The Chamber of Ten

XII

YOU ARE a historian, are you not?” Volpe said.

Sitting there across from him, knowing it was him speaking through Nico, Geena studied him in fascination. Nico’s face, yes, but the expressions were all wrong, and when Volpe came to the fore of Nico’s mind—took him over like some puppeteer—his eyes had a perpetual squint that had never been there before. And his speech retained the flourishes of a Venetian dialect that no one had spoken for ages. Yet only flourishes, as though he had accessed Nico’s mind to master modern Italian.

You’re in shock, she told herself. You’re just focusing on details because you’re trying not to scream.

A thin smile parted her lips.

“Have I amused you?”

Geena felt her smile vanish. “Not in the least. You make me feel as if I might vomit at any moment.”

Volpe looked—Nico looked—stung by this. His nostrils flared.

“I hardly think that’s productive.”

“What is productive? Murder?”

At this, those squinting eyes narrowed further. “It has its uses,” he said, lowering his voice. “But you were there, Geena. I had no alternative. I saved all of our lives. Il Doge would have—”

Geena closed her eyes and held up a hand. “Stop.”

He did. For several seconds she sat and listened to the sounds of the café, the Babel of tourist languages, the clink of spoons and cups, the creaking of the fan above their heads as it turned.

“Il Doge,” she said quietly, and it was not a question. More an affirmation.

“Please, let’s not spend any more time pretending that you do not believe what you saw with your own eyes, or inside your mind,” Volpe said.

Geena studied him, and though the ancient Venetian had come entirely to the fore, occupying Nico’s body to what she presumed was his full extent, she thought she saw a bit of Nico stirring in there as well.

Are you there? she thought, sending the question out into the ether.

And she felt a wash of love and worry in return that made her hand tremble as she lifted her coffee cup from the table. A bit of it splashed onto her lap, but it was not hot enough to burn.

We are both here, Nico replied.

She could sense the other in him. Volpe might not have Nico’s ability, his touch, but their mental communication was no longer private. They had an audience. Whether or not Volpe could consciously utilize Nico’s touch she did not know, nor did she have any desire to find out.

Volpe sighed and rolled his eyes. “Really, Geena, why do you keep running from the truth? I am here. I am real. You wanted to know what all of this is about, and I think it is only fair that I explain it to you. Your life has been irrevocably changed. You can accept that, and perhaps survive, or deny it and surely die.”

She took a sip of coffee. Hand still shaking, she set the cup down. It was much too sweet, but the fault was her own. Four sugars. What the hell had she been thinking?

“I choose to live,” she said.

Volpe smiled with Nico’s mouth. If she had not known that mouth so intimately, it would almost have been convincing.

“Back to my question, then. You are a historian?”

“Archaeologist.”

He waved the word away. “Yes, yes. A historian. Similar enough. I learned much of your work the first day and night after I returned, sharing this flesh with your lover.”

Geena felt her face flush with embarrassment. Lover. She and Nico had made love that night and during sex, with him thrusting inside of her, she had sensed him become distant and cold and more aggressive, as though he did not seem like himself. Nausea roiled in her gut.

“Go on,” she said, teeth snapping off the words.

Perhaps Volpe read her thoughts, though she did not feel Nico’s touch. It might have been that he simply knew how to read people, to interpret their faces, for one corner of his mouth turned up in a momentary smirk, as though he knew exactly where her thoughts had led her. She hated him for that.

Rape? She might not be able to call it that, but the violation and loathing she felt were nonetheless fierce.

“I am the key to a thousand mysteries, the answer to a thousand riddles that you historians have encountered in your studies. Perhaps one day we will have opportunity for me to introduce you to all of the secrets of Venice and beyond, but for now—”

“I don’t give a shit about Venice right now,” Geena said. “Tell me about you and the Doges. Tell me what you’ve gotten us involved in.”

His nostrils flared again and she felt a ripple of fury emanating from him, felt it through Nico. And then, in her mind, Nico’s voice. Volpe. Explain.

Volpe smiled. “Fine. But speak to me in that tone again and, Nico’s cooperation or not, I’ll leave you to the Doges’ mercies.”

Geena felt all the blood rush from her face.

“You wouldn’t dare. Or if you would, Nico wouldn’t let you. It’s obvious that you can’t control him completely. You need him, which means you need me. So get on with it. You’re wasting time.”

She signaled the waitress for a refill on her coffee.

“All right,” Volpe said, breaking off a piece of biscotti. “But enough of your skepticism. Accept what is before you.”

She nodded for him to go on.

“In the time of my youth, the Doge ruled Venice, but he did not have absolute power. Beneath him was the Council of Ten, and beneath them the Senate. Often the Ten exerted a great deal of influence over both Doge and Senate, so any man who could control the Council of Ten could chart the course for Venice himself.”

“And you were that man,” Geena said. She had seen much of this in the visions she had shared with Nico, which she now knew were flashes of Volpe’s memory connected with parts of the city.

Volpe’s smile sent an icy shiver down her back.

“I was. For many years of beauty and enlightenment, far beyond the standard human life span, I controlled the Ten. They saw me as their most trusted advisor, and in that role I manipulated them to my own ends, and through them the Doges as well. From time to time, a Doge would discover his own ambition and attempt to assert his power. Those who could not be controlled were ruined. But over the time of my influence, there were three whose ambitions were greater, and darker, than any of the others, ruthless men whose desires reached far beyond the limits of Venice, and who would have sacrificed anything to fulfill those desires.”

“And you stood in their way,” Geena said.

“Each of them ordered my assassination, at least once,” Volpe said. “They failed, of course.”

Geena took this in, sipping at a glass of water the waitress had brought. “Caravello,” she said. “Aretino. Foscari.”

Volpe blinked Nico’s eyes in surprise. “Your link with Nico is stronger than I realized. You have plucked these names from his thoughts?”

She shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. He broadcasts and I receive. We are … open to each other. Yes, there’s a link with me that he doesn’t have with anyone else, as far as I know, but it’s Nico who has the ability. Nico who is different.”

Volpe nodded thoughtfully. “Just so. I believe he sensed me.”

“What do you mean?”

He sipped his coffee and Geena wondered what it tasted like to him. If he liked the things that Nico liked because Nico’s taste buds had acclimated to certain things, or if Volpe’s ancient predispositions would carry over, despite the fact that he resided in a body not his own.

“The Chamber of Ten,” Volpe said.

Geena flinched in surprise. “That’s what I called it.”

“And where did you derive that name? From your own imagination, or from your link with Nico? From his mind, and through his, from mine? That is what we all called it, myself and the Council, a place where we could meet in secret, unknown to the Doge and to the Senate.”

The archaeologist in Geena came to the fore. “And Petrarch?”

“When the poet wanted to move his library from Venice, I persuaded him to change his mind and arranged for Petrarch’s collection to be moved to the hidden room you and your people discovered beneath the Biblioteca. I could not allow him to remove certain arcane texts from the city.”

“Magic, you mean?”

Volpe nodded. “Spellcraft. Call it what you like.”

“You admit that you ruled Venice through deceit and manipulation. How were these three men, elevated to the position of Doge, any less worthy to guide the city than you were?”

“They cared nothing for Venice, only for themselves, and for their family,” Volpe replied, lifting his chin and glaring at her imperiously. “To them, the people of Venice were pawns. Grist for the mill of their ambition. I had only the good of the city in mind.”

Geena scratched at the back of her left hand. “Oh, of course,” she replied archly. “You were the hero of the people.”

“No, never that. I served them in secrecy, content to see the fruits of my labors in the rise of Venetian power and grandeur. But you mean to ask what the difference is between myself and these three corrupt men, if our goals were the same.”

Geena sipped at her coffee. “Of course that’s what I’m asking. You wanted Venice for yourself, just as they did. You’re obviously ruthless. You manipulated and deceived and murdered to keep your power. Why are they any worse—”

“Because I was chosen,” Volpe said.

Great, Geena thought. A psychotic ghost with a Messiah complex.

“Chosen how, exactly?”

Volpe sighed. Staring at him, she could barely see Nico in that face now.

“In your studies as an archaeologist, surely you must have encountered stories of the Oracles of the Great Cities of the World.”

Geena had been about to lift her coffee cup again, but now she set it down, studying him closely. Volpe had said something before about an Oracle, but things had been happening so fast it had barely registered.

“You don’t mean the Oracle of Delphi?”

“One of many.”

She was about to tell him she had no idea what he was talking about when a memory rose up. While cataloging the earliest of the books they had retrieved from Plutarch’s library, she had skimmed through a volume whose Latin title translated roughly to The Souls of Cities. Her Latin was very spotty, but she’d picked up a few sentences here and there that had made her think of a 14th-century French manuscript she had read during a dig in the ruins of a monastery in Talloires. It had included references to a woman who was considered the Oracle of Paris, who knew all of the secrets and the history of the city and who, it was believed, channeled its soul through her body. Collette something. She had offered wise counsel to nobles and commoners alike.

“Maybe I know what you’re talking about,” Geena admitted, “but only a little. The great cities of the world are, what, supposed to choose someone as their defender—”

“If need be, a defender,” Volpe interrupted. “But more truly, a voice. I am the Oracle of Venice and I have been for a very, very long time, including all of the centuries my heart remained in the Chamber of Ten. My heart and the city’s heart beat together. I know all of its secrets, its ancient history. Ruthless, perhaps, but I have done what was required of me.

“I used spellcraft to keep myself youthful, to remain strong, long past the limits of ordinary men,” he went on. “But I was not immortal and, in time—long after I had banished the three cunning Doges—my health began to fail. I knew that I would die.”

His voice trembled suddenly with remembered anguish. Though she felt only mistrust and even revulsion for him, he wore Nico’s face, and she hated seeing that pain in the features of the man she loved.

“You wanted to continue to protect Venice even after your death,” Geena said. “Venice would have chosen another Oracle, but you didn’t want to trust that the next would be as capable as you were. Whatever the spell was that you used to banish the three Doges, it was tied to you, physically. Somehow—and you must have had help from members of the Council—you managed to preserve your heart, in order to keep the spell from ever breaking. But when we found the Chamber—”

Volpe’s eyes flared with admiration. “I see why Nico is so profoundly in love with you. A formidable mind.”

“You said Nico must have sensed you,” Geena went on. “You meant down in the Chamber. I think you’re right. Once we were inside, he was … not himself. When he dropped the urn—”

“He broke the spell,” Volpe agreed, scratching at his forearm. “I attempted to restore the spell, gathering the elements necessary—”

“Including my blood.”

Volpe glanced at her arm and nodded. “Regrettably. But it would have been worth it, had the spell worked.”

“Why didn’t it?”

“Caravello was already here, in Venice. The spell cannot keep someone from entering the city if they are already here. Given what Caravello said, we must assume Foscari and Aretino have returned as well.”

Things clicked into place in Geena’s mind, a memory surfacing.

“When Caravello came after us, you said that knife had the blood of the ‘new Oracle’ on it …”

Volpe’s gaze flickered, and she saw danger in his eyes. But she pushed onward.

“But you cut me with that knife. Are you saying—”

He held up Nico’s hand to show her a slice on the palm, already healing. “It had Nico’s blood as well as yours. His mental power—what you call his ‘touch’—may have guided him to me, but I believe there were other forces at work as well. I believe that Venice called to him. The city always chooses. Even throughout my long rest it chose successors, but it had no need of them as long as I endured. I believe that Nico is to be the new Oracle.”

This was insane. Total madness. Her life had become a nightmare.

“You believe? Don’t you know?” she asked.

Volpe traced his fingers along the rim of his coffee cup, not meeting her eyes. Hiding something. “Not yet. But the truth will reveal itself to all of us soon enough.”

Geena knew if she pushed he would only shut her out. Whatever secrets he was hiding, she and Nico would learn them all eventually.

“You’re arrogant as hell, but that doesn’t make you right,” she said. “You talk about the ambitions of these three Doges—and I don’t understand how they’re still alive—in such generalities. They’re ruthless, but you’ve admitted you’re just as ruthless. Even if you are this Oracle, I don’t see how that makes you the good guy in all of this.”

Volpe smiled, one corner of Nico’s mouth lifting in something on the verge of a sneer. His eyes darkened with grim memory.

“I understand, Geena,” the old magician said. He pushed his coffee cup aside and leaned closer to her, lowering his voice. “You want me to tell you that the Doges were evil, so you can feel better about helping me kill Caravello. So you can trust me. Well, let me assure you that you cannot trust me. If I must choose between your life and the preservation of my city, I will choose Venice. I must choose Venice. But evil? I can tell you about evil.

“In a time before the history of Venice had begun to be written, most of the tribes of the Earth had those amongst them who were different. Magicians, shaman, even gods—call them what you want. They were like us, but they weren’t completely human. Some of the texts I’ve read claim that they were the offspring of demons who’d mated with humans, others the half-breed children of angels. I don’t know the answer, only that these were the true magicians, who did not simply tap into the arcane energies of the world the way that I do, but who had that power innately within themselves.

“The Old Magicians were neither good nor evil, or they were not meant to be. They had wisdom and power and often kept themselves at a certain distance from the tribes with whom they lived, and from one another. Rarely would there be two of them together. Perhaps they were more like shepherds than anything else.

“They were immortal, inasmuch as their lives were longer than an ordinary man could imagine, and they could heal themselves of all but the most grievous wounds. They could die. In time, they all did. But to those around them they surely seemed immortal.”

The waitress came and refilled Geena’s cup and Volpe paused, staring at the woman, letting her see his irritation at the interruption. She didn’t offer him a refill before she darted away, shooting them both a withering glance.

Despite the warmth lingering from the long summer day, Geena felt a chill deep enough that she warmed her hands on the cup.

“Even if I accepted this …” She almost called it a fairy tale, but stopped herself. There were enough ancient texts that referred, even if only tangentially, to magicians and gods, healers and shaman—and oracles, for that matter—that she could not brush it off so easily. Not after what she had experienced today. And she could not forget the visions she had shared, the parts of the past she had experienced through Nico’s connection to Volpe.

“What do these Old Magicians have to do with the Doges?” she asked. “Are you saying that’s why they’re still alive? They’re part of this ancient race?”

Volpe sneered, and this time there was no trace of a smile in it. “It would be their fondest wish, but no. Not all of the Old Magicians remained so aloof and objective. There are many stories of them becoming corrupted, and among those, one of the ugliest tales is that of Akylis.”

She nodded. “I’ve heard that name. Through Nico. I asked one of my colleagues about it and he mentioned Aquileia.”

“Founded by Akylis,” Volpe confirmed. “Or, at least, by his followers. Those who survived their worship of him. He began to see ordinary people as pets and playthings and he made himself a god amongst them.”

He waved a hand in the air as though to brush his words away. “None of this matters. It is only history, and we must concern ourselves with the present. Akylis has been dead for millennia. The surviving Doges must be our concern.”

Geena stared at him. “You’re confusing the hell out of me.”

Volpe leaned forward, locking eyes with her. For a moment she thought she could see Nico surfacing, but then his eyes narrowed and the old magician frowned, perhaps gathering his thoughts.

“Every city has a soul, a collective spirit of hopes and desires and needs that, in time, takes on a certain awareness. The Oracle is chosen by the city itself, and the bond between them is intimate and complete. You have been working to preserve the history of Venice, but I have it all inside of me, all its memories, from the magical to the mundane. The moment I became the Oracle of Venice, my mind was flooded with all that knowledge, but one thing stood out amongst the others. Before the city was truly born, when the only people here were fishermen who lived in crude huts in the marsh, a rare gathering of Old Magicians took place. It was a funeral, of sorts. They dug deep into what is now San Marco, more than one hundred feet down, casting spells to accomplish what men could not, holding back the water. At the bottom of this well, they built a dolmen—a tomb of standing stones—and there they lay to rest the remains of Akylis. He had become so corrupt, so evil, that these nearly immortal beings—usually above ordinary emotion—felt ashamed.

“They buried him there, and in time Venice rose above him. Akylis is dead. There is no awareness remaining in him. But his evil survives beneath the city, captured like the rancid gases inside a bloated, decaying corpse. Over the ages, many of those who have dabbled in magic in this city have touched this evil and been tainted by it, and throughout all of those many centuries it has been the duty of the Oracle to protect the city from those dark magicians. Only the Oracle can brush up against the evil trapped in the Well of Akylis without being tainted.”

Geena sipped at her coffee, but did not take her eyes off Volpe. As he spoke, his voice almost mesmerizing, she had begun to really see him in that face, though the features were Nico’s.

“That’s what happened to the Doges,” she said. “They delved into magic—”

“Their hearts were already dark with greed,” Volpe said. “But, yes, they were tainted. It began with Caravello. Even before he became Doge he had already set his schemes in motion, sending cousins and uncles out of Venice, to the other great cities of the Mediterranean, with instructions to wheedle themselves into positions of influence. The family did the same, of course, in Venice. There were murders and blood sacrifices. But I heard every whisper of their conspiracy. Caravello wanted more than to be Doge of Venice. He wanted his family to take all of Europe, and perhaps beyond, one enchantment, one ritual, one murder at a time. And if that kind of black magic took the blood sacrifice of every man, woman, and child in Venice, he minded not at all, so long as his family continued its reign.”

“Fuck’s sake, why didn’t you just kill him?” Geena asked, then blinked in surprise at the savagery of the sentiment.

“We fought a war of influence,” Volpe said. “I did have some members of the family quietly arrested and secretly executed. But I couldn’t kill the Doge without losing control of Venice. I needed to be in the position to protect the city, because even after I arranged to have the Council ban Caravello, I knew that the family would not surrender entirely. The war continued. I managed to keep them out of power for nearly two decades before Aretino became Doge. Even then I watched carefully, uncertain how far he would take it. But he followed the plan that Caravello had set in motion, becoming a minor magician himself, tapping into the evil power of Akylis, and I had to arrange for him to be driven from the city as well.

“Foscari was the last. Over the years after his banishment, I arranged for nearly every relative I could find to be killed. By then I had taken complete control of the Council of Ten and arranged to have them build an enormous crypt beneath a new school being erected in Dorsoduro. My influence did not reach beyond Venice, so there was nothing I could do about those outside the city. But I protected my—”

Geena held up a hand. “Wait. Stop.”

Shaken from the reverie of memory, Volpe narrowed his eyes further. “What is it?”

Mind reeling, Geena took a breath to clear her head, trying to remember exactly what the waitress had told her at the pizzeria earlier in the day.

“A building collapsed today in Dorsoduro. A bunch of people were killed. Supposedly they found a massive tomb hidden beneath it.”

Volpe stared at her, then turned away with a snarl of disgust. “I should have known.”

“What?”

“I should have felt it,” Volpe said. He looked out the window at the fading daylight. “I am less than alive, but more than dead. Not a ghost, but not a man. When you told me the Mayor had been murdered, it upset me that I had not already felt it. I am the Oracle of Venice. The soul of the city is bonded to my own. But since my awakening, now that I am also bonded to Nico, my connection to the city is muffled and unfocused. I should be able to feel them.”

“Because you’re the Oracle,” Geena said, and it wasn’t a question.

Volpe nodded thoughtfully. “They knew enough magic even when I banished them to hide their precise locations from me, but not their presence in the city. Perhaps now that Nico and I have begun to … accommodate each other, my rapport with the city will grow clearer.

“I never imagined that they had leached enough of the magic from Akylis’ essence to keep themselves alive for this long, but perhaps the three of them worked together to reinforce what they had absorbed and what they had learned of magic. But now that they are back in Venice, they are already tapping into that evil repository beneath the city. They will sap all of the magic from it that they can. By killing Caravello though, we have bought ourselves some time.”

Geena leaned back in her chair. “Time to do what? I mean, what is it that they’re planning?”

“They will throw the city government into disarray, try to reclaim their old family properties—those still standing—and set old schemes in motion. The murder of the Mayor is a part of that, making the city council argue amongst themselves over who is really in charge of Venice. The destruction of that building in Dorsoduro incites chaos, draws the eyes of the city’s authorities away from whatever else they might be doing in the shadows. There will be other assassinations. Already they will be moving lackeys and pawns into positions of influence.”

“But what about the tombs of their relatives? Why would they expose the resting places of so many members of their family?” Geena asked.

“Perhaps simply to give the city something else to focus on, another distraction. Perhaps because they don’t want their dead to be forgotten.”

Something didn’t sound right to Geena. “So they’re just starting from scratch?” she said. “If what they wanted was to spread their influence across the Mediterranean, how will they accomplish that when all of their relatives have been dead for centuries?”

Volpe frowned, obviously troubled. “I don’t know. But I am quite sure that we’ll have the answer soon enough.”

As she spoke, she scratched at the back of her hand again, and this time she winced and looked down to see a purplish-red sore.

What the hell? she thought. And then fear rippled through her and she looked up, thinking that somehow Volpe had done this to her, infected her with something. But when she saw the look in his eyes as he stared at the discolored, swollen blotch on her hand, she knew she was wrong. He knew what it was, but he hadn’t done it.

“What?” she asked, her voice a rasp. “What is it?”

Her throat had been dry and a bit raw, but now as she swallowed, it actually hurt. She coughed softly into her fist.

Volpe looked down at his forearm. Where he’d been idly scratching, there were several of those sores.

“Bastard,” Volpe sneered, but in his eyes—Nico’s eyes—she saw fear.

“Tell me!” she snapped, too loud, drawing the attention of the other people in the little café. Twin girls eating lemon granita looked up at her. The barista fixing iced cappuccinos behind the counter gave an eye-roll and a shake of her head that showed her feelings about Americans.

Geena took in the entire scene in a single moment. But then Volpe was standing, his chair sliding back. He put his spoon into his coffee cup and followed it with Geena’s, then stuffed both of their napkins into his pocket and shot her a hard look.

“Take your cup,” he said, fury making his voice shake.

She wanted to ask why, but her imagination had already begun to supply answers that made her want to collapse into a fetal ball or scream or run or all of those things. In her entire life, she did not think she had ever stolen anything, but as Volpe swept past her she lifted her cup from the table and followed him out.

“Signora!” the barista yelled.

Geena heard a ruckus behind her, realized it must be the barista or a waitress coming after them, and ran through the open café door. With Volpe beside her, she fled along the alley and onto a stone bridge spanning a narrow canal. A shout came from behind, but they ran on.

Volpe coughed and she glanced at him to find that he had pulled Nico’s shirt up to cover his mouth and nose. Her chest burned with the effort of running—exertion that should not have troubled her at all—and she felt her own cough building. She cleared her throat.

“Cover your mouth!” Volpe barked.

Breathless, shivering, they darted down an alley on the right, then took the first jog to the left and ducked into a doorway. For a long minute they only stood there, still covering their mouths, but soon it became clear that the barista had abandoned the pursuit.

Volpe stepped away from the recessed doorway. “Come.”

“Where are we going?”

“Back to Caravello’s corpse.”

“But what if the police—”

“We’ve got to reach it before they do. Before anyone else is exposed.”

Icy dread filled her. “Exposed to what?”

Nico’s eyes narrowed, but then his expression softened and she saw that Volpe had retreated deeper into his mind, letting Nico come to the fore again. He faltered a moment, turning to stare at her, then glancing at the cup and spoons in his hand. He squeezed his eyes shut and then nodded decisively.

“Nico?” she said.

“Hurry, Geena. He can still save us.”

“From what?”

Nico’s face went slack, his gaze numb as he reached up to scratch his arm and then dropped his hand, picking up his pace.

“Contagion. Plague. Call it what you like. We’ve been infected, and we’ve got the plague, and we’ve got to stop it before it spreads.”

They stood on the opposite side of the courtyard from Chiesa di San Rocco, watching warily for some sign that the murder of Giardino Caravello had been discovered. In the fading light of day, she could make out the blood that stained the cobblestones near the stairs. A spattered, broken trail led through the alley beside the church and up to the side door of the small taverna whose owner had abandoned it after the last flood.

“No police yet,” Geena said quietly.

“So no one saw us,” Nico replied, and coughed softly into his shirt.

The little church square was still quiet. One old woman swept the steps of a small ladies’ clothing shop. They waited until she had gone back inside before starting across the courtyard.

“I just had the ugliest thought,” Geena said. “What if a cat licked it? Or … or rats? That’s how it all starts, right?”

“Whatever this contagion might be, it’s not going to follow any rules,” Nico replied. “Volpe has retreated now. It exhausts him, taking control.” He coughed, a wet rattle in his throat. “But I gleaned enough from him to know that this isn’t any ordinary sickness. It’s some kind of dark magic, some kind of booby trap or fail-safe that Caravello had running through his veins.”

“But it’s been barely an hour,” Geena said. “Not even plague kills that fast.”

Nico glanced anxiously at her. “We just have to pray. Otherwise …”

He let that hang in the air between them. Neither of them wanted to think about “otherwise.” They hurried over the cobblestones, Geena feeling a prickling on the back of her neck that might have been a result of her rising fever but felt like the eyes of hidden observers. She shook it off as paranoia. The feeling had none of the skin-crawling urgency and certainty that she had felt when Caravello had been stalking her. But how strange she thought the two of them must look, covering their faces and carrying coffee cups in their hands …

“What now?” she muttered as they approached the bloodstains …

… and felt Nico touch her mind. His fear blazed brightly, along with a fierce love for her. He was more frightened of losing her than he was of dying himself, and the raw intensity of that love nearly brought her to tears. God, why had this happened to them? They had been so happy.

And will be again, Nico thought, sending the words to her.

Lowering the shirt from over her mouth, Geena glanced around the church square. You believe that?

I have to.

She nodded, turning to him. “We need Volpe.”

The old Venetian, the magician—whatever he was—had retreated into Nico’s mind. The question of what exactly he was lingered in Geena’s thoughts and she had seen it in Nico’s as well. If there were such things as ghosts, that was one thing, but Volpe was obviously something else. To possess the body of a man five hundred years after your own death … Volpe had power. But exerting it exhausted him, and he had been silent in Nico’s mind since they had fled the café. Geena had no sense of him in there. He had left Nico with a firm impression of what must be done, but they needed Volpe now.

Nico nodded. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Whatever Nico did to attempt to summon Volpe, Geena heard nothing in her own mind. But then Nico gave a sharp intake of breath that became a hacking cough and he brought a hand to his mouth to cover it. And when he lowered his hand, his expression had changed again. She knew she was looking at Zanco Volpe, hiding behind Nico’s face. And Volpe looked tired.

“Are we being watched?” Volpe asked wearily.

Geena shook her head. “I don’t think so. What can you do? We can’t just leave the blood out here if it’s infected.”

“No,” Volpe agreed. “We can’t.”

He began to turn, but then shifted his gaze back to her. Geena did not have to ask what he was looking at. New sores had appeared on her arms and legs and one on her left cheek. More had erupted on Nico’s flesh as well.

“It’s moving so quickly,” Volpe said.

“Too quickly for us to … to have a chance?” Geena asked. She had been about to say “survive,” but couldn’t bring herself to use the word.

“This is insidious magic,” Volpe said. “Caravello’s blood exposed us to this infection. I could almost admire it—the assured destruction of whoever might be responsible for your own murder—but this won’t only kill us. This is a hex-plague. Thousands could die, and all out of spite.”

For the first time, Geena understood the loyalty Volpe had to his city. The old magician could be cruel and brutal in his efforts to preserve and protect Venice, and his arrogance was monumental. But she no longer doubted that the Doges were the enemy here. They were putrid creatures. Only a truly evil man could conceive of such an abhorrent act as Caravello’s fail-safe contagion.

Volpe handed her his coffee cup and their two spoons but otherwise ignored her. He glanced around once, then thrust his arms downward, palms open and fingers splayed as though he were warming his hands over a fire. His fingers contorted, sketching odd symbols in the air, and he whispered something she could not hear.

The bloodstained cobblestones burst into flame. Geena gasped and stepped back as fire raced along the spilled blood and flashed up from each of the splotches they had left behind when moving the Doge’s corpse to the abandoned taverna. It lasted only an instant, not much longer than the fire from the hand of some stage magician—a parlor trick.

But what Volpe had done was no parlor trick. The cobblestones were not scorched at all, but they were clean—cleaner, perhaps, than they had been in generations—and no trace remained of the blood of Giardino Caravello and the sickness it carried.

Nico staggered coming through the side door of the taverna. “So fast,” he muttered.

Geena followed him in. He watched her close the door and said a silent prayer that no one had seen them. But his prayers weren’t only for their benefit. If the police came and caught them before the work they needed to do here had been completed, all of Venice might be in danger. All of Venice, and far beyond.

She winced in pain as she coughed, and Nico felt her pain as his own. He tried to soothe her with his mind, but it was of no use. He could let her feel the depth of his love for her, the fullness of his heart, but he could not hide his own fear.

Geena’s thoughts were clear. We just need to focus. Please. If there’s any chance to save ourselves, we have to hurry.

Nico nodded. Together they slid a table against the door to prevent anyone else from coming in. The broken lock would be easily discovered, but at least this would gain them seconds in which to attempt escape, or finish the task at hand.

With Geena so close, he could not avoid looking at the purplish-red swelling under her neck and the wet, leaking sores on her face. He bit his lip and forced himself to focus.

Caravello’s body lay behind the bar, just as they had left it. The bloody trail on the floor had vanished, cleansed by the fire Volpe had summoned, but the corpse remained. Now, though, the flesh was pustulent and raw, and the dead Doge’s throat had swollen massively and turned black. They set the coffee cups and spoons and napkins on the floor beside the body.

“I don’t understand,” Geena said. “If the Doges want Venice, why would Caravello do this, knowing it might kill everyone in the city?”

“I don’t know,” Nico said. “Maybe it’s a side effect of accessing Akylis’ power? His evil? They’re contaminated.”

“Maybe,” Geena said. “Or maybe he didn’t even trust his cousins. Maybe the fail-safe was so the other Doges couldn’t betray him. We don’t even know if the others are also carrying it.”

Nico started to reply, but choked on a cough, which turned into a hoarse, seal-like bark that bent him double. When at last he caught his breath, he spat blood onto the floor.

Geena stared at him. “Nico, your eyes.”

He reached up to touch them and his fingers came away wet, not with tears but blood. Geena reached a hand toward his face. Nico felt his legs weaken and he collapsed to his knees, blackness swirling in his peripheral vision.

Volpe, he thought, turning his focus inward. The ancient presence remained, but diminished. Nico could barely feel Volpe’s awareness within him. We’re going to die if you don’t wake up and do something. And what of you? Will you die without a host?

Nico felt Volpe stirring, felt him rush upward, stepping forward to take control once again. But even as he did, he sensed barriers in place now between his mind and the old magician’s. Once again, Volpe was hiding something.

Geena saw it happen. Still on his knees, Nico sagged further, his head lolling onto his chest. Then his head snapped up, eyes narrowed, and though the fear remained it was no longer Nico’s fear, but Volpe’s. The shape of the mouth was different, and the merciless curl of the lip had returned.

Volpe looked up at her. Then he reached out for a nearby chair and used it to pull himself to his feet.

“Get me a knife. And hurry.”

Chills racked her body, cold sweat dripping down her back and between her breasts, but Geena did as he asked. The kitchen had been stripped of most of its valuable equipment, but a drawer near the sink in back held a handful of old knives and wooden spoons and a ladle. She grabbed one of the knives and stumbled away from the counter, accidentally pulling out the drawer, which crashed to the floor. Geena barely noticed as she staggered back through the door into the restaurant proper.

Light fixtures were dark. Ceiling fans did not turn. Dust covered the room. Over the stale smell of old beer, she could smell the stink of rotting flesh and knew the smell came from her own body as much as Caravello’s.

How did I come to this? she thought. None of this is …

Real? Possible? She shoved away the denials. The life she had known had felt strong and vibrant to her, but in truth it had been fragile and ephemeral. She had to tell herself that it could be reclaimed; that it waited for her, just out of reach. But if she ever hoped to have that life back, she and Nico first had to live, and she would do whatever was necessary to make certain of that. To protect him, above all.

Nico—no, Volpe—pulled out a chair and sat down, the legs scraping on the dusty wooden floor.

The knife, he thought.

She swayed to a halt, brought up short. Get the fuck out of my head.

He could use Nico’s ability after all. Or perhaps he and Nico were working together for now.

We are, Nico said, reading her thoughts. We have to.

Geena erupted in a fit of coughing, but in its midst she managed to give Volpe the dulled blade. He took her hand and sliced the blade across her palm. She tried to scream but only coughed hard, black spots swimming at the corners of her eyes.

“Bastard,” she said, clutching her bleeding fist against her chest.

But then an image rose in her mind, of the Council of Ten slicing their own palms as part of some spell of Volpe’s, and she knew this was magic. Blood magic.

Volpe held up his own hand, Nico’s hand, and cut the palm, blood running down the blade of the knife. He held his fist above the splash of Geena’s blood already on the floorboards. For a moment he seemed to sag again, his eyelids drooping, and she thought he might pass out. His breath rattled with phlegm.

“Wake up!” he said, and it was Nico’s voice, Nico’s panicked gaze.

Replaced immediately by Volpe, blinking and shaking himself. He looked at Geena. “Paper? An old tablecloth? Did you see anything in the kitchen?”

She shook her head and hugged herself, shivering with the chill of her fever. Pain had begun to make a fist in her gut, and she knew that to speak would be to give it voice.

“Behind the bar, then. A rag. A napkin. Anything?”

“Maybe,” she managed to say.

Geena tried to rise and her legs went out from under her and she sprawled on the floor, little trickles of their blood spreading toward her, where her cheek lay on the coolness of the wood.

“I’ll find something,” Volpe said. “I need his eyes, anyway.”

“His … eyes …?”

“They saw us in health. All the better to restore us, having those images.”

Taking a guttural, rasping breath, he staggered to his feet and stalked across the room. She watched him go to the bar and vanish behind it. When the noises began—wet, squelching sounds—she closed her eyes, but that only made it worse, made the sounds clearer and her imagination more vivid.

She gagged, managed to keep herself from throwing up, but then began to cough. Blood and bile filled her mouth and she spit it onto the floor, but the coughing continued until the black spots at the edges of her field of vision darkened and spread, and then the whole world tilted and …

… How long? she thought as she opened her eyes. She knew she’d been out, but for how long? If Nico heard her thoughts—or Volpe, for that matter—neither of them replied.

She tried to lift her head and the darkness swept in again and she was …

… blinking … careful this time. What did she hear? Murmuring, so softly, like whispered sins coming from inside a confessional.

Taking a deep breath, she opened her eyes wide and gave herself a second to focus. Nico sat cross-legged on the floor perhaps four feet from her, on the other side of the blood he—no, Volpe—had taken from both of them. She blinked, studying his face. She knew it intimately, had traced the lines of that face with her fingers and her lips, had gazed into those eyes and thrown herself open to the man.

Tears of blood streaked Nico’s face. The disease, taking its toll.

But it wasn’t Nico. Exhausted as he must be, Volpe did not want to die for eternity. With horrible tenacity, he seemed to be hanging on inside of Nico, propping up the body around him like a boy in his father’s old suit. The body seemed to be shrinking in upon itself. The blotches on his throat had gone black now and spread, and his neck had bloated hideously.

A bar rag lay spread out on the floor in front of him and with one blood-wetted finger, he dabbed and scrawled something she could not see from this angle.

“What is your name?” Volpe gasped. “The name you were born with?”

Though she was confused and curious, she did not have the strength to ask why he needed to know.

“Geena Louise … Hodge.”

Volpe nodded. “Geena Louise Hodge. Nicolo Tomasino Lombardi.”

He dipped his finger in the blood again and again, smearing the cloth. A gelatinous mush quivered in the midst of the spilled blood, and it took her a moment to understand that these were Caravello’s eyes.

She hadn’t the strength to vomit.

The murmuring, the whispers, were coming from Nico’s lips, and it took her a moment to realize that Volpe was chanting some sort of rite. Spellcraft, she remembered he called it. Meant to heal them.

But the darkness encroached again. She fought to stay conscious.

Nico, she thought, an abyss of sorrow opening up to swallow her. I think I’m going to die now.

His reply was weak, but he was there. We live or die as one.

“Quiet, you fools,” Volpe growled. He took a rattling breath and continued his strange song.

Geena saw the rats before she heard the skittering of their claws upon the wood. They skittered toward Volpe as though dragged upon strings. When they reached him, they waited, quivering and squealing but frozen in place.

“What are you doing?” Geena asked, coughing. “Did you call them?”

“Our lives are fading,” Volpe rasped. “If we’re to survive … we have to steal life from elsewhere.”

When he had finished scrawling on the bar rag, he reached out a shaking hand and picked up one of the rats. It did not scratch or bite; it gave no resistance save those screams. Volpe placed it in the bloody mess on the floor, pressed the point of the knife to its belly, and slit it open.

Geena closed her eyes and drifted again …

… disoriented, eyes fluttering open, she saw that the second rat was already dead. Small mercies; she had not had to witness it. The smell of blood filled her nostrils and she felt it sticky on her cheek. It had trickled along the wood and pooled beneath her head.

Volpe sat unmoving, slumped down upon himself. If not for the phlegmy rattling in his throat, she would have thought he had died.

Dying, Geena thought. The three of us are dying.

Even as despair overcame her and bloody tears began to clot her eyes, she saw Nico’s body twitch. One of them—she no longer knew if it was Nico or Volpe—raised his head. He lifted up the bar rag and began the chant again, though now it was little more than a low gurgle. She could see the rag now, arcane letters and strange sigils scrawled in blood upon it.

He dropped it onto the mess on the floor and blood began to soak into the fabric.

“I will not die,” he snarled, even as he slid onto his side, blood pouring from his ears and nostrils. He choked, coughed, and then reached out a hand, holding his palm open above the cloth and the words and the death he had carefully prepared.

As before in the courtyard, it all burst into flame, an instantaneous eruption of fire that consumed the entire mess. The blood that had trickled toward her ignited, flames leaping up and racing toward the pool of blood beneath her face.

Geena tried to scream through her ragged, swollen throat, and a wave of pain crashed through her.

Then, once again, the darkness took her.