Demeter’s Tablet:

Chapter 2

Chapter Two

We left the hedonism of the baths and headed for holy ground. Mátyás-templom, or Matthias Church, sat atop a hill aptly named Buda Castle Hill. Its turrets stretched up into the darkened night. On the roof, colorful tiles gleamed in the moonlight. The architecture was a marriage between Ottoman mosque, Jesuit temple, and Roman Catholic church.

“Here, put this on.” Loren handed me a lace mask.

I was still in a bikini and heeled sandals from the baths. We’d slipped on shear cover-ups before we’d hopped in the car. The mask would cover more of my face than the swimsuit covered my body.

“Why do I need a mask?” I eyed it suspiciously. It reminded me of a party I’d gone to in Paris thrown by the Marquis de Sade.

“It’s kind of a costume party.”

Loren and I had only known each other for two months. But a lot had gone down in that time—life and death situations, breakups, makeups, a little mass g******e. We’d seen each other at our best and our worst. We’d had a chance to learn each other’s habits and quirks well. So when she didn’t meet my eye, I knew something was up.

“Loren?” I elongated the two syllables of her name.

She turned around, exasperated. “All right, it’s a s*x party.”

“Loren!” I stomped my foot against the car’s floorboard, eyeing the door handle.

“We’re just going to go in, find Baros, question him, and get out.”

“Loren . . .” I sighed, turning away to look out the window at the cityscape passing us by.

“It’s either this or we go to a museum and try to decipher the writings of the Eleusinian Mysteries on pottery.”

I grimaced. I loved museums, but she knew I hated riddles. Even more, I didn’t want to sit in my room moping, or worse, go back to the baths and be hit on by Millennials. I needed something to do. If this guy, Baros, was a quick route to finding out more about the mysterious cult, I supposed I could risk my virtue for one night.

“Are you sure you’re not trying to get back with this guy?” I asked.

“No.” She didn’t meet my eye. “Baros and I are over. I’m here for work, not play. Besides, you’re still in that mourning period where all guys are jerks. Since I’m your best friend, I won’t break the girl code.”

Loren had taken the title of my best friend shortly after we’d met. I hadn’t bestowed it upon her—she’d just claimed it. Like I was a newfound land and she’d staked her flagpole in my chest. I didn’t mind. It was nice having someone watch my back.

“But a s*x party,” I whined. I wasn’t a prude. I’d been to orgies before. I was alive during the heyday of Rome. Had been present and accounted for during the writing of the Kama Sutra. And for those romance readers who got a kick out of the new wave of b**m books? Yeah, they should have lived through the Victorian age.

Although I didn’t have a youth, I did my fair share of s****l rebelling. But that was all before I’d met . . . him. He who should not be named while I was trying to get my groove back. I fidgeted with the mask on my face. The lace itched my cheek.

“You don’t have to do anything,” Loren said. “And if anybody makes a pass at you, you can just break their mortal fingers. Everything will be fine. This is the best lead we’ve got to learn about the Eleusinian Mysteries.”

While they’d been together, Loren’s ex-lover, Leonidas Baros, had implied he knew the mysteries of the ancient cult. The rumors of the cult went back for hundreds of years. It invited all into its ranks, including rich and poor, male and female, philosophers and slaves. But the rituals the initiates undertook to get into the cult had never been revealed. All any outsiders knew was that, once accepted, the initiates were promised everlasting life, riches, and knowledge.

Immortals were the only beings on this earth gifted with a natural long life. There were others who were given or took immortality through supernatural means. Just recently, I’d learned that the natural privilege could be stolen.

An ancient tribe had killed two of my kind and drank an elixir concocted from their bones. The concoction had served to prolong the humans’ lives. The adults of that cult had been slain, but their children remained alive. For now.

My gut clenched at the thought that it could be happening again, had happened again. If there was something I could do to stop it now, then what was a little grope and poke along the way?

Loren and I got out of the car. We came to stand in line behind a slow-moving group of . . . creatively-clad bodies. Instead of their Sunday best, these people were wearing the barest frills on top of their birthday suits. One scantily-clad young woman caught my eye.

“But I was told to come,” she said. Her hands waved animatedly. “I’m with College Buzz, the website. I’m here to give the party a rating and review for my blog. Hundreds of coeds visit my site daily.”

The doorman shook his head, his gaze impassive and impenetrable behind dark shades.

“But I was given an invitation.” She held up a cream-colored paper with gold-embossed lettering. There was a depiction of a feather surrounded by wheat on the piece of paper.

Something pulled at the corners of my mind—had I seen that symbol before and it meant something to me?

The doorman barely gave it a glance. “There were no invitations sent out.”

The young woman stood and glared at him for a few more minutes. “Lamest party ever. I’m totally going to Yelp about this.” Then she turned and stormed away, crumpling the invitation and letting it slide to the ground.

“Next,” shouted the doorman.

Loren stepped up and whispered something to him. He gave her a once-over and then stepped aside. Loren tugged my hand, and we slipped past the velvet ropes into the church.

“What did you say to him?” I asked.

“Lenny always has a password.”

“What’s the password?”

She turned to me with a grave look. “If I told you, I’d have to kill you.”

I quirked an eyebrow, and she laughed. But she didn’t give over the secret code. I turned my attention to our surroundings.

I’d been inside this church many times over the years. By over the years, I meant centuries. I’d visited when it was first built. Watched as they built the high tower and hung the bell. I’d been in the chapel when the people hid the Madonna and child statue from the invading Ottomans. And now, hundreds of years after the Turks had fled the city and the mosque had become a church again, mother and son stood unveiled inside the chapel to see all the sin that had been let into the doors in the night.

This Leonidas Baros must indeed be rich, or at least well connected, if his pockets were deep enough to turn a holy church into a den of sin. People sat with bare asses in the pews and milled about with strong drinks. Some made out near the walls with murals depicting the Crusaders defeating the Turks. On the raised platform was where the real action went down.

A golden-haired man lay in a pile of women. Most of the women were nude or nearly there. The blond Adonis was decked out in his birthday glory while the women gyrated around him. One woman captured his lush lips. It looked as though he devoured her with his kisses. When she came up for air, another took her place, and he gulped her down, too. On and on it went. He never seemed to tire, yet the women appeared to lose their breath and needed a break from his embraces. Still, they kept going back for more.

He chuckled as one woman’s eyes fluttered closed after a kiss and she appeared to pass out. He looked up in search of another. That was when his gaze caught mine.

I watched his nostrils flare as he surveyed me from head to toe. His gaze was proprietary. He traced the outline of my curves like he’d taken the route before. When his gaze found mine again, his eyes twinkled. No, the irises sparked like a lit match. Or a crack of thunder.

He crooked a finger in my direction, beckoning me closer. His lips moved, forming words I couldn’t hear. But then a voice resonated inside my head. Was it his? I felt hypnotized. My feet took a step toward him without my permission. I halted my body and backed away.

He threw his head back and chuckled. A woman took that opportunity to catch his lips, drinking deeply from him. I had the urge to march over there for a taste of my own. But I didn’t.

His lips stayed locked on the woman kissing him, but his thunderous gaze found mine again. He winked at me while his mouth worked her over. Somehow, that gesture communicated that it wasn’t over between us. That it was, in fact, the middle. But there had been no beginning. Had there?

This man was just that—a man, a mortal. I knew every one of my kind. There were only ten of us left now. No one new had been born, or so we thought. I didn’t remember my birth or my parents . . . if I even had any? There was one theory that Immortals sprang into being fully formed. But this man didn’t give me a tingle or a twitch of the weakness that came when I was in the presence of one of my race.

He could be something else. There were witches and wizards in this world—mortals who could manipulate the energy of ley lines. There were also demons—mortals who gave up their souls to demigods. There were shifters; humans born with an animal soul. There were even honest-to-god knights—a group of men entrusted with safeguarding magical relics. Their exposure to that magic granted them certain powers and lengthened their lifelines. But I knew those men. I did my best to avoid them and keep them from my treasures, as they avoided me to keep their treasures from my admittedly grabby hands.

I couldn’t tell those meta-humans from an ordinary one. At least not on sight. They had to reveal themselves to me. By looking at him, this guy didn’t come off as wizard, demon, shifter, or knight.

Still, the prickles at my neck rose from intuition. There might be something magical about him. But I wouldn’t find out now. I turned away from the libertine and found Loren moving steadily toward more velvet ropes.

She leaned in and whispered something to the man at the door. He looked her up and down and then removed the link. We were let through the ropes and led into an opulent room I hadn’t seen in the church before.

A tall man with broad shoulders framed the picture window that looked onto the market below. Leonidas Baros looked like he’d walked out of an Olympic stadium. His cheeks were chiseled. His dark hair fell in a mass of curls around his face. His body was smooth, polished marble. All he needed was a sword and shield to be ready to take on any opponent who met him in the arena.

I could see the appeal. When I looked at Loren, it was obvious she was having second thoughts about her decision to end their relationship, or whatever had been between them. She appeared to want another helping of Baros.

“Lenny,” Loren purred in what I was coming to know as her s*x-kitten voice. She’d gotten us drinks at the bar last night with that tone, out of a speeding ticket while we were in the south of France, and into an upgrade on our flight to Hungary.

“Lolo.”

The two embraced with a kiss on each cheek followed by a wet smack on the mouth that lingered longer than was friendly.

“It’s been too long,” Baros said, perusing her body. “The last time I saw you was at the end of a blade.”

“That may have been because your own sword was sheathed in someone else’s scabbard.”

“Had I known you cared, you would’ve been given exclusive use of my entire arsenal of weapons.” Baros’s large hand glided down Loren’s barely covered body.

“So maybe you should make me a permanent fixture?” Loren said.

She leaned in as Baros closed the last inch of distance between them. I cleared my throat to remind Baros that I was in the room and to remind Loren that we had another purpose here besides having her loins girded. Neither of them paid me any heed.

“Loren Van Alst, are you proposing to me?” Baros’s lip quirked up.

Loren’s face twisted in horror. “What? God, no.”

Baros chuckled, completely undaunted at the rejection. He lifted his hand and ran his fingers through Loren’s golden locks. A copper ring on Baros’s right hand caught my eye. It was a small ring, likely a woman’s. It sat above the knuckle of his pinky finger. It was the Greek lettering that interested me.

His hand went over his heart, giving me another glance of the ring and allowing me to read the inscription. To many, it would look like chicken scratch. But to me, someone who could read every language ever written, the message was clear.

“Then to what do I owe this unexpected reunion?” Baros asked.

“You invited me to solve a mystery once,” Loren said. “You said if I passed the tests, I’d be granted something beyond my wildest dreams.”

“Did I say that?”

“You did,” Loren said. “You said I was just the type of person they were looking for.”

“Who’s they?” I piped in.

They turned to me. Loren gave me a look that said, Chill, I got this.

Baros gave me a look that suggested he was contemplating whether I was friend or foe.

“Dr. Nia Rivers.” I extended my hand.

Baros glanced at it suspiciously. Instead of offering his own, he crossed his hands over his massive chest with the ring facing outward. “Doctor of what?”

“Antiquities,” I said. “I have a love of Greek history, like the ring you have on your finger. It looks to be from around 600 BCE.”

“It’s from 500 BCE.” Baros grinned. “You have a good eye.”

“It was stolen from Greece during the Nazi occupation of the Second World War, along with a host of other artifacts.”

“Indeed it was. Although, they weren’t the first scum to trample my homeland and take what wasn’t theirs.” Baros admired his hand. “I took it from the hand of a Nazi.”

I got the feeling he meant that quite literally—that the Nazi’s hand had come along with the ring.

“Many things were stolen from my people,” Baros continued. “I have spent a lifetime recovering what was lost.”

“You’re an archaeologist?” I asked.

“No.” He grinned.

“Ex-military?” I guessed.

“I never retired. War and conflict is a constant companion in this life. Once evil comes to rest, I suppose that is when I will, too.”

His philosophy put a tick in his favor, but thieving was still thieving. “And now that you’ve recovered the ring, you’ll return it to its rightful owner, I assume?”

“I have,” Baros said.

“You’re not the Greek government.”

“Not anymore, no.”

“That ring is over two thousand years old. It belongs in a museum.” I felt the hackles on my back rising. That often happened before I found myself in a fight.

“Trust me,” Baros said, making a fist with his ringed hand. “It’s in the right hands.”

Loren stepped between us, blocking my view of the large man and looking pointedly at me while she spoke to him. “Lenny, would you excuse us for just a second?”

She ushered me over to the side of the room, out of earshot.

“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she said, “but you said you wanted to solve the mystery, not start a fight.”

“That ring should be in a museum.”

“You should be in a museum.” Loren took a breath and reached her palms out to me in a move I’d often done toward her when I needed to find patience. She took a deep breath and then tried again. “Do you want to see if this cult is legit or not? If not, it’s cool. Because, trust me, I’d rather go skinny-dipping in the baths with Lenny over there.”

We turned back to Leonidas Baros, whose back was turned. He leaned out the door, speaking to someone on the other side.

“Or better yet,” Loren said, looking at his ass, “mattress-diving.”

“We could just take it,” I said, looking at his hand, which rested on the inside of the doorframe. The ring on his pinky gleamed at me, begging to be brought to a glass case in an air-controlled museum. “You said yourself these mortals can’t stop me.”

Loren looked at me with her eyebrows raised. “And I’m the one who’s supposed to be the criminal?”

“Excuse me, ladies?” Baros shut the door and walked over to the desk. Reaching into a drawer, he pulled out two envelopes. “It is my great pleasure to inform you that you are invited to the Spring Eleusinian Mysteries.”

I looked down at the envelope he presented. It was cream with gold-embossed letters, much like the one the young woman who was denied entrance had discarded. Only this one had the depiction of a lightning bolt within a crown of wheat decorating the top. Down on the desk was a stack of black and white papers with similar lettering and images. But that image, like the young woman’s, had a feather. On the screen of the open laptop, a browser displayed the same feathered image on what looked like a message board.

Baros slammed the laptop closed and then placed the computer onto the stack of papers. His gaze narrowed on me, but I wouldn’t be cowed for snooping. It was how I made my living.

“Why the change of heart?” I asked.

“Does it matter?” Loren said. “We’re in.”

“The initiation will take place a week from now on the spring solstice,” Baros said. “If you are found worthy, all will be revealed to you. And Loren, I do hope you are found worthy.”

Loren grinned at him. I felt like I was about to be in the middle of their private orgy. But Baros shook himself.

“I wish I had time to play, but duty calls.” He motioned us toward the door with his right hand. “I hope you ladies will enjoy the rest of the church services.”

“Wait.” I planted my feet, motioning to the ancient artifact on his finger. “Name your price for the ring.”

“It’s not for sale.” Baros’s expression was harder than the metal of the ring.

“That’s too bad, because I’m not leaving here without it.”

Beside me, Loren groaned, and not in the good way.