“Even then one must have God’s special blessing,” Rudolf said, scowling at Matthew. “Edward is touched by God in ways you are not, Herr Roydon.”
“Oh, he’s touched all right,” Matthew said, looking over at Kelley. The English alchemist was acting strange now that the book was not in his possession. There were threads connecting him and the book. But why was Kelley bound to Ashmole 782?
As the question went through my mind, the fine yellow and white threads tying Kelley to Ashmole 782 took on a new appearance. Instead of the normal tight twist of two colors or a weave of horizontal and vertical threads, these spooled loosely around an invisible center, like the curling ribbons on a birthday present. Short, horizontal threads kept the curls from touching. It looked like—
A double helix. My hand rose to my mouth, and I stared down at the manuscript. Now that I’d touched the book, its musty smell was on my fingers. It was strong, gamy, like—
Flesh and blood. I looked to Matthew, knowing that the expression on my face mirrored the shocked look I had seen on his.
“You don’t look well, mon coeur,” he said solicitously, helping me to my feet. “Let me take you home.” Edward Kelley chose this moment to lose control.
“I hear their voices. They speak in languages I cannot understand. Can you hear them?”
He moaned in distress, his hands clapped over his ears.
“What are you chattering about?” Rudolf said. “Dr. Hájek, something is wrong with Edward.”
“You will find your name in it, too,” Edward told me, his voice getting louder, as if he were trying to drown out some other sound. “I knew it the moment I saw you.”
I looked down. Curling threads bound me to the book, too—only mine were white and lavender. Matthew was bound to it by curling strands of red and white.
Gallowglass appeared, unannounced and uninvited. A burly guard followed him, clutching at his own limp arm.
“The horses are ready,” Gallowglass informed us, gesturing toward the exit.
“You do not have permission to be here!” Rudolf shouted, his fury mounting as his careful arrangements disintegrated. “And you, La Diosa, do not have permission to leave.”
Matthew paid absolutely no attention to Rudolf. He simply took my arm and strode in the direction of the door. I could feel the manuscript pulling on me, the threads stretching to bring me back to its side.
“We can’t leave the book. It’s—”
“I know what it is,” Matthew said grimly.
“Stop them!” Rudolf screamed.
But the guard with the broken arm had already tangled with one angry vampire tonight. He wasn’t going to tempt fate by interfering with Matthew. Instead his eyes rolled up into his head and he dropped to the floor in a faint.
Gallowglass threw my cloak over my shoulders as we pelted down the stairs. Two more guards—both unconscious—lay at the bottom.
“Go back and get the book!” I said to Gallowglass, breathless from my constrictive corset and the speed at which we were moving across the courtyard. “We can’t let Rudolf have it now that we know what it is.”
Matthew stopped, his fingers digging into my arm. “We won’t leave Prague without the manuscript. I’ll go back and get it, I promise. But first we are going home. You must have the children ready to leave the moment I get back.”
“We’ve burned our bridges, Auntie,” Gallowglass said grimly. “Pistorius is locked up in the White Tower. I killed one guard and injured three more. Rudolf touched you most improperly, and I have a strong desire to see him dead, too.”
“You don’t understand, Gallowglass. That book may be the answer to everything,” I managed to squeak out before Matthew had me in motion again.
“Oh, I understand more than you think I do.” Gallowglass’s voice floated in the breeze next to me. “I picked up the scent of it downstairs when I knocked out the guards. There are dead wearhs in that book. Witches and daemons, too, I warrant. Whoever could have imagined that the lost Book of Life would stink to high heaven of death?”
Chapter Thirty Two
"Who would make such a thing?” Twenty minutes later I was shivering by the fireplace in our main first-floor room, clutching a beaker of herbal tea. “It’s gruesome.”
Like most manuscripts, Ashmole 782 was made of vellum—specially prepared skin that had been soaked in lime to remove the hair, scraped to take away the subcutaneous layers of flesh and fat, then soaked again before being stretched on a frame and scraped some more.