Corra was perched on the barred cage of the book hold, where the manuscripts were locked away and stored for patrons to use the following day. Her head was inclined as though she were listening to the still-chattering voices. She cooed and clucked in response, her head bobbing up and down.
Fernando had followed the sound to the same place and was standing behind the call desk where Sean spent his days. He was looking up at one of the shelves. There, next to an Oxford University telephone directory, sat a gray cardboard box so ordinary in appearance that it was begging not to be noticed—though it was pretty eye-catching at the moment, with light seeping out from the joins at the corners. Someone had clipped a curling note to it: “Boxed. Return to stacks after inspection.”
“It can’t be.” But every instinct told me it was.
I held up my hand, and the box tipped backward and landed in my palm. I lowered it carefully to the desk. When I took my hands from it, the lid blew off, landing several feet away. Inside, the metal clasps were straining to hold the book closed.
Gently, aware of the many creatures within it, I lifted Ashmole 782 out of its protective carton and laid it down on the wooden surface. I rested my hand flat on the cover. The chattering ceased.
Choose, the many voices said as one.
“I choose you,” I whispered to the book, releasing the clasps on Ashmole 782. Their metal was warm and comforting to the touch. My father, I thought.
Linda thrust the pages that belonged in the Book of Life in my direction.
Slowly, deliberately, I opened the book to the first page. The three stubs that remained from where Edward Kelley had damaged the books were just visible. I fitted the illustration of the chemical wedding into the spine, pressing the edge to its stub. It knit itself together before my eyes, its severed threads joining up once more.
Lines of text raced across the page.
I took up the illumination of the orobouros and the firedrake shedding their blood to create new life and put it in its place.
A strange keening rose from the book. Corra chattered in warning.
Without hesitation and without fear, I slid the final page into Ashmole 782. The Book of Life was once more whole and complete.
A bloodcurdling howl tore what remained of the night in two. A wind rose at my feet, climbing up my body and lifting the hair away from my face and shoulders like strands of fire.
The force of the air turned the pages of the book, flipping them faster and faster. I tried to stop their progress, pressing my fingers against the emerging text so that I could read the words. But there were too many to comprehend. Chris’s student was right. The Book of Life wasn’t simply a text.
It was a vast repository of knowledge: creature names and their stories, births and deaths, curses and spells, miracles wrought by magic and blood.
It was the story of us—weavers and the vampires who carried blood rage in their veins and the extraordinary children who were born to them.
It told me not only of my predecessors going back countless generations. It told me how such a miraculous creation was possible.
I struggled to absorb the tale the Book of Life told as the pages turned.
Here begins the lineage of the ancient tribe known as the Bright Born. Their father was
Eternity and their mother Change, and Spirit nurtured them in her womb. . . .
My mind raced, trying to identify the alchemical text that was so similar.
. . . for when the three became one, their power was boundless as the night. . . .
And it came to pass that the absence of children was a burden to the Athanatoi. They sought the
daughters. . . .
Whose daughters? I tried to stop the pages, but it was impossible.
. . . discovered that the mystery of bloodcraft was known to the Wise Ones.
What was bloodcraft?
On and on went the words, racing, twining, twisting. Words split in two, formed other words, mutating and reproducing at a furious pace.
There were names, faces, and places torn from nightmares and woven into the sweetest of dreams.
Their love began with absence and desire, two hearts becoming one. . . .
I heard a whisper of longing, a cry of pleasure, as the pages continued to turn.
. . . when fear overcame them, the city was bathed in the blood of