A Beautiful Evil

Page 10

I reached out, braced my thumbs on the outside of the jar, and slipped my fingers into the cold, jagged crack.
Nine
AND ONCE AGAIN ARI FALLS DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE, I thought as the edges of the clay jar peeled back, splintering with a blinding light that crept up my fingers, hands, and arms like electrified sparks.
The hard edges of the jar buckled, collapsing back. My heart pounded hard as I ducked inside, into the bright light ringed with blackness.
I released the crack as I went, stepping fully into the jar and then straightening. The energy humming through me was already fading with the light. White dots danced in my vision. I didn’t move, didn’t take a single step forward.
Music came like a leaf riding a gentle breeze. Italian opera mingled with the telltale skip and scratch of a record spinning, the music distant and echoing and brassy like it came from a horn. The white dots in my vision began to fade, and a vast room washed in orange candlelight came into focus, its walls and edges hidden in darkness. There were no boundaries; there was no way to mark the size of the room. It was like an island library in the blackness of space.
Several feet in front of me stretched a marble counter, and behind it was a large area with long tables, chairs, and lamps for study. Beyond that were row upon row of tall shelves and narrow aisles that went so far back, they disappeared into the darkness. The scope was beyond what I could’ve imagined, and I knew there was no way in hell I could ever go through this place without help.
I swallowed, reminding myself of my purpose, and stepped toward the counter. I glanced over my shoulder to see the massive crack dimly lit in the blackness. Either I had shrunk, or the crack had grown to twice the size it was on the outside of the jar. A tremor—the kind that comes when you suddenly realize how small and insignificant you are, how quickly you might become lost—ran through me. This wasn’t just the inside of the jar—this was another dimension.
I approached the marble counter, each end so long that they, too, disappeared into the black space surrounding the library. The top of the counter came to just below my chest. It was smooth and white, and I knew it would be cold to the touch, though I kept my hands down at my sides.
“Study topic?”
I jumped at the words, spinning around at the strange male voice. Jesus! I grabbed my chest, making sure my heart was still there and beating because it sure as hell felt like it had just been scared right out of me.
A figure stood behind the counter to my right. And it wasn’t human.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but it wasn’t this . . . thing. “What are you?” I blurted out.
Bronze eyelids blinked over eyes made of white stone inset with round brown disks for irises. “Automaton. The Keeper. Study topic, please.”
Its outer “skin” was made of tiny plates of bronze that allowed movement. It wore a Greek-style toga, which was odd, seeing as it was made of metal—unless it was anatomically correct, and then the clothing definitely made sense. It must’ve been filled with gears and a power source, and obviously had a mechanism that allowed speech. Whoever had built this was a genius or a magician. Maybe both.
“Study topic, please.”
I cleared my throat. “Um, right, okay . . . ,” I said, trying to get back on track. “I’d like anything you have on Athena, her temple, her weapons, her weaknesses. Anything about the war between Athena and the other gods. Oh, and curses, ones made by the gods, and any stories or myths about people overcoming them would be good.”
The Keeper turned, walked down the counter a few steps, and opened a gate I hadn’t noticed. He stood back and I entered the study area. The Keeper didn’t frighten me so much as surprise me, and I didn’t feel threatened—if I had, I’d have been halfway to the crack by now.
At the edge of the study area I found the source of the music—an old record player box with a huge horn on the top. The song reached its climax, becoming louder and more dramatic, cresting and cresting, then crashing in waves of beautiful notes and intense emotion that surprised me.
“What’s that song?” My curiosity came out before I could stop it.
“‘Nessun Dorma.’ In your tongue, ‘None Shall Sleep.’ It is an aria from the final act of Turandot, an opera composed by Giacomo Puccini,” he answered in a monotone voice. A talking encyclopedia. “It is sung by Calaf, the unknown prince, to the cold Princess Turandot. She recoils at the thought of marrying him. He tells her if she guesses his name by dawn, she may execute him and be free. If she fails, she must marry him. The princess decrees that none of her subjects shall sleep that night until they discover his name. Should they fail her, they all will die.”
“That’s horrible,” I muttered. She sounded as brutal and unfair as Athena. “What happens in the end?” The record had ended and was playing a chorus of static, skip, and scratch over and over again.
“Dawn arrives. The princess and her subjects have failed to discover the prince’s name. He tells her his name, allowing her to make the choice to execute him or love him. She chooses to love him.” The Keeper pulled out a chair. “Please take a seat. I will return.”
I stood near the corner of a table and watched the tall bronze automaton go to the old record player, lift the needle, and set it at the beginning of the opera again. Then it disappeared down one of the long aisles.
I didn’t sit, but instead browsed some of the rows near the study area. The shelves were packed with books, manuscripts, scrolls, and tablets. Other shelves held artifacts: boxes, jars, small statues, shields, weapons. I moved slowly, scanning, taking it all in.
The light grew dimmer as I went, but there was enough for me to see that there were things from nearly every era of civilization—that I knew of, anyway—and some that didn’t seem to have a time period at all. The aisle ended in an area with tables and items too big for the shelves: tall statues of people, gods, and animals; an actual chariot; a massive oil painting; a throne made of gold. There were chests and plates on the table full of gold, bronze, and silver coins.
Nearest to me was a long table made of thick black wood. A small marble basket containing a marble infant didn’t seem to fit with the other things I’d seen so far, but maybe that was due to the two marble hands clenching the sides of the basket from behind, broken at the wrists.
“The material you requested is up front.”
“Jeez!” That thing was going to give me a heart attack. For a metal robot, the Keeper was eerily quiet as it moved. Or maybe I’d just been too lost in thought.
“What’s with this statue?” I asked it.
“Tose are the hands of Zeus. And that is the child fated to kill him.”
The Keeper turned. With a parting look at the strange broken sculpture, I trailed behind the bronze automaton back down the aisle as he spouted off the library rules, which basically went something like:
Don’t rub the books, tablets, or scrolls.
Don’t blow on them.
Don’t alter them.
Don’t take notes.
Don’t read aloud from them.
And, above all, don’t carry them past the counter.
We stopped at one of the front tables, where four tall stacks of books, a pile of scrolls, and two clay tablets sat. Oh boy.
The Keeper went to the counter, reached beneath it, and retrieved a long, rectangular glass panel. It curved downward at each end, so when he placed it on the table, it was raised off the surface by five inches or so. Around the panel were etchings in glass, thousands of minuscule symbols.
“This will allow you to understand what you see. Set it carefully over your text and you will be able to read in the glass what is written there. Remember, do not take notes or bring anything beyond the counter.”
He began to walk away.
“What happens if I do?”
He stopped and turned around, his fake eyes giving me the willies. “You forfeit your life. It is that simple.”
I watched him go down one of the aisles, feeling like the temperature in the room had dropped by ten degrees. No emotion. No care either way. The Keeper’s reply drove home the rules more than anyone else could have. He’d be completely indifferent to my death. There would be no hesitation or remorse.
Not dwelling, I pulled out a chair and started with a stone tablet. It was small, the size of a paperback book, and was filled with tiny linear slashes and symbols pressed into the clay. I placed it carefully beneath the glass. Words began to take shape within the glass—a strange sort of magic I didn’t question.
I read about a Sumerian woman named Tiashur and the witch who removed a curse placed on her by the god Enlil.
Interesting story, but it didn’t offer any clues to how the witch removed the curse other than “untangling” it. I bit the inside of my cheek, wondering if it was really that simple, if all I needed to do to rid myself of Athena’s curse was to find a witch who could untangle the words Athena had spoken to Medusa all those years ago.
When my mind grew tired and refused to hold any more information, I took the glass panel back to the counter. The Keeper held the gate open, and I walked to the crack in the black wall, pulled it apart, and stepped into the Novem’s study.
And came face-to-face with Josephine Arnaud. Head of the Arnaud family. A Bloodborn vampire and Sebastian’s grandmère.
Josephine oozed wealth and old-world sophistication. Never a single hair out of place or wrinkle in her expensive clothes. Her dark eyes burned with intellect. She was a few hundred years old, but she looked like a beautiful young woman.
She was also a complete and total bitch, right up there with Athena.
We eyed each other for a second, and then I stepped around her, walking through the cloud of her elegant perfume. I didn’t have anything to say. She gave my father up to Athena and wanted to use me to increase her own power. She didn’t give a shit about me at all. And the feeling was mutual.
I was halfway to the door before she spoke in her cultured French accent. “Find what you were looking for?”
I hesitated, knowing I should keep going, but I walked back to stand in front of her. “If I did, I wouldn’t tell you, Josephine. You never could help me, could you?” I asked, remembering her offer to remove the curse in exchange for my allegiance.