The Immortal City Page 12

  “But it isn’t the real thing.” Penelope frowned.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Nereus interrupted. “Spells don’t care, and the more images or recreations, the more power is generated to the spell’s purpose.”

  “So when I had them on my wall…”

  “It was like water on a prayer wheel,” finished Alexis before adding, “you couldn’t have known.”

  “I hate that. I hate not knowing,” Penelope said as she circled the grotesque horse.

  “So I’ve noticed.”

  Penelope tried not to cringe when she studied the fear etched on the dead man’s face. That had almost been her fate, too. She swallowed hard and stepped away, turning her attention to the writing on the sea wall.

  “Can you read this?” she asked Nereus. “I’ve been trying to figure it out, but it’s been hopeless.”

  “I can read some of it, but not all,” Nereus admitted. “It’s a form of Atlantean. When Thevetat’s worship was growing in Atlantis, the temple priests took the Living Language and perverted it. This is the result. I never wanted to learn such a foul thing.”

  “Living Language?”

  “All language is alive,” Alexis explained. “Written script, whether scripture or a shopping list, holds emotion, a story, a form of consciousness. In Atlantis, this language was sacred, vibrant, and held power. There was an everyday alphabet, but the Living Language was only written for magic or ritual. They took something used for pure purposes and turned it into something twisted and dark.”

  “Do you know what they are trying to achieve with it?” Penelope asked.

  “What do you think it is? How does it feel to you?” Nereus asked. “I’m curious to see how intuitive you are. You found the Tablet, or the Tablet found you, so there must be some ability locked inside of you.”

  Penelope tried to sound confident as she replied, “The Acolyte is petitioning Poseidon on Thevetat’s behalf. Demon to God. It’s using the old sacrifices structure of favor, but like the language, it’s distorted. What they are trying to get the God of the Sea to do I’m not sure, but it’s a request as well as a threat.”

  “And isn’t that just the crux of it.” Nereus frowned. “But why petition a god with a threat? I’m impressed that you figured out it was a spell with no magical training and no knowledge of the language, Penelope. You have good instincts; I like that in a woman. I’m going to need some time to sort through this butchering of Atlantean, and I want you to help. First, I need you and Alexis to make peace with the polizia. We don’t need to give them any more cause for suspicion.”

  “They said I’m not allowed near the case—” Penelope began.

  “But the case wants to be near you,” argued Nereus. “Don’t you understand? The Acolyte, whoever he is, wants you. You are useful to the police because of it.”

  Penelope chewed her lip thoughtfully. If the Acolyte wanted her that bad, would he risk exposing himself to get to her?

  “I could get them to use me as bait to lure him out.” Penelope hated the idea, but she couldn’t deny that it could work.

  “You aren’t going to act as bait for a follower of Thevetat,” said Alexis.

  “I don’t need your permission,” Penelope retorted. “If it stops other people from dying, it’s worth the risk.”

  “Penelope’s right,” Nereus said as she studied the Bull-headed woman. “I’m sure you’ll keep her safe, Alexis, but trust me, the idea would have already occurred to the polizia by now, and their new agent is ruthless enough to plan and execute it.”

  “Marco might be able to hold the police off for a few days so I can recover, but they will want to do some proper questioning. I’ll tell them to use me to draw the Acolyte out.”

  “This’s madness,” Alexis muttered. “You’ve already been stabbed and kidnapped in the past fortnight!”

  “I’m not a sadist. I don’t want to be bait, but I do want to catch this bastard. Even if it’s to find out where he learned this language.”

  “Penelope, you should call Marco Dandolo and let him know you are doing better,” Nereus instructed, ignoring Alexis’s noises of protest. “I’ll keep you down here with me today while we try and figure out this petition.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Penelope said and pulled out her phone.

  “And me?” Alexis asked.

  “You and Phaidros can go back upstairs and summon the others. I’ve got a bad feeling in my guts about all of this. I want everyone together.”

  “Zotikos should still be in Crete,” Phaidros said. “That is, if he hasn’t gotten distracted by beautiful women.”

  “Any idea where Aelia is?” Alexis asked him. Phaidros’s face darkened.

  “Vienna, but she won’t come. She’s better off staying there. She’ll only cause trouble.”

  “Excellent! You know where they are. Get to it,” Nereus said. “Talk to Aelia, Alexis. She’s always listened to you.”

  Phaidros turned on his heel and stormed away, cursing vehemently in Greek. Alexis gave Penelope a tight smile before following him out.

  “Don’t worry about them, Penelope,” said Nereus. “Alexis gets moody when he’s worried, and Aelia and Phaidros have been at each other’s throats for the last ten thousand years. It’s been the only constant I’ve known.”

  “Should I ask what happened?”

  “That’s their story to tell, but if you ask me, they should’ve had sex years ago and got it out of their system.” Penelope burst out in surprised laughter. Nereus waved it away. “I’m too old to care about propriety. Right now, you need to call the inspector so we can get to work.”

  PENELOPE STEPPED out of the lab and found Marco’s number in the new phone’s contact list. He answered the call within the first ring. “Penelope! Grazie Dio. I thought that bastard Donato had given me a false number.”

  “I’m fine. I’ve been asleep.”

  “Of course, of course. I’m sorry. I’ve been worried since I let you leave with him. To make matters worse, when I got back to the office I was told to let him consult with you. I can’t believe he pulled Adalfieri’s strings so easily!”

  “It’s not a bad idea, Marco. He’s obsessed with Atlantis and the Aegean almost as much as I am. He’s followed my work, and he’ll be an asset,” Penelope replied. She wasn’t surprised that Alexis had maneuvered himself onto the case. He seemed to work four steps ahead of everyone else.

  “The only thing that’s made me feel any better about it was Agent Bianchi almost turning purple when she was told the good news.”

  “I can imagine! Don’t worry, Alexis and I are already working on decoding the script, and as soon as I have something, I’ll let you know.”

  “Sounds good. Keep in contact, Dottore. I still don’t like Donato. There’s more to him than meets the eye.”

  You have no idea, Penelope thought as she hung up and hurried back to Nereus’s lab.

  UPSTAIRS PHAIDROS had gone straight to his rooms to call Zotikos, leaving Alexis sighing in age-old frustration. He couldn’t argue with Nereus’s decision to keep Penelope downstairs. Together they would pull the spell apart in no time. Despite her terrible idea about being used as bait, he couldn’t help but smile with an unexpected, secret warmth.

  Back in his tower, Alexis focused on Aelia. She was the type of person who would leave her phone in the bottom of a bathtub if it rang too much. He couldn’t risk her ignoring them. If dark priests of Thevetat were on the move, they would try and pick off those outside the pack, and Alexis wasn’t about to let that happen.

  It took him but a moment to fix on Aelia’s mansion. It was in a grand old building, first built when the land was still known as Vindobona, and its Romanesque architecture had taken on other, more baroque styles as she expanded it. Thinking about her music room, he opened a portal and stepped through.

  The room was a collection of old and new instruments with a piano once owned by Beethoven (that she won from him in a game of cards), soundboards for mixi
ng digital music, and piles of sheet music written by Vivaldi held down by a used martini glass.

  “Defender,” said a deep voice behind him, “what a surprise.”

  Aelia stood in the doorway dressed in a long burgundy robe with heavy golden stitching. She had golden-brown skin, her arms heavy with bronze cuffs, and her burnt-bronze hair was piled elegantly on the top of her head. Her violet eyes were striking in a bed of black eyeliner. Aelia looked him over carefully, holding a martini in one hand and a gladius in the other.

  “Princess.” Alexis bowed. “Is that blade’s edge for me?”

  “Oh, this?” She looked down at it as if she were surprised to see it. “I felt magic being used and I thought I best be ready to expect the worst.”

  “You have felt it then? The growing darkness?” he asked, sitting down on one of the plush chaise lounges scattered about the room.

  “I’m a princess and High Priestess of Atlantis,” she said proudly, placing the gladius down on the top of the piano. “Of course I have felt the bloody darkness growing. They are back, aren’t they?”

  “Thevetat’s found some new followers in Venice. There have been…sacrifices. We are trying to stop them.”

  “After all this time,” she said, her voice hollow. “Do you think it has something to do with the tide of magic growing stronger?”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me. They would want to be as powerful as possible before they make their move on us.”

  “Fucking Thevetat,” Aelia muttered. Her eyes flicked to her sword as if she needed the comfort of its hilt in her hand. Alexis knew Aelia’s past with Thevetat’s priests, and he wasn’t about to judge her uneasiness.

  “And what of this pretty human I keep seeing in my dreams?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “A scholar I’ve kept an eye on for a few years. She came to Venice to help with the murder investigation and has gotten tangled up with magic. We made a truce.”

  “So quickly?” Aelia’s coppery brow shot up.

  “I found out she was in Venice when she astral projected straight into my tower. Then she found the palazzo, and it let her in.”

  “I bet you hated that.” Aelia laughed.

  “That’s not all. She also figured out the priests were setting spells and charging them with their sacrifices. All of this with absolutely zero magical ability.”

  “Impressive little mortal. What do you want from me, Alexis?”

  “Come home, Aelia, at least until this matter is sorted out. Nereus wants us together, and I agree that we are safer that way.”

  Aelia made a face. “If we are together there will be more bloodshed.”

  “You and Phaidros are the only ones who don’t get along.”

  “That’s because he does everything he can to irritate me.”

  “Why do little boys pull little girls’ hair?” teased Alexis.

  “Because little boys are assholes raised in a patriarchal society who think it’s okay to treat women however they please,” Aelia said, finishing her martini. “How many weeks?”

  “Two, maybe three. It’s Carnevale, your favorite. Besides, Penelope and Nereus are getting to the bottom of this mystery as we speak.”

  “Nereus is letting her work in the Archives with her? Wow, she hasn’t liked a human that much since…” Aelia trailed off.

  “Da Vinci?” Alexis couldn’t quite recall, either, it had been so long.

  “Only when he got older,” added Aelia. “At least she didn’t argue with him the way she did with that Englishman.”

  “Which one? She’s argued with the English more than any others she’s known.”

  Aelia clicked her fingers in frustration before exclaiming, “John Dee! Athena save us from mathematicians and occultists.”

  “I had hoped she would get along with Penelope, but it seems she has a genuine liking for her.”

  “It seems Nereus isn’t the only one.” Aelia’s eyes danced. “The stoic Defender has a crush.”

  “Hardly. The woman is incredibly frustrating, and if she had any sense at all, she would have walked away before she got herself into this mess. Now someone called the Acolyte wants to sacrifice her, and what does she want to do? Offer herself up as bait.”

  “Gods, Alexis, it sounds like you need one of these more than I do.” Aelia sang a few harmonic notes and another martini glass and full shaker appeared on the small table beside her. She poured a drink and passed it to him. “You have got yourself all riled up over some human woman. How very unlike you, Defender.”

  “I was going to kill her and decided against it. I annihilated her career, and still, she kept coming,” Alexis complained. “Relentless, obsessive, frustrating woman.”

  “Hmm. Doesn’t sound like anyone I know at all,” Aelia said, sipping her drink.

  “At least I can protect myself, and I don’t needlessly put myself in harm’s way. Bait for Thevetat! The woman is insane. Maybe you can talk some sense into her.”

  “If you can’t, I don’t like my chances,” said Aelia. “The Alexis I know would never give her the option not to listen. The priests of Thevetat haven’t been seen in ten thousand years, and there is no way she could comprehend what it means. You need to explain it to her without losing your temper. Make her understand.”

  “I would, but she doesn’t exactly trust me yet.” Alexis drained his glass. “She makes me want to protect her.” And throttle her and kiss her all at once.

  “Well, that is your very nature. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be the Defender, would you?” Aelia’s purple eyes studied him carefully. “If you didn’t like her, she wouldn’t drive you so crazy.”

  “I know that too.” Alexis got to his feet and clapped his hands. “Enough about Penelope. Pack up your things, Princess. Dark priests aren’t going to hunt themselves.”

  “Hunting dark priests…it’s starting to feel like the old days,” Aelia said. “Give me a day or two to get a few things in order, and I’ll come. I need to meet this human.”

  FOR THE NEXT few days, Penelope healed, sent regular updates to Marco, and hung out in the Archives. The black moleskin notebook she had bought at the airport gift store slowly filled with notes.

  Knowing only her eyes would see it, she wrote about being amongst the magicians, the Archives, and how time seemed to move slower in the palazzo. A part of her was afraid of forgetting again, or that it was still somehow not happening and the palazzo and Alexis would vanish in the night. The academic side of her had a minor heart attack every time she entered the Archives, and while Nereus had given her permission to touch and read whatever she wished, she was usually so overwhelmed she didn’t know where to start.

  Penelope wrote about the script at the crime scenes, and how if she looked at it for too long it felt like little burrs were hooking themselves into her mind. In a stream of consciousness, she hypothesized what the spells were for, how they could be connected to MOSE, and why anyone would want to follow a demon god. She sat in Nereus’s lab, the magician using her as a sounding board as she tried to unravel the spell work at the sites.

  “I don’t know who would have been able to teach him all this,” Nereus muttered as she and Penelope drank tea. “The Demon could have, I suppose. It explains why it’s haphazard even for a dark priest.”

  “What about other survivors?” Penelope asked. “Atlantis is pretty big for no one else to have managed to escape apart from you seven.”

  “In the beginning, I thought it was possible,” Nereus admitted, “but we searched the world for them. There weren’t as many magicians as you might think, and within fifty years or so, any survivors would have died.”

  “A human follower of Thevetat could’ve taught others.” Penelope tapped her pen thoughtfully on her notebook. “They might have even masqueraded as something else.”

  “Come again?” Nereus put her tea down.

  “If you were a priest or a follower in a new land and you followed a religion that others might not understand or be afraid
of, wouldn’t you keep it quiet?”

  “You would if you knew magicians survived who would have hunted you into the ground,” said Nereus, getting to her feet. “I want you to follow this line of inquiry with Alexis. He searched for survivors, and he was my best hunter when it came to Thevetat’s followers.”

  At Nereus’s instructions, Alexis began joining Penelope in the Archives, and she finally began to relax in his presence. They claimed a huge study table, and sitting opposite each other, pulled out manuscripts on dark magic and cults that could have been Thevetat worship under a different name.

  “What about the Anemospilia site near Heraklion?” Penelope asked as she used her laptop to search the Archives databases.

  “What about it?” Alexis asked, not looking up from his book.

  “An excavation took place there in 1979, and the temple they found was completely different from any of the other ancient Minoan sites. The construction itself was odd, less labyrinthine and more symmetrical,” Penelope explained. “From the looks of it, the temple was destroyed by an earthquake. They found a statue that had feet made of clay, like our Bull woman.”

  Alexis’s head snapped up from the book. “Sacred Earth. What else did they find?”

  “It was full of vases that held traces of blood as well as food and wine.” Penelope opened the Internet and pulled up papers and articles written on the dig. “There was a room for sacrificing bulls, but the thing that got everyone in a real tizzy was the body of a young man they found on an altar. His hands and feet were bound, and there was a sacrificial blade on the skeleton. I always thought it strange that they would sacrifice a human when it was obvious everything was designed for bulls.”

  “If they were concerned about the earthquakes then they might have been pushed to offer a human life to the gods to make them stop.” Alexis moved so he could see over her shoulder and study the photos on the screen. “The Greeks weren’t shy when it came to sacrificing humans when the need arose, and the Minoans were no different. It’s the building structure and its location that concerns me.”