The Immortal Greek (17 page)

Samuel stared at him for a moment longer than necessary, but at least the angel didn’t humiliate him by putting him on the spot. Instead, Samuel took a chair from the kitchen and invited the other two to sit.

“What is this all about?” Karl warily looked around. “And where is Ravenna?”

Samuel shifted on his chair, his broken wings restrained by the back. “Karl, I’m sorry I have to tell you this way, but I must inform you that Ravenna was kidnapped yesterday.”

Karl, who had just sat, shot back up. “No, it’s not possible!” He leaned over the table and steadied himself by pressing his hands on the surface.

“I’m sorry.” Samuel walked to the sink, took one of the two long-stemmed glasses set on the table, filled it halfway, then strolled back to the table and placed it before Karl.

“I prepared this romantic dinner for us.” Karl didn’t pick up the glass. He stared at the table, his eyes glassy. “I thought it would fix things between us.”

Samuel sat back on his chair and rearranged his wings behind him. “I apologize in advance, but I need to ask you—”

Karl raised his face to look at the angel. “Anything. You can ask me anything.”

Samuel sighed. “You were here when Alexander stopped by, but did you see Ravenna?”

“Yes, I did see her.” Karl pointed his chin at Alexander. “She arrived as he left.” He brought a hand to his forehead and pressed thumb and index finger to his temples.

“Did you notice anything different about her?” Samuel shifted once again on his seat, several feathers had gotten stuck between the bars composing the back of his chair.

Karl let out a sound that had started as a mirthless laugh and had become almost a sob. “No, everything was exactly the same.” He gestured toward the table. “She was as pissed at me as she was last time I had talked to her. Nothing had changed.” He finally lowered himself on the chair and took a gulp from the glass. “I had hoped she would reconsider our breakup, but she kicked me out and asked for her keys back instead. When I left, she was closed in the master bathroom. She didn’t even say good-bye.”

Alexander’s heart did a somersault in his chest. He had a hard time controlling his reaction to the news. He put his hands under his thighs and hoped his face wouldn’t betray his highly inappropriate sentiments.

“I wish I would’ve stayed longer. Maybe, if I were here yesterday, she would be safe now. Still pissed at me, but at least safe.”

That comment from Karl had the effect to sober up Alexander immediately. He couldn’t help but wonder if she would be in his arms now, had he given her time to explain herself. He hadn’t let her talk, but insulted her and left. “Did you notice anything else out of the ordinary?” He schooled his face to hide his growing anxiety and guilt.

Karl seemed to think about it for a moment. “No, besides the people outside patrolling her house, everything looked normal.”

Alexander remembered how Karl had acknowledged him. “You thought I was one of the detail people. Had you talked to any of them earlier?”

“Yes, as I reached for the door, one of them walked to the steps and asked me who I was. When I explained him I was Ravenna’s fiancé—” He shook his head and murmured under his breath, “Ex-fiancé,” grimaced, then continued, “he let me enter the house.”

Samuel perked up. “Can you describe him to me?”

Karl nodded. “Big, as would be expected in his line of work, razor-shaved head, but dark-brown stubble, and a northern accent. He gave me his name, but I can’t remember it now.”

Samuel gave him a sympathetic shrug. “Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter. He almost certainly gave you a fake name. He doesn’t fit any of the people I sent to check on Ravenna, and none of them would’ve asked you who you were anyway. They were all briefed about her family and friends.”

“Can you remember anything else about this man? Anything at all?” Alexander had enough of sitting. He needed to do something and soon.

Karl shook his head at first, then something passed through his mind. “I don’t know if it’s important or not, but the man was chewing on a licorice stick. You know the small piece of wood people chewed on several decades ago?”

Alexander immediately connected what Karl was depicting with what had been an ancient form of toothbrush and toothpaste all rolled in one. He had used to chew on the thin branch of licorice when he was a kid in Greece. Washing one’s teeth and refreshing one’s breath with it had been popular for several centuries in Italy, and only fell out of practice in the last fifty years or so.

Karl stood up. “As I said, it’s nothing. I noticed it only because I love licorice sticks, and it’s so hard to find any store that sells them anymore. I even asked him where I could buy any, but he seemed put out by the question now that I think about it. Anyway, he said it was a gift and left. ”

“Do you remember the make of his car?” Samuel pushed his chair back and stood to accompany Karl to the door.

“No, I’m sorry. He approached me when I had already opened the door and my thoughts were on preparing the surprise for Ravenna. I didn’t think anything strange of him asking my credentials. Actually, it assured me Ravenna was in good hands.” Karl walked through the hallway with a somber expression. His eyes moistened.

Alexander felt a shred of sympathy for the man and gave him his hand. “It isn’t your fault. Anyone would’ve thought the same.”

“He’s right. We’ll find her. Don’t worry.” Samuel patted Karl on his shoulder as he opened the door for him. He waited for Karl to descend the steps, then turned to Alexander. “What’s going on between you and Ravenna?”

“We’ve spent a night together. That’s all.” He didn’t want to have that conversation, but understood Samuel needed to know. “I wouldn’t have put her in any danger.” He stared at the angel. “You know that.”

Samuel nodded. “You care about her.”

“I do.” He wanted her back at his side more than anything he had ever wanted in his long life. Desperation had a strange way of affecting one’s brain. In Alexander’s case, his mental processes sharpened. “I have a hunch…” When Karl had mentioned the licorice sticks, he had immediately thought to look for all the places in Rome that sold that item.

“What is it?” Samuel stretched his wings to shrug his shoulders.

Alexander raised one finger for the angel to give him a moment, then tapped his cell phone to launch a search. “Let’s see how easy is to find licorice sticks around here.” When the search came back with a list of only three stores in the whole city, he wasn’t surprised. Two of the stores, as expected, were specialized in naturopathic products. One of the two was a place he had visited recently. He looked at Samuel, who had just peeked at the results and had sworn out loud. “It can’t be a coincidence.”

He thought he could smell freshly brewed chamomile and verbena tea with a hint of licorice.

Ravenna looked around the small room. The night was almost upon them. The shadows of the bars framing the window had grown longer and longer, until they had disappeared, swallowed by soft light of the end of day.

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Malina’s pleas had grown frantic in the last hour.

As soon as the golden afternoon sun had reached their heads, bathing them in its warm rays, the shifter had become more and more anxious.

“I can’t control it.” She had kept repeating the same sentences one after the other, until Ravenna had shushed her to be careful not to anger their jailers.

Once she had recognized the smell of dried herbs and flowers coming from the outside, she had also realized she was in Alberto’s house. She couldn’t believe she was right, but somehow she knew in her heart she was, and it pained her.

“Ravenna, do you believe me?” Malina’s eyes were bigger and liquid.

“Yes, I do believe you.” The answer came to her in a rush. She didn’t have to think about it. As she knew Alberto had kidnapped them, so she knew Malina had told her the truth about that night and about not wanting to hurt her. “I’m sorry I never tried to listen to you. I should’ve known better.” She thought of her friend, only seventeen and shunned by her family and friends. For years, she had imagined her dead. Then one day, several decades later, Malina had reappeared, apparently out of thin air. By that time, neither of them was human anymore. “How were you turned?”

Malina shivered. Her teeth had elongated and now could be seen poking through lips she couldn’t close. They also gave her a pronounced lisp. “That same night, when my family threw me out, I ran away from Florence. I was terrified Livio and Giulia would find me and kill me. I wandered through Italy, begging for food…” Tears escaped her eyes, now black as the night.

Ravenna felt her heart shrink at the image of her friend alone and without any help, fetching for herself in times when a girl’s life wasn’t worth much.

Malina straightened her back. “I survived though. And I became stronger. Eventually, I joined a gipsy family and they gave me what my own hadn’t, support. I fell in love with a gipsy, Alan. He was several years older than I was and the most handsome man I had ever seen. We lived together, traveling from place to place. Sometimes, when we needed to lay low for a while, we made camp in remote areas.” She paused and gave Ravenna a sad smile. “You can imagine how this tale ends.”

“Were you attacked by a passing shifter?” Ravenna took Malina’s hand in hers and caressed her to soothe her shivers, now more pronounced.

“The were-panther attacked Alan. I attacked the shifter. Can you believe my stupidity? But I didn’t care about dying if I could save Alan. He had taken me in without questioning my past, without judging. He just loved me and I loved him in return. Nothing else mattered when I threw myself at the creature tearing apart my companion. That panther paused for a moment and pawed at me, as if testing my resolve, then growled and bit me. Soon, I realized it didn’t want to kill me. It kept biting, but only to tear my skin, then it would lick at the wounds, and start again. I couldn’t move. The creature kept me anchored to the ground with his forelegs. When my tormentor finally had enough, it left me mangled and barely conscious. Alan was dying a few meters away from me, but I couldn’t move. I passed out. When I woke, Alan’s body was already cold.” Malina couldn’t repress a sob.

“I’m so sorry you had to go through that…” Images of the carefree child Malina had been in her youth came back to Ravenna and superimposed on the suffering woman before her.

“The first full moon came, and I changed.” The skin on Malina’s face was tight, revealing the different bone structure emerging.

“Were you scared?”

“Very. I thought I was dying and it was so painful. Then the creature came out of nowhere and sat by my side. It stayed there the whole time, its tail brushing my thigh when I thrashed on the ground. When the change was complete, it talked to me in my mind. It told me what to do.”

Ravenna was so engrossed in Malina’s tale, she hadn’t realized the sun had set and the room was now illuminated by the orange halo of the streetlights. Steps echoed outside and the door was pushed open. Two men, one of them Raul, entered and came straight to them.

“Time to go,” the second man ordered while yanking Ravenna’s chain up to unlock it from the radiator.

“Where to?” She asked.

“You’ll see in a few minutes.” Raul wasn’t looking at her, busy keeping Malina on her feet. He was a big, hulky man, but Malina was as tall as he and not fully in control of her body.

The two men escorted them out and led them through a narrow corridor that opened onto several doors. They entered the third on the right that turned out to be a stairwell. Ravenna counted five landings before they reached their destination. From the earthy smell wafting from the stucco walls showing patches of molds, they were underground. Almost all the houses in the historic center of Rome had retained the ancient cellars, and in most cases archeological findings were buried in them. Reason why when it became mandatory for people to declare anything found in their properties belonging to Roman and Etruscan times, those cellars were erased from the houses’ official blueprints so that taxes weren’t due.

Raul opened the metal door facing them at the end of a small and narrow hallway. Upon entering the room, Ravenna took in the bare brick walls, the two dilapidated armchairs, one missing its back, the other its armrest, and the enormous cage in the middle of it. A kennel for a big animal. Or two women. They were pushed inside and left there without an explanation. The bars forming the cage were sturdy and too close to each other to permit anything larger than an arm through them. The two men hadn’t even bothered to chain them to the two hooks dangling from the cage’s ceiling.

“Ravenna, you must kill me.” Malina was on her knees, in the same position she had landed when Raul had forcefully let her inside.

Ravenna took Malina’s face in her hands and pressed on her cheeks to make the were-panther look at her. “What are you talking about?”

Malina shook her head. “Why do you think they closed us in here? They know I’ll be turning soon. They want me to kill you.”

Ravenna shushed her gently, then lowered her forehead to Malina’s. “There’s still time.” She rocked them slowly. “Anything can happen.”

Malina seemed to relax, but another shiver ran through her body, her eyes rolled to white, and her body went limp for a moment. When she came back, terror was etched in her face. “You must promise me. I never hurt anyone. Not even by mistake. I’ve always been careful. I couldn’t live with your death on my conscience.” She took Ravenna’s hands in hers and squeezed them. “Please.”

“I won’t let you kill me. Don’t worry. It won’t come to that.” Ravenna said what she knew she had to say, but Malina’s change was coming, and without any window in the cellar, there was no way to know what time it was. She had never witnessed a shifter change before, so she couldn’t estimate how long they had before Malina would become a panther.

Finally reassured, Malina nodded and heavily slumped against the bars. Ravenna couldn’t sit. She had been cramped in the crouching position for too long and needed to stretch her legs. She used the bars to stretch her arms and wrists as well, crossing and bending them, until she felt the blood circulating again in her limbs.

“You always had the grace of a ballerina.” Malina’s lips, fangs freely protruding from them, curved in a smile.

The metal door’s hinges creaked as the door was swung open. Following Raul and the other nameless man entered Alberto Giudici, who immediately looked at her and sighed. “Ravenna.”

Ravenna’s heart plummeted to her stomach. She had hoped until the last moment to be wrong. She had wanted to be wrong. Her eyes were full of tears she couldn’t stop, and she had to grab the bars not to fall. “Why?”

He walked the whole length of the cellar, passed the cage, grabbed the chair with the back intact, then turned, dragged it behind him, and stopped a few steps from her. “Why…” He sat on the chair and crossed his legs, one of his hands on the remaining armchair, the other stroking his white beard. He tilted his head, his eyes first on Malina’s shivering form, then on Ravenna. “I have plenty of reasons, but I doubt you could understand any of them.” His expression showed pity that enraged Ravenna.

She pulled at the bars. “I need to know why I’m here.”

Alberto nodded. “I can understand that.” He steepled his hands. “Believe me, my child, when I say I wish things were different.” He waved his right hand at Raul and the other man, indicating the door with his chin.

While the nameless man immediately obeyed the silent order and exited, Raul hesitated at the threshold. “Master—”

Alberto gave him a paternal smile and gestured for him to go. “I’ll be fine. They can’t do anything to me.” He waited for Raul to leave and close the door behind him. “I should start from the beginning, but I see that your friend doesn’t have much time left before her change is complete. I’ll try to be brief.”

Ravenna saw how relaxed he looked, how calm he was, and her blood boiled. She squeezed the bars until her hands hurt.

“You met me as your distant uncle, a cousin of your mother's several times removed. In actuality, I am one of your ancestors. I was turned before the Etruscans ruled the lands that became Rome. It was easier before the digital era to disappear and reappear when most convenient. I only had to travel from city to city. I didn’t even have to leave the region.” He uncrossed his legs and placed his hands palm down on his thighs. “Before I became an immortal, I was a medicus in my village. I knew a great deal about natural remedies.” He chuckled. “Back then, they were the only remedies—”

Ravenna couldn’t help but interrupt him. “You were Livio Treccani’s personal doctor.”

Alberto raised an eyebrow, then he briefly lowered his eyes on Malina, who was still sitting on the floor of the cage—her breathing erratic. “You want to get straight to the point, I see.”

“You knew what he was after when you came to speak with my father on Livio’s behalf.” Saying the words out loud made them real for Ravenna, whose stomach had shrunk to the size of a walnut, so much anger was corroding her.

He flattened the fabric of his pants with slow deliberate gestures. “Yes, I did.”

Ravenna was about to comment on his statement, when he raised one hand to stop her.

“I did know Treccani was a student of the dark arts because I was his teacher.” He raised his hand a second time. “And yet, when you and your brother fell ill with the plague, I saved your lives.”

Ravenna looked at him in a stupor. She needed to scream and let all her pain out, but she couldn’t even open her mouth at the moment.

“Don’t you want to know why?”

Malina emitted a sound that resembled a growl, but Alberto barely flinched. Ravenna left the bars to sit by Malina, and gently pulled the were-panther’s body against hers, passing her arm over Malina’s shoulder. Ravenna tried to comfort her, hoping she was still conscious enough.

“I was fond of you and your brother. I tried to have kids when I was still human, but after changing several wives, I realized I was sterile, and that’s something becoming an immortal doesn’t fix.” He stretched his legs before him, crossing them at the ankles. “The few times I visited with your family, I saw something special in you. A special resilience Livio needed in a wife. You would’ve become a great sorceress. Way more powerful than Livio, and eventually, I would’ve asked my goddess, Athunè, to change you. I wanted a daughter who would follow my steps and you were the one.” He looked at her with that paternal expression of his Ravenna had always loved.

Now, the mere sight of him made her nauseous. “You’re lying. Livio’s intention was to sacrifice me, not to practice the dark arts together happily ever after.”

Alberto dismissed her words with a shrug. “I wouldn’t have let him hurt you.”

Ravenna massaged Malina’s back. “How?”

He pointed a finger at the were-panther. “Same way I didn’t let him kill her when he had the opportunity. How do you think she could leave Florence so easily?” He laughed. “When I realized who the girl he was looking for was, I ordered Livio to let Malina go. I knew you were fond of her. Well, I knew you
had been
fond of her once. And once you had become privy of the truth of what had happened that night, you could’ve used a trusted friend by your side. Life as a sorcerer can be lonely, and I always wanted a big family.”

“What about Giulia’s involvement? Was she part of your plan as well?” Ravenna felt Malina stir at the mention of her cousin.

Alberto moved on the chair, his chest expanding before he released a long sigh. “No, I must admit she was a nuisance I hadn’t expected. Ultimately, she was also the reason why I never contemplated vouching for Livio. Once under her spell, he became useless to me. I need people I can trust and his loyalties were divided after he met that hateful girl.”

Ravenna’s head was exploding. “I still don’t understand why you dabbled in the dark arts. You were an immortal—”

“No, it’s the other way around. I was a powerful sorcerer when I was changed. Athunè saw fit to grant me immortality because I was versed in the dark arts she was the depositary of.” His eyes focused on a distant point for a moment, then he blinked. “As a pre-Greek and Roman deity, she was formidable and implacable when it came to mete out her form of justice. Too bad all the gods and goddesses have decided to abandon us to our destiny. We could have used their help once in a while. I lost interest in the dark arts once she retired to the Tartaros.”

Malina, who had gone still for several minutes, was now shaking from head to toe.

Ravenna was tired, but it was imperative she did her job at the best of her abilities. “Why are we here
now
?”

“That’s the real question isn’t it, my child?” His words were affectionate in tone.

“You’re providing the Immortal Death.” At the sudden realization, Ravenna would have smacked her head if she weren’t busy soothing Malina with circular caresses on her arms and back. “Why?”