Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2)(191)
“It could be used to destroy us all,” Matthew finished.
I craned my head to look at him. “What are we going to do with it, then? Take it back with us to the future or leave it here?”
“I don’t know, mon coeur.” He gathered me closer, muffling the sound of the storm as it lashed against the hull.
“But this book may well hold the key to all your questions.” I was surprised that Matthew could part with it now that he knew what it contained.
“Not all,” he said. “There’s one only you can answer.”
“What’s that?” I asked with a frown.
“Are you seasick or are you with child?” Matthew’s eyes were as heavy and stormy as the sky, with glints of bright lightning.
“You would know better than I.” He had taken blood from my vein a few days ago, soon after I realized that my period was late.
“I didn’t see the child in your blood or hear its heart—not yet. It’s the change in your scent that I noticed. I remember it from last time. You can’t be more than a few weeks pregnant.”
“I would have thought my being pregnant would make you more eager than ever to keep the book with you.”
“Maybe my questions don’t need answers as urgently as I thought they did.” To prove his point, Matthew put the book on the floor, out of sight. “I thought it would tell me who I am and why I’m here. Perhaps I already know.”
I waited for him to explain.
“After all my searching, I discover that I am who I always was: Matthew de Clermont. Husband. Father. Vampire. And I am here for only one reason: To make a difference.”
Chapter Thirty Three
Peter Knox dodged the puddles in the courtyard of the Strahov Monastery in Prague. He was on his annual spring circuit of libraries in central and Eastern Europe. When the tourists and scholars were at their lowest ebb, Knox went from one old repository to another, making sure that nothing untoward had turned up in the past twelve months that might cause the Congregation—or him—trouble. In each library he had a trusted informant, a member of staff who was of sufficiently high standing to have free access to the books and manuscripts, but not so elevated that he might later be required to take a principled stand against library treasures simply . . . disappearing.
Knox had been making regular visits like this since he’d finished his
doctorate and begun working for the Congregation. Much had changed in their world since World War II, and the Congregation’s administrative structure had adjusted to the times. With the transportation revolution of the nineteenth century, trains and roads allowed a new style of governance, with each species policing its own kind rather than overseeing a geographic location. It meant a lot of traveling and letter writing, both possible in the Age of Steam. Philippe de Clermont had been instrumental in modernizing the Congregation’s operations, though Knox had long suspected he did it more to protect vampire secrets than to promote progress.
Then the world wars disrupted communications and transportation networks, and the Congregation reverted to its old ways. It was more sensible to break up the globe into slices than to crisscross it tracking down a specific individual accused of wrongdoing. No one would have dared to suggest such a radical change when Philippe was alive. Happily, the former head of the de Clermont family was no longer around to resist. The Internet and e-mail threatened to make such trips unnecessary, but Knox liked tradition.
Knox’s mole at the Strahov Library was a middle-aged man named Pavel Skovajsa. He was brown all over, like foxed paper, and wore a pair of Communist-era glasses that he refused to replace, though it was unclear whether his reluctance was for historical or sentimental reasons. Usually the two men met in the monastery brewery, which had gleaming copper tanks and served an excellent amber beer named after St. Norbert, whose earthly remains rested nearby.
But this year Skovajsa had actually found something.
“It is a letter. In Hebrew,” Skovajsa had whispered down the phone line. He was suspicious of new technology, didn’t have a cell phone, and detested e-mail. That’s why he was employed in the conservation department, where his idiosyncratic approach to knowledge wouldn’t slow the library’s steady march toward modernity.
“Why are you whispering, Pavel?” Knox had asked in irritation. The only problem with Skovajsa was that he liked to think of himself as a spy hewn from the ice of the Cold War. As a result he was a tad paranoid.
“Because I took a book apart to get at it. Someone hid it underneath the endpapers of a copy of Johannes Reuchlin’s De Arte Cabalistica,” Skovajsa explained, his excitement mounting. Knox looked at his watch. It was so early that he hadn’t had his coffee yet. “You must come, at once. It mentions alchemy and that Englishman who worked for Rudolf II. It may be important.”
Knox was on the next flight out of Berlin. And now Skovajsa had spirited him away to a dingy room in the basement of the library illuminated by a single bare lightbulb.
“Isn’t there somewhere more comfortable for us to conduct business?” Knox said, eyeing the metal table (also Communist-era) with suspicion. “Is that goulash?” He pointed to a sticky spot on its surface.
“The walls have ears, and the floors have eyes.” Skovajsa wiped at the spot with the hem of his brown sweater. “We are safer here. Sit. Let me bring you the letter.”