Foscari threw them off, staggering, wheeling across the floor to crash into the stone column right in front of her. His face had been clawed and beaten, cheek gashed to the bone, and his left arm was torn and bloody.
As he started to push away from the column, he saw her there in the dark.
“Bitch! I’ll have your eyes for this!”
Another dead man tugged him backward. Knife in hand, Geena followed him out. The blade felt heavy in her grasp, but the weight of consequence—what would happen if she did not stop this man—was far heavier.
Foscari laughed at the sight of the knife. “You can’t be stupid enough to think that will kill me.”
One of the Ten got a fistful of his hair, began to drag his head back. Another of the dead caught his arm. With a muttered curse, Foscari tried to strike back, but by then Geena was already moving.
He tore free, whipped his fist around and caught her with a skull-rattling backhand, but the dead man still held him by the hair. Blood dripped down her chin, her lip swollen and split, but she barely felt it as she lunged at him. Her free hand caught his wrist, held it back, and she swept the knife around in an arc that sliced cleanly through his throat. Blood sprayed her face and clothes; it stung her eyes as she blinked it away.
Choking on his own blood, Foscari gurgled laughter.
“Damn you, stop fucking laughing!” she screamed.
“… plague …” he croaked, wheezed, pointed to her. “… dead.”
Clutching a hand over his throat, sealing the wound, he sneered as he stumbled toward her. She thought of the sickness that had ravaged her and Nico after they’d killed Caravello and the spell Volpe had done to cure them, and she wondered if it had an expiration date.
“I’ll be fine,” she said with a confidence she did not feel. She held up the knife. “But you won’t.”
Foscari’s eyes narrowed with sudden alarm. He fell to one knee. Then, furious with his sudden weakness, forced himself to rise again. But he moved slowly now, reaching for her with a trembling hand.
“This blade is stained with the blood of the chosen Oracles of Venice,” she said. “The city endures, but you’re not as immortal as you like to think.”
With a choking, wordless rage, Foscari lunged for her. Cruelty and lust still tinged his gaze, even as he began to die, and she knew he was intent upon taking her with him into death.
Geena stabbed him in the chest, putting all of her weight behind the blade, pulling him in close like a lover, and twisting. Foscari stiffened and then crumpled into her embrace. She could have laid him gently upon the ground, but he did not deserve her tenderness. She recoiled from his diseased blood and his filthy touch—just tugged the knife out and let him slump wetly to the floor.
The plague. If she was going to get sick again, how soon would she begin to cough? How quickly would the sores appear?
The words were Volpe’s, echoing in her mind. She’d heard little of Nico’s thoughts in the past two minutes, but had felt his fear and fury and pain. Now she spun, thinking for a moment that Volpe had been talking to her, that he didn’t realize Foscari was already dead.
But the words weren’t for her.
Four of the withered dead, the last remnants of Volpe’s loyal Council of Ten, were holding Pietro Aretino pinned against the wall. One of his hands had been hacked off and the other broken and bloodied, meaning that spells that required the use of his hands were out of the question. He began to chant something, still trying to stay alive.
“I said, finish him!” Nico shouted in Volpe’s voice. Or the other way around. There was little distinction now between one and the other.
Nico stood only a few feet from Aretino and began to claw his fingers at the air, summoning a spell that would end the life of the last Doge.
“No!” Geena screamed, running toward him, but they didn’t seem to hear her.
He hesitated, glanced over at her. Through the rapport they shared she could sense Volpe trying to finish the job. Geena slammed into Nico, knocking him to the ground, straddling him there and staring down into his eyes.
“The plague jars!” she shouted. “Didn’t you listen? If all three of them die, the waters will flood in and smash the jars and the plague will take all of Venice.”
Anger had clouded the minds of both men who lived in that body, but now the eyes cleared. She could not tell who gazed out at her from within, but she saw that reason had returned, and she exhaled.
“That’s all right,” Nico and Volpe said, in one voice. “I have a better idea.”
The dead Ten—those Foscari had not destroyed—restrained Aretino while the magician, this strange combination of Nico and Volpe, silenced the old Doge with a spell. He could not speak enchantments, could not warp the air without fingers.
Eyes wide with the terror he would have gladly brought to others, Aretino struggled uselessly as the dead men began a chant that sounded more like creaking hinges than voices. They cut the papery skin on their palms and held their hands forward, but only chalky dust fell to vanish in the water on the floor. When Nico sliced his palm open, true blood flowed and pooled and swirled in the water with that dust, and the ritual gathered its power.
So much remained to be done. With the Doge’s life essence preserved just as Volpe’s had been, his heart still alive and still beating, the spells that had been woven around the plague jars and the chambers where they had been hidden would be maintained. She and Nico would have to find every single one of those chambers and destroy the plague jars with the cleansing flame Volpe would teach them how to use. It would take time, but Geena was beginning to realize that they would have that time. Time to learn. Time to love.
But only if Volpe kept his word.
When Nico—and Volpe, always Volpe—stepped in to drive their knives into Aretino’s chest and carve out his heart, Geena couldn’t watch any longer. She bolted for the stairs, knowing as she did that she had seen the Chamber of Ten for the last time.
He had promised to leave Nico, to let his spirit pass into the next world and leave Venice to a new generation of Oracles, but she still did not trust him. How could she? The question followed her up the stairs into Petrarch’s library, and then up into the Biblioteca, and finally out into golden morning of the city that had chosen her and Nico to be the keepers of its soul and its secrets.
Venice.
The Most Serene.
XIX
THE SUN shone bright on the day they buried him.
She sailed to San Michele in a water taxi with Tonio, Domenic, Sabrina, and several other lecturers and students from the university. It was the first time she had seen them all since the melee that had ended in Ramus’ death. She’d arrived at the jetty moments before the water taxi, and stood behind them for a while, staring at their shadows. Today, they were as darkly attired as the shadows themselves, all visions in black. Domenic had seen her first, raising an eyebrow as he glanced back over his shoulder, and when they boarded the taxi the others offered her nods, or smiles, or awkward combinations of the two. Only Tonio had seemed unfazed by her appearance. He had granted her two weeks’ sick leave, on the proviso that upon her return she spend some time explaining. He knew, of course, that in the meantime she was helping the police with their inquiries.
She had a week left in which to construct her watertight story. It was more than long enough. She hoped that Nico would be there for that week to help her.
She had not seen Nico in five days, but she had always sensed him close. It was nothing like those usual sensations she picked up from him, because he was no longer himself. He was Nico and Volpe, Volpe and Nico—the merging of a 15th century magician with a 21st century academic. He was a stranger that she recognized, and today was the day she hoped everything would change. To face a new beginning, first she needed an ending.
