"Okay, then; pop my bones back into place, knit my flesh back together, and we'll get out of here. The two of us, together. You help me, I'll help you. Deal?"
There was the sound of a gasp in the darkness, as if the other couldn't quite believe what he'd just heard, and then a quick succession of rapid pops.
Almost like iron clasps being broken under immense force . . .
Logan had a second to wonder just what he'd done, and then the figure from the throne was bending over him, its bony teeth shining in the darkness, the eyes on the necklace around its throat all turning as one to stare at him in horror.
This won't hurt a bit, the other said, and then a hand clamped itself over one side of his face as a searing heat burned itself deep into his flesh and his head was filled with the triumphant laughter of a being who should have remained locked in its prison deep beneath the earth until time itself passed all meaning, but was now free to wreak havoc wherever and whenever it wanted . . .
The Adversary was a prisoner no more.
Six Months Later
The door to the mansion in the swamps outside New Orleans crashed inward from a savage blow, and then Simon Logan strode into the room, staring with satisfaction at the surprised occupants and disrupting the ritual that they'd just begun.
One of them stepped forward.
"What's the meaning of this?" he cried. "How dare you intrude on--"
The speaker, one of the senior mages of the Council of Nine that Simon Logan had once longed to emulate so badly, never got any further. Logan waved a hand, and the man began choking to death, his throat collapsing inward upon itself as if it had been struck by a great weight.
As the man struggled to escape the fate he'd called down upon himself, the other men in the room fell silent, stunned into inaction by the power of the man they thought long dead, the man who had once been nothing more than an eager acolyte but had now returned to them as a powerful sorcerer in his own right.
Just the reaction Logan was hoping for.
He searched their faces one by one, looking for his target. Not seeing him, he addressed the closest man. "Where's Hale?"
This man was perhaps a bit smarter than his colleague, for rather than protesting he simply turned and pointed into the ranks of those behind him.
Sensing where this was going, the men standing in that part of the room quickly separated, leaving Logan staring at the man he had come here to kill.
Hale's mistake was in not attacking the moment Logan entered the room. The extra time gave his opponent the opportunity to prepare his defenses, so when the attack came, it crashed against a wave of arcane force far more powerful than Hale had anticipated.
Logan gazed calmly at Hale as the other stood there, bewildered by his onetime apprentice's newly found power.
"My turn," Logan said with a smile.
When he was finished, there wasn't much left of the former necromancer but a few bloody bits of flesh clinging to the walls.
Logan addressed those still standing in the room.
"I hereby claim leadership of the Council of Nine, its power and authority granted to me by the rite of trial by combat. Any objections?"
There were none.
As he turned, intending to seek out his former master's study and see just what artifacts and books of power he had hidden away, the voice of the Adversary spoke into his mind from hundreds of miles distant.
Oh, we are going to have so much fun, you and I.
So much fun.
Simon Logan, now the most powerful necromancer in the United States, merely chuckled in agreement.
BELLUM ROMANUM
CARRIE VAUGHN
In the Kitty Norville series, werewolf Kitty hosts a talk-radio advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged. At first the show is all about consoling lovelorn women whose vampire boyfriends have become pains in the neck. But the farther Kitty delves into the supernatural world, meeting powerful vampires and sinister magicians, the more she realizes the world isn't what it seems and a deep, dangerous conspiracy is afoot. At the center of this conspiracy is a mysterious vampire named Roman. Before he became Kitty's nemesis, Roman was Gaius Albinus, a centurion of Rome, and two thousand years ago he was dragged into the supernatural world against his will. He's been seeking revenge ever since.
Gaius Albinus stood before the locked gates of Diocletian's Palace. Fifteen hundred years of planning, and he could not get to where he needed to go because of a chain and padlock, an electronic security system, and a modern sense of reasonable working hours, helpfully marked out on a placard bolted to the stone. What had once been a palace was now a museum, and it was closed.
So many obstacles in this modern era did not involve armies, weapons, or violence. No, they were barriers of bureaucracy and officious politeness. Another venerable institution of old Rome he ought to have known well, passed down to successive civilizations.
He couldn't help but smile, amused. To come so far, and to be confronted now by a sign telling him the site had closed several hours before and that he could not enter until daylight. Impossible for him.
Well. He would simply have to find another way. There was always another way.
What most impressed Gaius Albinus wasn't how much the city of Split had changed, but how much remained the same and recognizable. Even now, the city felt Roman.
The central palace complex still stood, amidst the sprawl that had grown up around it. The temple walls were identifiable. Many pitted stone blocks had fallen long ago and were now arranged in artistic piles in the interest of archaeological curiosity. At some point, cast-off stones had become valuable, worthy of admiration. Entire towns had turned into relics, museum pieces. And the roads--the roads still marked out routes across the Empire. The great engineers of Rome remained triumphant.
These days the onetime retirement retreat of Emperor Diocletian was a university and tourist town, raucous with nightlife, young people crowding into cafes, spilling onto the beach, drinking hard under strings of electric lights. Not so different from youths cavorting under suspended oil lamps back in the day, letting clothing slip off shoulders while pretending not to notice, making eyes at each other, offering invitations. That hadn't changed either, not in all his years.
Now, as then, tourists were easy to spot by how they wandered through it all with startled, awestruck expressions, most likely not understanding the local language. Gaius remembered going to Palestine as a young soldier, expecting to hear a cacophony of languages yet not being prepared for the sense of displacement, a kind of intellectual vertigo, that came from standing in the middle of a market and hearing people shout at one another using strange words, laughing at jokes he couldn't understand. The way people became subdued when he spoke his native Latin. More often than not they understood him, even when they pretended not to. They marked him as a foreigner, a conqueror.
Since then, he had learned not to particularly care what people thought of him.
Outside the old Roman center, the city was comprised of the blend of modernity and semimodernity along narrow medieval streets that marked so many European cities. After traveling out by car, he stopped at a squat town house of middling modern construction: aluminum and plywood. Clearly a product of the time when this country was part of Yugoslavia, communist, and short on resources. That era had lasted less than a century. The blink of an eye. Hardly worth remembering.
The hour was late. Gaius knocked on the door anyway, and a mousy-looking man answered. In his thirties, he had tousled black hair and wore dark-rimmed glasses and a plain T-shirt with sweats. An average man dressed for a night in. He blinked, uncertain and ready to close the door on the stranger.
"I need your help," Gaius said in the local Croatian.
"What is it?" The guy looked over Gaius's shoulder as if searching for a broken-down car. There wasn't one.
"If you could just step out for a moment." The man did, coming out to the concrete stoop in front of the door. People were so trusti
ng.
Gaius needed him outside his house, across the protection of his threshold. In the open, under a wide sky, the Roman could step into the man's line of sight and catch his gaze, then draw that attention close, wrap his own will around the small mortal's mind, and pull. In the space of three of the man's own heartbeats, Gaius possessed him.
Gaius's heart hadn't beat once in two thousand years.
"Professor Dimic, I need to get inside the palace. You have access. You'll help me."
He didn't even question how Gaius knew his name. "Yes, of course."
Gaius drove the archaeologist back to the city center and navigated the crowds to the quiet alley where the gate to the lower level of the palace was located. Gaius could have broken in himself--picked the lock, disabled the security system. But this was simpler and would leave no evidence. No one must track him. No one must know what he did.
Dimic unlocked the gate and keyed in the security code, and they were inside.
"Anything else?" he asked, almost eagerly. His gaze was intent but vacant, focused on Gaius without really seeing anything.
"Show me how to reset all this when I leave."
"Certainly."
The archaeologist gave him the code, showed him the lock, and even left a key. He helpfully pointed out restrooms at the far end of the hallway.
"Go home now," Gaius instructed the man. "Go inside. Sit in the first chair you come to and close your eyes. When you open them again you won't remember any of this. Do you understand?"
"I do." He nodded firmly, as if he'd just been given a dangerous mission and was determined to see it through.
"Go."
The archaeologist, a man who had dedicated his life to studying the detritus Gaius's people had left behind, turned and walked away, without ever knowing he'd been in the presence of a onetime Roman centurion. He'd weep if he ever found out.
Gaius made sure the gates were closed behind him and went into the tunnels beneath the palace. The vaulted spaces were lit only by faint emergency lights at the intersections. Columns made forests of shadows.
He had to orient himself. The main gallery had been turned into some kind of gift shop or market. The eastern chambers had become an art gallery, scattered with unremarkable modern sculptures, indulgent satire. But along the western corridor, he found a familiar passageway, and from there was able to locate the series of chambers he needed. He reached the farthest, not taking time to glance at any of the exhibits--he knew it all already. Then he counted seven stones along the floor to the right spot on the wall, two bricks up. Anyone who'd come along this passage and happened to knock on this row of stones would have noticed that one made a slightly different sound. A more hollow sound. But in all that time, it seemed that no one had ever done so.
He drew a crowbar from inside his jacket and used it to scrape out mortar and grime from around the brick, then worked to pry the brick free. He had to lean his body into it; the wall had settled over the centuries. Dust had sealed the cracks. But he was strong, very strong, and with a couple of great shoves and a grunt, the brick slipped out and thudded to the ground at his feet.
Gaius reached inside the exposed alcove.
A thousand disasters could have befallen this site. A dozen wars had crossed this country since the last time he'd been here. But he'd chosen his hiding place well. The palace area had been continually lived in and not left for ruin. The town was off the main crossroads of Europe. Armies generally didn't have a reason to level a coastal village with no strategic value. The place was still mostly intact, mostly preserved. Even better, over the last couple of centuries it had been cleaned up and maintained.
And in all that time, no one had discovered what he'd left buried. He drew out his prize and held it up to check its condition.
The artifact was a clay lamp, terra-cotta orange, small enough to fit in the palm of his hand. A spout at one end would hold a wick; oil would be poured in through the top. It was a poor man's lamp, too plain and commonplace for wealth. The designs imprinted around the top were of fire. The thing was dusty, covered in grime, but otherwise in good shape. Just as he'd left it. A couple of swipes with his gloved hand cleared some of the dirt. There'd be plenty of time later to clean it more thoroughly. It didn't need to be clean, it needed to be intact, safe in hand. The Manus Herculei. The Hand of Hercules, which he would use to bring fire down upon the Earth.
If archaeologists had found it, they'd have tagged it, cataloged it. Stuck it behind glass or simply put it on a shelf in some climate-controlled archival storage. He might have had a harder time claiming it then, and some of the artifact's power might have diminished. But this . . . this was the best outcome he could have hoped for, and it made him wonder if there wasn't in fact some weight of destiny on his side. He was meant to do this, and he was being guided.
He had been on this path, unwavering, for two thousand years.
79 CE
When Gaius Albinus arrived in Pompeii, he had not aged in eighty years. He still looked a hale man in his thirties. A bright centurion of Rome, though he'd left his armor behind decades before. Who needed armor, when one was practically immortal?
He'd never wanted to be immortal. He'd wanted to die for Rome. That chance had been taken from him by a monster. Since then, he had looked for purpose. Some kind of revenge against the one who had done this. Unfortunately, Kumarbis was as indestructible as he was.
The force of Gaius's rage surprised him. He'd never had a reason to be angry before. When he looked for an outlet, something he could break or destroy to somehow quiet his fury, he found one worthy target: the world. If one was going to be immortal, one might as well use that time to attempt the impossible.
In Herculaneum, he rented a house. This was a port village up the coast from the more decadent, raucous Pompeii. Here, he'd have quiet and not have to answer so many questions. The place was small, just a couple of rooms on the outside of town, but it had a courtyard behind high walls. In privacy, he could burn herbs and write on the flagstones in charcoal, washing them off when he finished.
Then he learned to make lamps.
He couldn't simply buy one in a market and have it be pure, so he went out one night to a pottery workshop and persuaded the master there to help him. The potter was skeptical, even with Gaius's particular brand of persuasion. Gaius was well dressed and held himself like a soldier--why would he need to learn to make lamps? "It's a hobby," Gaius said, and the man seemed to accept that. The potter taught him to fashion objects from clay, bake them, fire them. His first few efforts were rough, lopsided. One shattered in the kiln.
"Practice," the potter said. "Even a simple thing takes practice. Keep trying."
Gaius understood that, and at the end of a week of working long nights he had a lamp, all of his own making. He paid the potter well, which seemed to confuse the man.
That was the first step. Next: the inscription.
He washed; wore a light, undyed tunic; and went barefoot. The summer air was thick, sticky, but his skin was cool, was always cool. He'd taken blood from his servant, who now slept in the house, out of the way. The borrowed strength buoyed him and would be enough to carry him through the night.
A full moon rose as dusk fell, and the smallest hint of sunset still touched the deep blue sky when Gaius arranged his tools in the courtyard. Charcoal, candles, string, braziers, and incense. His lamp. He had a hundred incantations to learn, a hundred symbols to memorize and write, then write again, until he had them perfect. Practice, as the potter had told him.
Such good advice.
He had a lamp to infuse with power.
Kneeling, tools in hand and bright moonlight silvering the courtyard, he hesitated. The hair on his arms stood up, and a sudden tension knotted his shoulders. It was the sensation of being stalked by a lion. He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder.
The danger was outside the courtyard, approaching. If he quieted himself, he could sense every beating heart in the town, he coul
d follow the scent of warm blood and the sound of breathing to every hidden soul. But the thing approaching had no heartbeat, and its blood was cold. The hold it had on Gaius Albinus was difficult to define, but even after decades, the bond remained and called to him.
He set down his tools and marched to the courtyard door, wrenched it open, and looked.
An old man, his skin shriveled, his bones bent, pulled himself along the alley wall, creeping from one shadow to the next on crooked limbs. Hairless, joints bulging, he should not have been alive. His ragged linen tunic hung off him like a crucified body. This was the source of nightmare tales that kept children awake, the stories of ghouls and demons that hid under beds and in wells.
Frozen, Gaius watched him approach. His teeth ground, his jaw clenched with rage, but he couldn't move, he couldn't flee. He ought to murder this monster. But he couldn't.
The shriveled old man heaved up against the wall and stared back at him. Laughing, he pointed a crooked finger. "Salve, Gaius Albinus, salve! I found you. Given enough time, I knew I would find you. And, my dear son, all I have is time."
"I am not your son," Gaius said reflexively, as he had done a hundred times before, uselessly. He glanced around the street; he didn't want anyone to witness this.
"Yes, you are. I made you. You are my son."
The old man, Kumarbis, looked desiccated, as if he had been wandering in a desert, baked by the sun. Which was impossible for one like him. This meant he had not been eating, going weeks between feeding on blood instead of days. He was starved; he was weak. How was he still existing?
Something dug hooks into Gaius, a connection between them that he'd never be able to deny, however much he wanted to. A feeling: compassion. Gratitude. A tangle emanating from this creature, binding them together. Gaius had tried to escape these lines of power, fed through blood and woven with terrible magic, created when Kumarbis transformed him.
"No! I disavow you. I broke from you!"
"You are my son--"
"You are a mockery--you are not my father!" Gaius's father had died decades ago, never knowing what had become of his son, who'd vanished into the service of Rome.
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