A Ride of Peril (A Shade of Vampire #46)(17)

“I cannot express how grateful I am to have you here with us,” Jovi quipped, already stuffing his face.

I nodded my appreciation to the Daughter, and she responded with a smile. I looked at Draven and found him already watching me, candlelight reflections flickering in his gray eyes. I filled my plate and ate quietly.

The rest of the group talked about the books, the swamp witches, and what we could do next.

Draven stood and took the lead in the conversation. “First, let’s see how the books come together.” He fetched the books from a cabinet nearby and placed them on the dinner table next to each other.

We were all silent, watching as he flipped them open, one by one, and frowned.

“Something’s not right,” he mumbled.

“What do you mean?” I asked, gazing at the first pages.

They didn’t seem connected at all. The symbols from one book didn’t match any of the other two. He shuffled them around, changing their position, trying a horizontal and vertical order, but still, they didn’t say anything.

“They’re not making sense,” Draven groaned. His jaw muscle tightened.

Hansa stood up and came to his side, looking at the pages with identical befuddlement. She turned several pages and moved the books around again.

“He’s right. They’re not linked in any way. The half-symbols and sketches in one book don’t match any of the other two. It’s not supposed to be like this,” she muttered.

One by one, we all stood up and inched closer to get a better look.

“This can’t be happening,” Draven hissed and sat down with a defeated expression.

“Why don’t we just finish dinner, go to sleep, and look at them again tomorrow with fresh eyes?” I said.

I took my seat and ate a bite.

Draven nodded, then put the books one on top of the other and poured himself another glass of water. Once again, his plate was empty.

“Out of curiosity, when is it that you actually eat?” I grinned, hoping to steer the conversation away from the books for a while.

“Once a day, but I don’t like to be seen when I feed,” he replied, staring absently at his plate.

“Why not?”

“Druids are, in many ways, like snakes,” Hansa interjected as she sat back down. “They don’t eat cooked food. They only tolerate raw meat.”

Draven cut her off. “She really doesn’t need the full graphic description.”

“She’s a big girl. She can take it, especially after everything she’s seen so far!” Hansa shot back with a smirk, then looked at me. “They eat like snakes, basically. Swallowing large pieces of flesh, which they gradually digest over the course of the day. In the old days, they used to gobble up entire animals, spitting the bones out after a couple of hours, but they’ve come a long way since then.”

A moment of silence passed as I looked at him and noticed he was avoiding eye contact. I couldn’t help but wonder whether he was embarrassed. Judging by the flush in his cheeks, I guessed he was.

Hansa seemed to notice as well. “He’s ashamed,” she chuckled.

“What’s there to be ashamed of? He eats raw meat. I literally suck the life out of people. We’re all weirdos here,” I quipped.

I didn’t want him to feel like a misfit, not in my presence, not with my family or friends—particularly when we were all hybrids of sorts, crosses between sentries, vampires, witches, Hawks, werewolves, and fae. He looked at me, and his gaze softened, a faint smile animating his features.

“I find your Druid abilities to be quite fascinating,” I added and gave him a sideways glance. My spine tingled as I felt desire emanating from him like a heatwave. His gaze locked on my lips.

A strange shuffling sound drew my attention to the books next to my elbow. I dropped my fork on the plate with a clang, my mouth gaping and eyes nearly popping out of my head. Draven looked down and immediately shot up from his chair.

The books, placed neatly one on top of the other, trembled. The layers of leather rubbed against each other. The covers began to ripple, and over the course of a minute, their texture changed as they merged into one large and very thick book. The leather turned black, and we stared as we realized that the three books had become one.

“What the heck,” I managed to croak as I stood.

The others joined us on our side of the table, each gawking at the book.

“What happened?” Aida asked.

“What’s that?” Phoenix asked.

“I have no idea,” Draven replied, equally baffled. “They seem to have morphed into one. I think it was part of the spell.”

With slightly trembling fingers, I reached out and turned the first pages. The writing was clear and linear, the sketches and pentagrams complete. The swamp witches had used a spell to protect their knowledge by splitting it into three separate books. They were useless on their own, and, even when they were put next to each other, they still made no sense. One had to put them together, literally stacking them, for the knowledge to emerge in the form of one large compendium.

“This is still wrong,” Draven added, once again frustrated. “I don’t recognize the language.”

“Oh, come on!” Hansa groaned and flipped through the book. “Figures! They used their cryptic code to write it all down.”