Chapter Ten
Olivia recoiled as if she had received a physical blow.
Ethan felt something twist inside his chest at the anguish distorting her features. He clenched his jaw and clamped down on a sudden urge to walk over and wrap his arms around her body to protect her from what was to come.
‘Natalia never…“saw” what happened,’ said Asgard in a low voice. ‘I think the shock of it would have killed her if she had. They were twins after all.’ His head drooped. ‘Natalia was asleep in her own home at the time of Sara’s death. She woke up filled with an unnamed dread about her sister’s fate and ordered her men to bring her to our castle. When they got there, the entire estate was ablaze and crows were swarming the place. It was morning by the time the fires died down enough for them to be able to enter the premises. They found evidence of a brutal battle and discovered the burnt bodies of the human servants and men I had left guarding the castle. Scattered among them were the ashes of the immortals in my service. Sara—’ His voice trembled. ‘—Sara’s remains were in the library. From the state of the room and the sword by her side, she fought to the bitter end.’
‘You told me immortals could survive sixteen deaths,’ Olivia said shakily.
Asgard swallowed. ‘They can. But there are three ways to permanently dispose of an immortal. Kill them repeatedly until their final death. Tear their bodies into small pieces.’ He hesitated. ‘And decapitation.’
Olivia raised a trembling hand to her lips.
‘From the human corpses Natalia and her men came across, the third method had been employed indiscriminately by the killers,’ Asgard continued in a thick voice. ‘Kristof and I returned two days later. By then, Natalia had already buried her sister’s ashes. It was as I wept before my wife’s grave that Natalia told me the news. Sara was with child at the time of her death.’
Ethan’s hand bunched into a fist on his knee at the Bastian’s tormented words. He could not even begin to imagine what the older immortal had lived through in those moments.
Tears dropped silently into Olivia’s lap.
‘Sara found out she was expecting shortly after Kristof and I left for Pozsony. She asked Natalia not to send for me. She wanted it to be a surprise upon our return.’ Asgard glared at the ground between his feet. ‘On that day, Natalia, Kristof, and I promised that we would leave no stone unturned in our quest to uncover who was behind the atrocities that had been committed. Although we never found proof that Jonah Krondike and Kronos slaughtered Sara and the people who had served us, what we discovered over the years and decades that followed convinced us they were the culprits.’
He looked at Olivia. ‘Kronos was a group made up of the descendants of pureblood immortal-human offsprings. We never got to the bottom of their exact origins, but we believe Jonah Krondike formed an unholy alliance with them in the middle of the fourteenth century, around the time the Red Death was coming to its natural close.’
Olivia startled. ‘A pureblood immortal-human offspring? You mean, like Mother Edwards?’
‘The woman who raised you may have been of the same race as the members of Kronos, but she had absolutely nothing in common with that infernal sect,’ said Asgard stiffly.
Relief brightened Olivia’s face slightly.
‘We got our first glimpse of their identity and objectives in the 1400s, in the Kingdom of Bohemia,’ said Asgard. ‘At the time, we had followed sightings of individuals bearing the mark of the cross and the rose to the town of Klodzko, where a terrible crime had recently been committed. A renowned natural philosopher by the name of Augustus Medevelle and his gifted assistant, Joseph Veceslav, had been found with their throats cut. Medevelle’s lifelong mission had been to find a mystical artifact linked with the creation of the Elixir of Life. It was an endeavor that had earned him years of ridicule from his colleagues in the capital and abroad.’ He gazed steadily at his niece. ‘That artifact was the Tabula Smaragdina.’
Olivia gasped. ‘The Emerald Tablet?’
Ethan drew a sharp breath. She knows about the Tablet?
‘Wasn’t that one of the Hermetic texts said to be behind the origin of alchemy itself?’ she continued.
Asgard regarded his niece with newfound respect. ‘You are well-read.’
Her face grew troubled. ‘There was a library at the abbey. Most of the books I studied came from Mother Edwards’s personal collection though. The first texts she ever gave me to read concerned alchemy and philosophy.’ Her eyes darkened. ‘I thought it strange at the time, considering the nature of our order. Was she preparing me for—’ she waved a hand and indicated the luxurious estate around them, ‘for this?’
Asgard hesitated. ‘Although I did not know her personally, Margaret Edwards strikes me as having been a singularly astute woman. She knew you would face difficult times in the future.’ A melancholic smile curved his lips. ‘I think Natalia left her instructions to get you ready for what might come.’
Olivia looked down at her hands. ‘But it wasn’t enough, was it?’ Her voice trembled. ‘I could not protect her or the other nuns in the end.’
‘I don’t think your mother or the abbess expected you to be able to defend yourself against an army of killers, Olivia. You were never trained for physical combat.’ Asgard faltered. ‘Your talents lie elsewhere.’
His gaze shifted to the shadows beyond the deck once more. ‘The Emerald Tablet was one of the objects believed to be behind the Magnus Opus, the process used to make the Philosopher’s Stone. The other famous relic was the Mutus Liber, or The Wordless Book, as it was also known. Although modern historians attribute authorship of the Mutus Liber to a Frenchman from the seventeenth century, Kristof and I believed the original text was several millennia old.’
The distant howl of a coyote broke the heavy hush that fell over the patio.
‘How—I—this is just so incredible,’ Olivia stammered.
‘Medevelle and his assistant were on the trail of the Emerald Tablet when they were tortured and killed by Jonah and Kronos,’ Asgard continued in a level tone. ‘But it seemed they lied to their murderers about their findings and sent them on a fool’s errand to Asia. Veceslav proved to have been the more cautious of the two men. After we introduced ourselves to their families and told them of our search for a group of marked individuals we believed to be responsible for the murders, his daughter led us to a field outside the town. Under her directions, we dug up a box her father had interred. In it were copies of the two men’s lives’ works.’ He ran a hand through his hair and let out a tired sigh. ‘Fifty years later, Kristof and I unearthed the Tabula Smaragdina in North Africa.’
Olivia gaped. ‘You discovered the Emerald Tablet?’
Asgard dipped his head.
‘What did you do with it?’ She looked around at the mansion and its grounds, as if expecting to see the relic floating in midair. ‘Is it here?’
Ethan masked a smile at the excitement in her voice.
‘No,’ Asgard replied. ‘We knew we couldn’t keep the artifact safe while we were still chasing Jonah and Kronos. After much deliberation, we entrusted it for safekeeping to a group of humans in 1478. That fraternity eventually came to be known as the Freemasons.’
Olivia had gone pale. Ethan felt a twinge of sympathy for Asgard’s niece. The first time the Bastian noble had related this tale to Howard and him, they had not believed the immortal either. It wasn’t until they saw the artifact with their own eyes that they finally grasped the significance of the quest they now found themselves embroiled in.
‘And the Mutus Liber?’ she finally asked.
‘We never located it. At least, that’s what I believe.’
Olivia’s brow furrowed in puzzlement.
‘In the middle of the sixteenth century, Natalia convinced us to part ways. She and Kristof would chase after the Mutus Liber while I continued to hunt Jonah and Kronos.’ Muscles worked in Asgard’s throat. ‘The last time I saw your parents was in 1595, in Minsk. By then, Kris
tof and I had disposed of more than a hundred sect members across Europe, Asia, and Africa. Four years later, I tracked Jonah to the Urals. He knew I was closing in on Kronos’s primary command post and went into hiding. I evaded the killers he sent after me and found the mountain cabin where he had taken refuge.’
The Bastian noble fell silent.
Olivia studied her uncle with apprehension. ‘What happened?’
Despair etched deep lines in Asgard’s face. ‘I chased Jonah onto a glacier. The shots we exchanged caused an avalanche that cracked the ice. I fell inside a crevasse and was buried in a frozen lake inside the very belly of the mountain.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘And there I remained until the middle of the last century.’
Olivia gasped, green eyes flaring with shock. ‘I’m so sorry.’
She touched Asgard’s shoulder.
The Bastian noble grasped her fingers tightly. ‘Why, child? It wasn’t your fault. You had not even been born yet.’
They sat quietly in a moment of shared grief.
‘You said my mother believed Jonah and Kronos had been looking for something when they attacked your castle,’ said Olivia. ‘Did you find out what it was?’
‘Yes, I did. Although Jonah had been correct in assuming the object he sought would be in my possession, he had unwittingly been looking in the wrong place. It was with my sister at the time.’
‘Object?’
‘The item Jonah and Kronos had been searching for was a gold, sun cross pendant. It was a family heirloom passed down through generations of Godards since time immemorial,’ the Bastian noble explained. ‘As Tomas’s first born child, it was bequeathed to me. But Catarine had always been fascinated with the pendant, so I decided to leave it in her care. When I registered its resemblance to the mark borne by the members of Kronos, I feared my sister would be in danger if the pendant remained with her. I travelled to Prague and took possession of it once more.’
‘Where is the pendant now?’
Asgard looked up at the night sky, his expression nostalgic. ‘I left it in the care of a Buddhist order in 1415. The group was founded by Guru Rinpoche, the Lotus-Born Second Buddha, in the early part of the ninth century. He had come to know of immortals and created the order to keep our existence a secret from the eyes of humans.’ His face darkened. ‘It wasn’t until I escaped from Jonah’s clutches a few decades ago that I discovered Kronos had stolen the pendant from the order in the 1700s. They killed dozens of monks and practically burned their temple to the ground.’
‘What was so special about the pendant?’
A frustrated sigh left Asgard’s lips. ‘I don’t know. There was nothing in our family’s ancestral manuscripts that attributed any special significance to the object. For all intents and purposes, it was just another heirloom.’
Olivia digested this information in silence. ‘So you believe Jonah Krondike wanted to find the Elixir of Life. But why? He is already an immortal.’
‘He is. Up to his sixteenth death,’ said Asgard.
Olivia’s eyes rounded. ‘You mean he thought the Elixir would grant him immortality beyond that?’
‘It’s the only plausible explanation your parents and I came up with during the decades we hunted Jonah and Kronos. We believed their final objective was to conquer both the human and the immortal worlds, hence the conflicts they engendered throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. If they succeeded in creating chaos and distrust between the empires that existed at the time, it would have presented them with a unique opportunity to seize power. If they became invincible as a result of the Elixir of Life, no one would be able to challenge their supremacy.’
Asgard chuckled mirthlessly. ‘It was indirectly thanks to the immortal societies that this never happened. Although they never realized they had been fighting a common enemy for centuries, the Crovirs and the Bastians unknowingly thwarted many of Jonah’s and Kronos’s attempts to create unrest, thus keeping humankind and the immortal societies from imploding.’ His voice faltered. ‘But your parents and I always sensed there was something else, something greater to Jonah’s plans than achieving true immortality. We just never found out what that other goal was.’
Olivia bit her lip. ‘Do you know what happened to my parents?’
Asgard shook his head. ‘I don’t. We may find answers in the journals left to you by Margaret Edwards.’ He gazed at Olivia, his eyes fierce. ‘Know this well, child. Your parents would never have forsaken you except to save your life. After Kristof’s illness from the Red Death, they never thought they would be able to conceive. Your existence would have been a gift from the gods to them.’ He swallowed. ‘It must have broken their hearts to part with you.’
She blinked back tears. ‘Do you believe they are dead?’
Asgard went still. ‘Yes. I would have found them by now if they were still alive.’
Olivia’s head dropped forward, her hair a silken curtain that hid her features.
‘Thank you,’ she said huskily.
The Bastian noble nodded stiffly.
Ethan’s admiration for the woman grew another notch. Asgard had been right. Despite her fragile appearance, Olivia Ashkarov possessed great strength of will. A lesser person would have been an incoherent mess in the face of what she had endured in the last day.
She rose to her feet and stepped to the edge of the deck. A breeze ruffled her hair and the folds of her dress while she stood silently gazing out over the dark canyons. Ethan unconsciously held his breath. He had a strange feeling that something dramatic was unfolding before his eyes.
It was almost a minute before she turned and looked at them. ‘What does Jonah Krondike want with me?’
Ethan blinked. He barely recognized the woman they had rescued from the abbey. The events of the last twenty-four hours and Asgard’s retelling of their shared past seemed to have transformed her into someone else. There was a fresh hardness to her eyes and the rigid lines of her body. Were they seeing the real Olivia for the first time?
‘When he dug me out of the ice in the late 1950s,’ said Asgard, ‘Jonah took me to a secret US Army facility in New Mexico. Over the decade that followed, he conducted countless experiments on the immortals he had captured, including myself.’ He grimaced. ‘The methods Jonah and his team employed were unnecessarily sadistic. From their setup and the information we have since gleaned, it’s evident they had been at it for some time and were targeting immortals of noble and pureblood lineage.’
Olivia jerked in surprise. ‘Jonah was the one who rescued you?’
‘Rescue is a questionable word,’ said Asgard grimly. ‘I revived while in transit from the Urals to Perm. I broke almost every bone in my body during my fall on the glacier and my healing had been arrested by the ice. They gave me forty hours to mend before they started cutting into me.’
Olivia blanched. ‘How—how did you get out of there?’
‘In 1969, Jonah captured the last descendant of the Knezevics.’ Asgard glanced at Ethan. ‘It was a fortuitous meeting for the both of us. Although I had been planning my foolhardy escape for some time, the assistance of an Elemental accelerated the process greatly.’ His eyes grew hooded. ‘In hindsight, I doubt either of us would have gotten out of that blasted place alive on our own.’
Ethan felt gratitude flood him once more at the Bastian immortal’s words. Meeting Asgard Godard had redefined the course of his existence in ways he could never have predicted. Not only had it provided him with the opportunity for revenge he thought he would never have, it had also given him a friendship that would forever stand the test of time.
For as long as he could remember, the Crovir noble had led a life filled with secrets and lies. Though he had dim recollections of his early childhood, his lasting impressions of that period were of days spent in peace and joy in the city where he had been born. Then came the night everything changed. His only memory of it was of flames and screams, and the frightened sounds from the horses as they rode frantically into the darkness
, fleeing an invisible enemy determined to capture them at any cost.
He lost count of the number of times they moved after that, first across Europe and Asia, then to the Americas. His parents never spoke of their past and taught him to blend in with the world of the humans. He was beholden to his older sister, born fifty years before him, for telling him about their origins and the history of the immortal societies. He recalled lying in bed late at night and listening in awe while she spoke of a life he had never known. Of their wonderful ancestral home and the noble company they had kept. Of dazzling balls and exhilarating hunts. Of wonderful voyages to exotic places that others could only dream of. Of their influential position in the hierarchy of the Crovir society, for they had been the last descendants of a proud and venerated family of nobles.
But it seemed that others hungered for the powers of their singular ancestry. Shortly after Ethan turned eighteen, and days from discovering the first of the extraordinary abilities he had inherited from his bloodline, the ones who had chased his family from the only happy home he had ever known finally caught up with them.
He was the only one who escaped the attack. He never saw his parents or sister again.
Ethan had kept a low profile ever since, living under the radar of human and immortal societies alike. He became proficient at changing his identity and moved town whenever he caught a whiff of trouble on his tail. He had been to more cities and countries than he could care to call to mind.
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