Christopher Golden - The Chamber of Ten

But the Doge had studied well in his centuries of wandering. He rasped the initial words of a spell to drive out an invasive spirit, and Nico felt as though he were being torn apart.

Fight it! Volpe screamed in his thoughts. Without me, he’ll destroy you .

Nico fought, but as pain ripped into him, he feared that he was now so inextricably bound to Volpe that separation would kill them both.

Geena felt it happening, heard Nico scream inside of her head, and she saw what needed to be done.

Bring him down! she shouted in her mind, praying Nico or Volpe would hear her thoughts through the haze of their pain. Drop him!

With a roar of pain, Nico slashed his hands through the air and—as though he had cut the strings holding the Doge aloft—Aretino plummeted to the floor, crying out as the impact jarred broken bones. Snarling, sodden with canal water, he reached up to carve another spell from the air, but then two of the dead Ten attacked him. Geena had seen them waiting for the opportunity. From inside its tattered robes, one of them drew a long ritual dagger and hacked it down with inhuman strength, severing Aretino’s hand at the wrist.

Blood sprayed the two dead men.

Nico reeled backward and fell to his knees, but she felt the pain subside within him. For better or worse, he and Volpe were still joined.

A cry of fury erupted nearby and she twisted around to see Foscari struggling with a cluster of the Ten. He screamed words in some guttural tongue, some ancient Babel language she would never learn, and grabbed one of them by the throat. Like the other he had destroyed, it began to unravel and collapse in upon itself. But the rest had his arms then, twisting them behind him, trying to keep him from touching any more of them.

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?

Finish him!

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.

Nico, stop!

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.