Chapter 40
Dario stood in front of the scattered remains of Agrippa, his dust in the grooves between the gold and copper wire, a fine gray coating over five centuries of meticulous preparation that had amounted, in the end, to this.
Around him, the aftermath of the fight organized itself the way it always did after the killing stopped. Rodrigo was directing the outer perimeter, and Giana was moving among the surviving disciples with calm words, having been a victim and knowing how to talk them down from hysteria.
They were alive, confused, shaking, some of them weeping, several unable to do anything except sit on the floor and stare at the place where their god had stood.
They would need a great deal of work that Giana and Altun were already quietly organizing with the money Giana had siphoned from Agrippa's accounts.
Leo was crouched over one of the drained ones that had dropped when Agrippa had, examining it closely. Dante stood at his shoulder, not hovering, just present and ready in case the corpse decided to reanimate.
Silas was at the chamber entrance talking into his earpiece. Athena appeared beside him and said something that made him exhale slowly and nod.
Serapis hadn't moved. He was standing where Agrippa had been, not looking at the dust but past it at the shattered obsidian mirror. His hands were shaking a little at his sides.
Dario crossed to him. "You all right, Zio?"
Serapis murmured, "I didn't expect that."
"None of us did."
"No, I mean—" Serapis stopped. When he started again, it was a ramble, as if he were trying to work it out.
"The bee was supposed to free the disciples.
Strip the illusion from their eyes. That was its function.
I never thought it would work on him in the same way.
It stripped his absolute conviction that he was destined for apotheosis, for godhood, because he deserved it.
That conviction was his power. He sustained himself through sheer force of will, the unshakeable certainty that he was exceptional, that death was beneath him, that the universe owed him transcendence.
He made his own reality through the strength of his ego alone, and when the bee forced him to see the truth... "
"He was just an old man frightened of death," Dario finished for him.
Serapis nodded. "His reality collapsed. There was nothing left to sustain him." He shut his eyes for a moment and exhaled. "We make our own reality, Dario. Aggripa's simply failed him in the end."
Rodrigo appeared at his shoulder and looked Serapis and his brother over for any damage.
"It's over," he said, and Serapis opened his eyes again.
"Yes." He sounded so tired that Dario hoped he would be able to walk back out of the tunnels.
"I… I don't know what to do now. I have never not been fighting him, or preparing to fight him, or recovering from fighting him.
I don't know what comes next." He said it without self-pity, which somehow made it worse.
Leo stood up from where he had been crouching.
"You could teach me about my magic." He gestured toward Kon and Athena.
"And them too. They are extraordinary, and they possess power they don't fully understand, and you're the only person alive who can actually train them.
You said you created them to fight Agrippa and those like him.
That war is over for now, so help them become what they were always supposed to be beyond it. "
"Our family is so fucked up," Athena said, looking around them.
"We have a sorcerer who let our creator's mess with us for decades before he orchestrated their deaths.
We have brothers who were raised by a mother who shot one of them and made their lives hell.
We have an assassin with witch blood who will be related to all of us in some capacity, whether she likes it or not.
I suppose, we'll just have to figure all of our bullshit out together. "
Altun laughed softly. "Well said, Athena."
Serapis looked around the room. At Leo, who carried Niccolò's face and magic.
At Kon and Athena, who he had helped bring into existence and then stepped back and watched become people he couldn't have designed if he had tried.
At Rodrigo and Dario, who were his nephews whom he had loved and mentored as they grew up, before glancing at all the others that made up their bloodthirsty, unique, and ragtag found family.
Serapis smiled."Your father always said that knowledge was the only real weapon apart from the strength of family. I think he would have wanted this."
"We can start small. You can be on probation for a while, and we will see if we can really trust you," Athena said, her chin lifting.
Kon's smile sharpened. "Besides, we can always kill you later if we need to."
"I would expect nothing less from children of mine," Serapis replied, his eyes flaring with a new kind of fire.
Rodrigo led the tired group as they made their way back through the tunnels. Dario took the rear with Frederica, Kon, and Athena.
Partway through, the tunnel filled with the roar of Athena's flamethrower.
"She's been waiting to use that thing again for a while," Kon said from behind them with an affectionate chuckle.
"I can hear you," Athena said cheerfully, from the back of the column. Another burst of flame. "You're welcome, by the way. No chance of reanimation now."
"Is she torching all of the weird zombie things?" Dario asked.
"Of course she is," Kon said. "It's the easiest way to get rid of a lot of bodies."
"Good," Frederica said. "They give me the fucking creeps even with their heads cut off."
"Some days I genuinely love my life," Athena announced to nobody in particular.
They went out the same way Dario and Frederica had come in, and by the time they poured out through the old tomb, the sky over Cologne was pale at the horizon.
After being stuck in the tunnels all night, Dario stood for a moment, doing nothing but breathing the fresh air.
"Finally, I'm going to smell that place in my nightmares," Frederica said from beside him.
Despina took a deep inhale before she turned to Frederica and took her face in her hands.
"Now that we have a moment, I want you to know that I had no doubt you would come for me.
My weapon. My heart. I'm so glad I had a chance to fight beside you.
" She kissed Frederica's cheek and held her close.
Despina glanced over her daughter's shoulder at Dario.
"You're not so bad either for a malakas gigolo. "
"Thank you?" Dario said with an awkward laugh. Despina let go of Frederica and yanked him down into a hug. She kissed him on the cheek and whispered in his ear, "You hurt my daughter, and I will tie you to a rock and let crabs slowly eat you alive."
Dario grinned and hugged her tighter. "Sounds fair."
"I can't believe that I'm gone for five minutes, and men are already trying to steal you away from me. How typical! This is Shanghai in '98 all over again," Tore called out. He was limping badly, and he hadn't stayed in the van, but nobody who knew Tore Alesci would have expected him to.
"My love, how many times do I have to tell you that Shanghai was strategic flirting so I could get the hotel key from his pocket?" Despina countered, hands on her hips.
Tore reached them and put one arm around Despina and one around Frederica. "My girls. My fierce, impossible girls."
Despina said something in Greek, low and fierce, against Tore's neck. Tore kissed her and replied in Italian that he knew and that she was fine and that he had never doubted her for a second.
Frederica's eyes found Dario across the gravel path and softened in a way that sent his heart into overdrive.
He had been in a lot of places in his life.
He had stood in many rooms and surveyed many situations with a practiced eye, learning to read any space he walked into and understand what it wanted from him.
He had never been this content to simply stand somewhere and not want to be anywhere else. He winked flirtily at Frederica, and she rolled her eyes at him, which was the most Frederica thing she could have done, and Dario thought: Yes to this. All of it. With her. Always.