A tremor went through him. His right hand was stiff and ached with a deep, throbbing pain that he had not noticed immediately. Now he looked down at his hands and found that not all of the stains upon him were invisible. The knuckles of his right hand were swollen and bruised and blood smeared the back of his hand.
What did I do? he thought. Then he said it aloud, but it came out differently. “What did you do?”
Nico rushed to the window. If he cocked his head just right, he could see the Rialto Bridge. That tinny music came from the throng in the marketplace that ran alongside the canal. Tourists milled amongst carts laden with leather goods, T-shirts, pocketbooks, jewelry, and a million so-called souvenirs. On the canal, gondoliers shouted good-naturedly at one another as they poled their slim vessels through the sludgy water.
If the back of the building had that kind of view, and with this gleaming kitchen—the appliances alone probably cost more than he made in a year—he figured the rest of the place must be pretty swank as well.
So whose apartment was this, and where was the owner?
What the hell am I doing here?
He snatched the book off the table by pure instinct, not wanting to be parted from it, and went exploring. The apartment was not enormous, but whispers of money were everywhere. The high metal ceilings, expensive woodwork, and marble fireplace told him all he needed to know. Every room was so immaculate that he assumed the owner had a cleaning service. Odd that he had never connected cleanliness with wealth before, but the thread was there.
A small table near the apartment door had been overturned, spilling a picture frame, a stack of mail, and a dish of Murano glass made to look like pieces of candy across the floor. On the wall behind the table was a single streak of blood.
Nico held his breath, turning in a circle, trying to figure out where the struggle would have led him. Down a short hallway, he found two bedroom doors, but both rooms were empty, the beds neatly made and unrumpled. Which left the bathroom.
His hand shook as he reached out and gave the door a shove. Hinges creaked as the door swung inward.
At first he thought the man in the bathtub must be dead, and his throat tightened, his stomach roiling with nausea. Christ, if he’d done this …
Black electrical tape bound the man’s ankles. His arms were behind his back, but Nico could only assume his wrists were similarly trussed. Layers of tape had been wound around his head, covering his mouth. He’d taken a beating, face swollen and bruised and bloody.
But then he saw the man’s chest rising and falling, and he knew he wasn’t a murderer. Relief flooded him and he sagged against the open door. As he did, the book nearly slipped from his grasp and he gripped it more tightly, then looked down at it. He had almost forgotten he was carrying it. The warm leather felt as though it might as well be a part of his own body.
Revulsion made him want to drop the book, to leave it there on the bathroom floor and get the hell away, but his hand would not obey. Nico backed into the hallway and hurried to the door. He opened it and glanced out to make sure no one would see him exiting the apartment, then he slipped through and hurried along the corridor, descending the stairs toward the first floor at perilous speed, the book clutched to his chest.
Geena, he thought. Where are you? He needed her, but even more so, he needed time to sit and think all of this out. On the street, he turned right, navigating alleys and bridges as fast as possible without breaking into a run. Before he could talk to Geena about what was happening to him, he had to try to make sense of it, not just go on intuition.
He hurried through a beautifully landscaped courtyard, its stone and brick foundations crested with an abundance of flowers in full bloom, their vivid colors bright in the summer sun, the heat of the day trapping the scents of a dozen varieties like a city hothouse. A black dog ran by in the opposite direction as if it was chasing something, or being chased, and Nico smiled humorlessly as he saw himself in the same situation.
He would head back to his own apartment, make himself a cup of coffee, and think. Though just holding that book made him uneasy, he knew he would have to open it if he was going to figure out what had happened to him. If Volpe’s presence in his mind was more than psychic resonance, he wanted to know how to get it out of him. He needed to be able to think clearly again, without fearing a blackout.
As if summoned by the thought, the darkness began to edge in at the corners of his mind again. No, Nico thought, fighting to maintain control, to continue seeing out of his own eyes.
But as he crossed a narrow, crumbling bridge, with a gondolier poling a Japanese couple along the canal below, he could feel the presence that now lurked always behind the curtains of his mind. Words played across his thoughts, enchantments from the book he still held as close to his heart as a lover’s secret journal, and he wondered how long he had sat in the unconscious man’s kitchen reading that book before his own consciousness reached the surface of his mind again.
The presence inside of him—the spiritual remains of Zanco Volpe—had other things on his mind as well. He had the book, but there were other ingredients he needed to acquire if he hoped to be able to protect Venice.
Protect Venice?
He’d broken into an ancient church, a city landmark, and stolen a book that must be priceless. He had barged into some random man’s apartment and beaten, bound, and gagged him. What the hell did any of that have to do with protecting Venice?
The spell must be recast before they try to return.
Nico staggered, caught his foot on a protruding stone, and fell headlong down the stone steps leading down from the bridge. The book flew from his hands. He banged his right knee and skinned his palms, hissing through his teeth at the stinging pain of it. But he’d gotten away easy. It could have been much worse. The voice in his head had taken him by surprise. But had it been an answer? Was the presence inside of him self-aware? Or was it just Nico’s subconscious interpreting the things it had learned from the psychic backlash down in the chamber beneath Petrarch’s library?
Regardless, he knew what else he needed for this spell, and it was a dreadful shopping list. Even now, the words echoed in his head and he could not tell if they were his thoughts, memories of what he must have read in the book, or the murmurings of a Venetian magician who’d been dead for centuries.
The hand of a soldier, the seal of the master of the city, the blood of a loved one.
“Fuck,” he whispered, ignoring the stares of two old widows as he bent to retrieve the book.
Its cover seemed none the worse for wear. The blood on his palm soaked into the leather and it stuck to his hand, strangely rough on his skin.
He wondered if the blood would still be there when he looked again.
VI
GEENA DIDN’T bother to stop at the Biblioteca. She passed it by without giving the building so much as a glance, heels clacking on stone as she strode through St. Mark’s Square, pigeons taking flight to clear her a path. More than one tourist turned to frown at her for disrupting their feeding of the birds, which Geena had always thought a disgusting tradition. One man, a bearded fool speaking German to his companions, had pigeons roosting on his head and outstretched arms, grinning for a photograph, with no thought given to what diseases the birds might be carrying.
As she entered an alley between two restaurants—a waiter serving outdoor tables shooting her a curious glance—she pulled out her cell phone and rang Domenic.
“Good morning,” he said cheerily. “Are you two feeling any better?”
You two? She flinched at the words. Did they all think it was all right for her relationship with Nico to be public now that she had let them see how much she cared for him, feared for him, and loved him?
“Have you ever heard of a member of the Venetian government named Zanco Volpe?” she asked, unintentionally curt.
“I don’t think so. Was he a senator or a member of the Ten?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe just an advisor of
some kind. But he had a lot of power in the city.”
Domenic knew more about Venetian history than anyone she had met since she had first come to work at the university, three years before. He knew Venice, its people and culture and politics—but he knew the history best of all.
“The name isn’t familiar,” Domenic admitted. “Why do you ask? Did you and Dr. Schiavo find something in the Petrarch manuscripts?”
Geena could not think of any way to explain it to him that would not have led to a thousand other questions, not to mention worries about her mental stability. Instead, she ignored the question and forged ahead.
“What about someone called Akylis—maybe some kind of magician or shaman or something?”
“I’ve never heard ‘Akylis’ used as a person’s name before,” Domenic said.
“But you’ve heard the word?”
“I don’t know the etymology of it, but scholars have suggested the word as the root for the naming of ancient Aquileia, on the northern shore of the Adriatic. It was founded in the second century B.C.—”
“Count on you to know that,” Geena said, her mood lightening for a fleeting moment.
“It’s my job to know that,” Domenic reminded her.
“What about a Doge named Pietro … shit, something, I can’t remember the last name … and a count called Alviso Tonetti?”
She came to an alley too jammed with people and turned left, seeking an alternate route. Striding past a puppet shop where she always loved to stop and stare at the extraordinary marionettes in the window, she spared only a glance.
“That’s an easy one,” Domenic said. “The Doge was Pietro Aretino—”
“That’s it, yeah.”
“—and, according to the history books, Tonetti was his nemesis. Records from the period say that the Doge plotted to dismiss the Great Council, Venice’s equivalent to the Senate, as well as the Council of Ten and make himself some kind of emperor. Tonetti persuaded the Great Council to banish the Doge, and two of his conspirators—members of the Ten—were executed. Well, murdered, really, because it wasn’t as though they were tried for crimes against the state or anything. They called Tonetti ‘Il Conte Rosso’ after that because of the bloodshed.”
“Holy shit, it’s real,” Geena muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing, nothing,” she said quickly. A glimpse into a shop window filled with Carnival masks gave her a start. Too many faces watching her. Too many people around her.
“What year was that? With the ‘Red Count’?” she asked.
“Early 1400s. Maybe 1415, 1417, around there.”
Then she remembered the second of Nico’s weird visions that had spilled over into her brain, of soldiers escorting another banished Doge to the canal, forcing him to leave the city.
“There were other Doges banished, weren’t there?”
“Two that I know of. Geena, what’s this all about? Are you coming to the Biblioteca today, or what? We’ve got a lot of prep work to do before the BBC crew shows up tomorrow. And, honestly, I’m sick of the dirty looks I’m getting from Adrianna Ricci.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she said, dodging around an elderly couple walking arm in arm past shop windows, taking up the entire alley. “Just trying to track down … I just have to meet Nico and then I’ll be there.”
“I thought he was with you?”
Geena cut through a cluster of people and crossed a wide, well-preserved bridge. The buildings along the narrow canal that flowed beneath it had beautiful façades and many windows were filled with flower boxes, but the first floors were crumbling and stained by past high tides.
“Who were the other two Doges?” she asked, ignoring his question.
“Giardino Caravello in the 1390s, and then the most famous, Francesco Foscari, in 1457.”
“Foscari?”
“Yes. One of the subjects of Lord Byron’s play The Two Foscari. The same family the university is named after. Actually, some of the research I’ve read suggests all three of the banished Doges were related—perhaps distant cousins. Caravello, the first of the three, was apparently banished because he wanted his relatives in all levels of Venetian government. And not just Venice. The family had spread out to other powerful Mediterranean cities, sort of insinuating themselves into government wherever they could. Caravello was much more interested in power for his family than the glory of Venice.”
“And the other two, Aretino and Foscari, were related to him?” Geena asked.
“According to some sources,” Domenic said, impatiently. “Now are you going to tell me what all of this is about?”
Geena emerged from an alley and turned right on Riva del Ferro, the Grand Canal on her left. It had always seemed strange to her that this stretch of water was considered part of the Grand Canal, as it was so much narrower than other segments, but it was still broad enough that water buses, taxis, and private boats purred in both directions. The Rialto Bridge was just ahead, with its series of arches forever enclosed to protect the many shops inside the bridge.
But Geena knew she wasn’t going that far. In the flash of memory that Nico had blasted into her head, apparently unintentionally, she had known this place. She knew the house that had once belonged to Il Conte Tonetti.
A small crowd had formed in front of the once grand mansion. A police boat was moored at the edge of the canal and other officers had come on foot. Half a dozen of them clustered outside the front door, keeping people back from the old building.
From somewhere behind her, around the curve of the canal, she could hear the siren of a water ambulance. The noise echoed off the water and the bridge and the faces of the buildings, growing into a sound that was almost a scream.
Heart fluttering in her chest, imagining the worst, Geena shoved her way into the crowd. People snapped at her in Italian. Whatever tourists had been in the vicinity when the ugliness had begun had made themselves scarce. These were Venetians now, the people of the city. Neighbors and shopkeepers and even a couple of gondoliers, who she thought must have been having coffee in the café two doors down.
“What happened?” she asked. “Can someone tell me what happened?”
The frantic edge in her voice made her cringe, but it seemed to draw the right attention. A young man, no more than twenty, tossed his cigarette to the ground and stamped it out.
“A break-in at one of the apartments,” the guy said. “I heard one of the cops say the owner was beaten badly. The weird thing—at least from what the police were saying—is that the apartment wasn’t even robbed.”
Ice trickled along Geena’s spine. Flush with guilt by association and fear for Nico, she continued to forge her way through the crowd, searching for his face. But she knew in her heart that he had already gone. How long ago had he been there? An hour? Thirty minutes?
Retreating to the shadow of the Rialto Bridge, she pulled out her cell phone and called Domenic again.
“Are you on your way?” he asked upon answering.
“Dom, listen. You know everyone in Venice. You must know someone with the police, right?”
For just a second, Domenic was quiet. When he spoke again, his levity had vanished.
“What’s wrong, Geena? What’s going on?”
She hesitated, hand clutched tightly around the phone. If she let someone else into this craziness, what would happen? It already felt completely out of her control, but at least for the moment it was still between her and Nico. Intimate. Their problem and nobody else’s.
But she knew that was a lie. Their intimacy had been shattered, turned into a twisted mirror of itself. Whatever they were sharing now, it wasn’t natural, and it frightened her.
“It’s Nico,” she said. “He’s gone missing again. I … I don’t think he’s in his right mind, Dom. I’m afraid something terrible is going to happen.”
As she spoke the words, the water ambulance pulled up to the edge of the canal and two EMTs jumped out with their gear, hurryi
ng toward the front door, the crowd clearing them a path.
“I’m afraid it may have happened already.”
The hand of a soldier…
The very idea was abhorrent to Nico, and he’d been trying his best to turn his mind away from what it might mean. But he was finding it difficult to concentrate. His thoughts were scattered, darting here and there, calling up images and pushing down recollections that could not be his. As one thought seemed to coalesce, another would stalk in and rip it to shreds. His head ached, his eyes throbbed, and he felt more apart from this city than he ever had before.
The thing inside him, though—Zanco Volpe—that felt very much at home. And he had to accept now that the presence lurking in the shadowy corners of his mind was not merely an echo. Somehow, it had will and purpose. Volpe’s ghost? Nico didn’t know. But he knew for certain this was more than psychic residue.
Nico was being steered and directed, his movements dictated by the subtlest commands from deep inside. From Volpe himself. Sometimes he thought he heard a voice—deep, guttural, and cruel—and other times it was like walking through a waking dream. He knew he was dreaming, but he had no control over where this dream took him. Volpe could usurp Nico’s consciousness, sometimes with only a thought or an urge, but other times blotting it out completely. Those were the blackouts, and they frightened Nico the most. Bad enough that Volpe could take him over, make him see through his own eyes without any control over his body, but the idea that he might come awake at any time to find himself having done something hideous made him sick.
What if he had killed the man in that apartment, where Il Conte Rosso had once lived? Christ, how do I stop this?
Leaving the old mansion he had struggled to fight against this loss of control, and for a while he had stumbled through the streets with the book clasped to his chest. He must have looked like a drunk, staggering into walls, talking to himself in a dialect he had only ever seen written in books. More than once he had come close to falling into a canal.
The Chamber of Ten Page 9
