In the end, Hardin called it in and arrested Teresa. But her next call was to the DA about what kind of deal they could work out. There had to be a way to work this out within the system. Get Teresa off on probation on a minor charge. There had to be a way to drag the shadow world, kicking and screaming, into the light.
Somehow, Hardin would figure it out.
Bellum Romanum
GAIUS ALBINUS stood before the locked gates of Diocletian’s Palace. Fifteen hundred years of planning, and he could not get to where he needed to go because of a chain and padlock, an electronic security system, and a modern sense of reasonable working hours, helpfully marked out on a placard bolted to the stone. What had once been a palace was now a museum, and it was closed.
So many obstacles in this modern era did not involve armies, weapons, or violence. No, they were barriers of bureaucracy and officious politeness. Venerable institutions of old Rome he ought to know well, passed down to successive civilizations.
He couldn’t help but smile, amused. To come so far, and to be confronted now by a sign telling him the site had closed several hours before and that he could not enter until daylight. Impossible for him.
Well. He would simply have to find another way. There was always another way.
What most impressed Gaius Albinus wasn’t how much the city of Split had changed, but how much remained the same and recognizable. Even now, the city felt Roman.
The central palace complex still stood, amidst the sprawl that had grown up around it. The temple walls were identifiable. Many pitted stone blocks had fallen long ago and were now arranged in artistic piles, in the interest of archeological curiosity. At some point, cast-off stones had become valuable, worthy of admiration. Entire towns had turned into relics, museum pieces. And the roads—the roads still marked out routes across the Empire. The great engineers of Rome remained triumphant.
These days the one-time retirement retreat of Emperor Diocletian was a university and tourist town, raucous with nightlife, young people crowding into cafés, spilling onto the beach, drinking hard under strings of electric lights. Not so different from youth cavorting under suspended oil lamps back in the day, letting clothing slip off shoulders while pretending not to notice, making eyes at each other, offering invitations. That hadn’t changed either, not in all his years.
Now, as then, tourists were easy to spot by the way they wandered through it all with startled, awestruck expressions. Most likely not understanding the local language. Gaius remembered going to Palestine as a young soldier, expecting to hear a cacophony of languages, yet not being prepared for the sense of displacement, a kind of intellectual vertigo, that came from standing in the middle of a market and hearing people shout at one another using strange words, laughing at jokes he couldn’t understand. The way people became subdued when he spoke his native Latin. More often than not they understood him, even when they pretended not to. They marked him as a foreigner, a conqueror.
Since then, he had learned not to particularly care what people thought of him.
Outside the old Roman center, the city was comprised of the blend of modernity and semi-modernity along narrow medieval streets that marked so many European cities. After traveling out by car, he stopped at a squat town house of middling modern construction: aluminum and plywood. Clearly a product of the time when this country had been part of Yugoslavia, communist and short on resources. That era had lasted less than a century. The blink of an eye. Hardly worth remembering.
The hour was late. Gaius knocked on the door anyway, and a mousy-looking man answered. In his thirties, he had tousled black hair, and wore dark-rimmed glasses and a plain T-shirt with sweats. An average man dressed for a night in. He blinked, uncertain and ready to close the door on the stranger.
“I need your help,” Gaius said, in the local Croatian.
“What is it?” The guy looked over Gaius’s shoulder as if searching for a broken-down car. There wasn’t one.
“If you could just step out for a moment.” The man did, coming out to the concrete stoop in front of the door. People were so trusting.
Gaius needed him outside his house, across the protection of his threshold. In the open, under a wide sky, the Roman could step in the man’s line of sight and catch his gaze. Then draw that attention close, wrap his own will around the small mortal’s mind, and pull. In the space of three of the man’s own heartbeats, Gaius possessed him.
Gaius’s heart hadn’t beat once in two thousand years.
“Professor Dimic, I need to get inside the palace. You have access. You’ll help me.”
He didn’t even question how Gaius knew his name. “Yes, of course.”
Gaius drove the archaeologist back to the city center, navigated the crowds to the quiet alley where the gate to the lower level was located. Gaius could have broken in himself—picked the lock, disabled the security system. But this was simpler and would leave no evidence. No one must track him. No one must know what he did.
Dimic unlocked the gate, keyed in the security code, and they were inside.
“Anything else?” he asked, almost eagerly. His gaze was intent but vacant, focused on Gaius without really seeing anything.
“Show me how to reset all this when I leave.”
“Certainly.”
The archaeologist gave him the code, showed him the lock, and even left a key. He helpfully pointed out restrooms at the far end of the hallway.
“Go home now,” Gaius instructed the man. “Go inside. Sit in the first chair you come to and close your eyes. When you open them again you won’t remember any of this. Do you understand?”
“I do.” He nodded firmly, as if he’d just been given a dangerous mission and was determined to see it through.
“Go.”
The archaeologist, a man who had dedicated his life to studying the detritus Gaius’s people had left behind, turned and walked away, without ever knowing he’d been in the presence of a one-time Roman centurion. He’d weep if he ever found out.
Gaius made sure the gates were closed behind him and went into the tunnels beneath the palace. The vaulted spaces were lit only by faint emergency lights at the intersections. Columns made forests of shadows.
He had to orient himself. The main gallery had been turned into some kind of gift shop or market. The eastern chambers had become an art gallery, scattered with unremarkable modern sculptures, indulgent satire. But along the western corridor, he found a familiar passageway, and from there was able to locate the series of chambers he needed. He reached the farthest, not taking time to glance at any of the exhibits—he knew it all already. Then, he counted seven stones along the floor to the right spot on the wall, two bricks up. Anyone who’d come along this passage and happened to knock on this row of stones would have noticed that one made a slightly different sound. A more hollow sound. But in all that time, it seemed that no one had ever done so.
He drew a crowbar from inside his jacket and used it to scrape out mortar and grime from around the brick, then worked to pry the brick free. He had to lean his body into it; the wall had settled over the centuries. Dust had sealed the cracks. But he was strong, very strong, and with a couple of great shoves and a grunt, the brick slipped and thudded to the ground at his feet.
Gaius reached inside the exposed alcove.