The Book of Life Read online

My eyes dropped to survey the meeting room, dominated by a large oval table surrounded by high-backed chairs. Like the locks, and the keys that opened them, each chair was inscribed with a symbol. Mine was right where Baldwin had promised it would be: on the far side of the room, opposite the door.

  A young human woman stood inside, presenting each Congregation member who entered with a leather folio. At first I thought it must contain the meeting's agenda. Then I noticed that each folio was a different thickness, as though items had been requested from the shelves above according to the members' specific instructions.

  I was the last to enter the room, and the door clanged shut behind me.

  "Madame de Clermont," the woman said, her dark eyes brimming with intelligence. "I am Rima Jaen, the Congregation's librarian. Here are the documents Sieur Baldwin requested for the meeting. If there is anything more you require, you have only to let me know."

  "Thank you," I said, taking the materials from her.

  She hesitated. "Pardon my presumption, madame, but have we met? You seem so familiar. I know you are a scholar. Have you ever visited the Goncalves archive in Seville?"

  "No, I have never worked there," I said, adding, "but I believe I know the owner."

  "Senor Goncalves nominated me for this job after I was made redundant," Rima said. "The Congregation's former librarian retired quite unexpectedly in July, after suffering a heart attack. The librarians are, by tradition, human. Sieur Baldwin took on the task of replacing him."

  The librarian's heart attack--and Rima's appointment--had come a few weeks after Baldwin found out about my blood vow. I strongly suspected that my new brother had engineered the whole business. The de Clermonts' king became more interesting by the hour.

  "You are keeping us waiting, Professor Bishop," Gerbert said testily, though based on the hum of conversation among the delegates he was the only creature who minded.

  "Allow Professor Bishop a chance to get her bearings. It is her first meeting," said the dimpled witch in a broad Scots accent. "Are you able to remember yours, Gerbert, or is that happy day lost in the mists of time?"

  "Give that witch a chance and she'll spellbind us all," Gerbert said. "Do not underestimate her, Janet. Knox's assessment of her childhood power and potential was grossly misleading, I fear."

  "Thank you kindly, but I don't believe it's I who needs the warning," Janet said with a twinkle in her gray eyes.

  I took the folio from Rima and passed her the folded document that gave the Bishop-Clairmont family official standing in the vampire world.

  "Can you file that, please?" I asked.

  "Happily, Madame de Clermont," Rima said. "The Congregation librarian is also its secretary. I'll take whatever actions the document requires while you are meeting."

  Having handed off the papers that formally established the Bishop-Clairmont scion, I circumnavigated the table, the black cloak billowing around my feet.

  "Nice tats," Agatha whispered as I walked by, pointing to her own hairline. "Great cape, too."

  I smiled at her without comment and kept going. When I reached my chair, I wrestled with the damp cloak, not wanting to relinquish the tote bag while I did so. Finally I managed to get it off and hung it over the back of my chair.

  "There are hooks by the door," Gerbert said.

  I turned to face him. His eyes widened. My jacket had long sleeves to hide the Book of Life's text, but my eyes were fully on view. And I'd deliberately pulled my hair back into a long red braid that revealed the tips of the branches that covered my scalp.

  "My power is unsettled at the moment, and some people are made uncomfortable by my appearance," I said. "I prefer to keep my cloak nearby. Or I can use a disguising spell like Satu. But hiding in plain sight is as much a lie as any spoken form of deceit."

  I looked at each creature of the Congregation in turn, daring any of them to react to the letters and symbols that I knew were passing across my eyes.

  Satu glanced away, but not quickly enough to mask her frightened look. The sudden movement stretched her poor excuse for a disguising spell. I searched for the spell's signature, but there was none. Satu's disguising spell had not been cast. She herself had woven it--and not very skillfully.

  I know your secret, sister, I said silently.

  And I have long suspected yours, Satu replied, her voice as bitter as wormwood.

  Oh, I've picked up a few more along the way, I said.

  After my slow survey of the room, only Agatha risked asking a question.

  "What happened to you?" she whispered.

  "I chose my path." I dropped the tote bag on the table and lowered myself into the chair. The bag was bound to me so tightly that even at this short distance I could feel the tug.

  "What's that?" Domenico asked suspiciously.

  "A Bodleian Library tote bag." I had taken it from the library shop when we retrieved the Book of Life, making sure to leave a twenty-pound note under the pencil cup near the till. Fittingly, the canvas bag had the library oath emblazoned upon it in red and black letters.

  Domenico opened his mouth to ask another question, but I silenced him with a look. I had waited long enough for today's meeting to begin. Domenico could ask me questions after Matthew was free.

  "I call this meeting to order. I am Diana Bishop, Philippe de Clermont's blood-sworn daughter, and I represent the de Clermonts." I turned to Domenico. He crossed his arms and refused to speak. I continued.

  "This is Domenico Michele, and Gerbert of Aurillac is to my left. I know Agatha Wilson from Oxford, and Satu Jarvinen and I spent some time together in France." My back smarted with the memory of her fire. "I'm afraid the rest of you will have to introduce yourselves."

  "I am Osamu Watanabe," said the young male daemon sitting next to Agatha. "You look like a manga character. Can I draw you later?"

  "Sure," I said, hoping that the character in question didn't turn out to be evil.

  "Tatiana Alkaev," said a platinum blond daemon with the dreamy blue eyes. All she needed was a sleigh pulled by white horses and she would be the perfect heroine in a Russian fairy tale. "You're full of answers, but I have no questions at this time."

  "Excellent." I turned to the witch with the forbidding expression and the execrable taste in clothing. "And you?"

  "I am Sidonie von Borcke," she said, putting on a pair of reading glasses and opening her leather folio with a snap. "And I have no knowledge of this so-called blood vow."

  "It's in the librarian's report. Second page, at the bottom, in the addendum, third line," Osamu said helpfully. Sidonie glared at him. "I seem to recall that it begins 'Additions to vampire pedigrees (alphabetical): Almasi, Bettingcourt, de Clermont, Diaz--"

  "Yes, I see it now, Mr. Watanabe," Sidonie snapped.

  "I believe it's my turn to be introduced, dear Sidonie." The white-haired witch smiled beneficently. "I am Janet Gowdie, and meeting you is a long-awaited pleasure. I knew your father and mother. They were a great credit to our people, and I still feel their loss keenly."

  "Thank you," I said, moved by the woman's simple tribute.

  "We were told the de Clermonts had a motion for us to consider?" Janet gently steered the meeting back on track.

  I gave her a grateful look. "The de Clermonts formally request the assistance of the Congregation in tracking down a member of the Bishop-Clairmont scion, Benjamin Fox or Fuchs. Mr. Fox contracted blood rage from his father, my husband, Matthew Clairmont, and has been kidnapping and raping witches for centuries in an attempt to impregnate them, mostly in the area surrounding the Polish city of Chelm. Some of you may remember complaints made by the Chelm coven, which the Congregation ignored. To date, Benjamin's desire to create a witch-vampire child has been thwarted, in large part because he does not know what the witches discovered long ago--namely, that vampires with blood rage can reproduce biologically, but only with a particular kind of witch called a weaver."

  The room was completely quiet. I took a deep breath and continued.


  "My husband, in an attempt to draw Benjamin into the open, went into Poland where he disappeared. We believe Benjamin has captured him and is holding him in a facility that served as a Nazi labor camp or research laboratory during the Second World War. The Knights of Lazarus have pledged to get my husband back, but the de Clermonts will need witches and daemons to come to our aid as well. Benjamin must be stopped."

  I looked around the room once more. Every person in it save Janet Gowdie was slack-jawed with amazement.

  "Discussion? Or should we move straight to the vote?" I asked, eager to forstall a long debate.

  After a long silence, the Congregation chamber was filled with an indignant clamor as the representatives began to shout questions at me and accusations at each other.

  "Discussion it is," I said.

  You must eat something," Gallowglass insisted, pressing a sandwich into my hand.

  "I have to go back in there. The second vote will take place soon." I pushed the sandwich away. Baldwin had, among his many other instructions, reminded me about the Congregation's elaborate voting procedures: three votes on any motion, with discussion in between. It was normal for the votes to swing wildly from one position to the other as Congregation members considered--or pretended to consider--opposing views.

  I lost the first vote, eight opposed and one--me--in favor. Some voted against me on procedural grounds, since Matthew and I had violated the covenant and the Congregation had already voted to uphold that ancient pact. Others voted it down because the scourge of blood rage threatened the health and safety of all warmbloods--daemon, human, and witch. Newspaper reports of the vampire murders were produced and read aloud. Tatiana objected to rescuing the witches of Chelm, who, she tearfully claimed, had cast a spell on her vacationing grandmother that made her break out in boils. No amount of explaining could convince Tatiana that she was actually thinking of Cheboksary, even though Rima procured aerial photographs to prove that Chelm was not a beachfront spot on the Volga.

  "Is there word from Baldwin or Verin?" I asked. Isola della Stella suffered from poor cell-phone reception, and within the walls of Celestina the only way to catch a signal was by standing in the exposed center of the cloister in a steady downpour.

  "None." Gallowglass put a mug of tea in my hand and closed my fingers around it. "Drink."

  Worry for Matthew and impatience with the Congregation's Byzantine rules and regulations made my stomach flip. I handed the mug back to Gallowglass, untouched.

  "Don't take the Congregation's decision to heart, Auntie. My father always said that the first vote was all about posturing and that more often than not the second vote reversed the first."

  I picked up the Bodleian tote bag, nodded, and returned to the council chamber. The hostile looks I received from Gerbert and Domenico once I was inside made me wonder if Hugh had been an optimist when it came to Congregation politics.

  "Blood rage!" Gerbert hissed, grabbing at my arm. "How did the de Clermonts keep this from us?"

  "I don't know, Gerbert," I replied, shaking off his grip. "Ysabeau lived under your roof for weeks and you never discovered it."

  "It's half past ten." Sidonie von Borcke strode into the room. "We adjourn at midnight. Let's conclude this sordid business and move on to more important matters--like our investigation of the Bishop family's covenant violations."

  There was nothing more pressing than ridding the world of Benjamin but I bit my tongue and took my chair, resting the tote bag on the table in front of me. Domenico reached for it, still curious about its contents.

  "Don't." I looked at him. Apparently my eyes spoke volumes, for he withdrew his hand quickly.

  "So, Sidonie, am I to understand you're calling the question?" I asked her abruptly. In spite of her calls for a quick resolution, she was proving to be a major impediment to the deliberations, drawing out every exchange with irrelevant detail until I was ready to scream.

  "Not at all," she huffed. "I merely wish us to consider the matter with proper efficiency."

  "I remain opposed to intervening in what is clearly a family problem," Gerbert said. "Madame de Clermont's proposal seeks to open this unfortunate matter to greater scrutiny. Already the Knights of Lazarus are on the scene and looking for her husband. It is best to let matters take their course."

  "And the blood rage?" It was the first time Satu had said anything with the exception of her "no" when called upon in the first vote.

  "Blood rage is a matter for the vampires to handle. We will discipline the de Clermont family for their serious lapse in judgment and take appropriate measures to locate and exterminate all who might be infected." Gerbert tented his fingers and looked around the table. "You can all rest easy on that score."

  "I agree with Gerbert. Furthermore, no scion can be established under a diseased sire," Domenico said. "It's unthinkable. Matthew Clairmont must be put to death, and all his children with him." The vampire's eyes gleamed.

  Osamu raised his hand and waited to be recognized.

  "Yes, Mr. Watanabe?" I nodded in his direction.

  "What's a weaver?" he asked. "And what do they have in common with vampires who have blood rage?"

  "What makes you think they have anything in common?" Sidonie snapped.

  "It's only logical that blood-rage vampires and weaving witches have something in common. How could Diana and Matthew have had children otherwise?" Agatha looked at me expectantly. Before I could answer, Gerbert stood and loomed over me.

  "Is that what Matthew discovered in the Book of Life?" he demanded. "Did you unearth a spell that joins the two species?"

  "Sit down, Gerbert." Janet had been knitting steadily for hours, looking up every now and again to make a judicious comment or smile benignly.

  "The witch must answer!" Gerbert exclaimed. "What spell is at work here, and how did you perform it?"

  "The answer is in the Book of Life." I dragged the tote bag toward me and drew out the volume that had been hidden for so long in the Bodleian Library.

  There were gasps of astonishment around the table.

  "This is a trick," Sidonie pronounced. She rose and made her way around the table. "If that is the witches' lost book of spells, I demand to examine it."

  "It's the vampire's lost history," Domenico growled as she went past his chair.

  "Here." I handed the Book of Life to Sidonie.

  The witch tried to spring the clasps, pushing and tugging at the metal fittings, but the book refused to cooperate with her. I held out my hands and the book flew across the space between us, eager to be back where it belonged. Sidonie and Gerbert exchanged a long look.

  "You open it, Diana," Agatha said, her eyes round. I thought back to what she'd said in Oxford all those months ago--that Ashmole 782 belonged to the daemons as well as the witches and vampires. Somehow, she had already divined a sense of the contents.

  I placed the Book of Life on the table while the Congregation gathered around me. The clasps opened immediately at my touch. Whispers and sighs filled the air, followed by the eldritch traces left by the spirits of the creatures who were bound to the pages.

  "Magic isn't permitted on Isola della Stella," Domenico protested, an edge of panic in his voice. "Tell her, Gerbert!"

  "If I were working magic, Domenico, you'd know it," I retorted.

  Domenico paled as the wraiths grew more coherent, taking on elongated human form with hollow, dark eyes.

  I flipped the book open. Everybody bent forward for a closer look.

  "There's nothing there," Gerbert said, his face twisted with fury. "The book is blank. What have you done to our book of origins?"

  "This book smells . . . odd," Domenico said, giving the air a suspicious sniff. "Like dead animals."

  "No, it smells of dead creatures." I ruffled the pages so that the scent rose in the air. "Daemons. Vampires. Witches. They're all in there."

  "You mean . . ." Tatiana looked horrified.

  "That's right." I nodded. "That's parchment made f
rom creature skin. The leaves are sewn together with creature hair, too."

  "But where is the text?" Gerbert asked, his voice rising. "The Book of Life is supposed to hold the key to many mysteries. It's our sacred text--the vampire's history."

  "Here is your sacred text." I pushed up my sleeves. Letters and symbols swirled and ran just under my skin, coming to the surface like bubbles on a pond, only to dissolve. I had no idea what my eyes were doing, but I suspected they were full of characters, too. Satu backed away from me.

  "You bewitched it," Gerbert snarled.

  "The Book of Life was bewitched long ago," I said. "All I did was open it."

  "And it chose you." Osamu reached out a finger to touch the letters on my arm. A few of them gathered around the point where his skin met mine before they danced away again.

  "Why did the book choose Diana Bishop?" Domenico asked.

  "Because I'm a weaver--a maker of spells--and there are precious few of us left." I sought out Satu once more. Her lips were pressed together, and her eyes begged me to remain silent. "We had too much creative power, and our fellow witches killed us."

  "The same power that makes it possible for you to create new spells gives you the ability to create new life," Agatha said, her excitement evident.

  "It's a special blessing the goddess bestows on female weavers," I replied. "Not all weavers are women, of course. My father was a weaver, too."

  "It's impossible," Domenico snarled. "This is more of the witch's treachery. I've never heard of a weaver, and the ancient scourge of blood rage has mutated into an even more dangerous form. As for children born to witches and vampires, we cannot allow such an evil to take root. They would be monsters, beyond reason or control."

  "I must take issue with you on that point, Domenico," Janet said.

  "On what grounds?" he said with a touch of impatience.

  "On the grounds that I am such a creature and am neither evil nor monstrous."

  For the first time since my arrival, the attention of the room was directed elsewhere.

  "My grandmother was the child of a weaver and a vampire." Janet's gray eyes latched on to mine. "Everyone in the Highlands called him Nickie-Ben."

  "Benjamin," I breathed.

  "Aye." Janet nodded. "Young witches were told to be careful on moonless nights, lest Nickie-Ben catch them. My great-granny, Isobel Gowdie, didn't listen. They had a mad love affair. The legends say he bit her on the shoulder. When Nickie-Ben went away, he left something behind without knowing it: a daughter. I am named after her."