how he can help us prevent this so-called vampire Armageddon.”
She frowned. “The original tablet didn’t actually say he could prevent it,” she told him. “It did seem to be about to say that, but then the rest of the segment was missing.”
“I know. Those missing segments are another piece of the puzzle. Translating what we have here might fill in the blanks. We desperately need to know everything we can, everything that prophecy has to say, especially about Utanapishtim.”
She frowned hard. “I think you take these things far too literally.”
“I think you’re going to change your mind about that.”
That, she realized, was entirely possible. “Then again,” she said, “a week ago I’d have said there was no chance, not even a remote one, that vampires could exist, and now I’m surrounded by them.” She rubbed her arms as a chill ran up her spine. “Just saying it out loud still feels so…surreal. It’s like my entire worldview has been demolished. I don’t know what’s real anymore.”
“Nothing has changed from when you felt secure and serene, not really.”
She shrugged, not agreeing with him at all. From her perspective, everything had changed. “What do you want with Utanapishtim’s remains?”
He shifted his eyes away from hers. “There’s a ritual. It’s complicated, and also sort of oathbound.”
“Oathbound?”
“It’s something we don’t share.”
“I see. And are you going to tell Rhiannon that you told me all this?”
He got to his feet and stood beside the bed. “Not unless I have to. Good rest, Lucy. I’ll see you at sundown.”
“Good night—I mean, good rest, James.” She got up, as well, and there was an awkward moment when she tipped her head up to stare into his eyes and he stared right back. The air between them actually seemed to snap and spark. But only for a moment. Then he turned away, moved to the door and was gone, and Lucy wanted to stomp her feet in frustration.
She closed her eyes tightly, wishing she could control this desire, fight this magnetism of his that drew her like a moth to a flame. And then she lifted her hand to the doorknob, intending to turn the lock—but stopped with her hand in midair. What if he wanted to come back in later?
What the hell was she thinking? She was in a den of vampires, for God’s sake!
She turned the lock, firmly and decisively, and then she went back to her bed and tried to get some sleep.
10
At sundown, James once again found himself in the hidden basement room with Rhiannon by his side, giving orders as if she had some inherent right to do so. He resented it but didn’t say so aloud. She was older than he, more powerful. An elder among the undead. A leader. And besides that, she was family and he loved her. So he tended to give her more leeway than he would have given anyone else.
Before him lay five corpses, and the stench that filled the room was almost unbearable.
“Dab some of this beneath your nostrils,” Rhiannon said, handing him a jar of menthol rub. “Brigit said it would help.”
“Brigit watches too much television,” he muttered, but he obeyed, and the vapors did indeed mitigate the stench of rotting flesh. “You really expect me to…to try to resurrect these?”
“No, I don’t expect you to try. I expect you to do it. Start with this one.” She moved to a table and yanked a dusty sheet, probably one that had been covering old furniture upstairs, from the face of a corpse. “He’s only a few days dead.”
He thinned his lips. “Does he have a story? Is there going to be a way to explain his return to his family?”
“If you insist on a full biography of every stinking bag of flesh you work on, we’ll be extinct before you get to the bony ones. Now do it.”
He balked at being ordered around, but he knew she had a point. “I’m just trying to make this okay in my mind. In my soul, Rhiannon.”
“That’s the trouble with having a soul.”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. You have a soul and you know it.” Still, he approached the corpse, which was blue but mostly intact. He suspected its closed but sunken eyes and shriveled lips, and the peeling skin here and there, were not quite as pronounced as in the other bodies that lined the room.
“Fortunately,” Rhiannon said, “I don’t let my soul dictate my actions as if I’m a slave to it.”