Christopher Golden - The Chamber of Ten

But that was nothing compared to this.

She’d seen Nico burn a man to death by looking at him, and …

And Ramus.

She sobbed once and slowed down. Foscari walked into her—on purpose, she was sure—and grabbed her upper arms.

“You shouldn’t keep Aretino waiting,” he whispered, hot breath in her ear. She shrugged him off and walked on.

Hope. She had to cling to that. Nico had been shot, but it was Volpe who possessed him—a magician who had returned from a five-hundred-year limbo to cast his influence across the city once again. Nico had been moving on the ground even with a bullet hole through him, painting those weird signs against the Venetian night to protect himself against the Doges’ hired help, and surely that meant that Volpe was shielding him from the effects of the wound? Could he do that?

Hope. Prisoner of two old men who should have died half a millennium before, she had little else.

She tried to keep track of where they were taking her, but their route quickly became confused. After several years here she thought she had a good understanding of the city’s geography, but Aretino led them along alleyways she had never seen, into courtyards that might have changed little since he had been banished from the city, and she could only follow.

Before long, any thought of making a break for it had gone. If she did run and somehow escape Foscari’s grasp, she would have to sprint to lose him in this warren of alleys and shadows, narrow bridges and small cobbled squares, and she’d just as likely emerge onto a dead-end before a canal. No, she needed a plan. She already had the sense that Aretino was the one with the power, and Foscari the more physical of the two. To escape them both, she’d need a plan that covered all angles.

“Ahh, my old Venice at last,” Aretino said, and Geena shivered. It was as if speaking of the city he’d once loved and coveted brought its oldest places alive around him, shoving them back through centuries to a time that these men had called home. It was a foolish notion, but as they walked between buildings that leaned so close together that they almost seemed to touch, walls dripping with clematis and climbing roses, Geena desperately looked for signs of the present. Who knew what powers these men had? If they could defeat time by living to this unbelievable age, perhaps they could manipulate and mold it to their liking.

How will he find me? she thought, imagining Nico even now scouring the streets and canals for her with Volpe’s help. If they take me back to their time, will he see me represented on some buried fresco? Find my bones in an old tomb he might uncover years from now? How will he even know it’s me? She had never felt so disassociated from her surroundings, an intruder in the city she had grown to love.

Aretino paused and glanced back at her, smiling as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “This might interest you.”

“Nothing you do or say can interest me,” she countered, but his wrinkled smile didn’t slip, so she added, “Fucker.”

Aretino shrugged. “Maybe I’m wrong. We know so little about you, really, but what we have learned in the short time we’ve been aware of your existence—the short time we’ve known of that traitor Volpe’s tenacity and his hold on the one you love—leads me to believe you exist in the past.”

He was listening to my thoughts! she thought. But no, it was merely Aretino’s manner of speaking. She knew what having her thoughts and mind read felt like.

She did not reply. Foscari moved in close again and she pressed her lips tightly together, resisting the inclination to step away from him. He did not touch her, but he was so close that she could feel the heat of his body.

“It doesn’t matter,” Aretino said, waving one hand dismissively. “When we reach our destination, I’ll tell you what you must do to preserve the life of the one you love, and also your own.” He turned and slipped through a short alley, and Geena followed. They emerged on the other side onto a narrow path beside a canal, and she sighed with relief. One of the windows across the canal flickered with that blank silvery light that could only be a television, brightness rising and fading again as the picture changed. And from another window, she heard the shrill ringing of a phone, and then a brusque man’s voice answered.

They were still in the present. Her imagination must have been working overtime.

It was minutes later when Aretino opened an old door set in the façade of a building Geena had never seen before, that their journey back in time really began.

“What is this place?” Geena asked, instantly hating herself for vocalizing her astonishment.

They had walked through an empty, dilapidated room to a door set in the wall at the far side, plastered and painted over many times. Foscari had used a heavy knife to trace the line of the door—his knife strokes fast, strong, and unerringly accurate—and then Aretino had shoved it open. A breath of musty air, a staircase heading down, thirteen steps … and then this.

“Just an old house,” Aretino said, dismissing a hoard of artwork that was probably close to priceless. Paintings lay stacked against one wall, and the lead canvas on one pile looked like something Masaccio might have created. Exquisite old furniture was piled against another wall, along with sculptures in various states of completion, one of which looked like a brass pulpit created by Donatello. On a huge table lay hundreds of scattered sheets of paper and canvas, stored carelessly and in no discernable order, and Geena glimpsed the unmistakable cogs and lines of a da Vinci. Gasping, trying not to reveal her amazement, she followed Aretino through the room.

He was smiling. She could feel that even before he turned around.

“Interested?” he asked.

She did not answer. She didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. But she could not keep her eyes on him—she kept glancing to the left and right, thinking how much her friends and colleagues would give to spend some time in this room. Domenic would love the paintings, Tonio would be hugging some of the incredible sculptures she saw, and Ramus …

Ramus never had been able to contain his enthusiasm. He’d possessed a love and fascination for old art that belied his young age. The last she’d seen of him was as that blond woman had been stabbing him, the murderous attack only fleetingly visible from the square outside the café. An attack at the Doges’ behest.

“Don’t you want to know how?” Aretino asked.

“Fuck you.”

He raised his eyebrows—gray slugs over eyes that should no longer sparkle. “Manners have certainly fled since we were last here, don’t you think, Francesco?”

Foscari, still behind Geena, placed a hand on her shoulder. He squeezed lightly, released, and squeezed again. She couldn’t help thinking that he was kneading her. It filled her with disgust, but she pretended he wasn’t there.

“You want to tell me what a wonderful thief you were when you were alive?” Geena asked.

“Not quite,” Aretino said, frowning slightly. “A collector. And a cautious one, at that.”

“So when you were alive , you liked collecting?” Geena could see that she was getting to him. The old bastard’s eyes had changed infinitesimally, shedding a hint of smugness and taking on irritation. But if the best she could do was to irritate him … well, so be it.

“Few people have seen any of these pieces since I was sent from the city by your Volpe,” Aretino said softly.

“He’s not my Volpe!”

“And yet you and he have copulated.”

“No!” Geena said, but when she glanced away from the Doge and back again she saw the smugness had returned.