So she kept walking through the night until the time came when she no longer tried to recall where she had been, but rather craved something familiar.
The first touch of Nico’s mind on hers made her cry out with joy.
When Nico regained consciousness, he was surrounded by the dead. The room, lit by several weak candles that all seemed to be sputtering their last, was filled with skeletons. They were piled on shelves carved into the walls, one on top of the other like firewood stacked against the winter. They were propped in alcoves several deep, held in place like collected insects by long pikes driven through rib cages; he could not tell whether they’d been pinned there before or after death. In one far corner there was a pile of skulls, and all of them bore signs of trauma to their pale domes. Other bones scattered the floor, tangled with shreds of rotten clothing. Candlelight shifted here and there, and the shadows cast into skulls’ eyes blinked at him, arm bones moved, and clawed fingers clasped at the floor as they tried to pull themselves closer.
None of that shocked him. What did shock him was the weight in his chest. It felt as though his heart had been ripped out—
—Il Conte hacking away, breaking, reaching in—
—and replaced with a lead weight. When he breathed he hardly felt his chest move, and his lungs were burning.
What has he done to me now? Nico thought, and he wondered how many of these skeletons were made by Volpe’s bidding.
I’ve healed you, fool, Volpe’s voice said.
Nico looked down at his chest. He was shirtless, and the place where he’d been shot—just to the left of his sternum, an inch higher than his nipple—was a mass of heavy purple, green, and yellow bruising. He touched himself there with his right hand, running his fingertips across his puffy skin in search of the bullet hole. But it was not there.
A hair’s breadth closer to your heart and you would have bled to death, Volpe said.
“And you?” But the old magician did not answer that. “So where are we?” Nico asked, but already the memories were coming back at him, punching in with each fresh revelation—Ramus’ death, Foscari shooting him gleefully in the chest, Geena being taken by that bastard Aretino—and Volpe did not answer straightaway.
It was easier to cure the wound when you were unconscious. Magic’s influence can be … indelicate sometimes. And the heart is most delicate. It took a while, but you’re well now. I’m well. Now we both need rest.
“But they took Geena,” Nico said.
They won’t hurt her. Not yet.
“How can you be sure?”
Because they want me, and you and I are inextricably bound.
“So they’ll use her as bait,” Nico said coldly.
Of course.
“You sound tired,” Nico said, and Volpe did not reply. He was still there—Nico could feel him, looming in his mind like a shadow in blazing sunlight—but he was musing, his silence loaded with something important.
Nico sighed and closed his eyes. This would have been a great find for any archaeologist, and some vague part of him hoped that he’d discover where they were and remember it. But such considerations seemed like part of a life he no longer knew. Here he was surrounded by bones bearing evidence of violent deaths, and he felt calm. Not quite at home, but settled. He breathed in deeply and smelled dust.
You sought memories that were not your own, Volpe thought. Nico had never heard such caution in that voice. You … forced your way in.
Nico opened his eyes and sat up. He had full control of his body, and he looked around to confirm that, lifting one hand, then the other. He felt righteous rage building inside him, and knew that Volpe would feel it as well. He stood. The chamber’s ceiling was low and brushed his head, and whilst standing he seemed to look down on all the bones and skulls, viewing them as if from the position of a conquering warrior.
Those were not your things to know, Volpe continued. Magic is a dangerous thing, and does not bestow itself upon just anyone. There was a hesitancy to his voice now, and Nico was enjoying the feeling of subtle power it gave him. Volpe did not sound afraid, not quite … but the things Nico had seen were obviously precious to him. The memories were still clear, though disjointed.
What do you expect me to do about it?
“I expect you to forget,” Volpe said.
Nico lashed out. He kicked at a skull, and it shattered beneath his boot, bone shards ricocheting around the room. He turned on the spot, looking for something else to hit or kick, and it was only as his anger bubbled over that he realized, There’s no door to this place.
“I forced my way in?” he shouted. “Then what the fuck did you do to me? Serves you right. How do you like it?” He stalked across the chamber and stomped on a pile of skeletons, feeling a wave of queasiness as they cracked and crumbled beneath his boot. His chest felt heavy and hot, but he could not describe it exactly as pain, more the memory of pain having been there. Right then, he might have welcomed its return.
Volpe held back and let Nico expend his anger. It did not take very long. He turned from the bones he had broken and knelt again in the center of the chamber, shaking, sweating, and thinking of those knives plunging into Volpe’s torso over and over again. Each shred of memory brought a stab of pain in his own chest, and he wondered whether Volpe could transmit to him exactly what it had felt like. Probably. He was the old magician’s mannequin, and though this burst of fury felt good, he was sure that Volpe could stop it at any moment.
“Once the remaining two are put down, you’ll be rid of me,” Volpe said. Nico felt those bloodied memories drawn away, and he frowned as he tried to hold on to them. “They are the threat right now,” the magician continued, the sound of his voice surprising Nico. He’d not sensed the takeover, and now it felt natural speaking as Volpe.
I don’t want any of this, Nico thought.
“We’re in a place I haven’t been to for a long time,” Volpe said, as if answering a question. Control of Nico’s body remained with him, and he relaxed back onto his haunches as Volpe spoke. He could not deny his interest. “Even years before I died, I had no cause to come here. We’re deep beneath my family tomb on San Michele, in the buried ruin of the church that once stood here. This place houses the remains of those who wronged my family and friends over the decades and centuries.”
Popular family, Nico said, looking around and trying to guess how many were entombed down here. There were too many to count.
“When you’re at the forefront of progress, there are always those keen to hold you back.” Volpe took subtle control and pointed at the stacked skeletons, and those pinned against the walls. “Some were brought here dead, this was simply a place to dispose of them.” Then he indicated bones scattered across the floor, not all of them as a result of Nico’s brief show of anger. “Others were put here alive.”
Nico could barely comprehend the fate of those thrown in here still alive, dying in a darkness full of rotting cadavers. So why bring me here now? he asked.
“Recuperation,” Volpe said. “The gunshot damaged more than I can touch right away. You feel well because I’m holding back the pain. I’m accepting it myself.”
The hesitant voice, Nico thought. The caution. It’s because he’s in pain. And … afraid of the Doges?
“No,” Volpe said. “Cautious. They know the city, but never knew this place. I believe the Doges are hidden in a mansion in Dorsoduro. That’s where they will have Geena. For either of us to get what we want, we will have to kill them both. But before we can face them, you must heal. While fighting them, I cannot also take on your pain. And it would be crippling to you.”
Nico touched his chest again and felt Volpe withdraw. His skin felt warm, but the heavy weight inside his chest gave out no real sensations. He almost thanked Volpe, but felt little real gratitude.
“How long do we have to wait?” he asked.
Awhile, Volpe said, and he was fading further away.
“Where’s the door?” Nico asked. He
was looking around the chamber again, trying to perceive squared edges in the uneven shadows. But all he sensed from Volpe was a smile, and then nothing.
So he sat down for a while and rested, closing his eyes, breathing calmly and smelling age and candle wax, and the dust of broken bones. And when he thought Volpe was deep enough and far enough away, Nico opened his mind and perception and thought, Geena, I’m alive, and I’ll guide you in.
XVII
GEENA DESPERATELY wanted to go to him. I’ll guide you in, Nico had whispered into her mind, and every part of her wanted to surrender to that guidance. In his thoughts she felt pain and sorrow, and she wished that she could be in his arms, taking and giving the comfort their intimacy would provide.
If they were very lucky, and her courage did not fail her, perhaps they would know that comfort again. But now was not the time. Enemies still lurked all around them, working in shadows to wreak havoc upon their lives. But even that was selfish thinking; more hung in the balance than just the lives of two lovers. Plague and ancient hatreds had come to Venice on wings of greed.
All of it needed to be expunged and, somehow, the fates had conspired to make Geena Hodge the only one able to do that. If she acted now, and swiftly, and as mercilessly as her enemies.
She felt Nico’s psychic touch, the flutter of his thoughts caressing hers, and she wanted to melt into him. She chose ice instead, freezing emotion out in order to preserve it.
Geena? Nico whispered in her mind.
I’m here, but I can’t come to you. They set me free but only to find you. The contagion is in Foscari and Aretino, just as it was in Caravello. And they have more, secreted away in chambers even Volpe doesn’t know about. If they can’t have Venice, no one will. If we don’t do as they demand, they’ll scour the place of life and start over.
She felt his thoughts recoil.
They’ve given us a choice, she continued. I bring them Volpe by dawn or everyone in the city dies. So you have to come to me, Nico. You and Volpe have to meet me in the Chamber of Ten an hour before dawn.
But Volpe—
He loves this city. He’ll come, and he’ll try to kill them. But if all three of them are dead, the plague in those chambers will be released, so he’s got to come up with some other way to stop them.
Geena felt his confusion. But what are you going to do between now and then? he asked.
Prepare, she replied. Whatever you do, don’t trust him. When this is over—
She did not finish the thought, but she knew that Nico would feel it and understand her fear. Perhaps Volpe would sense it as well, but perhaps not. She was not sure how much of their communication he could understand, if it had to be concrete thoughts or if just feelings were enough. But Nico would know, he would feel her suspicion and mistrust of Volpe. The magician had promised to leave them alone, to depart Nico’s body when all of this was over, but Geena no longer believed him, if she ever had. His hubris had made him preserve his heart and his spirit for centuries so that he could remain the Oracle of Venice long past the time someone else ought to have inherited the role. He saw himself as the only one capable of protecting his city, and would not surrender that responsibility for anything.
To be the Oracle, he needed a body.
I’ll be all right, Nico thought, the words a salve to her troubled soul. But words were not enough.
Geena could not risk letting him see more of what was in her mind. I’ll see you an hour before dawn. Until then, don’t search for me. Don’t reach out. We’ll make it through this, honey, and we’ll be together again, just the two of us.
She felt his concern and his love and his fear for her, but just before the connection between them was severed, what Geena felt more than anything was his trust, and that gave her the strength to go on.
Nico sagged back against the stone wall of the catacombs beneath the Volpe family crypt, feeling the absence of Geena in his mind like the urgent nothingness of a missing limb. The shadows were fluttering moths in the dim, jittery candlelight. More than anything, the place felt dry, all of the moisture drawn from the bones of the dead long ago.
As though stepping out from the dark recesses of his mind, Volpe slunk forward. What do you suppose she’s up to?
“You were listening in,” Nico said. “You know as much as I do.”
Or did he? He knew that Volpe had heard the thoughts he and Geena had exchanged, but how much more had he been able to understand?
You are her first priority—
“I was. But if your old friends are telling the truth—”
Caravello carried the plague in his blood, under his control, like a weapon. We must assume they are telling the truth.
Nico winced, both from the lingering ache of his healed-over wound and from the strange glee he felt coming from Volpe.
“You’re happy about this?”
We were going to have to face the two prodigals regardless, but I could not have chosen a better location. It was the locus of my power and influence for all these many years.
“But they must know that, and they still plan to attack you there.”
They want access to the well.
Nico froze. “The well? You mean where Akylis’ tomb is buried?”
The Old Magician’s remains were never buried, Volpe said, the tone—even in Nico’s mind—like that of an adult correcting an errant child. The well was dug, the dolmen erected around the corpse, and then the well was capped. There is no awareness there, nothing lingering of Akylis’ mind. But as his body liquefied, the magic and evil remained. All that power, down there at the bottom of the well. Though it had been capped, when I built the Chamber of Ten, I sealed it with magic of my own and a new stone cap.
An image flashed across Nico’s mind and he realized he had seen the well cap. He had been too distracted when they had first entered the Chamber, too absorbed with the power emanating from the urn where Volpe had preserved his heart. But when he and Geena and the rest of the team had watched the footage Sabrina had shot, he had seen the granite disk set into the floor of the Chamber.
“Why do they need to open it?” Nico asked. “You said they’re already leaching Akylis’ power.”
Don’t you see? They want to bathe in it, to absorb it all at once. It would probably kill them, but I can’t risk the possibility that it won’t, never mind the potential that Akylis’ evil, unleashed from the well, could taint the hearts and spirits of all of the people of Venice. I can’t allow it.
“But we’re still going to meet them there?”
Are you suggesting we ignore this summons? That we leave your woman and all of the people of my city to die?
“Of course not! But it’s obvious they’re not afraid of you.”
They will be. They’ll never unseal the well. I won’t allow it. Besides, they don’t know what awaits them in the Chamber of Ten.
“And what’s that?”
The past.
Nico felt Volpe shifting inside of him and he felt himself expanding the way he did when he drew a deep breath, lungs filling with air. But this wasn’t air—the empty spaces in his body and mind were being filled up with the spirit of Zanco Volpe. A flash of panic sparked inside of him and he thought of the impressions he had gotten from Geena, her certainty that Volpe intended to betray him and take over his body …
“What are you doing?” Nico asked.
Making myself comfortable, Volpe replied. We will have to work together as never before if we are to survive to see the dawn.
“We?” Had Volpe not heard his thoughts and doubts?
How could I not know of your suspicions? I would fear the same if our situations were reversed.
“All right. So how do I know I can trust you?”
You have no choice.
Nico felt a chill that had nothing to do with the bones around him. Or perhaps it did … were these not the remains of generations of those foolish enough to make enemies of the Volpe clan?
We are in swift waters n
ow, Nico, and we have little influence over where they will finally cast us ashore. The magician’s presence and even his inner voice diminished. We have several hours before we must depart for this rendezvous and the best use of that time for both of us is to rest and heal. Sleep now. Soon you and your love will be reunited.
Even as Volpe’s magic clouded his mind and dragged him down into a healing slumber, his suspicions were at work.
“For how long?” he whispered.
But the magician’s only reply was oblivion.
Geena stood again in the courtyard of the church of San Rocco, paranoia creeping like spiders along her arms and up the back of her neck. The taverna where she and Volpe had burned the corpse of the Doge Caravello remained dark and undisturbed.
The façade of the church had an appealing plainness to it, and its windows were just as dark as the shops. It seemed to be waiting for her, offering a sanctuary she only wished she could claim.
The shops were dark, only a rare light visible in the windows of the apartments above them. Surely no one would be awake now, and yet she could not dispel the fear that even now she was observed. It was not the feeling that prickled her skin, not the certainty she had felt when Caravello had been stalking her.
She took a deep breath and began walking again, not across the courtyard—that would have been foolish—but retracing the same roundabout route that she and Volpe had used to depart the taverna earlier in the day. If things went as she hoped, being observed approaching the church would not be a problem. But if she had to improvise, if there was damage done, she did not want anyone to be able to say that they saw her there.
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