Read Online Furies by D. L. Johnstone - Free Book Online Page B

softened into a chalky paste as they mixed with the oils on his skin. He smelled his fingertips – the distinctive, metallic tang of blood.

 

     
    The villa was as it had been, all their fine furniture, beautiful artworks and splendid tapestries in their proper places once more. Aculeo walked down the dark marble hallway. It was odd – he could hear the sounds of people bustling about and talking to one another, but he couldn’t actually see anyone. In fact, every room he came to was empty yet still echoed with voices. Where is everyone?
    When he reached the garden wall at the rear of the villa he stepped through the Himmatean marble archway. The air was warm and sweet, tinged with the spicy perfume of the hyacinths and mock orange trees that bordered the impluvium. There he saw Titiana standing next to the fountain. He ran forward to take her in his arms. She didn’t move. He pulled back slightly at the hardness of her cheek pressing against his, her lips cold and unyielding as he tried to kiss them.   
    He took her hands in his anyway, squeezed them tight. “I’ve missed you so much,” he said. “Did you just arrive?”
    Titiana gave no response, though Aculeo sensed she did not want to be there at all. “Everything will be better now, on my oath. We’re together again. Where’s Atellus?”
    Titiana remained silent and still as a statue, but she was clearly troubled. Something was amiss. Aculeo called for the boy. He could hear nothing but the breeze and birdsongs in the trees.
    “You didn’t leave him back in Rome, did you?” But he knew even as he asked that wasn’t the answer. “Titiana, you’re worrying me. Where’s our son?”
    Titiana’s unsettling gaze fixed upon a narrow path at the far end of the garden leading deep into the flowered shrubs. Aculeo released her hands and stepped onto the path. The path quickly narrowed with overgrown foliage. “Atellus?” he called. Still no answer. He pushed the branches aside, ignoring the thorns that pricked at his arms and legs, moving deeper and deeper into the untamed shrubbery until at last he reached the garden’s back wall.
    There was no sign of the boy. The ground suddenly rolled and fell like a great wave beneath his feet. Aculeo clutched at the wall to catch himself and felt the bricks start to crumble and come apart beneath his fingers. He stepped back just as the wall gave way and watched the bricks and the pathway’s paving stones topple down a sheer cliff that led to the sea far below, where waves pounded and crashed against a wild shore.
    And then he spotted a small figure tumbling down the cliff’s face as well, breaking into pieces as it tumbled to the sea …No!
    “You’re not an easy man to find,” said a man’s voice.
    Aculeo awoke with a start. Two figures stood in shadow at the foot of his bed. He blinked up at them, utterly disoriented. Gellius and Bitucus, he realized. They appeared almost amused.
    “My friends can still find me easily enough,” he muttered. H is head was throbbing, still clouded with wine, his mouth dry as sand.
    “I’m surprised you have any friends left,” Gellius said.
    “I’ve all I need. Though I could use a new slave. The current one seems too willing to let any riffraff cross my doorstep. ”
    “I tried to stop them, Master,” Xanthias said from the doorstep.
    “Don’t go blaming the poor fellow,” Gellius chided. “We didn’t give him much choice.”
    “Nice place,” Bitucus said, looking about the cramped, dingy little closet of a room.
    “We could schedule a tour if you’d like,” Aculeo said. “It might occupy a full thirty seconds if we took the scenic route.”
    “Another time.”
    “Where’s Trogus?”
    “Waiting in the street,” Gellius said. “Any luck finding Iovinus?”
    “Not really.” Aculeo told them of his disturbing encounter with Pesach at the fullery the prior day.
    “It’s worse even than I could have imagined,” Gellius said, clearly upset. “To