"I know, I've seen it before, but they haven't."
"I must leave, right now," she said, trying to stand up.
"That's not going to happen." Lür held her down, wrapping his arm around Adana's neck, stopping her from getting out of the bath.
"I have many children in Pompeii, I must warn them, it will be too late for them."
"I know.”
I also have children to protect from you.
She finally understood the danger.
"What's the matter, madam, have I scared you?"
"You're not a slave, I can't see you properly. Give me a mirror."
Lür passed her the silver mirror from the table. A small circular disk with a lion skin handle.
"Your face..."
"What's the matter with my face?"
"You look so much like someone I used to know..."
"Maybe someone from my family."
"I don't think that anyone from his family is alive."
Adana went quiet and suddenly understood.
"Are you Lür?" she finally asked.
"Yes, I was once known by that name. But I don't use it anymore, you cursed it."
Adana tried again to sit up, but Lür sat on the edge of the bath, not allowing her any chance to escape.
"It's not possible, I saw your body."
"Maybe I can never die."
They were together again, after so many thousands of years, after so much that they'd been through together, after a shared history full of corpses.
"Have you come back to me? Have you finally repented at having left me?" she asked.
"No, Adana. I'm not here for that."
"Well, you should be! Don't you get it, that me and you should be together?"
"What I do know, unfortunately, is that I can't let you carry on living. A Cataclysm brought me to you, and it seems like it will take another Cataclysm to free me from you."
"Are you going to leave me here?" she asked in amazement.
"We've both seen mountains belching out fire like this before. First come the black pebbles that fall for hours, the roof over your head will collapse from the weight. Then the lava will start to flow, everyone will die immediately, the air will become deadly and maybe not even you will be able to survive without breathing. Then the ash will bury this city, as well as Herculaneum, Stabiae, and all the coastal villages will fall."
"And do you think that you'll be able to escape?"
"I'll be able to escape if I leave right now. I have several boats, they are small and fast. We have to go out to sea, it's the only way out. Every living thing in Pompeii will be dead by this afternoon. For thousands of years I've dreamed that I had enough cowrie shells to bury you alive. One for each child whose life you took. Isn't it ironic that you're going to end up buried here by black shells. Goodbye Adana, your journey ends here."
Lür held the heavy marble lid of the brazier over the bath, covering it, as if it were a gravestone, ignoring Adana's cries. He knew that she couldn't get out of that bath, that she would be buried by the volcano.
He couldn't stop looking over his shoulder as he ran. He ran through the streets, under the rain of black stones that were paving the city. Four of his boats left in time, before the sea retracted hours later. From high sea, he could see how, hour after hour, Pompeii and all its inhabitants, including Adana, were buried under several meters of ash.
41
Daughter of a lesser God
IAGO
We reached the tiny Belle Island by speed boat. Surrounded by a rosary of small mounds of rock and manicured gardens, the Thousand Islands had been the favorite vacationing place for the local elite since the mid 19th century. I spotted several peculiar castles on the surrounding islets, and wondered if Dana was being held in a similar building.
When we reached the small private jetty that Marion pulled the boat into, I began to note the worrying presence of men with white balaclavas wearing camouflage suites, also white, carrying silver weapons.
"Don't worry, they won't hurt us," Marion said, as if that sentence could calm my nerves.
I was entering the beast's lair and I was very aware of it.
"You're asking me to behave, aren't you?" I replied.
"Please."
I looked at my watch. I'd soon find out if Dana was really there, because I was ready to make an agreement, to negotiate, to fight. Whatever I had to do.
Marion led me through the grounds to an impressive 19th century mansion. Before going inside I saw several elegant towers on the corners and hundreds of windows. It must be huge on the inside. It took several minutes to cross the garden and reach the entrance steps.
"This is the unofficial headquarters of the Kronon Corporation, isn't it, Marion? The real one, the secret one."
"Bingo”, she mused, also nervous, also on edge.
At the entrance of the building, in front of the roll bar, Marion indicated that I had to leave my cell phone if I wanted to continue.
"I hope you know what you're about to do, Marion. After this there will be no going back for us," I whispered, as she guided me through the marble halls. Everything looked sterile and cold, like in a frozen Hell.
"We both know that I haven't been totally upfront, like you haven't been with me."
"Obviously."
We waited a second before opening the white door. She looked into my eyes with an infinite sorrow, as if I was a small child about to be exposed.
"One last piece of advice, Iago: you have to be prepared for anything. Think fast, because she will think faster, and don't be fooled by her appearance.
"I'm ready, let's get this over with. Time's running out."
He swallowed hard and pushed the door open.
They walked into an oval library. All the walls were covered with ancient books with transparent spines. A fur rug made from a whole pack of albino animals covered the floor under our feet. There were several large couches, it was a room that Dana could have lost herself in for hours, buried between the old volumes.
I counted eight white hooded people distributed around the room. Their silver weapons were pointing to the floor, but the effect was the same, intimidating.
In the middle of the room, a young woman had her back to us, concentrating on filling three glasses with a transparent liquor.
She was wearing a long white dress, it was almost a tunic. She could have walked through the Athens of Pericles or a 19th century theatre without sticking out, everything about her was timeless. A long face, dark eyes and a very long, dark braid that fell across her shoulder. She looked like the daughter of a lesser God. She seemed fragile, but the look in her eyes didn't correspond to that body. They were eyes that had seen everything. I felt like a newborn, and I was sure that next to her, I was.
"This is my mother, Urko," Marion said, without going near her, as if she was afraid of being close to her. "Not directly, I'm actually an eighth generation descendant."
"You haven't brought me Lür," whispered an almost inaudible voice, without raising her eyes from the glasses. What a strange accent, so sweet, so indeterminate.
"I know, Mother. But I think I've brought you something that's more important for all of us, I think that we can come to an arrangement that will suit us all."
"You haven't brought me Lür and you had him within your reach!" she shouted.
Then she looked at me for the first time, as if up until then I hadn't been in the room. It seemed as though events occurred differently in her head, not one after the other, but all at once, like communicating vessels.
"So, you're a descendant of Lür."
"I'm actually his oldest living son," I said, challenging her. Did it hurt her? Did it hurt her to remember the children she had had with my father that had died?
She gave a tight smile. I felt shivers run down my spine.
She went to the ice bucket, picked up some ice cubes with her hand and dropped them into the glasses.
"Here," she said, holding out a glass o
f liquor. "Let's celebrate the fact that you're alive."
"I won't toast."
"Yes, you will."
She placed the glass on the arm of a nearby sofa.
"I won't toast until you tell me something about my wife."
"Your wife? Who's your wife?" she asked, distracted, without taking her eyes of the glass I had refused.
"We know that you've found out something more than you let on about the longevo gene," Marion put in, with caution in her voice. "I know that you injected your brother with something that had nothing to do with the solution I proposed. You wouldn't have risked your wife dying, we know that there's something else. In exchange, we have located her, isn't that right, Mother?"
"Located, isn't she here?" I asked, nervously.
"No, but Mother knows what island she's on and we'll rescue her. Isn't that right, Mother?"
Mother didn't reply, she was no longer interested in the conversation.
"Isn't that right?" Marion insisted.
Mother's silence made my blood run cold.
"You promised me," Marion insisted. "You said that you'd take care of it, that nothing was impossible for you when it came to finding someone."
"You're a Daughter of Adam. Since when do you question me?"
Marion took a step forward and stood between Mother and I, as if that gesture would protect me.
The white soldiers raised their weapons in unison, almost unconsciously and mechanically.
"I've had enough, Mother. I wasn't born to be submissive."
"I've exiled people for much less, Maia. This is more important, Lür has not only managed to surround himself with a family of immortal children, but one of them has found the reason for our immortality. Don't I deserve to be the one that holds that secret, the most Ancient living person, doesn't it belong to me?"
"And what would you do if I gave it to you?" I wanted to know.
"I won't have any more weak children that grow old, just children like you."
"That, Adana, is not something that I'm going to share with you," I told her.
"We'll see," she whispered.
The last thing I remember was a blow from a gun to my temple.
42
A red sunrise
IAGO
I woke with a headache on a soft bed in a white, spacious bedroom. I got up and looked out of the barred window and saw that we were on the third floor of the mansion. It was starting to get light.
The sunrise was painting the sky with a worrying red color.
But I was not alone, Marion was waiting patiently, sitting on one of the armchairs in front of me. She had probably spent all night there watching over me in the same position. The dark circles under her eyes showed an infinite tiredness.
I looked at my watch, desolate.
"Adriana will be dead by now."
Marion lowered her head, and then stared at the door frame.
"We're locked in, we can't get out," she muttered, very seriously, looking defeated. "She promised to help us, Iago. She told me that she had found her."
"I trusted you," I interrupted. "I knew that I would have to pay a price for following you, but I trusted you."
"Mother is very angry, she's not used to anyone defying her like you have."
"Really!! Well, you can't imagine how angry I am. You can't even begin to imagine," I answered, circling the room like a caged feline.
But Marion was still lost in thought, and I saw terror on her face, a very old terror that, for once, made her vulnerable.
"Who were the white hooded soldiers?"
"They're Guards, her personal bodyguards. They are raised to never leave her side."
"Great," I said to myself. Two against eight.
"Iago, I've been exiled. Mother has exiled me and you have no idea what that means."
"I don't know, and I don't want you to explain it to me right now. She's not going to let me leave, is she?"
"Mother doesn't do things by half and she isn't lenient."
"And how can you be subject to her orders?" I asked, standing in front of her.
"You still don't understand, do you? Mother is a protective umbrella for someone like me, a huge global network of influence, property, money and political, financial and military power. I've always kept to the sidelines as much as I could, paying my obedience taxes when she sent me on some mission. That's why I only go to her if it's strictly necessary, she always ends up demanding favors. How do you think I've survived for six thousand years? Do you really think that I did it all by myself? What I can't understand is your family's situation: barely four or five members, always arguing, splitting up and getting back together like you do, so anarchic. How the hell have you managed to get this far? I find it almost impossible to believe that anyone can do it, however good you may be at survival."
"So I was just a mission," I summed up, sitting in an armchair in front of her and staring into her eyes.
"That's what it was for Mother. But not for me. Definitely not for me. I came back from Santander with empty hands. I didn't want to spy on you, make notes on what you were doing at night behind my back. I couldn't do it, but I thought that what you allowed me to see would be enough for her. But when I returned to Paris, she made me..."
"She made you?" I interrupted. "I thought that you were Little Miss Independent."
She shut her mouth, tired of giving so many explications and exhausted from the lack of sleep.
You sold me out, Marion, you sold me out. How far does your loyalty to Mother go, how much of this is part of your mission?
I had to get out of there, at least save myself. I'd given Dana and Nagorno up for dead, the best and the worst of the last few millennia.
But I had to find the way to escape, and Marion's cell phone was maybe my only option.
"You're exhausted, Marion. Come on, get some sleep and I'll keep watch."
And I invited her to lie down on the bed. She finally accepted and I sat on the quilt, with my back leaning against the wall and Marion's head on my lap.
She shut her eyes and let me caress her black hair.
"No, Iago, I'm not going to be your consolation prize," she murmured, as she drifted off to sleep.
"Forget about Iago del Castillo for one day. Let me forget about everything, let me go back to being Ely," I said softly.
And there was a moment of real intimacy, of recovered trust, of two bodies who recognized each other and accepted the caresses that they had so longed for.
But reality set in and I continued with my plan.
I patiently waited until she fell asleep, and stretched my hand out to the inside pocket of her white jacket, when I felt a deep sigh on my thighs.
I had to call my father's phone from that position, with my legs trapped underneath Marion. I knew that if I moved, Marion would wake up.
"I'm being held in the mansion on the Belle Island," I whispered when Lür answered. "In a bedroom on the third floor. They confiscated my phone. I've managed to get my hands on this one, but not for long."
"I'm very close," he said. "I'm already in the building. Keep the phone close so as I can locate you."
I glanced at Marion, who shifted slightly, as if she had heard something.
I didn't want my father to find me snuggled up in bed with Marion, but if I turned the volume down he wouldn't find me. Nevertheless, I didn't have time to react, because at that very minute the medieval melody from Marion's phone blasted out and I heard footsteps in the hallway. My father was already on the other side of the door, pushing it and trying to get in. Marion woke up upon hearing the noise and looked at me with a puzzled face.
Someone strong managed to open it, and I will never forget the faces of the unbelievable group that had come to rescue me: my father, my brother Nagorno, my son Gunnarr and my wife, Dana.
Everyone looked uneasily at Marion and I, lying on the bed as we were. Perhaps they picked up on something from that intimacy we shared and that we weren't able to hide. I don't
know, I was unable to react.
I ran to Dana, trying to hug her, I was so relieved to find her alive, so relieved to see her again, after thinking that I'd lost her, that I forgot about Marion and the uncomfortable situation in which they had found us.
Dana gave me a look of infinite deception, but we didn't have time to speak.
The eight Guards came into the bedroom and pointed their weapons at us. They made us follow them to the oval library, where Adana was waiting for us. We looked at each other, alert in her presence, but aware of what was in play.
The future of our family was on the verge of being decided.
43
Crossroads
IAGO
The eight white soldiers that Marion had called Guards distributed themselves once more around the library. We were standing in the middle, in front of Mother. To my surprise, Gunnarr stepped forward and began to speak, as if he had no fear.
"You are a woman who scorches everything you touch, but you know that the majority of us here are very difficult to kill."
"I'm listening," Mother replied.
"You want to make someone pay, punish Lür for having created the family you have before you now. But all of us are here with our own ideas of revenge. My Uncle Nagorno has his reasons, and I have mine, no less powerful. Maybe what I'm going to do now will satisfy all of us here who feel that they have been wronged by Lür or by one of his descendants.“
And with that, he put both his hands around Dana's neck, lifted her above his head and strangled her, Sythian style. Then he just dropped her, and her lifeless body fell to the white rug with a dull thud.
Lür covered his face in horror, and a groan of pain escaped from his mouth that pleased Mother.
I rushed towards Dana's body, unable to believe what I was seeing.
Irreversible.
Definitive.
"It can't be, it can't be, it can't be..." I whispered in disbelief, checking her pulse. I couldn't find one. There was no heartbeat.