The Immortal City Read online

“It’s mine. I carved every inch of it. True, it was for the Temple of Poseidon at the time, but it’s mine more than anyone else’s. Once Zotikos returns from Crete with the other piece, it will be together for the first time in ten thousand years. What?”

  “You…” Penelope looked from the Tablet to the man beside her. “But how is that possible? You can’t be—”

  “Haven’t you figured it out yet, Penelope Bryne?” he asked, his voice softening. “You said you wanted answers, even if you couldn’t speak of them to anyone. Maybe not even to yourself, because how could you, with your glorious academic mind so filled with science, believe in magic and immortals.” He drew close to her, and her fingers tightened on the stone engravings. “You have seen magic, Penelope, and you didn’t flinch. Are immortals such a stretch?”

  “Immortal magicians from Atlantis. Atlantis. That is…” Her breath hitched as her lungs tightened. “Impossible.”

  “Is it? Would you like proof? I could show you more.”

  “You mean you can throw me into another memory?”

  “It wouldn’t be as intense. You wouldn’t be me like last time but if you want to see…” Alexis held out his hand and waited.

  See Atlantis? Was it possible? Penelope bit her lip and put her shaking hand in his. Slowly, he lowered their hands to the Tablet, and the Archives disappeared.

  PENELOPE STOOD in a temple of crystal and marble. Color flooded her eyes as she took in everything, from the murals on the ceilings to the carved pillars and finely woven curtains that blew softly in the mild sea breeze. Oil braziers burned on tall iron stands, filling the rooms with golden light. Alexis stood beside her, holding her hand gently.

  “Where are we?” she whispered.

  “Atlantis,” he said sadly. “This is one of my memories of the Temple of Poseidon.” They walked together out onto a large balcony. Beneath them stretched a dark garden and the shimmering ocean.

  Voices made her turn, and she saw Alexis and Phaidros, clad in chitons of red fabric that fell to their knees with golden belts about their hips. Their skin glowed where gold had been painted in a thick band across their eyes.

  Alexis appeared about twenty years old, the soft look of boyhood still about his face even though his long body was filled with the muscles of a man. Phaidros’s golden hair shone brightly and hung in looping coiled waves down his shoulders. Teasing banter passed between them in the same lilting language Penelope had heard Nereus speak.

  “What are you saying?” Penelope asked, following them.

  “I’m teasing him about a girl. He was so in love with one of the priest’s daughters he thought he was going to die from desire,” Alexis answered.

  “Boys.” Penelope rolled her eyes. “What were you doing at the Temple?”

  “Everyone had training at the Temple before they became a man. We were still seen as boys and had yet to go through our Rites. My father was one of the most famous artisans in all of Atlantis, and I’d made the Tablet as an offering to Poseidon, shaping it with dedication and love in the hopes he would bless my coming of age with a commission.”

  “And did he?”

  “Yes,” Alexis said with a broad smile, “but not in stonework. It was my destiny to become a magician.”

  “Not a priest?”

  “I lacked certain disciplines.” Alexis’s smile was so filthy Penelope blushed. “Nereus was at the selection night. She saw the magic in me and insisted on taking me for the Magicians. The High Priest challenged her, but she was a powerful woman in the capital, and Nereus always has her way.”

  “I’ve noticed,” laughed Penelope. “I can only imagine the argument.”

  “I’ll show it to you sometime if you like,” Alexis said, and then they were back in the Archives in Venice, their hands linked. Penelope stumbled in surprise. “Do you believe me yet?”

  “I’m starting to,” she said, removing her hand from his. “Not going to lie, I want to believe, but it might take me a few days to wrap my head around all of this.”

  “That’s understandable. It can be overwhelming to have everything you ever thought about magic and Atlantis be entirely incorrect.”

  “It’s not just that, I mean look at this place.” Penelope waved her hands, gesturing to the books and manuscripts around her. “No libraries are like this anymore, how do you keep track of it all? How is it cataloged?”

  “Come, I’ll show you,” Alexis said, and she followed him eagerly. “Galenos has always kept registers, but as technology advanced, he found different ways of doing things.”

  They reached another group of rooms and Penelope’s mouth fell open. They were filled with servers, computer terminals, and workbenches covered in half-finished electronic gadgets. Galenos sat in front of a group of screens, eyes flicking over code. Apparently, it didn’t take long to get rid of a body.

  “I never thought a magician from Atlantis would be such a computer geek,” Penelope said, trying to reconcile the technology with the trove of manuscripts outside the door.

  “One of us needed to be a little more advanced than parchment and ink.” Galenos smiled brightly. “I always was fascinated by technology, and when you are immortal, anything new is a novelty.”

  “What does all of this do? Are you digitizing the Archives?” Penelope asked eagerly, her fingers aching to open a search engine.

  “Absolutely not,” Alexis huffed. “More copies, the stronger the spells get. Copies of an entire book of spells would be a disaster.”

  “Well, not exactly,” Galenos corrected, earning a warning glare from Alexis. “Alexis is half right. In some cases, making digital copies would duplicate the magic. In others, it would be only the copy of a completed ritual that would make it grow more powerful. What I’m doing, in most cases, is cataloging what’s actually in the Archives. Each artifact, manuscript, and book are special.”

  He pulled up what looked like a blank database entry form with familiar fields such as NAME, AUTHOR, and ORIGIN. Then there were others that were unique such as MAGICAL PROPERTIES, RADIATION LEVEL, DANGER TO HUMANS.

  “What does it mean by radiation level?” Penelope asked.

  “Some books have a magical aura, and if they are cataloged or stored incorrectly, the magic of the books around them can be affected. It could grow more powerful by draining the other magical auras. By measuring the radiation levels, we can ensure that a balance is kept,” Galenos explained, pulling up tables and data and ever-shifting numbers. Penelope took it in with giddy delight.

  “If you have recorded radiation, I’m sure you’ve done enough categories and keywords that I could use a computer to track down certain topics?”

  “Of course.” Galenos snorted like it was the least exciting thing she could have asked. “I’ll get you permissions if Nereus allows it. Perhaps you can show Alexis who still wants to search one bookshelf at a time.”

  “Well, we will stop disturbing you, Galenos,” Alexis cut in. “We’ll talk about giving Penelope database access next time if she decides to visit again.”

  “Look at her face.” Galenos’s smile was knowing. “Of course she is coming back.”

  ALEXIS LED her back to the Archives, Penelope’s head swimming with data and search engines and magical radiation. She was excited, distracted, and a little nauseous like she used to feel on the first day of school.

  “It’s late, I’ll take you back to your hotel so you can…process,” Alexis said. “I wanted to ease you in so you weren’t frightened, and I’m sorry if I failed at that. Nereus is worried about these murders and thought it best to throw you in.”

  “Sink or swim. Luckily, I’m an excellent swimmer.” Penelope grinned. When you aren’t freaking the hell out of me.

  “I can tell. Still, I will wait a few days before I interrogate you on how you broke into my meditation. You say you don’t know what happened, but I’ll figure it out.”

  “Good luck. Finding some Turkish corsair in my meditation was as much of a surprise to me as it was to
you.”

  Alexis roared with laughter. “Turkish corsair! I’ve never been accused of such a thing in my life.”

  “I’m glad you’re not offended by that,” Penelope said.

  “How could I be offended? I was one for a while. Although nobody knew enough to accuse me of it.”

  “Really? What did you steal?” she asked as they walked back through the shelves to the elevator.

  “Lysippos’s statue of Hercules and the most valuable books and scrolls from the Library of Constantinople,” Alexis replied without hesitation.

  “Lysippos’s Hercules was destroyed during the Sack of Constantinople in 1204. Crusaders melted it down.”

  “Did they now? How interesting. I’m quite sure it’s on the other side of the palazzo.”

  “You stole it from the crusaders?”

  “I commandeered it for preservation purposes,” Alexis corrected, “and to be fair, they stole it first. I was making sure it wasn’t melted down, though they went with that story rather than losing it to pirates.”

  “No wonder this place is so big,” Penelope said as they stepped back into the elevator. “You have been thieving for centuries.”

  “Preserving, Penelope. Humans can’t be trusted with some knowledge, and every time people decide to fight with each other, they seem to want to destroy books and art first.”

  “It’s a shame you couldn’t get to Alexandria before they…” Penelope began and then stopped. “You didn’t…?”

  “Didn’t I?” he said, blue eyes filled with innocence.

  “Well, fuck me,” Penelope whispered, and Alexis laughed at her shocked expression.

  “Maybe some other time. I think you’ve had as many surprises as you can handle tonight.”

  “Smart-ass,” replied Penelope. She leaned against the elevator as it rose, a sea of knowledge and magic beneath and around her. “So you’ve spent eternity collecting knowledge.”

  “Collecting and protecting it as I have the other survivors.” Alexis looked out at the Archives. “There are seven of us, and I’ve done my best to ensure that our true natures remain undetected.”

  “Why? Why not let people know about all of this?”

  “Humans destroy what they don’t understand. I won’t have my brothers and sisters becoming science experiments, or have our treasures burnt, our magic stolen. You know that even the noblest and moral humans can be seduced by the smallest of things. Could you imagine if they had access to this knowledge? To immortality?”

  Penelope could imagine, and she swallowed the lump in her throat. If anybody knew about the Archives under Dorsoduro, they would plunder and destroy it as well as its guardians. And he would kill to protect it. But he hadn’t killed her, and now he was trusting her even though she didn’t trust him. The enormity of Alexis’s decision to share all of this with her knocked the sense from her long enough for her to turn and hug him.

  “Thank you for showing me,” she said against his chest, before quickly letting him go. “Sorry.”

  “You’re welcome, Doctor Bryne,” he replied awkwardly. The elevator doors opened, and she quickly stepped back from him. “I’m just glad you’ve stopped trying to stab me with your oyster knife.”

  “For now.”

  “May I escort you back to your hotel? It’s late, and I don’t like the idea of having to bring you back from the dead again.”

  She rubbed her sternum. “I’m not keen on that either.”

  “There’s something I’m curious about that night,” he added, taking a coat from a closet as the blue-and-gold door appeared.

  “What’s that?” Penelope asked, winding her scarf around her neck.

  “You came to, spewing canal water and bleeding profusely—”

  “I’m charming that way,” Penelope added as they stepped into the cold, misty night.

  “You were almost dead, and yet the word that came out of your mouth was ‘firecrackers.’ Why that word?”

  Penelope suddenly wished she had rejected his offer for an escort. “If I tell you, you must promise not to hold it against me,” she said as they walked under the lamps of the Calle dei Cerchieri.

  “You have my word,” he said solemnly, a hand over his heart. He went first down a tight alley between the buildings, and Penelope took advantage of the fact that he couldn’t see her face.

  “It’s your aftershave.”

  “Scusi?”

  “You smell like firecrackers and some spice, like cinnamon or sandalwood. It’s one of the first things I noticed when I came out of the water. I knew it was you because you smelled the same in the meditation.”

  “How strange,” he said.

  “After today, I’m reassessing what I find strange.”

  “It’s not that,” Alexis said as they crossed a small bridge. “I don’t wear aftershave.”

  “Then what is it? Because people don’t naturally smell that way. Especially after a dunk in a canal,” argued Penelope.

  “What you are smelling is my magic.” Alexis shook his head. “Amazing. I haven’t known a human who could smell magic in four thousand years.”

  “Here I thought Dolce and Gabbana had upped their fragrance game,” teased Penelope. She would freak out over this later. She looked at him, dark hair tousled around his high cheekbones, and wrapped in double-breasted navy cashmere.

  That’s magic all right, she heard Carolyn’s voice quip in her head.

  “Can I ask how you are feeling? Now that you know some of what is happening?” asked Alexis when they reached the hotel.

  “Much better. My urge to throw things at you has lessened, and my stomach flu seems to be gone.”

  “It wasn’t the flu. Your body was fighting the memory spell I placed on you.” Alexis frowned pensively. “It was fighting even after you forgot what you were fighting. The fever dreams were forcing you to remember.”

  “Believe it or not, some people don’t like their memories messed with.”

  “I had to do it or Lyca would have killed you.”

  “What’s her deal anyway?”

  “Killing is her magic. She has protected Nereus all her life and only answers to her. Taking your memories was a kind of compromise. But you remembered. You came back.”

  “It was a test, and I passed? Or is it something I should still worry about?”

  “You definitely passed.”

  “What does that mean now?”

  “It means tomorrow we are going to start hunting down Thevetat’s followers before they hurt anyone else. We’ll find out what spells the murderer is using.”

  Penelope let out a small groan. “Damn it! I was meant to ring Marco. There is some DIGOS agent that’s managed to sway the Questore into not letting me back to any of the crime scenes.”

  Alexis waved dismissively. “I’ll fix it. I’ve some friends who owe me a favor.”

  “If you think they can help, it would be great. I’m going to get some sleep, and hopefully, when I wake up this won’t have been a dream.”

  “It’s not a dream.” He turned to leave but hesitated, adding, “I’ve wanted to talk to you for a long time, Doctor Bryne. I’m happy you found your way back to the palazzo.”

  “Me too.”

  “Buona notte, Dottore.”

  “A domani, Alexis,” Penelope replied and hurried inside the hotel. She shut the door behind her and leaned against it, dazed.

  “Hell of a day, Bryne,” she whispered.

  Louisa was nowhere to be seen, and when Penelope looked at her phone, she realized why. It was nearly 1:00 a.m. She had somehow lost nine hours inside of the palazzo.

  There were four messages and a missed call from Marco, two from Carolyn, and one from her mother. Penelope replied to Marco first as she walked up the steps to her room, apologizing profusely for the time and extending an offer for breakfast.

  Penelope opened her door and switched on the light. Her room had been trashed, with clothes pulled out of drawers and papers scattered across the floor.


  “What the…?”

  She was struck hard from behind, and her world went dark.

  PENELOPE’S HEAD THROBBED, her hair wet with blood. She had been tied to an old wooden chair with duct tape, and her hands ached from the lack of blood flow. She looked at her surroundings, trying to get her bearings.

  She was in a damp shed filled with gondolas in need of repair. A small ramp of rotting wooden slats led down into oil-slicked canal water.

  “She’s awake,” a voice said from the shadows. A balding man with thick arms came into sight and pulled down her sticky gag.

  “What do you want?” asked Penelope, earning herself a sharp slap.

  “I ask the questions, whore,” the man said in heavily accented English. “Where is Lorenzo?”

  “I don’t know anyone called Lorenzo,” Penelope answered through bloodied lips. Lorenzo? Who are these people?

  “He was sent to kill you. Did you kill him first? Did the Acolyte?”

  “Do I look like I’m capable of killing anyone?” Penelope said, even as fear filled her stomach. In the hazy light, she saw the lion and serpent tattoo on his forearm. Suddenly, she knew who Lorenzo was. The dead man in the Archives. “I think you have me confused with someone else.” Her voice shook. “Nobody has tried to kill me. I’m no one—”

  “You are Penelope Bryne, an Australian traveling in Venezia and putting her nose into other people’s business. Lorenzo was offered a big contract to see you dead.” The man loomed over her. “And now he’s gone. Who are you working with?”

  “No one! I’m here on holiday—”

  He seized her little finger and broke it.

  “Don’t lie to me, Dottore.”

  “I’m not, I swear,” she cried, pain riding up her arm. “I’m just a tourist.”

  “I’ll give you ten minutes to think about your answer before I return and break something else. You have a lot of bones, and I have a lot of patience.” He calmly took out his phone and began speaking angrily in Italian before disappearing through the doors.

  Biting back tears, Penelope strained against the tape, willing her hand to slip free. She only managed to make the pain in her broken finger worse as the tape folded over and cut into her sharply.