Machiavelli had allowed no one to get close to him for almost half a millennium. He’d been in his early thirties when he’d married Marietta Corsini in 1502, and over the next twenty-five years they’d had six children together. But when he had become immortal, he’d been forced to “die” to conceal the truth that he would never age. The Dark Elder who had made him immortal hadn’t told him at the time that such a ruse would be necessary. Leaving Marietta and the children had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done, but he’d looked out for them for the remainder of their lives. He’d also watched them age, sicken and perish: this was the dark side of the gift of immortality. When Marietta finally died, he’d attended her funeral in disguise and then visited her grave in the dead of night to pay his last respects and swear an oath that he would always honor his marriage vows and never remarry. He’d kept that promise.

Machiavelli strode down a wood-paneled corridor and pressed his palm against a bronze bust of Cesare Borgia on a small circular table. “Dell’arte della guerra,” he said aloud, voice echoing in the empty hallway. There was a click and a section of the wall slid back to reveal Niccolò’s private office. When he stepped into the room, the door hissed shut and recessed lights came to glowing life. He’d had a room like this-a private, secret place-in every home he’d ever lived in. This was his domain. During their life together, Marietta hadn’t been allowed access to his private chambers in any of their homes, and over the centuries even Dagon had never stepped into one. In years past the room would have been accessed via secret passages and protected with spiked and bladed traps, and later with many locks and intricate hand-carved keys. Now, in the twenty-first century, it was safe within a bombproof casing and secured with palm-and voice-print technology.

The room was a perfect soundproof cube. There were no windows, and two walls were covered with books he had collected down through the centuries. Leather bindings stood beside dusty buckram and yellowed vellum were shelved side by side. Rolled parchment and stitched hide rested alongside brightly colored modern paperbacks. And all the books, in one way or another, had to do with the Elders. Absently, he straightened a four-thousand-year-old Akkadian tablet, pushing it back on top of a printout from a mythology Web site. Whereas Flamel was obsessed with preventing the Dark Elders from returning to this world and Dee was equally determined that the world return to its masters, Machiavelli focused on discovering the truth behind the enigmatic rulers of the ancient earth. One of the lessons he had learned in the court of the Medici was that power came from knowledge, so he had become determined to discover the Elders’ secrets.