The Immortal City Page 8

  “Magic?” Her voice was disbelieving but indulgent. She was polite, but it was obvious from her tone that she thought the question was absurd. She shut him down with a challenging glare. Wouldn’t you be fun to argue with? Alexis smiled as she moved on, dismissing him.

  After the lecture, he had watched her work the crowd. He didn’t dare approach her, but their eyes locked once, and the look she gave him was so defiant he could only smile in acknowledgment before heading out of the library.

  Outside, the cold, wet air cleared the buzz from his mind. Penelope was getting too close. Obsession was a cruel mistress. Alexis had lived long enough to know how dangerous it could be. He couldn’t allow her to find them. With reluctance in his soul, Alexis resigned himself to killing Penelope Bryne.

  IT WAS after midnight when the keys rattled in the door, and Penelope entered her dark flat. Alexis had been there for an hour, a blade resting across his knees. He admonished himself for snooping, but he hadn’t been able to help it. She lived with another woman who wasn’t there that night. The presence of a lover was nowhere to be found, and unlike most academics, Penelope was scrupulously neat. Books were stacked in piles on the floor and inside groaning shelves. A framed copy of the article on the Atlantis Tablet hung above the gas fireplace.

  An inspection of her bookshelves proved quite revealing. There were tattered copies of Plato and the Odyssey, textbooks on the Greeks, Phoenicians, and Mycenaeans tabbed with pieces of colored paper. An unopened book on anxiety was tucked in a dusty corner. When Alexis’s curious fingers began to touch things, he scolded himself and sat down to wait.

  Penelope came into the flat and shut the door behind her without turning on the lights. Her feet were sure of their destination as she placed her black leather satchel bag and keys on the kitchen counter and headed for the bathroom. Do it now. Stop dragging out the inevitable, a voice of reason urged him.

  But Alexis wasn’t listening to reason; he was tapping his blade softly against his knee, waiting for another option to present itself.

  Warm light spilled through the bathroom door as Penelope reappeared wearing Wonder Woman pajamas, her hair piled on top of her head, the scent of jasmine, musk, and sea salt lingering in the air. She turned off the light and went to bed.

  Alexis waited another thirty minutes before getting up and going into the room after her. She slept in the middle of the bed, stretched out like a long cat, already fast asleep. The knife in his hand twitched once before Alexis sheathed it. He would destroy any chance she would have to continue her search. It would be a way to save her life even if it would destroy her career.

  Alexis touched her forehead, sketching a symbol that would be sure to alert him before she got so close again.

  PENELOPE WAS pulled out of the memory, gasping for air and thrashing her arms.

  “Easy, Penelope, you’re okay,” Alexis said from the chair beside her. She let go of his hand, pushing him away so she could stick her head between her knees.

  “Oh God, oh God,” she breathed, a panic attack imminent as her chest tightened, the extra adrenaline making her stomach heave. “You were in my house. You were going to kill me…”

  “But I didn’t. You could feel my reluctance. You are brilliant, Penelope, and brilliant people are too few in the world to just kill off when they become inconvenient.”

  “What have you done to her, Alexis?” a woman’s voice said sharply, and Penelope looked up to see an old woman striding into the room, face like a thunderstorm. Nereus, the healer, she remembered.

  “I tried to show her I didn’t want to kill her,” Alexis said stubbornly.

  “By showing me the night you were planning on killing me! Are you insane?” Penelope shouted.

  Nereus gave Alexis a look that had him cringing. “You are thoughtless sometimes. Look at the damage you’ve just done.” Nereus crouched down beside Penelope and touched the base of her skull in a gentle twisting motion. Instantly, the adrenaline vanished, the panic and nausea leaving with it.

  “Thank you,” breathed Penelope.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t think—” Alexis said softly, but Nereus hissed at him.

  “I thought you liked this girl. What use is scaring the life out of her? You should know better,” she chastised before turning to Penelope with a gentle smile. “I’m so sorry my dear, I shouldn’t have trusted Alexis to greet you properly. Would you like to come with me and see something that won’t send you screaming out of the palazzo? He’s doing a terrible job of reassuring you that we aren’t involved with Thevetat’s band of miscreants.”

  Penelope got to her feet and slid the knife back into her pocket without looking at Alexis. “Sure, Nereus, I’d like that.”

  “Sometimes it takes a woman’s touch,” Nereus muttered as she led Penelope out of the Atlantis Room.

  Penelope risked a glance back at Alexis, but he remained glaring at the wall of paraphernalia. Once Penelope had entered the long hallway with her new guide, she felt the connection to him tug again.

  Perhaps Nereus could fix that like she did my panic attack, Penelope thought.

  She didn’t know what to make of Alexis. The trip into his memories was too weird. The lecture night had haunted her for months and seeing it through someone else’s eyes left her disorientated.

  “Alexis can be brooding and secretive, but his heart is honorable,” Nereus said beside her.

  “You can read minds?” asked Penelope. Please don’t be able to read minds.

  “I don’t have to. Your conflicted emotions are on your face.”

  “You would be concerned, too, if a strange man claiming to be a magician kept turning your life upside down.”

  Nereus chuckled under her breath. “According to Alexis, you are the one terrorizing him.”

  “This is all a big misunderstanding.”

  “I don’t think it is. Sometimes fate and the gods intervene to make our lives more interesting. If you weren’t meant to be here, you wouldn’t have found the palazzo, and it certainly wouldn’t have let you into his tower, even as an astral projection.”

  “I didn’t do it on purpose,” argued Penelope.

  “Alexis knows that and finds it worse than if you were trained.” Nereus smiled mischievously, and it made her appear young and wicked. “He takes himself far too seriously. It’ll humble him to know there are things left in this world that he doesn’t know. I must say, it’s been a delight to see him so rattled recently. It’s probably why he thought it would be a good idea to show you the most inappropriate memory he could. The man isn’t exactly thinking straight and has forgotten how to make friends.”

  Despite her words, her tone was thoroughly amused, and Penelope found herself relaxing ever so slightly.

  “So you’re saying I should trust him?” Penelope asked. “After everything he’s done and all the other…weirdness?”

  “God no. Never trust a magician just because he asks, Doctor Bryne. I’m merely suggesting that you give him a chance to earn it. He would never do anything intentionally to hurt you. I’ve known him long enough to know when he’s fond of someone.”

  Nereus pressed a silver button on the wall, and the elevator doors slid silently open. Penelope stepped inside the elaborate cage of iron and glass in a stunning art nouveau design wondering just how big the palazzo was.

  The doors were closing when a brown hand caught them. Alexis stepped inside without saying anything. Nereus looked sideways at Penelope and gave her a secret wink.

  The hair on Penelope’s arms rose when Alexis leaned on the glass beside her, the proximity and intense hum of his energy making her edgy. This is real this is real this is real, she reminded herself. She didn’t like that a part of her was fighting the urge to touch him again just to be sure.

  “You should turn around,” Alexis suggested.

  “Why?”

  He gave a shrug that could mean anything. “You will enjoy it.”

  Penelope turned so she was facing the glass through
which only the interior of the wall could be seen. The elevator began to drop, and she was surrounded by the blue-gray of the canal water before they descended into the seabed. She looked at him questioningly, but he only smiled. The earth and rock vanished as they descended through the roof of an immense cavern. Elaborate chandeliers and floating orbs of light illuminated shelves upon shelves of books.

  “This is a library?” Penelope’s voice was small with wonder. She rested her hands on the glass to steady herself as her knees went weak.

  “We call it the Archives.”

  “What’s that?” Penelope pointed.

  Alexis stood behind her to see, and the hair on the back of her neck rose. In the distance, gold flickered on top of a marble pillar.

  “That’s the Atlantean symbol for knowledge,” he replied, reaching around her to point at another pillar, “and that one over there is for protection. The pillars are carved with stories, but you won’t be able to make anything out from this distance.”

  Penelope looked over her shoulder at him. His blue eyes were calm, and before she could think about it she asked, “Will you show me?”

  “If you like.”

  “You see, Alexis? You just needed to show her some books, and she’s friends with you already.” Nereus chuckled.

  He was so tall she had to tilt her head back, but Penelope stared him dead in the eye. “I’m so not your friend.”

  “Yet,” he replied, the corner of his mouth twitching toward a smile. Penelope’s mouth twitched back. God damn it, I wanted to hate you.

  “You can show her whatever you like after we have been to the lab,” Nereus interrupted as the elevator doors opened.

  Nereus led them into a laboratory that was built out of the cavern rock. It was filled with glass and metal contraptions of varying shapes and colors. Penelope could only speculate what they did.

  They found a slender black man standing near a stone slab examining a dead body. “Hello, Penelope,” he greeted with a brilliant smile. “I am Galenos.”

  Penelope tried to smile, but she was doing her best not to balk at the sight of the body. She had seen dead bodies before, especially recently, but this one made her blood run cold. It was the man who had stabbed her on the bridge. His throat was cut, and she turned questioningly to Alexis.

  “We didn’t kill him,” he said innocently. “By the time Phaidros caught up to him, the thug was already dead.”

  “Why did you bring him back here? Why not call the police?”

  “We needed to question him,” Nereus said as she tied on a leather butcher’s apron.

  “But he’s dead.”

  “Good observation,” she replied. “I can see why Alexis is so taken with you.”

  Penelope bit her tongue, chastised.

  “Nereus, please. Give her a chance to—” Alexis began, but Nereus silenced him with a sharp glance.

  “Sink or swim, Penelope. Sink or swim.” Nereus took a knife and sliced the dead man’s shirt, pulling it back to examine his skin. “Tell me what you see, Miss Observation. He was sent to kill you, after all.”

  Penelope stepped forward, determined not to embarrass herself further. The man’s skin was pale brown, with a spray of dark hair and a few tattoos, but otherwise unmarked. “He’s not part of the Thevetat cult,” she said, lifting parts of his shirt away to check as much skin as she could. “At least not directly.”

  “What makes you sure?” Nereus asked. “Demon worship isn’t something people would advertise.”

  “From my research, and what I know about chthonic cults, there would be a brand,” Penelope explained. “I don’t know what the brand or mark would look like, but there would be some initiation rite scarring. The ritual murders are steeped in pain and blood because they believe they can draw power from it. If he were a part of it, there would be evidence of self-mutilation.”

  “Interesting. What other evidence is there?”

  “He was a hired thug. I recognize that tattoo of the snake around the lion head. It’s the gang sign for the Sangue di Serpente. I remember reading an article a few years ago when there was a corruption case against a Sicilian politician. He had hired the Serpente to protect some of his properties.” Seeing Nereus’s disbelieving look, Penelope added, “Too many years looking at ancient texts has given me a curious memory for symbols. My father used to write my household chores out in hieroglyphics. He’s a jerk that way.”

  Alexis looked at Penelope, and though he wasn’t smiling, there was something in his stance that seemed smug. “Are you satisfied, Nereus?”

  “Let’s see if she’s right.” Nereus rubbed her hands together, static sparks jumping between her fingers. Galenos handed her a small black stone. Nereus dropped it into the dead man’s mouth and shut his jaw. The hair on Penelope’s arms lifted as energy crackled around the lab. The man on the table started to cough, and she leaped backward, colliding with Alexis.

  “It’s okay, Penelope, he can’t hurt you,” Alexis reassured her.

  The dead man coughed again and then, in gargling, Sicilian started to curse.

  “What’s he saying?” Penelope asked, still hanging onto Alexis’s arm.

  “Something about the son of a pig whore,” Nereus said before gripping the man’s face and asking a question of him in a stern voice.

  “She asked him who hired him to kill you,” Alexis translated. “He’s not sure of the man’s real name because he’s known as the Acolyte in gang circles. He’s worked for him before.”

  “Does he know where he lives?” Penelope asked. “If he does, Marco can focus the investigation there.”

  Nereus asked and whatever the man replied earned him a slap in the face. Apparently, dead men did feel pain as he cursed her even as he gave up the information.

  “He met him in San Marco, at the palazzo where there were lots of people. He didn’t trust the Acolyte. He was on his way back to meet him there when he was jumped,” Alexis said.

  “Any other questions, Doctor Bryne?” Nereus asked, and Penelope shook her head. Alexis didn’t translate what Nereus asked next, but Penelope heard the word Thevetat, and the man’s face twisted in fear.

  “He knows nothing, release him,” Alexis said.

  Nereus eyed the dead man coldly before placing her hand over the man’s mouth. Lines of electricity crackled from her palm and the black stone flew into it. The man collapsed back on the slab, dead and broken.

  “You were right, Penelope,” Nereus said quietly. “He wasn’t initiated into the cult, but he did know what Thevetat was and that’s cause for some concern. Alexis, show her around. Galenos and I will clean this up.” Nereus dismissed them with a wave and started directing Galenos in a strange and lilting language.

  “Come on, let me show you something less dreadful than this sad display,” Alexis said, his hand on the small of Penelope’s back, guiding her from the laboratory.

  Penelope took a deep breath and stared up at the floating lights above her. “How is it not cold and damp in here?”

  “A simple answer? Magic. We use it to regulate the heat and humidity so none of the books rot,” he replied. “You are still not screaming or panicking.”

  “You expected me to?”

  “You seemed to have calmed down quickly.” He frowned.

  “Maybe I just needed some books,” Penelope said, looking at him with a small smile. “Books always make me feel better.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind for future reference. Are you sure you don’t have magician blood?”

  “Believe me. There’s nothing magical about my family. My father thinks I’m a nut case for studying Atlantis,” Penelope scoffed, “but I’m pragmatic. If this is a dream, it is a fascinating one. If this is real, then I’m being given the opportunity to brush against true mystery, and hopefully, find the answers that have plagued me since childhood.”

  Alexis considered this as they walked between the shelves. Penelope had to stop her hands from reaching out to touch the spines of the
books. Many were bound in colored leathers, their titles stitched onto the spine in scripts she didn’t recognize. She wanted to know what was in them, why there were so many, and what else the Archives held. Shelves were built into the rock from the floor to the roof hundreds of meters above her. How did you get them down? Who would be game enough to climb a ladder that high?

  “If you were given the option of knowing answers, but never being able to publish or prove them to anyone else, would you still want to know the truth?” asked Alexis, as she paused to study a statue.

  “Of course I’d want to know. I only published my work on the Tablet because I wanted to generate interest and funding to search for the rest of it. I’m not interested in fame. I only want to find things,” admitted Penelope.

  “You still wouldn’t have found it,” Alexis said with a curious head tilt.

  “That’s what you think.” Penelope folded her arms. “Would you have sabotaged my dig if I had received the funding?”

  “I wouldn’t have had to,” he replied confidently. “The rest of the Tablet is here.”

  “What? Where?”

  “Behind you,” he pointed. “Look.”

  Penelope turned sharply on her heel. Sure enough, displayed on a wall behind her was a massive stone tablet. It was four meters long and would have been two meters wide except a corner piece was missing.

  “Oh my God.”

  Penelope ran over and immediately began scanning the curves and loops of the script. Unlike the writing at the crime scene, this felt wonderful to look at. She touched it tentatively, running her fingertips over the border carved with intricate, geometric patterns. She felt the same buzzing under her hand as she had the day she found the missing piece. I found you.

  “You can imagine my surprise when I saw your article claiming you had found the missing piece of my Tablet,” Alexis said from behind her. “I thought it was lost forever in a stream of lava.”

  “It’s beautiful…wait, what do you mean your Tablet?” She looked at him.