But when Mouse knelt and kissed Angelo as a last good-bye, the strings of power pulling at her loosened a little, and the blinding anger eased. She leaned down, her lips to his ear, and whispered so that only he could hear. “Wake up.”
His disorientation lasted only a moment. “What happened to them?” he asked as he ran his hand over his face, trying to focus.
“They’re unconscious.”
“What are you doing?”
“Help me get the book into the equipment case. Quickly.”
“We’re stealing it?” He was now as angry as he was confused.
“We have no choice. I’ll explain later.”
“Were you going to leave me here?”
“Angelo, help me!”
Angelo shoved the Devil’s Bible into the equipment case while Mouse wrapped the cameras in the photo umbrellas and crammed them into the metal box that had held the ancient manuscript. When it lay closed on the table and the equipment case stood ready by the door, Mouse and Angelo pulled the librarian and the guard into the chairs along the back wall where they would’ve sat to observe Deacon D’Amato taking his pictures. Mouse and Angelo moved near the door, ready to run if something went wrong.
With everything staged, all that remained was for Mouse to wake them. She moved closer to Angelo so that her hand was touching his, praying that it would serve like an antidote if the force in the Devil’s Bible surged again when she tapped her own power to give the command.
She blew out a sigh. “Wake up.”
While Eva Hedlin and the guard wrestled with the momentary disorientation, Angelo talked as if they were all in the middle of a pleasant conversation. “Thank you for the recommendation for lunch, Ms. Hedlin. I’m sure it will be lovely.”
The librarian’s eyebrows pressed together in confusion, but then she stammered, “It was my pleasure, Deacon D’Amato. I hope you enjoy it.”
“The exit down here would be easier for us, Ms. Hedlin. We wouldn’t have to lug the equipment back up stairs. Would that be okay?” Angelo asked.
The librarian looked at the guard, who nodded blankly and led them to a door that opened to the gardens behind the library.
“Thank you,” Mouse said, but the door was already closing behind them. Mouse and Angelo walked away with an ancient manuscript insured for fifteen million dollars shoved into the case between them.
“I can’t believe you,” Angelo hissed at her.
“Angelo, I can’t do this right now.”
“But you—”
A piercing wail erupted as they stepped into the circle of trees in Humlegården at the back of the library. Mouse looked up into the canopy thinking of the cicadas back in Nashville, but the leaves were clean and green with no insects, and she realized that the sound was different—higher and solitary, unnatural. The air was changing, too, charged like before a storm.
“Something’s coming, Angelo.”
Mouse dropped her end of the case and moved in front of him. There was no one in sight, so she started scanning the dark places under the trees.
But the sound wasn’t coming from the dark. It was in the sunlight, blinding and audacious.
A thing peeled itself off the statue of Carl Linnaeus where it lay like a second skin over the bronze figure, green and scaly with age. It had been waiting, like the creature at Marchfeld, a sentry left by her father. It dropped into a low crouch and lurched as it came to know itself again. Slowly, the thing reclaimed its shape—a feline skeleton protruded from its starved flesh, and the large, dead eyes of a bird consumed most of its squat, badgerlike face. Its nostrils flared as it caught Mouse’s scent. Arching its back as it dropped its head, it turned toward her.
Mouse swept quickly to the left, the creature’s eyes tracking her. As it started to move, twisting oddly on its jointed legs, she ran—away from Angelo, who was still standing there frozen as his mind tried to adjust to the reality of the creature he’d just seen.
Mouse’s heels clicked on the sidewalk and then sank into the dirt as she raced across the grass toward the cover of a tight line of trees. She turned to see how close the thing had gotten.
There was nothing there.
Afraid that it had gone after Angelo instead, she closed her eyes, frantically searching for evidence that he was still alive. She saw his glow moving in her direction. Then she heard the snapping in the trees above her. She jumped out of the way just as the creature landed, its claws raking her back.
Mouse ran again, trying to lure it farther away from Angelo. She could sense it closing in on her and hunched her shoulders, expecting any moment to feel its claws piercing her. When she ran up against the Gazitúa statue, she spun around, her back against the stone.
“Leave!” she ordered. The thing was only a step away, but Mouse was too frightened to issue a more fatal command for fear of who else might hear and obey.
The creature never even paused.
Mouse’s neck popped as it backhanded her. She flew into the trunk of a nearby weeping mulberry, its branches dangling down like a curtain, obscuring her view and tangling in her hair. She jumped to her feet, slipping on the dusty cobblestone as she struggled for traction. She headed toward the sound of traffic, thinking only of distracting the creature somehow—thinking only of getting it away from Angelo.
She made it to the grass before the thing leapt onto her back, sinking its claws into her scalp as it struggled to hold on. She could feel it pulling itself around to her front, its teeth exposed. Mouse stopped and threw her weight forward, tossing the creature over her back, but it kept its hold on her head. Her hair tore at the roots as the creature flipped her forward.
Her head cracked into the sidewalk and everything went black.
When she opened her eyes, the creature was crouching over her, its thin face tilted stiffly to look at her, its pupil a tiny pinprick surrounded by pale yellow. And in the flash of a moment as it realized she was awake, Mouse jabbed her hand into the soft flesh just below the creature’s sternum. The thin skin tore, and her fingers plunged into its intestines.
Without warning, her head exploded in pain, and her father’s voice shut out her awareness of everything else.
I see you want to play my little game, girl.
He’d never been angry when he’d violated her mind this way before. Those other times had hurt, but this time the pain was unbearable as his wrath swelled in her mind. Blood gushed into her ears and trickled down her neck.
But it’s rather inconvenient for me right now. Give me a few more days and I’m all yours.
His laughter shook her like a seizure.
That is, if you’re still able to play.
The creature lowered its snarling mouth toward her; Mouse could do nothing to stop it. But the thing did not rip out her throat. Instead, it just leaned closer, pushing her balled fist farther up into its chest. Its lips were oddly soft and chalky as it wrapped its mouth over hers.
And then it slipped itself into her pores, like hundreds of needles piercing her skin, as it started to meld with her like it had the statue. It was like the black ooze in the cell at the ruins of Podlažice, except this thing was alive, sentient. It would claim her as its own and then take her to her father. Mouse squirmed with a muffled and powerless rage.
“Get off her!” Angelo had finally caught up to them. He dropped the case he’d dragged with him and spun toward the tree, looking for a limb he could use as a weapon, but then realized it would be useless unless he wanted to bash Mouse’s head in, too.
“Throw the salt!” Mouse cried out as the creature started to consume her. “Throw the salt!”
Angelo grabbed at the leather pouch Mouse had tucked into his pocket that morning and ran toward the entwined bodies, untying the frayed strap as he went. He flung the opened pouch at the creature as it sank further into Mouse. The salt spell she had prepared as a talisman for Angelo, tinged with her blood and laced with all the words of protection she knew, now flew into the demon. It screamed in agony. Mouse screamed,
too—a gurgling, drowning cry that barely left her throat.
The crystalline cubes sliced into the creature’s skin and cut into Mouse’s flesh. The salt gathered the creature’s substance as it came in contact, pulling it out of and away from Mouse. Angelo watched as the demon was shredded into a million tiny pieces trapped in a million grains of salt that scattered along the sidewalk with quiet plinks and bounced into the grass.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Mouse gripped the steering wheel. Angelo stared out the window. They were half an hour out of Stockholm, and neither of them had spoken.
Seconds after she had been freed from the demon in Humlegården, Mouse pushed herself onto her knees, beckoning to Angelo, who was standing on the sidewalk, his eyes glued to the scattering of black-tinged salt. “We have to get out of here now. Something else will be coming,” she said, her voice so hoarse she barely sounded human. It broke his trance; he helped her to her feet, and they made their way slowly through the park back to the car, Angelo dragging the case behind him and Mouse creeping along beside. They took turns explaining to concerned passersby that Mouse had fallen and scraped her knees and hands. The rest of the blood was masked by her dark suit.
Angelo hadn’t even argued when Mouse insisted on driving. She dropped stiffly into the seat as Angelo struggled to shove the equipment case into the trunk before sliding into the passenger seat without a word—just the click of his seat belt and the quiet thud of his head against the window.
Finally, Mouse had no choice but to break the silence. “Can you hand me the bag of salts in my backpack? I got a new one at—”
“You’re not doing that again.” It was cold and final.
“We can’t leave ourselves unprotected, Angelo.”
The pull of the Devil’s Bible had quieted—Mouse guessed it was a side effect of the spell-laced salts Angelo had used to kill that thing in the garden—but she could still feel its power, and she knew her father could, too. He would know where they were.
“We need something to shield us until we find someplace to hide,” she said.
“I’ll do it then.”
“No. I don’t want you to—”
“You don’t want what, Mouse? You don’t want to watch me dig into my arm? Watch my blood splatter on the upholstery so I can keep you safe?” His eyes narrowed, daring her to argue.
“Fine. Go ahead.”
Still glaring at her, he shaped the salt along the floorboard and seats and then pulled a razor from his bag. She held her breath as he cut into his forearm. She gave him the words of the spell quietly, hating that he had to learn to do it, knowing that it probably wouldn’t be the last time. She wondered whether Bishop Sebastian would still claim him as his own if he saw Angelo now. Drops of his blood rolled down the console. Finally he sat back hard in the seat and crossed his arms, pressing a tissue against the cut.
“Now will you tell me what that thing was?” he asked.
“Something that belongs to my father.”
“I’m warning you, Mouse. No games. What was it?”
“I don’t have a name for it any more than you can say what pulled you out of the damn river.”
“You betrayed me and you’re the one who’s mad?”
“Betrayed you how?”
“You never said we were going to steal the book. You made me pass out with the others. You controlled me to get what you want.” His voice was sharp and Mouse was defensive; both were overcharged with adrenaline and fear from what had happened.
“That’s bullshit, Angelo! I couldn’t think of any other way to get the book out. I didn’t want to do any of that, least of all to you, but what else was I supposed to do?”
“You could have gotten what you needed at the library.”
“You think so?” She scoffed. “How was I supposed to find the words to the spell I need with that woman breathing down my neck? Those words are probably written in blood like the others were. I have to touch the book to get the words. Did she act like she was going to let me touch it?” She waited a moment for an answer she knew wouldn’t come. “That’s what I thought.” She gritted her teeth. “I am sick of being second-guessed, Angelo.”
“Second-guessed? Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I didn’t mean it that way.” Mouse flushed with sudden embarrassment, realizing how it sounded and realizing, too, that she wasn’t really angry at Angelo. She was mad at herself and doubting every choice she’d made. Stealing the book was the least of it. She had made a deal with the Bishop that she would take her father out of the game, find some way to kill herself, or hand herself over to the Bishop and his self-righteous warriors. She was supposed to stop this impending storm of evil the Bishop believed was about to be unleashed on the world, and she was supposed to keep Angelo safe while she did it. None of those things seemed possible right now.
“I just meant I’m doing the best I can,” she said quietly.
“It’s not about how hard you’re trying, Mouse. It’s about you shutting me out.” He sighed in frustration.
She pushed herself back into the seat and jerked the wheel as she slipped in and out of cars on the motorway. She knew he was right, but after seven centuries, keeping secrets had become a habit. The wheels whined against the pavement as she pushed on the accelerator.
“The book does things to people,” she finally said, trying to give Angelo some part of the explanation he craved and some confession of her own, too. “It does things to me. It plays off my emotions, amps them up like someone winding up a toy to watch it spin. Surely you noticed that I wasn’t . . . myself at the library.” She hesitated because some part of her worried that the way she was in the library, angry and arrogant and contemptuous in her power, was actually the real Mouse, the person she was born to be.
“But it’s not just me who’s affected by it,” she added. “The man who wanted me to write it for him, Bishop Andreas, went crazy searching it for secrets. Then he hanged himself in the presbytery.”
“I don’t understand what that has to do with—”
“It’s happened over and over again since then. The book doesn’t seem to bother most people. Scholars come study the translations and tourists come to spook themselves with the Devil’s picture, and they’re just fine. But when someone goes looking for something more—things happen.”
“Like what?”
“They go insane. A porter in the eighteen hundreds and, later, Eugène Fahlstedt, and his friend, August Strindberg—”
“The playwright?”
She nodded. “They spent a night with the Devil’s Bible searching for its secrets. Not long after, Strindberg ended up in an asylum suffering from a psychotic break he called his Inferno crisis.” Mouse sighed. “I could have searched the book in the library while Eva Hedlin and the guard were passed out on the floor. It would have been a lot easier. But how could I take that risk? I hadn’t counted on it affecting me the way it did, but I knew about the other stories. And I knew my father would protect his secrets somehow. You saw what he did at the ruins in Podlažice, and just now, what he left lurking in Humlegården. I might have drawn that thing into the library with all those people.”
“Who is he, Mouse?”
Mouse stared out the window.
“Why didn’t you tell me all this before we went?” Angelo asked when it was clear she wouldn’t answer his other question.
“If something went wrong and we got caught stealing it, I wanted you to be able to say you didn’t know what I was planning to do.”
“And that’s trusting me?” His temper flared again.
“It’s not about trust, Angelo. I trust you more than anyone I’ve ever met. This is about what I have to do.”
“What you have to do? Save everyone? That’s pretty damn presumptuous, Mouse.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“So enlighten me, then.”
“I killed ten thousand men.” She said it out of anger, never
meaning to make the confession.
“What?” He almost laughed, but as he studied her face in the silence that stretched out longer and longer, the truth of her words settled in him. “My God,” he whispered. “How?”
For a few minutes, Mouse stayed silent, watching the signs flash by counting down the miles to the border crossing. She searched for words that would give Angelo some kind of answer without really telling him the truth, but she was too tired. Tired from what had just happened at the library, tired from the roller coaster she’d been on since Nashville, tired from seven hundred years of running and hiding and lying. She was too tired for anything but truth, simple and bare, so she told him about Marchfeld. When she finished, she thought she should have felt unburdened, but she just felt dirty—contaminated by the book stuffed into the trunk of their car, by the filthy residue of that thing that had been inside her, by the blood running through her veins.
“So you think you have to find redemption by saving everyone?” Angelo asked.
“It’s not about redemption.”
“Why not?”
“That’s not possible for me.”
“What, you’re the one person in all of human history who can’t be forgiven for what they’ve done? Yet you’re the one who has to save everyone else? That’s just—I don’t know, Mouse, that’s some major god complex at work there.”
She was quiet for a long time. It wasn’t as simple as he made it sound, but Angelo was right. She hadn’t been sacrificing herself and her life out of a sense of compassion. She hadn’t encased herself in an emotionless, cloistered life driven by ritual and routine out of selflessness. She’d done it out of an inflated sense of responsibility, out of a hope that she could undo what she had done and make herself into something other than her father’s daughter. But she was filled with as much arrogant pride as her father was.
“You’re right.” The hum of the engine filled the silence and weighted her confession. “There’s nothing I can do to fix what happened at Marchfeld. I can’t change what I am. And I’m not a savior.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Mouse. What happened in that field—it was an accident. An act of mercy gone horribly wrong. You can hardly hold yourself responsible any more than I would blame myself for accidentally stepping on an ant.”
The Devil's Bible Page 27
