“What is it?” Alana asks.

“I just got a call from Geneva,” Byron says. “They finally have a match for this strain of the plague.”

“Which is?”

“Yersiniai pestis orientalis.”

Nico shakes his head. “I’ve never heard of this subtype.”

“Because it hasn’t been seen in hundreds of years,” Byron says. “Not since the Middle Ages.”

“No . . .” Alana murmurs.

Byron locks eyes with her. “It’s one of the only two known variants of the medieval plague.”

She goes cold. “The return of the Black Death.”

Chapter

Thirty-Four

Armageddon. Perhaps it has descended already without any form of divine intervention.

He feels dirty just being here. He read up beforehand on Scampìa, the crime-ridden neighborhood in northern Naples, but only in person does he appreciate the ungodliness of the place. A modern-day Sodom or Gomorrah. The dilapidated buildings are protected by chain-link fences and locked gates. The street is littered with garbage, much of it in the form of humans. Drunks and addicts totter down the streets, a few push their possessions in shopping carts. The neighborhood stinks of sin—body odor, tobacco, and rotting garbage.

He crosses at an intersection and passes two young women who stand on stiletto heels under the bluish haze of a streetlight. Both smoke cigarettes. Each of them is squeezed into a tube top and tiny skirt. One of them is taller than him, with shoulders as broad. And the other one with the purple-dyed hair, who looks to be no more than fifteen or sixteen years old, can’t stop giggling. It’s obvious they are intoxicated. He wonders if cocaine or even amphetamine—the crystal meth he read was so rampant in this neighborhood—is to blame.

“Hey, lover boy,” the taller one calls to him in a deep voice. “Want to play?”

He is shocked to realize that she must have once been, or possibly still is, a man. He shakes his head and continues walking, but the girls follow, falling into stride on either side of him.

“For seventy-five euros, I’ll blow you good,” the purple-haired one offers.

“And for a hundred fifty, you can do us both,” the masculine one coos. “Bet you’ve never had a threesome, lover boy. Not as special as one with the two of us, anyway.”

O Lord, what has this world come to?

“Don’t be shy, lover boy.”

“Tend Your sick ones, O Lord Christ,” he mumbles to himself. “Rest Your weary ones. Bless Your dying ones. Soothe Your suffering ones. Pity Your afflicted ones.”

“Ooh, we got a religious one here.” The taller one claps her hands gleefully. “My absolute favorite kind to corrupt!”

“Looks like your pants are saying yes,” the purple-haired one cries out as she points at his crotch.

To his horror, he realizes that his member has stirred to life. The shame and guilt overwhelm him. He has worked so hard to banish those urges. He wants to vomit. He wants to run. Instead, he just mutters, “I have no money.”

The jezebels seem to lose interest and fall away. He scampers on for three or four more blocks, until he’s convinced they are no longer following. Then he doubles back to the streetlight where he met them, but the two whores are nowhere to be seen.