PIETRO AMATORE

Viggianello, 29 September 1635

We had begun to journey again, but something had changed. Now, every visit, we encountered Rome as a scarred battlefield, even before the rock hits, which before we had only seen a few times. Johannes knew that something, which he hadn’t seen, had fixed some ‘path’ through time, and made it inevitable. What did it matter? If humanity destroys the Earth before God, did it really make a difference?

Another letter had arrived from Ro. . .

Pietro Amatore

Salerno, 21 September 1635

After four days, we reached Salerno, far from Rome, and Johannes had fully recovered. I’d never seen him as well as this, as every day I’d seen him for the last two weeks he’d been making his journeys, which took so much out of him. His skin was clearer, he stood straight and strong, he never used his stick. He could almost pass for a man of thirty. And his spirits were lifted too, he began to smile more often and even laugh; and detached . . .

Asher crouches, tightening his grasp on the baseball bat.

“Did you hear it too?” he whispers over his shoulder.

“Yeah, it sounded like it was coming from the left up ahead,” Wendy whispers back, her hand resting on the pistol in her side holster.

Asher takes quiet steps forward through the fallen leaves and sticks, his green eyes searching through the trees for a sign of movement. He counts to thirty, hairs prickling up the back of his neck and his heart thumping. A bead of s. . .