"Give me your hand, Mills," Kristiana said. She positioned my palm facing downward about a foot above the book. "And now yours." She reached out to Keel, and set it on top of mine. His palm to the back of my hand.
Oh god, I'm going to have to touch it again. My whole arm started shaking, repelled at thought. Not even knowing what the book was or the rightness of Keel's touch could break through the suffocating dread.
"It won't be like last time," Kristiana promised, placing her hand on top of Keel's. This time I'm touching it with you."
I forced a tight smile onto my lips and worked to steady myself.
"A couple more things before I begin. The spell will be performed in two parts, the first will open the book to you, the second will bind it to your bloodline. Once bound to you and your descendants, I'll react to it much as you now." She said that last part to me.
"But isn't this an important piece of your family history?" I asked.
"Yes, but it should have some greater purpose than as a relic or a collection of unsavory magical writings hidden away in a vault somewhere. It should be with those who practice bond magic, those who are like Cella and Rook, those it might help." There was tear shining at the edge of Kristiana's right eye.
I slipped my hand from beneath Keel's and went to her, wrapping her in the tight hug I'd wanted to give her from the moment I'd realized what the book was. "Thank you. Thank you so much."
"I'm sorry" -she sounded like she was apologizing for a lot more than her tears- "you'll understand better when you read Cella's foreword."
"I feel like I'm probably going to read it a hundred times," I mumbled into the shoulder of her sweater.
"I hope it helps."
"It's already helped. All we've ever had for role models are Garstatt and Etan. We've always believed that at least one of us would go mad and-"
Kristiana's laugh rumbled me clear out of our hug. "You really think that would happen?"
"I did. It was pretty much my hugest fear: that the League was right about us."
Kristiana shook her head, still chuckling. "This, child, is why you need this book. Now, why don't we get on with giving it to you?"
I went back to the opposite side of the table and returned my hand to the stack with Kristiana and Keel's hands.
"The spell is in Romanian, my great grandmother's tongue. Her grimoire contains the most up-to-date version of both casts. You don't need to repeat anything with me, but when we touch the book, please make sure you're open to its energy and that your magic is flowing freely between you, as some will need to pass into the pages. In the second half of the spell, we'll work some of your blood into the bindings and cover to help power the new repellent."
Keel and I were practiced enough at spellcasting that none of this posed a problem and she seemed pleased with that.
"Then let us begin," she announced with the tiniest hint of ceremonial flare.
Kristiana lowered our hand-pile to the book and as soon as my palm landed on the cover, I felt that rumble again, only it was lower now, muted, reaching no further than my elbow. My arm relaxed.
"Good," Kristiana said. "We're ready. Now close your eyes and open yourselves up the magic."
My eyes blinked shut and I gave my attentions over to the ebb and flow of my blood magic before reaching out to Keel and the bond magic and welcoming both into the current welling up inside me. As Kristiana began her spell, I felt a third stream of power, shoving upwards into me: the book's.
It exploded inside of me, a hot and terrible detonation, and I gasped, my back arching involuntarily. I didn't fall, however, my hand was stuck to the book's cover, as if it had been glued there and the tome had suddenly transformed into granite. Opening my eyes and my mouth at the same time, I was confronted by blackness and the scream died in my throat.
Keel, Kristiana, the penthouse suite, the coffee table, the chair I'd been sitting on - all gone.
And yet, I couldn't move my hand. Beneath it, I still felt the book's supple leather, even if the volume itself was gone and in this place my hand pressed against nothing.
Don't fight it. The words drifted out of the dark, the female voice unfamiliar.
Fight what? I wondered. Was I fighting?
Another voice. Male. Just an echo. It's the one spell we never could test.
A spell?
Don't fight it. The woman again. The book's a grimoire but also a gateway, for the right magician.
A gateway? What the hell did that mean?
Given that I appeared to have gotten myself stuck somewhere, I didn't see what choice I had but to follow the advice of disembodied speakers. Don't fight it. Okay, I'd try that.
I shut my eyes to the nothingness around me, concentrated on the feeling of the bond magic tome beneath my fingers and steadied my flow of magic, before slowly opening myself back up to the energies around me. As soon as I did, I began falling. A current of fear buzzed through me and I stopped dead. Oh. That's what she meant by fighting. The next time I opened myself to the darkness, I embraced the descent.
For a long time, there was only the book beneath my hand and the steady downward motion. Then, in an instant, the book was gone, but not gone. Rather, it was all around me. Its pages fluttering against my clothes, its ink staining my skin, and then even the feeling of the book was gone, and I found myself lying on a rough-hewn wooden floor.
"Welcome, magician."
I lifted my head towards the voice. I recognized it. It was the woman from the darkness. But here she was made whole.
In her late thirties maybe, her blonde hair streamed down her back in unruly, cascading locks. She appeared to have made some attempt to pin it up and back, but it had broken free like some kind of living beast. Her clothes were simple, a tunic and a long skirt, all tans and faded browns; as simple as the room we occupied with its wooden furniture, jars and pots, books and candles. I recognized her by the ring around her eyes. It matched my own.
"Cella?"
She nodded. I turned to the man beside her. Tall, lean, bald, clothed in equally simple clothes, though his were several shades darker that his wife's. His eyes, too, gave him away.
"Rook?"
He didn't nod, so I turned back to Cella, who seemed the friendlier of the two. "How is this possible?"
"A spell," she said. "Each of us sacrificed a portion of our life force and our magic to this book, so a part of our essence lives on inside of it."
"I've never heard of such a spell."
"Bond magic allows for casts that other schools of magic do not."
"Not much is known about bond magic where I come from," I admitted, wondering if I should have changed that "where" to a "when."
"Not much is known about it where we come from either," Cella said. "That is why we studied, wrote this book."
Now it was my turn to nod.
"It's not merely a spellbook, but a living journal," she continued. "Each entry, each illustration, each spell, is a gateway into our life and our research that you may choose to travel through and explore. The combined knowledge of a lifetime of experience and study. In return, we only ask that you continue our work. Write volume two. Protect both volumes for the next magician."
"But why do all this?"
"Bond magic is extremely powerful and extremely misunderstood; one can only stop fear through knowledge. We lived in hiding, so that someday other bond magicians may live free."
I didn't have the heart to tell her that we were still being hunted five hundred years later, and that we may well die before we ever have the chance to continue their life's work.
Cella rose from the chair and approached me, her long skirt dragging along the floor, occasionally catching on cracks and splinters. When she offered me her hand, I took it and rose. She guided me to a table where the book was spread open next to a pen and inkwell. In this place and time, it had not yet been completed.
Cella flipped to the back of the book and pried up some of the leather cover with a knife. Next, she dipped the pen in the inkwell and placed it in my hand, then with her hand over mine, she wrote a string of words in a spot that would covered by the displaced leather. The language was foreign to me, but I understood it was part of the gateway spell. Maybe even the reason the book had reacted so oddly to me when Kristiana had handed it to me the first time. Had these words already been there then? Was I really travelling in time right now? How could I be writing in the book if I was in the book myself? The more I tried to make sense of where I was and what I was experiencing, the more my head ached and the more nonsensical it all seemed.
I was relieved when Cella moved on to the spell part of the gateway spell, because it gave me something else to concentrate on. When she was sure I'd perfected the meditation and incantation, she announced it was time for me to go back. "Be careful when you use the gateway," she warned. "Your body will be empty and helpless in those moments. If you die in the physical world while in these pages, the book will absorb your essence and your power."
That sounded terrifying.
"One more thing," Cella said. "Find us out there. There are certain humans who can-"
"-talk to the dead." I said, finishing the sentence for her. "I know."
She smiled. "Then it seems you are not completely without knowledge. Until we meet again, magician." As she put her hand on my forehead and began chanting a spell very much like the one she'd just taught me, I realized that she'd never asked my name. I opened my mouth to tell her and everything went dark, just like before.
"Mills, Mills!" Something cold and wet landed on my face, and dribbled down my neck into my sweater. "Mills, wake up!"
"I saw- I saw her. Them. The book is a-" The words fell out of my mouth in a jumble.
"Slow down," Keel said, setting the washcloth down on the coffee table. "Breathe."
Once I caught my breath, I decided the long-winded story about what the book was could wait. For now, I'd keep it simple. Something I could explain in under five minutes. "They want us to find them."
"They're dead," Kristiana said, looking at me oddly.
"No, they knew about-"
"Careful," Keel said, and I realized the mistake I'd almost made.
Kristiana stared at me, her expression changing.
"You're already seeing it, aren't you?" I collapsed back into the chair. This may have been the worst thing I'd done yet. Fuck.
"I thought they were a myth," she said slowly.
"Please Kristiana, you can't tell anyone." I was back to being perched on the edge of my seat. "They're humans, with a gift; they cannot protect themselves against supes. They'll be sought out, kidnapped, and exploited. Please." I was on the verge of tears, my panic escalating by the second.
Kristiana looked at Keel. "So, you are not the only one good at making useful friends. With secrets like that, your wife needs to learn to protect herself more than I ever thought. She walks between worlds and must carry all their secrets as if she were a lock box, for knowledge can be as deadly as magic."
It struck me how that was almost the exact opposite of what Cella had said about knowledge. That made me sad, like in five hundred years all we'd done is gone nowhere or maybe even regressed. That what Kristiana said was true only made it that much more more depressing.
"But you'll teach her, right?" Keel said.
"Yes, of course." Kristiana turned to me. "And I will keep your friend's secret. We don't need humans getting mixed up in this mess. Humans have armies of their own, and many, many weapons - and fear. It's that fear that makes them so dangerous, you know."
"Thank you," I said, reminding myself that I needed to be much more careful in the future. "Should we finish the spell now?"
"It's done," Kristiana said.
"What?"
"I finished it while you were in your trance. His Majesty's eyes were closed and I was so deep in the cast that we didn't immediately notice you'd left us."
"Oh, okay then." Left us, that was a good way to describe it. And gone where? Into a spell, a memory, the past, something embedded in a book? How powerful had Cella been? I could do nothing like that.
I looked down and sure enough there was a cut across my palm; unless Keel had done it, I should have felt it. But I hadn't been here. Cella's words of warning about my body being helpless while I was inside the book rippled through me in a shiver that went all the way down to my toes. So it was true. I'd need to be very, very careful when learning its secrets.
Keel escorted Kristiana to the door of our suite, thanking her for her incredible openness and generosity - just as valuable, he noted, as anything declared in the meeting earlier. When he went to shake her hand, she surprised us both by throwing her arms around him for a quick and friendly hug. "It has been such an honour meeting you, and Mills, I'll be back here at 11 a.m. for our spellwork, so do try not to spend the next five hours so deep in that grimoire that you'll be too tired to learn."
"I won't," I said, even while looking at the book.
"She won't," Keel assured her. "The book can wait; her safety cannot."
"You are very unusual vampire, King Argarast," Kristiana said, turning back to Keel.
"So people keep telling me." He was smiling.
"Get some rest you two," she said, and disappeared into the hallway.
I'd only gotten two lines into the book's next spell, when Keel's hand squeezed my shoulder. "She's right, you need to rest."
"Just a couple more." I knew I sounded like an addict, but I couldn't imagine sleeping with this book in the next room. In fact, I wasn't sure I'd be able to sleep until I had the whole thing committed to memory and I'd passed through each of its magical gateways. What other secrets and revelations did it hold in its pages, in its living history?
"Mills." My name used a warning, not something he did often anymore. When I didn't immediately heed it, he leaned over the table and closed the book. "Sleep first," he said, pressing his hand down onto the cover. "You can spend the entire van ride back to the compound studying it if you want, but not now, okay?"
"You don't understand how remarkable this is," I argued.
"Oh, I do," he said, bending me over and scooping me up in his arms. "But you need your sleep more - and your king."
I squealed and struggled a bit, but not seriously. "Is that so?"
He nipped my neck. "Or maybe it's that I need my queen."
Kicking open the door to the suite's master bedroom, Keel used his vampire speed to propel us onto the bed. His lips finding mine the moment we hit the mattress.
My fingers automatically sought out the buttons of his shirt, as if they had years of experience undressing him and not just days.
He broke the kiss long enough to doff his blazer and dress shirt, and to yank my sweater and undershirt over my head. Then his mouth was back on mine, making me senseless. But not so senseless that I didn't remember Kristiana's gift and admonishment.
"Wait." I pushed him back, and slipped out from beneath him.
"What is it?"
"We can't just keep sleeping together without using, you know. Even Kristiana called me out on it. I'm not ready to-"
Keel placed an index finger on my lips, silencing me. Then he reached into his pocket and dropped a condom on the bed between us. "I know. What happened in the arena was irresponsible and not what we agreed to."
"Don't apologize for that. I could have said stop too."
The room had begun lightening around us. When I looked at the window the sky had already brightened to a rich midnight blue, soon the first hints of purple and red would appear on the horizon, and then the sun would rise.
I bolted from the bed and slammed the curtains shut with a woosh of fabric and the metal-on-metal scrape of the hardware against the curtain rods. This was something we never had to worry about underground.
"You do know we don't burst into the flames, right?" Keel teased.
I turned to discover that he'd slipped out of his pants and into bed.
"Not exactly. You've never allowed us to be out in the sun."
Keel rolled onto his side to look at me. "It's like a really bad allergic reaction."
"And what do Nosferatu know about allergies? I thought supes were largely immune to all that human stuff."
"Well, they've caused enough problems with the feeding and upkeep of some of the Bleeders that we had to learn."
"Oh." Nothing like a reminder of all those human captives who were suddenly part of my royal responsibilities to ruin the moment. Even when I could stop feeling guilt about one thing, there was always something else with the Nosferatu. Is this how it would always be?
"Come back to bed," Keel implored, holding open the blankets and inviting me to join him. "I'm sorry I brought up the Bleeders, I know they bother you."
I hung back by the curtains a few seconds longer and then conceded. What else could I do? The problem of the Bleeders, if it could ever be solved, would certainly not be solved overnight and not in the days before a war.
As I slid into bed, Keel closed the blanket cocoon around us and spooned me close. His lips creating a tender trail of moist kisses from my hairline to my shoulder and then back, reigniting all the sparks that died a moment earlier. The rightness of him made me a special kind of traitor, and I wondered if my human mother ever felt that way when she'd been with Ephraim.
"Keel."
"Mmhmm," he murmured into my spine.
"If we survive this war, I want to find my mother."
His hand crept along my thigh, continuing what he'd begun with his lips - a nuanced unravelling of all my self-restraint.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?"
"No," I admitted. "But I want to talk to her, even if it's just once."
"Okay," he said. "We'll find her."
And with that promise he made love to me slower and more gently than he ever had before. Only halting his kisses and caresses when the sun crested the horizon and dragged him into the heavy sleep of nocturnal creatures. Since my near-death, I also felt the weight of the day, but it wasn't impenetrable, especially with a bit of coffee - something I'd requested the kitchen back at the compound begin stocking.
I cleaned up the remnants of our lovemaking, checked the penthouse's coffee supplies - I'd be needing those in a few short hours when I rose to work with Kristiana on blocking my mind and my body from magical intrusion - and had a quick shower before returning to bed. As soon as I found a comfortable position, Keel shifted in his sleep, wrapping me up in his right arm. Rightness, again. Just like when we'd first fallen asleep like this, before all the changes.
No, we weren't Garstatt and Etan.
We were Cella and Rook.
That thought and Keel's arm stole me away into the best sleep I'd had in months, even if it turned out to be way too short.