Greek Revival: Chapter 12

XII.

Trading on their newfound productivity and an imaginary case of norovirus, Ari managed to get three days off from work at Full English. Wednesday for frantic research, Thursday for the rescue mission, and Friday to recover from whatever happened on Thursday. Asking for Friday off was the only concession Ari made to the idea of failure. Damian’s restless motivation to do something never wavered, but he alternated between proclaiming his certainty of their success and prophesying their doom. Ari, more to keep themself sane than anything, continued quietly insisting that they would save Nico one way or another. They just had to plan for every contingency.

The first order of business, when they got back to the little white house on Monday afternoon, was for Damian to step outside and smoke three Panda cigarettes in quick succession.

“If I don’t have one right the fuck now, kid, I’m gonna be too weird to function,” he explained, already shaking one out of the carton on his way to the back door. “Pretty sure that charm was fucking with my brain chemistry in more ways than one.”

Once Damian came back inside, reeking of smoke and visibly calmer, the second order of business was to figure out where Nico would be brought for the equinox. Ari sat down at the kitchen table and trawled through the Facebook updates and Twitter posts of all forty-eight members of the PGM who had responded to Dr. Pryor’s invitations, searching for any mentions of their travel plans, but came up empty. Damian dug out the copied Greek letter, and Ari’s translation of it, from the pile of papers that had taken over the table entirely by now. He deposited the Greek version in front of Ari and pored over the translated version. Split up and look for clues.

“It doesn’t say anything new,” Damian said after a few minutes of squinting at the letter. “Don’t aim at small magic, liturgy to what’s-his-face, sacrifice, protect our lives forever, tee… uh, tee-may? Right, that’s how you say it?”

“More or less, yeah,” Ari replied. “Timei.”

“Jesus, I’m fucking useless. If we survive this, and I’m not saying we will, because we probably won’t – god, fuck.”

“If we survive this?” Ari prompted, careful to keep their voice level, trying very hard not to indulge Damian’s soothsaying.

“If we survive this, I’m gonna learn Ancient Greek. Seriously. I don’t know why the fuck I was an economics major.”

Ari scanned the Greek letter again. “You’re probably better at math than I am, at least. Did we ever figure out what the numbers at the bottom of this were?”

“Let me see that.”

As Damian traced a finger across the bottom of the letter, the glossy ibises gathered around him, while the white ibis maintained its post next to Ari’s chair. They had been glued to Ari and Damian’s sides since they stepped through the door and unwrapped themselves from Dr. Pryor’s old blankets. The white ibis’ gaze was steady and inscrutable as ever, but the glossy ibises seemed nervous, shifting from foot to foot and chittering quietly among themselves whenever Ari or Damian moved, clacking their beaks and rustling their feathers.

“I think they’re coordinates,” Damian said.

“What?”

“Like geographic coordinates. That’s what these symbols mean. Latitude and longitude.”

Ari grabbed the paper back. “Phi and lambda?”

“Yeah, if that’s what they’re called.”

“Dang, I thought they were just random letters.”

“Read them out to me,” Damian said, picking up Ari’s phone from the table and opening their maps app. “This has gotta be where the equinox is happening, right? It’s gotta be where they’re taking Nico. There’s no way it’s anything else.”

Ari began reading the numbers aloud. Partway through, an eerie sense of deja vu overcame them, like they’d seen these numbers in this order before. As they reached the last number, the realization hit them.

“Alright, looks like it’s a place down by the river called –”

“Lookout Point,” Ari finished.

“You know it?” Damian said, spinning the phone around to show Ari pictures of the clearing, the cliff, the rock with the coordinates oh-so-helpfully etched into it.

“I’ve been there once. I can totally see people doing some dark magic ritual there.”

“That’s gotta be where they’re taking Nico, then,” Damian repeated. “Alright. Let’s get the fuck to work.”

***

The whole downstairs of the little white house smelled thick and rank – oil, fat, and manure – and opening the windows didn’t help. The equinox had dawned hot and gotten hotter, much hotter than it had been all month. Unseasonably hot, now that it was technically fall.

As though every season in New Hampshire isn’t unseasonable, Ari thought wryly as they slathered themself in Invisibility Paste for what they prayed would be the last time.

Slung over Damian’s shoulder was a hiking pack full of pipes and tinfoil. The plumbing in the whole house was gone, ripped out for spell components, carefully marked with letters and symbols and names. Lots of names. For the past two days, Ari and Damian had taken turns keeping watch for one another, looking out for evil Classics professors and shadow monsters and nosy neighbors, so they could shower with the garden hose in the backyard. They had decided that only Ari should be invisible for the rescue mission: although it seemed unlikely that the entire PGM didn’t know they were a threat, they still hadn’t made themself as much of a problem as Damian had, and any anonymity they could maintain would be an extra layer of safety. Meanwhile, their supplies were too numerous to carry unobtrusively, and a backpack the size of a small child hovering in midair was an awful lot more suspicious than a hippie on a hike in the woods. Damian had even dressed like a normal person for the occasion, in shorts and a faded Green Day t-shirt and hiking boots with the Papyri’s all-purpose victory charm inscribed on the soles. Damian had written the charm in permanent marker on the soles of Ari’s feet before they turned themself invisible, too, just in case it worked that way, although based on their translation of the spell Ari was fairly certain that shoes were required.

“We have everything?” Damian asked for the seventh or eighth time.

“Think so,” Ari said for the seventh or eighth time. They had stopped counting.

“Cool. Alright. Yeah.” Damian lapsed into silence, turning a slow circle in the center of the kitchen. “Fuck, Nico’s gonna kill me when he gets back. We’ve wrecked his house.”

“Better him killing you than them killing him.”

“Yeah.”

Ari took a deep breath, watching Damian. His missing eye was hardly distinguishable from the rest of his face now: just a flat pink space where an eye should have been, topped by a messy brown eyebrow. His remaining eye shone, still hazel, still pretty. His hair was up, dark at the roots, a spray of blond emerging from his ponytail. There was a flat, determined set to his mouth. One of his big square hands clutched the strap of the hiking pack. The other was balled in a fist by his side. Ari felt a sharp tug in their stomach and thought, unaccountably, I am going to miss him so much.

The ibises clustered around Damian’s legs clicked their beaks, and one of them went so far as to nudge him with its brown feathered head. He jumped, as if he was seeing the kitchen for the first time and it had startled him, then turned back to Ari and squinted into the air.

“Where are you?” he asked. “I’m trying to make eye contact.”

“Um. I – I don’t think there’s any good way to describe my relative position in space when you can’t see me.”

“Just come here then.”

Ari picked their way between the ibises until their nose was nearly touching Damian’s chin. “I’m right here,” they warned. “Don’t step forward or you’ll bump into me.”

Damian looked down at Ari, searching until his eye found their pupils. “Okay. Yeah. Look, kid, I should’ve done this before you were invisible. This was stupid. But here goes. You know, and I’ve said it, I literally could not have done this without you. I would’ve been screwed. And once we get him back, and Penny too, and once I’ve cleaned up his fuckin’ house and figured out how to pay him back for the pipes and everything – well – I mean, what are you gonna do?”

“Go back to work, I guess,” Ari said. “Magic is real, and we’ve both put ourselves on the hit list of every magic user in the world. What else can I do?”

Damian shrugged. “I dunno. I don’t know what I’m gonna do either. But if you want to, whatever it is, I can do it with you. I – shit, not like – well, I mean, we can also keep fucking, I’m into that, and I’m pretty sure you were into that, so not to say no, but that’s also not what I – shit. Kid. Ari Tan. Keep being in my life, okay? Come down to Brattleboro once I get my place back down there. Let me see your apartment. Hang out with me and Nico and Penny. They’ll love you. I love you. Alright?”

“So it wasn’t the anger charm?” Ari heard themself asking.

“What wasn’t the anger charm?”

Shut up, Ari. Please. “You – never mind. You really want that?”

“Course I do. After we get Nico back, it’s pretty much all I want. That and a drink that I don’t have to steal from my brother.”

“I mean – well – no promises, I guess. But I love you too. After all this – I don’t think I could not love you.”

“That counts as a promise.”

“Does it?”

Damian’s mouth curled up at the edges, just for a moment. “Kid, it’s the only promise in the goddamn world.”

“Guess I promise then.”

“Guess you do.”

A moment hung between them, thick as the scent of manure in the kitchen. The ibises were silent. Damian breathed in and out once.

Ari leaned up and kissed Damian on the cheek. “Come on,” they said. “We’d better get there soon. Sunset is in a few hours and we don’t know when they’re moving Nico.”

Damian flushed pink. “Yeah. Yeah, right, yeah. We have everything?”

“Think so.”

When Ari and Damian opened the door to the little white house, the ibises, walking single file with the white ibis at the head of the line, followed them. Despite Ari’s invisibility, the white ibis bowed its head directly at them as it passed.

“What the fuck?” Damian asked, directing the question half at the air near Ari and half at the white ibis itself. “I thought they couldn’t leave the house.”

“Maybe they were just waiting for this? The final rescue mission?”

“How could they know? They couldn’t know. We didn’t even know ‘til way after they showed up.”

“What did I tell you?” Ari said, feeling themself crack a smile. “Magic birds.”

Damian drove to the river. Although Ari held open the door to the back seat, the ibises declined to enter the car, the glossy ones fluffing up their feathers in alarm at the machine as though it were a rival bird. Still, when they parked the car near the bridge connecting New Hampshire to Vermont and got out and began their trek along its banks, the ibises were waiting for them in the shaded woods along the path.

Despite the heat, Ari saw few swimmers, and none at all near Lookout Point. Tall, dark clouds had begun to gather further up the river, and although the sun was still shining, the threat of a thunderstorm was evidently enough to scare off most rivergoers for the evening. Lookout Point, shaded by trees, was dark even with the sunlight glinting up off the river. Long shadows stretched across the clearing, slipped over the steep riverbank, and disappeared into the water below. The ibises, upon reaching Lookout Point, flapped their wings as one and dispersed themselves among the trees, so a ring of birds encircled the clearing and gazed down at it like gargoyles adorning a Gothic church, or the lion-headed water spouts that watched over the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.

I see why the PGM picked this spot, Ari thought, pacing the length of the clearing with their arms outstretched in front of them while Damian skirted its edge, both of them searching for animated shadows or stray sets of pupils hovering in midair. Quiet, secluded, and creepy as heck. Perfect for spooky secret society rituals.

“Fuck!” Damian shouted from between the pines, fumbling for something in his pocket. Suddenly, Ari’s phone flashlight lit up in Damian’s hand as he waved it at a quickly-dissipating shadow in the rough shape of a person.

“You okay?” Ari hissed.

“Yeah, fine, one of those shadow assholes. I’m just gonna shine this thing everywhere and hopefully get rid of all of ‘em if there’s any more.”

“Well, I don’t see any pupils,” Ari said, “and I haven’t bumped into anyone yet. So if there’s anyone invisible around they’re hiding pretty dang well.”

Something slid sideways across Ari’s peripheral vision. They whipped their head around and saw the shadow of a rail-thin pine melting into a human form and creeping up behind Damian, one dark liquid hand reaching for the zipper of his pack.

“Behind!” Ari hissed. Damian whirled around, brandishing the phone, and the shadow dissolved.

“Was that the same one?” Ari asked as Damian re-adjusted the zipper.

“Don’t think so. The other one was fatter. Maybe they can shapeshift or whatever, but I bet they look like whoever cast the spell. Or something. I mean, the one that stole the ring back from you was pretty fuckin’ Gilbert-shaped, at least.”

We’ve been learning magic for weeks and we still know hardly anything about it, Ari mused, completing a circuit of the clearing, arms still outstretched in front of them. I kinda wish Hermes hadn’t deleted all those photos of the Papyri. It would be cool to try to study how all these spells actually work. Apply the scientific method to them, try to figure out where the limits are. Maybe even make new spells. Have any of these guys even tried to make new spells? From the way Dr. Pryor talked in the letter it sounds like they’ve pretty much been getting along for years and years on just what the PGM gave them. Which I guess is fine if your only ambition is a lot of money, a lover or two, a tenure-track job, and a quiet life. But Dr. Pryor wants more.

Ari wandered toward the riverbank, running their fingertips over the rock marking Lookout Point. Their evening watching the sunset with Greg felt remote, flat, like they’d watched a movie about two people going for a walk down by the river rather than living through it themself. On some level, they supposed, that had been a different Ari. An Ari who really did have a gas leak in their apartment, maybe. An Ari who could talk about magic portals being handed from classicist to classicist in a strictly metaphorical sense. An Ari who would’ve taken the portal with both hands when it was offered, no questions asked.

A lot of money, a lover or two, a tenure-track job, and a quiet life.

That still sounds pretty darn good, actually.

“Shit!” Damian exclaimed. “I think someone’s coming. C’mere. I don’t wanna lose you, kid.”

Ari strode across the clearing and laid a hand on Damian’s wrist. He jumped a little, then turned to search for their pupils. Although Ari knew he couldn’t see their face, they smiled reassuringly anyway and said, “I’m here. Hide.”

After a moment of assessing the area, turning his head back and forth, Damian made for a large, sturdy pine tree and scrambled halfway up it in a few easy motions, ascending its branches as if they were a ladder. He settled in a crook between several thick limbs and the trunk, leaning with his back, and the hiking pack, against the trunk. On the ground, Ari could hardly tell where he had gone.

“I’m not gonna be able to make it up there,” they whispered.

“No, it’ll be good to have you on the ground. Just wanted to make sure I had – well, not eyes on you, but – whatever.”

Distant splashing from whoever was still swimming in the river. A woodcock beeped somewhere deeper in the woods. A breeze rustled the pine needles, shaking a few loose onto Ari’s head, which they brushed off. The sun would be setting soon.

Ari said, “Are you sure someone’s –”

But then they heard the sound of footsteps – lots and lots of footsteps – crunching along the path. It wasn’t quite a rhythm, but it was something approaching it, the way that, when a crowd at a concert applauds for long enough, a beat emerges. Ari realized they were holding their breath and let it out in a long, slow stream, making sure even they couldn’t detect the sound of it over the wind.

Gilbert Applewhite came first, anxiously twisting his iron ring around his index finger, wearing an entirely impractical outfit for a late afternoon hike along the Connecticut River: a deep brown two-piece suit with penny loafers, a checkered tie, and, oddly, a piece of white linen tossed over his shoulder like a bartender’s towel. Behind him, single file – Ari was reminded of the ibises, following them out of the little white house, and cast around to spot the birds in the trees, and although they picked out the glossy ibises easily enough, they couldn’t find the white one anywhere – came a few dozen men. Ari recognized their faces from their social media stalking and their clothes, they realized, from their ring dream, when Asclepius had shown them the making of the iron rings. Every man did indeed have an iron ring on his finger or hanging from a chain around his neck, and every man was wearing roughly the same thing as Gilbert: a deeply impractical suit or other business wear and some item of white linen. Some wore full yards of it wrapped around themselves in approximations of chitons; others had single scraps tied around their wrists or wrapped around their heads. All of them were silent as they crunched their way down the path, but judging by their expressions, they weren’t too keen on traipsing out into the middle of the woods on a day that was far too hot, even as the clouds rolled in down the river, to be called autumn.

Last in the line was Dr. Pryor. Ari fought down a snort at seeing him wrapped head to toe in a long, flowing white linen chiton, complete with a himation on top – a cloak, made of more white linen, fastened over one of his shoulders. The sight of him in anything other than a suit – although Ari supposed, judging by the other PGM members’ outfits, he probably had a suit on beneath the yards of white fabric – was absurd enough that it took Ari several seconds to notice the bundle he dragged behind him. It was also wrapped in white fabric, tied off at the top like a full garbage bag, and about the size of one, too. The underside of it was stained a dirty brown from being dragged through the woods, and the whole thing was lumpy and misshapen. Toward the front side of the bundle, where it followed Dr. Pryor’s heels as he walked, was a dark red splotch that couldn’t have been anything other than blood. Nico. Ari swallowed hard, trying to breathe through the nausea rising in their stomach.

Dr. Pryor dragged the bundle to the center of the clearing. The other men had made a circle at its outskirts, shoulder to shoulder, obscuring the proceedings from Ari’s view, and presumably from the view of any unlucky passers-by, although Ari suspected they must have been using some sort of concealment or attention-diversion spell or something, because their strange outfits and bleeding sack of white linen wouldn’t have made it out of the parking lot otherwise. Ari glanced up at Damian – they could just barely tell where he was through the thick pine boughs, and couldn’t make out any sort of expression or signal from him – then began tiptoeing around the perimeter of the circle of men, looking for an opening.

“Gentlemen,” Dr. Pryor announced, his voice unnaturally loud and clear despite the fact that, as far as Ari could tell, he was speaking in a normal tone and volume. “Xarites didomi. A meeting such as this is unusual, I know, but your curiosity and willingness to serve the gods will not go, and have not gone, unnoticed. I trust you have all purified yourselves appropriately?”

Nods and quiet assent around the circle.

“Then let us begin. Samuel, the water.”

A man with sandy brown hair, a bristly mustache, and prominent crow’s feet broke from the circle and pulled a flask from a pocket inside his blazer. Both his arms were wrapped in long strips of linen. He unwound one in long, ceremonial movements, starting from his left bicep and unwrapping down and down until it fell away from his wrist. Then he tied it around the neck of the flask, unscrewed the cap, and lowered it over the steep bank down into the river.

As he was doing this, Ari darted to the vacancy he’d left in the circle and squeezed between the men who’d been on either side of Samuel, taking care not to touch either of them. The bundle was between them and Dr. Pryor. His back was turned as he addressed the men. Ari knelt down beside the white linen bundle and worked their fingers into the knot. The fabric was pulled taut. They dug their nails in and yanked. The knot began to come loose.

“The chant, please, gentlemen,” Dr. Pryor said.

At once, Ari was at the center of a wall of sound. The men’s voices began to drone a tuneless chant, a list of meaningless syllables that sounded to Ari in their distraction like every other list of meaningless syllables they’d encountered in the Papyri. The chant was so loud and deep that Ari felt like their brain was vibrating inside their head, knocking against their skull.

I kind of hate magic.

The knot came loose, and as if the force of the chant was too great for the linen to withstand, the fabric fell away, exposing the naked form of Nico Cappelletti, curled into the fetal position. He was skinnier than he had been in his wedding photos, but not gaunt, and his mousy hair had grown out from a military crop into short, soft curls, which were stuck to his head on one side with congealing blood from a still-oozing scrape. His freckled face was frozen in a wide-eyed stare, jaw set, teeth gritted.

Ari glanced up at Damian’s tree and saw, for an instant, his face appear between the pine needles. They couldn’t hear him over the chanting, now somehow increasing in volume, but his mouth was open in a horrified gasp. Then, he disappeared into the tree again.

The force of the chanting was becoming too much for Ari to stand. Their ears burned. Their head ached. They tried to slide an arm under Nico’s body, drag him away, but their muscles were twitching like they’d just run a marathon and they could hardly bend down without falling over. The droning grew louder. Instinctively, Ari clapped their hands over their ears. Their head felt oversized, swollen, about to burst.

Is this how Damian’s eye felt?

Something changed.

Ari couldn’t tell what, at first. The chanting was just as loud as ever, but it had shaped itself into something musical. Comprehensible. Although the words weren’t English, and might not have been words at all, Ari understood them nonetheless, as if the meaning were being beamed directly into their brain.

“Mithras, lord Mithras, give me over to an immortal birth, an immortal rebirth, beginning with the immortal spirit, and the immortal water, and the immortal blood of a mortal slain before his time, and breathe your spirit into me, Mithras, so I may see the world with immortal eyes.”

Over and over they repeated this, and although their voices had been a dull monotone minutes before, and if pressed Ari was pretty certain they were still a dull monotone, harmonies seemed to rise and fall in their words. They sounded like a church choir. The force of their voices enveloped Ari, calling to them, tugging on something deep in their mind, or their soul, and they had to physically put a hand over their mouth to keep from joining in.

Nico’s body began to levitate.

Ari gaped in awe. The chant flowed around them, seeming to buoy Nico’s body upward as if he was floating in the river. They grabbed at his body, trying to drag him back down to earth, but their hands moved slowly, thickly, just as they had during their Asclepius dreams. Nico, still in the fetal position, rose until his head was about six feet off the ground.

Across the clearing, Damian dropped to the ground. None of the men seemed to notice. Most of their eyes were closed. Ari, struggling to close a hand around Nico’s ankle, felt the world slow down to meet their sluggish body.

Damian unzipped the hiking pack.

Dr. Pryor stepped forward, into the very center of the clearing, barely six inches from Ari.

Damian dug out as many pipes as his arms could hold, not bothering to look at the names inscribed on them.

Dr. Pryor produced a long black iron spike wrapped in linen from within his sleeve.

Damian rushed to the riverbank.

In one fluid motion, Dr. Pryor unwrapped the spike with one hand, yanked Nico’s head backward with the other, and drew the sharp-edged spike across Nico’s throat.

Damian hurled the pipes into the water and turned back to the clearing just in time to watch his brother die.

Thick, dark blood dripped from Nico’s throat onto Dr. Pryor’s hands. His head lolled back, his eyes still frozen in shock and fear, the same expression they must have been frozen in for months, and his body dropped to the ground, making a sickening thud as it hit the dirt. Dr. Pryor smiled, a thin, triumphant smile, knelt down, and plunged his hands into Nico’s bleeding neck. He moved so quickly that Ari jumped back and realized that they, too, were moving at their normal speed. The chanting had stopped, and most of the members of the PGM were looking around at each other, confused. Some were swaying woozily on their feet as if the effort of chanting had exhausted them completely. A few weren’t moving at all.

Dr. Pryor was smearing Nico’s blood across his face and chiton, leaving dark red streaks behind. A pool of blood had spread around the body, and Dr. Pryor scooped it from the dirt and rubbed it over his arms, his shoulders, his neck. He pulled aside the chiton and rubbed blood on his suit, too, pale grey with an eggplant purple waistcoat. He didn’t stop until every inch of his clothing had been stained red-brown. Ari wrenched their gaze away from the professor covered in blood and sought out Damian. He hadn’t moved from his spot by the riverbank, staring at Nico’s dead body. A wet tear track ran from his eye to his chin, and his shoulders were convulsing with sobs. The entire flock of glossy ibises had gathered around him, their feathers fluffed, their heads pressed against his knees and shins. Damian gave no sign that he had noticed the birds. Ari stepped toward the gap in the circle of men, to try to get to Damian, to comfort him, to hide him, something –

Dr. Pryor stood up, blocking Ari’s path to Damian, and asked, “Well, gentlemen? Why have we stopped chanting?”

“I don’t know,” ventured Gilbert, whose white-blond hair glowed in the last of the fading light.

“George isn’t moving,” said someone else.

“Neither is Hector.”

“Nor Chester.”

Dr. Pryor furrowed his brow and glanced around the clearing. Ari held their breath and ducked their head, praying he hadn’t caught sight of their pupils. His gaze skipped right over them – and, oddly, it skipped right over Damian too. The ibises had tightened their circle around him, and though Damian’s sobbing was audible from where Ari stood, none of the men appeared to hear it.

“Sabotage, most likely,” Dr. Pryor said. “No matter. We can hunt down anyone foolish enough to disrupt our rites in a moment. The first part of the ritual is finished. Samuel, bring me the water.”

Dutifully, Samuel pulled the flask from the river and handed it to Dr. Pryor, who upended it over his head. Although it couldn’t have been more than a pint of river water, it poured over his entire body like a wave, washing the blood away with it. Within moments, Dr. Pryor was clean and gleaming white again, and the bloody water soaked into the earth, vanishing completely in moments more until the ground was dry and dusty again. Other than Nico’s limp body, curled unnaturally in the dirt, it looked as if nothing had ever happened.

“Let us test it, shall we?” Dr. Pryor said, offering Gilbert the iron spike. Gilbert swallowed hard, then took it.

“Are you certain I should –”

“Do it,” Dr. Pryor snapped, tilting his head back and exposing his neck.

Grimacing, Gilbert drew the spike across Dr. Pryor’s throat. A line of blood blossomed. Before it had time to drip, Dr. Pryor’s eyes blazed with the same molten-metal glow that Damian’s had when Hermes possessed him. The blood rolled backward into his neck. The flesh knit itself together, glowed white-hot, then faded. Dr. Pryor stood, unharmed, and smiled.

“Gentlemen, we have done it. Immortality is ours.” He turned a full circle, displaying his uncut throat, and said, “So. Who’s next?”

“What about them?” Gilbert asked, indicating the men – George, Hector, and Chester, evidently – who Damian had frozen, mouths open, mid-chant.

Dr. Pryor waved a dismissive hand. “Go find whomever has so clumsily attempted to sabotage our proceedings if you’re so concerned. The ritual can proceed without their voices.”

Gilbert nodded awkwardly and bowed his head, chastened. He retook his place in the circle but made no attempt to search for a saboteur.

“May I go next?” Samuel asked.

Dr. Pryor smiled indulgently, like a grandfather listening to his grandson’s nonsense story. “Of course. Allow me to be your water-bearer.”

“Who will provide the blood?” snapped an older man with a linen sash.

“Why, our sacrifice, of course,” Dr. Pryor replied, gesturing to Nico’s corpse.

“I wouldn’t be so certain, Edward.” The older man stalked over to the center of the clearing and turned Nico over with the toe of his wingtip shoe. “Look. You’ve drained him completely.”

Sure enough, Nico’s skin had turned completely white, and the blood that had pooled underneath him had disappeared with the water, soaked into the ground and vanished.

“I… I’m afraid I don’t understand. The instructions clearly indicate the ritual requires the blood of one untimely slain.”

“One victim for each immortal made, must be,” the older man grumbled.

“Well, I certainly won’t give myself up so Samuel can spend the rest of his life fetching water and studying fucking Prodicus,” sneered a middle-aged man wearing a bow tie and a scrap of white linen wrapped around his head. “You promised us all eternal life, Edward.”

An outcry rose up around the men as more and more of them insisted that Dr. Pryor explain himself, find more victims, share his magical self-healing neck abilities with the rest of them somehow. Taking advantage of the confusion, Ari made a break across the clearing until they were by Damian’s side.

“He’s dead,” Damian said.

“I’m so sorry,” they whispered. “I couldn’t – I didn’t –”

“He’s dead,” Damian repeated, his hollow voice coming out at a normal volume. Ari shot a panicked glance over to the assembly, but they were closing in on Dr. Pryor. Not one of them was paying Damian any attention. Whatever the ibises were doing, it was working.

“I know. I’m so sorry. I tried. But being there in the middle of all that – I couldn’t move – it just happened before I could even… I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry, Damian.”

“He’s dead.”

Ari sighed. “I don’t think there’s anything I can do for you right now,” they said. “But after this is over, whatever you need, I’ll try, okay?”

They reached into Damian’s hiking pack and rummaged around for more pipes, wincing at every clank and rattle they made, although the arguing from among the men was reaching a fever pitch. They squinted in the fading light, trying to read the names, before deciding it didn’t matter and closing their hand around the first one they could find to hurl into the river.

The sun dipped completely below the horizon.

The arguing stopped.

“Boys,” said a voice – the man with the bow tie, Ari realized, mostly because he was making direct eye contact with them, “I think we’ve found our saboteur.”

Ari grimaced as all heads turned towards them. I get that Invisibility Paste is an extremely cool spell and all, but I really, really wish I didn’t have to be naked for this.

“Stay back,” Ari said, brandishing the pipe at Bow Tie Guy and attempting to look as threatening as someone who is naked and terrified can look. “You’re not the only people who know how to do magic.”

Bow Tie Guy raised an eyebrow and stepped forward toward them. Instinctively, Ari stepped back, closer to the steep bank of the river. “Maybe not,” said Bow Tie Guy, “but there’s one of you and – well, minus our unfortunate friends – about forty-seven of us. I’d suggest not trying anything, young lady.”

“Quincy, don’t be barbaric. They’re not a young lady,” Dr. Pryor said, and the heads swiveled back towards him. “They’re a student of mine. Welcome, Ariste.”

“Um.”

Dr. Pryor strode towards them, and the crowd parted for him. Ari backed up another step. “It’s terribly unfortunate that you became involved with the Cappelletti family, Ariste. I’m afraid their mediocrity has, to some extent, rubbed off on you. Where is Damian? I don’t believe you would have come here alone.”

Oh, no. They got Nico. They’re not getting Damian, too.

“He’s long gone,” Ari said, swallowing hard between their words, holding Dr. Pryor’s gaze, praying they could withstand his lie detection skills this last time. “Ran away when the ritual started. Left me here alone. I was only trying to help save Nico.”

“How sweet,” Dr. Pryor deadpanned. He stepped forward, almost nose to nose with them now, both of them half a breath from the river’s edge. “Well, I don’t need to tell you that I wish this could have ended differently. You could have been in charge of these men one day, you know. You have the talent for it. And the skill, the dedication, the inborn desperation to prove yourself that people like this –” He waved a hand at the rest of the PGM. “– cannot imitate no matter how hard they try. They’ve had it too easy. But you… you have such potential, Ariste. I’ve always said you’d be wasted outside the classroom, doing archaeology, dirtying your hands. Yet here we are. It’s a shame to see you wasting that beautiful potential after all, dying so another man can live forever.”

“I mean. I don’t want me to die either. You don’t have to do this.”

Dr. Pryor shrugged. “I’m afraid I do. Just because these men cannot kill me does not mean they cannot make my eternal life very, very uncomfortable.”

I was only trying to help save Nico. This isn’t fair. None of this is fair. I should’ve just called the cops on Damian that day in the alley and hooked up with Greg and gone off to grad school next year and forgotten any of this ever happened and joined the PGM properly and spent the rest of my life going to dinner with Dr. Pryor and never thinking twice about whether I deserve, whether anyone deserves, to use magic. I should’ve gone through the magic portal and never looked back.

Okay, but. I wasn’t only trying to help save Nico, though.

“Can I ask you one question? Before you kill me?”

“Of course. You’ve more than earned it.”

“Where’s Penny?”

A smile tugged at the corners of Dr. Pryor’s mouth. “At home, just where Damian Cappelletti – and you, I’m now realizing – left her. She was becoming discontented with our arrangement, asking questions, insisting that I propose to her. The Papyri don’t warn that their love spells may be too powerful for a man’s comfort, although I intend to make a note of that for future users. To be frank, Ariste, I wouldn’t have been able to do that to the woman I love, but now that you’ve done it for me, I rather like the peace and quiet around the house. You did me a favor.”

“Fuck you.” It was out of Ari’s mouth before they knew what they were saying. The words felt unfamiliar on their lips. They tried it again. “Fuck you. How dare you. How fucking dare you say that about her. Fuck you.”

I get why Damian swears so much. This feels great.

“Come now, Ariste, let’s not get hostile. It will be easier for everyone if we do this calmly. Be a proper Greek man for me, now. Let me just take that.”

Dr. Pryor reached for the pipe that Ari had forgotten they were holding. They glanced down at it and saw the name scrawled in the middle in permanent marker, in their own handwriting.

EDUARDOS HAMISSOS PRIOR.

Dr. Pryor’s hand closed around the pipe, and Ari let go of it. “It’s all yours, professor,” they said.

Then, bracing both hands against Dr. Pryor’s shoulders, they shoved him backward as hard as they could.

His arms wheeled in the air as first his left foot, then his right, left solid ground. He tipped back over the riverbank and plummeted over the edge, further than Ari thought possible, arcing as if they had thrown him, toward the center of the river.

He plunged into the water with a loud splash, taking the pipe with him. The moment the metal touched the river, Dr. Pryor’s body locked up, freezing in place, his head tipped back for air, his eyes wide. He looked just like Nico. For a moment, his face bobbed above the surface, his monkish hair turning from grey to black as the water saturated it. Then, dragged downward by his clothes, soaked through and heavy with water, Dr. Pryor disappeared under the Connecticut River.

Ari stared at the ripples where his head had gone under. They radiated outward until the current of the river carried them away, and if they hadn’t still been staring at the same spot, watching it until tears pricked at their eyes and they had to blink, Ari wouldn’t have been able to tell where Dr. Pryor had fallen.

They turned back to face the rest of the PGM, who were staring at them in shocked silence. It only lasted for a moment. Bow Tie Guy – Quincy – rolled his eyes.

“Was that your only plan?” he asked. “What did Edward say your name was? Ariste? Would someone please kill Ariste so we can all fight about who gets to be immortal next?”

The men, stirred to action, sprang forward and began to close in on Ari, several concentric circles of men in suits and scraps of linen, their hands outstretched. Ari raised a fist, not that they had any idea what they would do with it, but a burst of white clouded their vision. The white ibis was standing in front of them, its wings spread. It glanced back at them, beady-eyed and inscrutable as ever, bobbed its head, and opened its beak.

“Te phulakso,” it said. I will protect you.

“What?”

The ibis’ legs began to stretch, and its body warped, shedding feathers and growing arms. Its head grew too, although it remained the same, white-feathered and knife-billed. The transformation took place in seconds, so by the time the men were upon Ari, there was a tall, dark-skinned man with the head of an ibis standing between them and the PGM. The ibis-man turned back to Ari once more with a smile and dragged a hand across their eyes. Ari’s vision swam and everything went white.

Might Makes Write and all the writing shared herein are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.