The Curse - Book 1 (Completed)

Prologue: 1527

They say it was the summer of 1527 when the world as we know it began.

Venice, at the time known as La Serenissima, was at the height of its power, being one of the world's three cultural epicenters, along with Rome and Constantinople.
The wealth that rich Venetian families acquired through international trade was immeasurable. For many years, from Venice to Alexandria, Gibraltar to Cyprus, skilled merchants controlled the commerce of the then known world. Along with them, shipping company owners, architects, and cardinals attained inconceivable profits. As their power and fortune grew, Venice grew with them and became the Jewel of the Adriatic Sea.

Word describing this city best at the time would probably be boundless. No limits existed for greedy and power-thirsty Venetian patricians. For them, no palace was luxurious enough, no land was vast enough, and no feast was long enough.
A famous writer of the era wrote: "Seeing Venice, one thought inevitably comes to mind of any human being - Lawless chaos".

And he was right.

No laws existed that could be interpreted to detriment of the rich. One couldn't find a single priest eager to refuse performing an absolution of sins when a couple of silver coins appeared in a sinful hand of an affluent man. The so-called social elite lived in the purest form of hedonism. The only thing exceeding their wealth was their narcissism and thirst for excitement, pleasure and blood.

Neither respecting manmade laws nor obeying religious commandments was important at the time, since one could ease God's anger and save their soul with merely a handful of silver coins.

Allegedly, even a secret ring existed, whose members held the highest positions in their communities. They gathered from time to time in a prison called Prigioni nuove. Every Sunday they went from the pompous Doge's Palace over the famous Bridge of Sighs down to dungeon's twilights of the prison.

There is a story handed down that the ring edified their own Prey Room. No evidence of its existence have ever been found, but there were various rumors circling around Venice describing such a room. It was said that a giant pool was located in the center of the room. The pool, however, was anything but a normal pool. Having been built exactly on sea level, it was just a hole in the ground. An open mouth connecting the Prey Room with the untamable currents flowing under Venice's palaces.

The most remarkable feature of the Prey Room were three Aztec figures standing on arches in a circle around the pool. If the rumors were true, they were the first ones shipped from the new world to Italy.

The ring members, having already witnessed thousands of child sacrifices in the temple of Tlaloc in Tenochtitlán, enjoyed macabre scenes occurring before their eyes in the Prey Room.

Their faces would flicker in the torch-light while virgins danced at their feet. Deprived of their clothes and under the influence of strong drugs they danced up to the moment when a masked man would emerge from the shadows behind them.

Then one after another, they were slowly decapitated by the ring members. Their bodies would fall into the pool and were washed away immediately by strong currents.

Each clansman stood silently in the shadows, holding a blade in his hand, waiting for his turn to put an end to the life of one of the virgins. Until today, the exact members of the ring have never been identified as they all wore contemporary Venetian masks, keeping their greedy faces hidden behind a frozen grimace.

Sacrifices were very common at the time. Even the pope Alexander VI of the house of Borgia, amongst the richest and most corrupt houses in the Italian Kingdom, was known to enjoy performing sacrificial rituals. He was also known to have had a soft spot for young innocent flesh when it came to sexual relations. Even though Venice was deeply opposed to Alexander in a political sense, due to his constant efforts to integrate Venice into Rome's fiefdom, they approved of his unethical lifestyle and considered him their guiding figure.

Alexander's perverse desires were insatiable. Rumor had it he even had a pact with the devil himself. When he passed away, his body rotted away within days, something many folks saw as supporting evidence to the assumption. Others, however, dismissed the idea and attributed the swift rotting to high temperatures of that time.

When Alexander would order a hunt on women rumored to be witches, nobody questioned his motives as all Venetians desired to demolish the lower layers of their society. It was a good opportunity to clean the streets of everything Venetians saw as unworthy to waste their air on.

When he would accuse a person of practicing witchcraft, their execution was a matter of only a few merciless hours.

It wasn't only the witches they slaughtered, though. They killed off everybody who did not fit into their universe of profuseness. But behind the affluent frozen grimaces and golden cloths, they were the ones spreading the decaying odor of their beggarly souls.

It was atmospheres like these that Luther felt most comfortable in. The Catholic Church that was to be divided was not the reason Luther came to Venice. He came to find an old acquaintance. But he enjoyed the lucky twist of fate.

For him, every war, especially one of religious nature, was a very welcomed fortune. Not because the practitioners of Catholicism bothered Luther - they were too far away from being considered his worthy enemies - but rather because he strongly resented the figure of their worship. Nobody could blame him. Luther was biased to side with anyone that stood in defiance of God.

As he strolled down the arches of the Doge's palace, he wore a sly smile. He stopped as he reached San Marco Square and took a deep breath in. The smell of burned flesh that covered Venice's main square like a heavy cloak filled his lungs.

The face of the Palace shone in a golden light reflecting the color of the fire ascending from the tall stakes laid all over the Square. Three hundred and thirty-three witches burning to death in one night.

Their screams echoed throughout the city and an impenetrable smoke layer enveloped the sky.

Luther felt at ease.

He admired the Venetians. There were not many humans able to withstand a spectacle such as the one taking place before his eyes. The Venetians, nonetheless, stood like statues amongst the stakes. They were covered in long red cloaks and wore golden masks. The ones who moved, moved without any hastiness and Luther knew that behind their masks, they laughed.

Suddenly, Luther turned his face away. Even though he enjoyed the scene, he needed to do what he came for. He did not travel the long way from St. Petersburg for pleasure. The burning of witches certainly presented a bonus, but at the same time it constituted a huge risk for his mission and reminded Luther of the necessity to act fast. He needed to find her. And most of all, he needed to find her before they did.

Katrina belonged to him. Only to him. He would not allow anybody to harm her.