“Wait,” I said, scrambling to open the book again so that I could study the new image more closely.
The Book of Life resisted me at first, but it sprang open once I wrestled with it.
It was empty. Blank. Panic swept through me.
“Where did it all go?” I turned the pages. “I need the book to get Matthew back!” I looked up at Sarah. “What did I do wrong?”
“Oh, Christ.” Gallowglass was white as snow. “Her eyes.”
I twisted to glance over my shoulder, expecting to see some spectral librarian glaring at me.
“There’s nothing behind you, honey. And the book hasn’t gone far.” Sarah swallowed hard. “It’s inside you.” I was the Book of Life.
35
“You are so pathetically predictable.” Benjamin’s voice penetrated the dull fog that had settled over Matthew’s brain. “I can only pray that your wife is equally easy to manipulate.”
A searing pain shot through his arm, and Matthew cried out, unable to stop himself. The reaction only encouraged Benjamin. Matthew pressed his lips together, determined not to give his son further satisfaction.
A hammer struck iron—a familiar, homely sound he remembered from his childhood. Matthew felt the ring of the metal as a vibration in the marrow of his bones.
“There. That should hold you.” Cold fingers gripped his chin. “Open your eyes, Father. If I have to open them for you, I don’t think you will like it.”
Matthew forced his lids open. Benjamin’s inscrutable face was inches away. His son made a soft, regretful sound.
“Too bad. I’d hoped you would resist me. Still, this is only the first act.” Benjamin twisted Matthew’s head down.
A long, red-hot iron spike was driven through Matthew’s right forearm and into the wooden chair beneath him. As it cooled, the stench of burning flesh and bone lessened somewhat. He did not have to see the other arm to know that it had undergone a similar treatment.
“Smile. We don’t want the family back home to miss a minute of our reunion.” Benjamin grabbed him by the hair and wrenched his head up. Matthew heard the whirring of a camera.
“A few warnings: First, that spike has been positioned carefully between the ulna and the radius.
The hot metal will have fused to the surrounding bones just enough that if you struggle, they will splinter. I’m led to believe it’s quite painful.” Benjamin kicked the chair leg, and Matthew’s jaw clamped shut as a terrible pain shot down into his hand. “See? Second, I have no interest in killing you.
There is nothing you can do, say, or threaten that will make me deliver you into death’s gentler hands. I want to banquet on your agony and savor it.”
Matthew knew that Benjamin was expecting him to ask a particular question, but his thick tongue would not obey his brain’s commands. Still he persisted. Everything depended on it.
“Where. Is. Diana?”
“Peter tells me she is in Oxford. Knox may not be the most powerful witch to have ever lived, but he has ways of tracking her location. I would let you talk to him directly, but that would spoil the unfolding drama for our viewers back home. By the way, they can’t hear you. Yet. I’m saving that for when you break down and beg.” Benjamin had carefully position himself so his back was to the camera.
That way, his lips couldn’t be read.
“Diana. Not. Here?” Matthew formed each syllable carefully. He needed whoever might be watching to know that his wife was still free.
“The Diana you saw was a mirage, Matthew,” Benjamin chortled. “Knox cast a spell, projecting an image of her into that empty room upstairs. Had you watched for a bit longer, you would have seen it loop back to the beginning, like a film.”