The patrons in the café pulled back from the shattered doors and windows, and the building’s lights fluttered and went out. She heard that scream again—Sabrina, calling Ramus’ name—and in her heart she knew what that meant. I didn’t get out quick enough, she thought, and she wondered whether Volpe had let Nico call her as soon as he wanted to, or whether there had been a pause—a stutter in time long enough for him to get here just as one of the Doges came to take her …
Someone else started screaming, and the man whose ears had been bleeding stood with flames enveloping his head—real flames, blackening skin and sizzling hair. Smoke and steam were whipped away from his twisted face by the sudden storm.
Nico’s body twisted on the ground, curling in on itself even as his hands reached out and clawed at the air. Any time his hands shifted position or his fingers clenched, someone else screamed. The tall man flailed at some invisible thing buzzing around his head. The blond woman slashed at her own legs, screaming in pain and bafflement each time the knife performed another sweep. And Geena watched Domenic stumble back with his hands held out, as if warding off the invisible thing that shoved him through the café’s already-shattered window.
Aretino pulled her away, and staggering across the square came the other ancient Doge, Foscari. He was aiming his gun at the writhing shape on the ground and frowning, obviously unable to shoot again. The Doge tugged hard on Geena’s hair, sending a sheen of pain across her scalp.
“Finish him!” Foscari shouted. The Doges’ hired thugs were backing away from Nico—all but the bleeding woman—their hands raised to defend themselves against the strange storm whipping around the square. At Foscari’s words, however, they paused. The fear Geena glimpsed on their faces was real. She wondered what they had seen done to those who chose not to obey the Doges.
The tall knifeman stalked in toward Nico.
Aretino pulled Geena backward across the cobbles, her feet scrabbling for purchase to prevent herself from being dragged purely by the hair. She knew that shouting and screaming at the old bastard would be useless, but she did so, anyway. She was leaving her friends behind, with Ramus perhaps dead or mortally wounded and the man she loved with a bullet in his chest.
The knifeman drew his arm back close to Nico … and the first flame sputtered to life in his hair. He batted at his head, looking around, knife hand still raised, and several more flames sprung up along his left arm. He dropped the knife to slap at them and the fires spread. First to his hands, then across his chest and stomach as he wiped them there, napalm-sticky. The man shouted. Others around him drew back as the look on his face went from confused to terrified, and as he opened his mouth to scream, Geena saw flames licking across his teeth. Silhouetted against his blazing clothes and hair she spied Nico’s hands clawing at the air, drawing unknown shapes, and she knew that Volpe was saving them both. But as she watched he fell back again, hands resting, and the chaotic storm erupted around the burning man.
Foscari drew close and she caught the shared look between the Doges—confusion, and maybe even fear. Then Foscari grabbed her feet and lifted, and together the two Doges carried her away from the square and into darkness, leaving their hired thugs behind. The glow and screams of the burning man faded away, and Geena closed her eyes and tried to sense Nico.
He was silent. But for now she held on to the sight of him moving on the ground, and Volpe casting spells, and perhaps that would give her strength to survive whatever was to come.
* * *
He knew that Geena had gone, but he could not give chase. Commanding his body to rise, Nico found that he could not move. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was Volpe remaining in control, but that usual sense of being wielded like a marionette was absent, and he could not sense or hear Volpe’s voice or thoughts. He could turn his head and watch the chaos around the square, and when the burning man fell at last and continued to spit and sizzle, Nico could feel the flames’ heat all down his left side. Maybe that meant he wasn’t paralyzed after all … but he had no idea how these things worked.
He shot me in the chest!
He could not move far enough to see the wound, so he tried lifting his hand to examine what damage had been done. Neither arm obeyed the command. He rolled his head sideways and looked at the café and the riot of people there, and one of them was Domenic. He stood staring at Nico, blood on his face and spattered across his white silk shirt. Always so smart, Domenic. Never a ladies’ man, though he could have been, and Nico had always sensed the soft spot he had for Geena. He’d never said anything, of course, because friendship was worth more than that. Now the silver-haired man stared across a calming scene at his wounded friend, and when the shouting inside the café became louder he turned and pushed through the broken doorway.
Domenic, Nico tried to say, but he did not have the strength. And then he heard someone shouting Ramus’ name over and over again, and he feared what had happened. He’d seen death today, but only of people he did not know. And other than his terror for Geena, he’d barely considered the nightmare of this coming home to roost.
Sit up! Volpe’s voice commanded, and Nico felt himself sitting. He sighed and groaned, feeling blood running across his chest and stomach.
“Heal it,” Nico said, and his voice had changed. Weaker than before, and there was a wet sighing effect behind it as well.
The shoulder was easy, Volpe said. The heart is more delicate.
Shot in the heart?
Close enough. Now listen to me, Nico. We’ve helped each other a lot today, and—
“You’ve used me,” Nico rasped. “You haven’t helped me.”
I allowed you to come and save your girlfriend.
“Only because you knew they would be here.”
Stop your sniveling! You’re dying, and unless you do exactly what I say, you’ll likely be dead before they torture her to death. Aretino always favored younger boys, but Foscari was a ladies’ man, and he preferred it when they didn’t welcome his advances. You hear me, boy?
Nico groaned and closed his eyes. Dizziness threatened, and for an instant the pain in his chest grew huge and mind-numbing, snapping his eyes open with shock. He caught his breath to scream, but Volpe sighed it out again.
“I can shield you from the worst of it,” he croaked, “but you have to leave here now. There are people dead, and you’ve been shot. We can’t afford the time it would take to deal with the police.”
Nico glanced sidelong at the burning man. The Doges’ other thugs had fled, doubtless already wondering what madness they had become involved in.
“Ramus.” Nico stood, wincing against the expected pain but feeling only a distant numbness. He heard Volpe’s voice, but the old ghost seemed to be mumbling words Nico could not quite make out. He’s just doing his magic, he thought, but it did not feel like that at all. Though shielded from the pain of a terrible wound, control was his once again.
“Which way?” Nico asked. And in that one question he realized his dependence on this thing in his body.
North.
Nico had seen the Doges taking Geena west. That way called him but, even though Volpe had drawn back again, mumbling, fuming, he knew that he had to follow the magician’s lead. So north he went, leaving the square by a small rose-encrusted archway that led to a short alley, emerging onto a narrow jetty. Several boats were tied there, and Nico chose one, starting the motor and steering away from the chaos behind him. He could smell the stench of burning meat on his clothes, see Foscari aiming the handgun at his chest and pulling the trigger, feel the heavy blankness at the heart of him where Volpe was struggling to keep the agony at bay. Is that why his mumblings seem so mad? he wondered. Because he’s taking on all that pain himself?
There was no answer from Volpe, and no sign that he had heard. So Nico guided the dinghy north along the old city canals, passing across the Grand Canal and then entering the shadows once again. He thought of Ramus, certain that his friend was dead. He thought of Domenic staring
at him writhing on the ground, then choosing to reenter the café to help his other friends. And he thought of Geena.
Soon, Volpe whispered in his mind. And Nico knew that old ghost was still there.
* * *
San Michele, Volpe said when Nico left the lights of Venice behind. The waters of the lagoon were calm, and for that he was glad. There were few lights on the cemetery island.
“What’s in San Michele?” he asked. He’d been there only recently, retrieving the soldier’s hand for the ritual that had been so wasteful. He only hoped that Volpe was not wasting time again now.
Just go, Volpe said. He sounded weak and distracted. Nico had examined the bullet wound in his chest once, and he had no wish to look again. The exit wound on his back must be even worse. But even in that brief glance he’d seen signs that the healing was commencing: drying blood, smoothed skin around the ragged wound, and a puffiness to the flesh that had more to do with fresh growth than bruising. Inside, he knew, the damage must be immense. The heart is more delicate, Volpe had said, and Nico had a flash of something that might have been memory: holding the slick remnants from that smashed urn in his hands as water surged around his feet.
He blinked and changed course slightly.
As larger waves began to slap against the boat’s hull, Nico was shocked by a series of images that flashed across his mind, each one accompanied by the fresh impact of a wave:
A circle of men, each of them grim-faced as if attending a wake, each of them holding a small, curved knife in one hand and in the other—
A ceiling painted in extravagant colors, intricate symbols and sigils intertwining, and each spread of the color red still drips—
Chanting that terrifies, in words he does not know, its rising and falling cadences seeming to penetrate to the heart of him and—
Nico cried out, leaning against the tiller as the images snapped away. He probed after them, because he knew they needed to be seen. Timing the impacts of wave against wood with his own psychic surges, he reached into what he knew were Volpe’s memories. The old magician was struggling, and Nico so wanted to know more:
A hand rises and then comes down slowly, the knife glinting, the bare flesh of his chest speckled with spots of perspiration … only, the knife and hand are a woman’s head, hair long and luscious, and she closes her lips around the head of his cock and looks up at him, smiling.
Nico shook the image away and probed deeper.
Hands rise and fall, twelve of them in quick succession, and then the first hand returns with a different knife, penetrating deep into his chest and … and the woman’s rump rises and falls, and he can see himself buried deep, and he has seen her before with a knife in one hand and a soldier’s member in the other. She turns and looks at him over her shoulder, eyes hooded and mouth open, still moving.
“No!” Nico shouted. His voice winged across the water and echoed from the boundary wall of San Michele, now drawing very close. Volpe was trying to hide that memory from him, flooding him with other memories to distract him. But Nico had a grip now, and he was clasping onto those flashes that felt so real. His claws remained in the past, and he groaned with effort as he began to reel it in.
He sensed Volpe’s anger, but he was wounded. He felt the raw rage brewing deep inside, and knew there would be consequences … but this was something he needed to know.
“If you truly want my help to save this city,” he said, “then you have to let me see.”
When he did see, it was not because of a weakening of Volpe’s opposition. It was because, for a short time, Nico was stronger.
The men have finished painting the necessary wards and sigils on the chamber’s ceiling, and two of them have removed the wooden bench they used to reach that far. Each has a bloodied cloth bound tight around his left hand, and Nico knows that their palms are slashed and sore. But these men do not betray their pain. Their faces are grim and spotted with droplets of their own blood. The ceiling drips, and when Nico looks down he sees the droplets splashed across his bare body.
Volpe’s torso is withered and old. Skin hangs from his frame, his ribs protrude even when he’s lying down, and there’s a grayness to him that not even this subterranean place should impart. Nico is merely a witness here, yet when his arm raises and he draws his finger through blood splashes, it feels as though he is giving the command.
“Here,” Volpe’s voice says, “and here.” He has drawn two intersecting lines across his breast, skin wrinkling and stretching to follow his finger.
“Zanco, there must be another way,” a man says, and Il Conte Rossi steps into view. He is bloodied again now, the cloth around his hand dripping blood as if he has cut himself deepest.
“There is no other way,” Volpe says. “My spirit is strong but my flesh is weak, and we must not let that spirit rot away with this flesh.” He motions Il Conte to him and lowers his voice. “I’m trusting you to complete this ritual, when the others might shy away.”
“I’m not sure I—”
Nico’s hand flashes out. He claws his fingers into the man’s robe and pulls him even closer, and he sees Il Conte turn his face away from the rotten smell of his breath. “I have been dying for a long time. What you do here today is of little significance to me, but vital for the city. You understand? This time is over, a new time is to begin. And it’s imperative that those three bastards are not allowed to even look upon this city again without fire scorching their eyes.”
The standing man nods. He understands.
“Vital!” Nico says. Volpe’s voice, Volpe’s grasp, and Volpe’s final moments. Because then Il Conte stands back and motions the other men around him, and together they raise their knives.
This time when they bring their blades down into Nico’s stomach and chest, the view does not change afterward. Il Conte steps in and carves at the ruptured flesh, cracking ribs, ripping the chest cavity open, his face set grim and lips tight.
And all the while, Nico is muttering words that he has heard before.
Il Conte finally pulls Nico’s heart free, and there is no pain. The heart continues to beat, and even as the man slashes away the final connecting arteries, the muscle looks strong and healthy.
But the Chamber bleeds. Blood flows from the ceiling, and Nico hears the men’s feet splashing in fluid that is too thick to be water. One of them brings an urn that Nico has seen before, and as Il Conte lowers the heart inside, his vision begins to blur.
But he sees the Red Count’s final gestures over the urn, and he remembers them. From the hands of another member of the Council of Ten, he takes the severed hand of a soldier, dips its fingers into Volpe’s blood, and uses it to run a symbolic seal around the urn’s lid.
Nico feels his body swaying and shifting as vision fades, sounds drift out, and then against all expectations the pain comes in, and—
It was immense.
Nico screamed. The boat nudged against a wooden jetty. Volpe rose in him again, and before Nico was shoved way down into his own injured body, he felt the old ghost’s rage.
Leave alone what is not yours! Volpe roared, and then Nico knew nothing.
XVI
THE ONLY reason the bastard had let go of her hair was that it made it easier to walk.
They’d already passed two groups of people who had protested at his treatment of her, and both times Aretino had merely glanced at Foscari. The first time, the other Doge had chosen one of the complaining men and beaten him, flooring him quickly and then stomping on his knees until Geena heard the sickening crunch of bones and the heavy silence of shock. The second time, Foscari had only approached the two young couples and they’d seen something in his eyes that made them flee. Such casual violence was nauseating, made her sick to her soul. But it also made her realize that these two men—if indeed men they still were—were totally in charge.
Aretino walked ahead, his old man’s body moving with confidence. The white knotted beard and shriveled face were misleading. When he’d l
et go of her hair at last, he had not even instructed her to follow, but she knew if she did not she would suffer. Besides, Foscari was behind her. Close behind. Sometimes she swore she could feel his breath on the back of her neck, and she had felt his hand brush casually across her ass several times. And if I turn and punch him in the fucking nose? she thought. She had no wish to find out. Aretino had said they needed to talk, but he had not said she needed her knees unbroken to do so.
She was terrified. That evening she had been stupid enough to believe that she could find a few hours away from this madness—from Nico and his crazy ghost, the deaths she had witnessed, and the fact that she’d been infected by some black magic plague less than twelve hours ago. Repair the foundations of the existence she and Nico had together, in the hope that they would be able to reconstruct the walls of their life when this whole bizarre mess was over. Now she saw how foolish she had been. And perhaps blind. Maybe she had been driven a little mad by what had happened, and though she had a mind that she thought was open and willing to explore, the certainty of what was happening might have been too much for her to handle.
But that was nothing compared to this.
She’d seen Nico burn a man to death by looking at him, and …
And Ramus.
She sobbed once and slowed down. Foscari walked into her—on purpose, she was sure—and grabbed her upper arms.
“You shouldn’t keep Aretino waiting,” he whispered, hot breath in her ear. She shrugged him off and walked on.
Hope. She had to cling to that. Nico had been shot, but it was Volpe who possessed him—a magician who had returned from a five-hundred-year limbo to cast his influence across the city once again. Nico had been moving on the ground even with a bullet hole through him, painting those weird signs against the Venetian night to protect himself against the Doges’ hired help, and surely that meant that Volpe was shielding him from the effects of the wound? Could he do that?
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