The Immortal Collection (A Saga of the Ancient Family Book 1)

  Was I flirting with my new boss? For heaven’s sake, Dana, a bit of self-control, I admonished myself. Flirting with bosses wasn’t my style, and I had absolutely no intention of changing my good habits at the MAC. There was too much at stake: my new life, my plans to escape, the resolution of some family issues . . . Everything depended on my fitting in at the museum. Given that, I forced myself to adopt a more neutral pose and waited for him to close the gap between us. Iago gave me a firm handshake and the obligatory kiss on both cheeks.

  “The Cantabrian Peoples exhibition opens today, and I have a few last-minute loose ends to deal with,” he said. “If it’s okay with you, we’ll meet in my office at eight o’clock tomorrow morning so I can bring you up to speed on the programming for this season. We’ll have to work hard. We’ve been without a department head for too many months.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said so that I wouldn’t go on staring at the unusual color of his eyes. “Elisa told me a bit about the situation with my predecessor.”

  My friend entered the Prehistory Hall at that precise moment, accompanied by a younger woman.

  “By the way, Elisa,” said Iago, turning toward her and handing her something that looked like an official certificate, “you’re not going to believe what I’ve got here.”

  They became absorbed in issues to do with the Contemporary Era Department Elisa was in charge of, working their way through items at a dizzying pace. I observed them in silence, curious—perhaps overly so—as they exchanged opinions.

  “In any event, don’t be too long,” he said to the three of us when he’d finished his discussions with Elisa. “The launch is in an hour’s time, so you have to be in the Multimedia Room at ten on the dot. I’ve arranged to meet Héctor and Jairo so that we can welcome the dignitaries. I’ll see you there.”

  He headed for the door, turning back and fixing me with that stunning gaze before he disappeared. “Adriana, it was a pleasure to meet you finally.”

  “Likewise,” I replied.

  Likewise, Iago.

  As soon as he’d gone—as quickly as he’d arrived—Elisa dropped her formal air and gave me a hug, squeezing me so hard I was almost left breathless.

  “I can’t believe how quickly time has passed! Remind me: How long is it since we last saw each other? Two years?”

  “Near enough,” I had to admit. “I’m really sorry I couldn’t make it to the little one’s baptism, I was at—”

  “At a dig. I know,” she cut me off. “You couldn’t make it to Gabriela’s either, but it doesn’t matter. Can you believe it? You and me working together in Santander!”

  I looked at her with a smile. Three pregnancies had left their stamp on a body that had always had a tendency toward curves. She wore bangs with blond highlights now, which partially covered her face. Maybe she wanted to look like one of those actresses in the black-and-white movies with their cascading curls and a single glove who always looked as if they were about to perform a striptease.

  We spent a bit of time on the requisite compliments—“You still look fabulous,” “Time is treating you well,” and the like—until we remembered that we weren’t alone.

  “By the way, let me introduce you to Chisca. She’s a student at the University of Cantabria, and she’s here on an internship, attached to my department.”

  The young woman’s eyes were coated with mascara, one ear was drilled full of piercings, and she wore elbow-length fingerless black gloves. Paramilitary boots with platform soles completed the standard goth wardrobe. She greeted me with a cheeky grin, and I smiled back in return.

  “Enough chitchat. Let me show you around the museum,” said Elisa, grabbing me by the arm.

  “No need for that. Héctor already gave me the guided tour.”

  “I bet he didn’t show you the café/bar they’ve installed on the ground floor, with its fabulous pinchos—I assume you haven’t adopted the word ‘tapas’ yet, despite all your years in Madrid? It’s called BACus, and it’s been a real revelation. Many people from Santander and nearby towns come to the museum just for the squid. Since BACus opened, we MAC employees have become a permanent fixture.”

  I allowed myself to be dragged along the corridors while Elisa filled in my information gaps.

  “Okay, so you’ve already met Iago. He’s a revved-up version of Héctor, right?” she said.

  I agreed. Elisa and her intern exchanged a conspiratorial look.

  “Don’t let those sweet blue eyes fool you,” Chisca interrupted. “Nothing gets past Iago. He’s a machine.”

  “The Machine,” Elisa emphasized, stressing each syllable. “Although he coordinates all departments of the museum, from Prehistory to Contemporary, he never talks just to hear his own voice. Iago is the real deal. He’s pretty demanding, but you learn a lot from him. By the way, we refer to him as the Iagopedia.”

  “The Iagopedia?”

  “Yes, Iago is a walking encyclopedia, so Iago-pedia,” she explained, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

  “Come on, Elisa,” Chisca insisted. “Don’t skimp on the details. You have to tell her about the Holy Trinity.”

  “The three brothers, I presume.” I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Indeed. Rumor has it their parents were diplomats. You see, there’s been an entire mythology constructed around them. Not surprising, given they’re probably the most eligible bachelors in Santander,” said Elisa.

  “Probably, Elisa?” asked Chisca.

  “All right, definitely the most eligible bachelors,” Elisa replied dismissively. “Okay, to continue: Héctor and Iago were born in Santander, while Jairo—the youngest and the richest of the three, by the way—was born in London.”

  “I heard it was Singapore.”

  “That’s news to me—who says it was Singapore? Anyway, it makes no difference. What we know for a fact is that Héctor and Iago studied at the best European universities, while Jairo focused on increasing the family fortune. They say their parents came from wealthy families in northern Spain, and the brothers returned to Santander a few years ago.

  “Jairo bought and restored this large mansion, which a little-known indiano, the marquis of Mouro, had had built in 1908 upon his return from Cuba. There’s a bit of a dark history surrounding the marquis—they say he was a smuggler and the bane of the then-governor’s existence. Then one day, the marquis simply disappeared, leaving behind nothing but an empty mansion and more rumors. The house remained empty until Jairo came along and bought it.

  “But getting back to the Holy Trinity, Jairo’s brothers are passionate about history, so they have been in charge of the museum since it opened four years ago. Neither Héctor nor Iago likes to appear in the media; they’re very low-key. I think they prefer to concentrate on their exhibition halls and exhibits. So they offered the position of director of the MAC—a purely honorary position—to a recently retired local politician, Luis Miguel Rivera, and he was delighted to accept.”

  “You mean the director is a figurehead,” I summarized.

  Elisa nodded in agreement.

  “What a bore you are, Elisa,” interposed Chisca. “Go on, tell her about the twenty-five percent.”

  Elisa sighed. “That again.”

  “She ought to know about it. Sooner or later someone will ask her,” the intern insisted.

  “So maybe you’d better tell me yourself then, Chisca,” I said, cutting her short. “What the hell is this twenty-five-percent business?”

  “Well, the MAC female employees are divided into four groups. A quarter of them have a soft spot for Héctor, twenty-five percent prefer Iago, and another twenty-five percent are crazy about Jairo.”

  “And the final twenty-five percent?”

  “That consists of those who’d be happy to go out with any of them.”

  I was afraid that would be the answer. Oh wel
l.

  “Great, I get it,” I told them, heading for the entrance to the bar. “And now, if it’s all the same to you, fill me in on the pinchos.”

  In any event, I made a mental note of their advice and reached my own conclusions. It seemed that Héctor del Castillo was the soul of the museum, Iago was its brain, and Jairo the money man.

  4

  IAGO

  Mother Moon Day, the tenth day of the month of Luis

  Monday, January 30, 2012

  I rushed along the corridors full of invited guests, looking everywhere. Where on earth had Kyra gone? I passed the president of the Friends of the Museum and exchanged hurried greetings with several other acquaintances. I went down the stairs to the basement, making sure none of the museum staff were around before I entered the Restoration Laboratory. At that very moment I heard beeps coming from my trouser pocket. I checked the screen on my phone and saw a message from my father: “We have a problem in the Prehistory Hall.”

  I ignored it for the time being. There were more urgent concerns.

  I crossed the deserted space, passing worktables covered with half-restored artifacts and jewelry and desalination tanks in this, the engine room of the museum, until I reached Kyra’s office. I unlocked the door and closed it again behind me.

  Large ceramic pieces sat on a metal bookshelf behind the desk. No one would think of moving that piece of furniture for fear of causing amphoras and pots to crash down on top of them. Nor would it occur to anyone that the pieces were stuck to the shelves and stoically endured all our comings and goings. Because, behind the prop piece, there was a white door, supposedly sealed, with a small keypad hidden under a plastic flap. I punched in the entry code and went into the most important laboratory in the museum, the one that only we four knew about, the one that I secretly loathed. Jairo had designed this bunker during the most recent renovations, finding the perfect underground spot for our deceptions at the very heart of the museum.

  Kyra didn’t show any reaction when I entered. It was typical that I would find her there, at the end of the workbench, in front of the powerful computer. She still hadn’t taken off her white lab coat, and her blond hair was pinned up in a style that made her look older.

  “You should be heading upstairs already,” I said as I approached her. “The exhibition opening ceremony is about to begin.”

  “I’m just finishing,” she replied. As soon as the printer stopped, she handed me a stack of paper, barely glancing at it first.

  “Tell me, Brother, what do you see?”

  I skimmed through the graphs, which I already knew by heart. “We’ll have to study them; it’s still too early to draw any conclusions.”

  “Because there aren’t any conclusions to be drawn, Iago!” she said, fuming. “There are no conclusions in these results. We’ve introduced harmful oxidants into mice, and we’ve treated them with antioxidants. So what? This doesn’t bring us any closer to the question of why we are Ancients.”

  I ignored her and headed to the back of the lab, where there was a stack of about a dozen cages containing a small population of rodents. I examined them, concerned. “How long is it since you last fed them? Do you want to starve them to death?”

  I opened the bag of feed and began distributing their rations.

  “They’re no use to us anymore. The study is finished,” she said, coming over.

  “Then give them a dignified death. They’re not to blame for your frustration.”

  But before I realized what she was doing, she grabbed some cages and, filled with rage, smashed them against the wall.

  “And who is to blame, Brother?” she yelled, beside herself. “Who is?”

  I threw myself at her and put my hand over her mouth. “Shhh . . . all the museum staff are above us.” I stroked her hair without relaxing my hold on her. “Calm down, Kyra. We’ll find it, okay?”

  “We’ll find it? Like the National Oncology Institute material, right?”

  Her voice sounded bitter, and that hurt.

  “What did you bring me from Madrid, Iago? I’ve been studying it, and it has nothing to do with what we’re looking for.”

  “Fine. The NOI material hasn’t worked out either. Then we’ll start spying on all the labs that are searching for solutions to aging. If it’s not antioxidants, it will be the growth hormone, or insulin, or calorie restriction, or whatever, okay? But I never want to see you so demoralized again. I promise you, we will keep looking.”

  She removed my hand and began to pick up the cages from the floor, ignoring the squeaks from the mice. She worked mechanically and with precision. That was what she had become: a precise, mechanical being.

  “I worry about you. You don’t interact with anyone. You only think about your research. That’s no life, Kyra.” I stroked her cheek with the back of my hand, but she moved my hand aside.

  “At least I’m still alive. That’s what you all wanted, isn’t it?” she muttered bitterly.

  Go with them, Brother. I’ll be fine.

  It wasn’t Kyra’s voice echoing inside my head. It was another voice, but it sounded just as familiar when it pronounced that sentence that had been pursuing me for two thousand years. Boudicca was still inside me. She had never gone away.

  “I’m remembering something from years ago,” I said, “when I took you to my house by the beach at Ribadeo, after what happened to Fénix and—”

  “I remember,” she cut me off sharply.

  “Please, let me go on,” I interrupted her in turn. “Every night, when I said good-bye to you and left you on your own, walking along the Catedrales Beach, you’d say to me, ‘Off you go, Brother. I’ll be fine.’ ”

  Kyra turned her back to me, as she always did when she didn’t want me to read her expression.

  “But I never believed you,” I continued. “I didn’t believe you, but I’d start the car so you’d hear me leaving. Then I’d park it a few hundred yards away and run back to the beach. I’d watch you from afar, hidden among the rocks, while you walked along the shore.”

  “You spied on me?” she exclaimed with surprise in her voice.

  I nodded silently. She lost herself in her thoughts for a few moments, and then she added, “That winter, during my walks on the beach, I sensed I wasn’t alone. I sensed some sort of protective force. I thought it was Teutates, the Protector.”

  “No, Kyra, it wasn’t any Celtic god. It was me looking after you every night, as you walked into the sea under the light of the moon.”

  I stood there, sickened, looking at the pipettes piled up in front of us.

  “A little bit farther every night. I thought it would only be a matter of days before you submerged yourself and never came back.”

  “And you would have saved me.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “Against your wishes, yes,” I was forced to admit. “But I would have done it.”

  She said nothing, an absent expression on her face, and I briefly abandoned myself to my memories, too. That difficult time in our lives was when Nagorno returned, I recalled with a bitter taste in my mouth. Opportunely, as always, with his brilliant plan to find the longevo gene in our DNA, to establish the museum as our cover, to undergo yet another hasty change of identities. He had offered the mechanism to enable me and Kyra to carry out our studies, and for all of us to perform our new roles.

  Kyra gave a half-turn and allowed me to examine her face. She had assumed her mask and was ready for my inspection.

  “It could take us years to finalize this research,” I repeated for the umpteenth time, in the hope that she would come to terms with it. “We’re taking a stab in the dark. It may be that it leads us nowhere. And you refuse to return to the land of the living.”

  “Should I pretend that I enjoy life?”

  No, Kyra, you should do whatever you want to do, and the momen
t for all of us to understand this is approaching.

  With Kyra, sometimes it was better not to say anything. I studied her silently for a good while. The strongest and the most solitary of us all, she didn’t need us. She had none of the pathetic dependency that had kept Héctor and Jairo and me attached to each other over the millennia, over and above the hatreds, the trickery, and the mutual weariness. She was born alone, raised alone, and had confronted the reality of her longevity alone.

  When I had found her again, suspecting that she was the child that Héctor and I had abandoned four centuries earlier, she had accepted what she was in the way that an oak tree accepts the frosts and the hail: by hardening her outer layer and accepting the earth’s cycles. Perhaps her cycle had reached its end. Maybe she really was ready to die once and for all. Perhaps we were the egoists, trying to prevent her departure so as not to go through the loss of another member of the family. That was Boudicca’s legacy to us: fear of death, something so prosaic that it turned us into the most frightened of humans.

  Why do so many people say that time heals everything? It’s not true. Not everything can be healed. When you lose an arm, you remember that you’ve lost it every day of your life. It makes no difference whether you live a few decades or several millennia. You miss it. It’s not there. Your other arm tries to compensate, but it can’t. It never will.

  5

  IAGO

  The month of Luis, 8,255 SB, Lugdunum

  43 BC, present-day Lyons

  Horrified, I looked at the gaping wound in my hand, blood pouring out of it; my thumb was hanging motionless like a flap of skin. The young woman with the hood wiped the blade of her small dagger in the folds of her muddy skirt, turned around, and darted off like a weasel, disappearing among the dark laneways that ran alongside the wall of Lugdunum, “the fortress of the god Lug,” as the Celts still preferred to call it behind the Romans’ backs.