My heart hammered, as if I were running full speed. “I’ve heard of first transformations taking hours.”
He nodded. “That happens when the unit number is low. Not enough virus entered the body during infection, or something is inhibiting it, so you might get somebody with five units in his blood, sitting at twenty percent of the shift for an hour. Five by two by sixty is only six hundred. Then the virus blooms and he shifts.”
I was grasping at straws. “What about Andrea? During the flare she was in a partial shift for at least a couple of hours.”
“Andrea had an object in her body that interfered with her shift. Once they pulled it out, it took her half an hour to rebuild the virus and change shape.”
Damn it. “Then why bother with sedation at all?” Doolittle must’ve done it for a reason. He must’ve had some glimmer of hope.
Curran reached over and covered my hand with his. “It’s not for her. It’s for you. Doolittle is using all of his skill to keep her alive and comfortable. He’s giving you time to come to terms with it . . .”
I stared at the road through the windshield. They were waiting until I gave up and agreed to put my kid out of her misery.
Curran kept talking. “I brought her in wrapped up, so nobody except the two of us, Doolittle, and Derek know how bad she is. The kid won’t say anything.” His hands gripped the wheel, his knuckles white. His face was calm, his voice completely flat and measured, almost soothing. He must’ve expected me to fall apart, because he’d locked his emotions inside, asserting absolute control over himself. “Julie isn’t in pain. She’s sleeping. You can take your time. I know how much she means to you. You care for her. Sometimes it can be very hard. If it’s too hard, I’m here. I will help her, if you need me.”
“Please stop the car.”
He pulled over. The outskirts of Atlanta had long ago succumbed to the magic’s onslaught. Ruins surrounded the road on both sides. The long stretch of highway lay deserted.
I stepped out of the car and marched out into the crumbling wreck of some old building, singed from the inside, its walls black and draped with dead kudzu. I didn’t know where I was going. I just had to be on my feet, so I paced back and forth, one wall to the other.
Curran followed me inside and halted at the gap in the wall. He didn’t say anything. Nothing needed to be said.
I paced. There had to be something, some way. Death was forever, but Julie was still alive.
“I keep thinking that if I had made it in twenty minutes earlier, none of this would’ve happened. I wish I could . . .” I clenched my fists.
“Kill Leslie again?”
I looked at him and saw my own rage mirrored in his eyes. He’d wanted to rip Leslie apart. He’d pictured it in his head more than once. She had become the Keepers in his head and in mine.
I spun on my foot, making a turn at the wall. “Leslie could’ve bitten me until the cows came home. I’d get a light fever and that would be the end of . . .”
A light went on in my brain. I stopped. My blood ate Lyc-V for breakfast and chomped vampirism for dessert.
Curran was right. Julie was hanging on by a thread. A direct transfusion of my blood would kill her.
“What?” Curran asked.
But my blood could kill Lyc-V. It could be done because Roland had done it before. I racked my brain. I knew the general gist of the story, but my memory didn’t store any specifics. I needed to know exactly what Roland had done. Where had I read about it? No, wait, I didn’t read it, I heard it. If I closed my eyes, I could recall a woman’s measured voice reciting the words.
Elijah. That’s right. The Chronicles of Elijah the Unbeliever. The Chronicles couldn’t be written down; they had to be recited from memory. Who in the city would know them? Who . . .
The rabbis. The Temple was my best bet.
I stepped to Curran.
“Can you take me to the Temple?”
He raised his hand and showed me the car keys.
CURRAN DROVE UP THE STREET, HEADING TO THE Temple. To the right, remnants of houses, little more than gutted wrecks of bricks and stone, thrust from the street. Behind them Unicorn Lane raged, like a wound in the body of Atlanta, bleeding raw magic even in the middle of a tech wave. Hideous things hunted there among decaying skyscrapers, feral and hungry, twisted by the very magic that sustained them, poisoned by the sewage and eating tainted prey.
The Unicorn lapped at the half-shattered walls, leaving long yellow hairs of the Lane moss in its wake. They glistened on the exposed metal framework of the magic-ravaged houses, feeding on iron and oozing corrosive slime, heralding the advance of the Unicorn. The Temple sat at the very end of the street running right next to the Unicorn, and the rabbis had warded it to allow safe access to the synagogue. Lampposts guarded the street, each decorated with mezuzot, small pewter cases engraved with the letter shin. Each mezuzah contained a parchment inscribed with holy verses from the Torah. The city council had been trying to contain Unicorn Lane for decades. It kept growing, expanding like a cancer, despite everything the city had thrown at it. Yet here, the rabbis quietly held it back without any fanfare or napalm.
“Who was this Elijah?” Curran asked.
“He was a small-time bricklayer down in Florida. He was kind of a jack-of-all-trades, so he did whatever came his way: fixed cars, performed small repairs, but mostly built houses. Something must’ve happened to him because he had a wife and a son at some point and was doing enough business to pay the bills, and then suddenly he just started drinking. And not just drinking, he drank himself into a stupor. Eventually his wife left him.”
“Great story,” Curran said.
“It gets better. Every weekend Elijah would take his paycheck, go down to the local pub, and do his best to drink himself to death. When he got drunk enough, he started raving. Sometimes he’d be spitting chunks of the Bible, word for word; sometimes he told these weird fables; sometimes it wasn’t even English. People pretty much dismissed him as a complete lunatic. One night a rabbi happened to be in a pub. He heard Elijah carry on and realized that he was listening to a section from Sefer ha-Kabod. It’s a twelfth-century text written by Eleazar of Worms, one of the most important Hebrew cabalists. Elijah was functionally illiterate. He could barely write his own name.”
Curran nodded. “It’s like a kid in kindergarten suddenly spouting the Iliad in ancient Greek.”
“Pretty much. So the rabbi stayed in town for a week and paid Elijah to ramble on, while he recorded him. At the end of the week, Elijah finished his last tirade and died.”
“From what?”
“Organ failure. He stopped breathing. There are about eighteen hours of tapes. Some of it was pure nonsense, and some of it was prophetic. In the recordings, there are about two hours of fables. Every fable is about Roland.”
Curran glanced at me. “Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Why don’t you own a copy of this book?”
“That’s the best part of the story. You can’t transcribe the tapes. Every time you do it, the next magic wave wipes them out. People have tried to write them down and put them in lead boxes, even. Doesn’t work. Magic hits, the words disappear. Even copying the tapes doesn’t work every time. The Temple is the largest synagogue in the Southeast. If they don’t have a copy of the tapes, someone there must’ve heard them played.”
Curran peered through the windshield. “What the hell is that?”
I glanced straight ahead. A massive clay golem blocked the road. The top half of the golem was sculpted into a muscular human body, topped by the face of a male with a long beard. The bottom half was an enormous ram, complete with four hoofed feet and a tail. The golem brandished a tall metal spear. It looked frozen in midstep, the left foot raised off the ground, the spear swinging as if the golem had been making a turn.
“It’s one of the Temple’s guards. Please don’t knock it over. I’m on thin ice with the Temple as it is.”
Curran braked.
The vehicle rolled to a slow stop. The golem didn’t move. The magic was down. Without it, the Temple protector was just a clay statue.
Curran shrugged. “I guess from here we go on foot.”
The Temple sat at the very end of the road, a solid red brick structure with a white colonnade, flanked by some utility buildings and a wall decorated with enough names of angels and magic symbols to make you dizzy. We crossed the yard and walked up the white stair to the reception area. The woman behind the receptionist’s desk saw me and paled. The mirror behind her offered me our reflection: we were both smeared with blood and dirt. A big red stain marked Curran’s sweatshirt over his chest—he had taken a bullet just under the clavicle. Lyc-V would heal the damage, but I’d had to pull the bullet out and the wound had bled after he put the sweatshirt on. My pale green turtleneck was splattered with something that looked suspiciously like someone’s brains, and a big print of a bloody hand marked my stomach, where someone’s fingers had clearly dragged over the fabric.
“The Beast Lord and Consort, to see Rabbi Peter,” Curran said.
The woman blinked a couple of times. “Will you wait?”
“Sure.”
Curran and I sat in the chairs. The receptionist spoke in a hushed voice into the phone and hung up.
Curran leaned to me. “You think she’s calling the cops?”
“I would.”
“Just letting you know, I’m not in the mood to be arrested and if they try it, they won’t like it.”
Why me?
I picked up a copy of a cookbook from the side table and flipped through it. Chocolate rugelach. Hmmm. Chocolate, sugar, almonds . . . Curran might like those.
“We sell those,” the receptionist said, her voice hesitant. “They are recipes from the congregation. Would you like to buy a copy?”
I looked at Curran. “Do you have any money?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a roll of cash. “How much are those?”
“Ten dollars.”
Curran flipped through the bills.
I leaned to him and whispered, “What are you doing?”
“Looking for one that’s not bloodstained. Here.” He pulled a ten-dollar bill out.
I offered it to the receptionist. She took the money carefully, as if it were hot, and gave me a small smile. “Thank you.”
“Thank you for the book.”
Curran glanced toward the hallway. Someone was coming. A moment later I heard it too, a quick patter of feet. Rabbi Peter emerged into the lobby. Tall and thin, with a receding hairline, a short, neatly trimmed beard, and wearing large glasses, Rabbi Peter should’ve looked like a college professor. But there was something in his eyes; they brimmed with curiosity and excitement, and instead of an aging academic, Rabbi Peter resembled an eager young student.
He saw us and paused.
We stood up.
Rabbi Peter cleared his throat. “Um . . . welcome! Welcome, of course, what can I do for, eh, you, Kate, and, eh . . . I’m sorry, I don’t know how I am supposed to address you.”
Curran’s eyes sparked. If he told the rabbi to call him Your Majesty, we could kiss cooperation with the Temple good-bye.
Curran opened his mouth.
I elbowed him in the side.
“Curran,” he said, exhaling. “Curran will do.”
“Wonderful.” The rabbi offered him his hand. Curran shook it, and then I did. “So what may I do for you?”
“Are you familiar with Elijah the Unbeliever?” I asked.
“Of course. Here, why don’t we go into my office. We’ll be much more comfortable there.”
We followed the rabbi down the hallway. Curran rubbed his side and gave me an evil look. I mouthed “Behave” at him. He rolled his eyes.
The rabbi led us into an office. Bookshelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, bordering the single large window so tightly that it looked cut out of the thickness of books.
“Please sit down.” The rabbi took a seat behind his desk.
We landed in the two available chairs.
“Would you like anything, tea, water?”
“No, thank you,” I said.
“Coffee, black if you got it,” Curran said.
“Aha! I can do that.” The rabbi rose and took out two cups and a thermos from a cabinet. He unscrewed the cap, poured black brew into the cups, and offered one to Curran.
“Thanks.” Curran drank it. “Good coffee.”
“You’re welcome. So Elijah the Unbeliever. Which particular part are you interested in, or is it the whole thing?”
“We need a certain fable,” I told him. “The Man on the Mountain and the Wolf.”
“Ah, yes, yes, yes. A very philosophical piece. In essence, the man on the mountain encounters a wolf who wants to be rid of his savagery. The man turns him into a dog through the sharing of his blood. There are several interpretations. We believe that when God created Adam and Eve, he made them using his own essence; this essence, Neshama, meaning ‘breath,’ is what separates humans from animals. In the fable, the wolf is feral. He lacks a soul, and thus he is consumed with rage. The man shares his blood with the wolf, forging a constant connection between them, just as God breathes a soul into each man and a woman. Since our soul gives us our conscience and takes us beyond the animal instincts, the wolf becomes a dog who will forever follow his master.”
Peter slid his glasses up his nose. “There is a second interpretation, based on the teachings of Maimonides, who believed in the necessity of balance. According to Maimonides, one should always walk the King’s Road, staying away from the extremes, neither surrendering completely to one’s emotions nor rejecting them entirely. The wolf, being enraged, walks the extreme path, and to return to the King’s Road, he ties himself to the man, becoming a dog. The dog still retains his primal savagery, but his rage is now tamed, so he achieves his balance. Were you looking for a particular interpretation?”
“We were looking for the exact wording. Do you happen to have a copy of the recording here in the Temple?”
“Unfortunately, we do not.”
Damn it.
Rabbi Peter smiled. “But I happen to have studied the tapes extensively. Elijah is my area of study. I’ve committed the tapes to memory, so if you have a few minutes, I can recite the fable for you if you would like.”
Yes! Thank you, Universe. “I’d be in your debt.”
“Very well.” The rabbi reached into the desk and produced three white candles. He struck a match, lit the first candle, and used it to light two others.
“Why the candles?” Curran asked.
“It is traditional when reciting Elijah’s words. In one of the recordings, Elijah states that a candle is synonymous with one’s wisdom. If you use one candle to light another, your light is now twice as bright. Just so when a teacher shares his wisdom with a student, both minds are enlightened. Since I am about to share Elijah’s words with you, I shall light two new candles and our light shall be three times as bright.”
The rabbi arranged the candles in the corner of the desk. “Now then. Fable number three. There once was a man of wisdom who lived upon a mountain. One day a rabid wolf blocked his path. The wolf was suffering, for he was full of rage and it drove him to murder and violence. The wolf begged the man to take away his rage, at any price. The man denied him, for it was too dangerous and could cost both of them their lives. The next day the wolf returned and begged the man once more to take away his rage. The man denied him again, for rage was in the wolf’s nature. Without it, the wolf would no longer be a wolf. On the third day, the wolf returned once more and refused to leave. He followed the man, begging and crying, until the man took pity on him. He agreed to free the wolf of his bloodlust, but in turn the wolf would have to promise to serve the man till the end of all time.
“On the fourth day, the man and wolf climbed to the top of the mountain. The man chained the wolf to a rock with chains of silver and iron. Then the man cut open his arm and
let his blood run free while a rain of needles fell upon the mountain. Seeing the blood, the wolf had become mad with rage and struggled to break his chains, but they held him fast. The man sliced the wolf’s throat and pulled the living blood from the wolf’s body into his hand. As the wolf lay dying, the man mixed his own blood with the fiery core of the wolf’s soul. Then the man thrust the mingled blood back into the wound, spoke the words that bound the wolf to obey him forever, and fell to the ground, weakened. The man’s blood purged the rage from the wolf. He sat by his master, guarding him while he rested, and when the man awoke, he found that the wolf had become a dog. That’s the end of the fable.”
The rabbi sipped his coffee. “The fable’s philosophical value can’t be denied; however, in recent years some scholars, myself included, have speculated that the fable is based on actual events. A large percentage of Elijah’s teachings, first taken as allegories, proved to be fact. The fable has all the characteristics of such a teaching. It offers specific if somewhat cryptic details: the rain of needles, the mixing of the blood, the chains of silver and iron, where fables conceived as fiction typically speak in general terms. But of course, daring radicals such as myself have to resign ourselves to scorn from our colleagues.” He smiled.
My aunt made flesh golems by pulling the blood out of her victims, infusing it with her magic, and somehow inserting the mixture into new flesh, creating monstrously powerful automatons completely under her control. Roland had done almost the same thing. He’d pulled the blood out of the shapeshifter’s body, seared it with his magic, and put it back. And somehow both he and the shapeshifter had survived.
I didn’t even know where to start. Roland had a hell of a lot more power than I did and it wiped him out, which meant I’d need a power boost. Just like the volhv who teleported Adam out of his workshop. I would not resort to sacrifice. Even for Julie. It was out of the question.
“Was it something I said?” Rabbi Peter murmured. “You look shocked.”
“No,” Curran said. “Everything is fine. Thank you for your assistance.”
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