by Graham Brown
After leaving New Orleans, Christian had looked through them in hopes of finding some answers. He discovered, to his surprise, that the writing was not Simon’s alone. There were notes and drawings in many different hands. Most of it was written in Latin, some in ancient Greek. He could only guess it was an heirloom of the Ignis Purgata, passed from leader to leader.
He wasn’t sure why Simon had wanted him to have it. At first, he thought it might be to keep it from his rival Henrick. But Simon Lathatch was not a petty man. He was strong, tough, pragmatic. He was cold, forged steel on the outside with a will of iron, but he was also a thinker. Simon had chosen to look beyond what he’d been told his entire life and see the possibilities of the future. Proof of this came in his actions and in the last words of the journal, hastily scribbled in Simon’s hand and meant, inescapably, for Christian.
You are the only hope. But you are not alone, my midnight son.
There were secrets in this journal, secrets Christian could use to carry the battle forward. But he needed to get at them and understand them to find them helpful. And that had brought him out to Columbia in the pouring rain.
Across the lawn, the library’s main door opened. A security guard held it as a woman in a wheelchair came out. Once she’d made it through the door, she opened a large umbrella and slotted it into a holder of some kind. With a flick of the wrist, she started down the access ramp and onto the pathway that divided the South Lawn.
Halfway across the lawn, she noticed him. Her pace slowed for a moment, but she continued on, stopping a few feet from where he stood.
For a moment, neither one of them said a thing. They just stared at one another, accompanied by the patter of the rain on Ida’s umbrella.
“How long you been out here, sonny?”
“All night.”
“And when I don’t work all night?”
“I watch your apartment,” he said, “to make sure you’re safe.”
“Because the others might know about me now? Is that it?”
He nodded.
She sighed. “You know, I’d almost convinced myself this was a delusion—you and your kind, all the things you told me—but then I went through my research again and I heard about what happened in New Orleans. The bodies the FBI found and the massacre in the bayou.”
“Sorry for getting you involved.”
“I was already involved, ever since I was a child.” She smiled sadly and then added, “I was worried about you.”
He didn’t know why it mattered, but it meant something to him that another soul on this earth was concerned for his well-being. “Thank you,” he said. “I’m okay.”
“Did you find your friend Elsa?”
He nodded and then looked away. “She’s gone now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Christian shook his head. “At least she’s free.”
He told her what had happened, told her of the battle and the FBI and Drake’s wounding.
“So what happens next?” she asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “That’s partly why I came here.”
He pulled out the journal and handed it to her. Beneath the shelter of her umbrella, she opened it and began to leaf through the pages.
“This is in Latin,” she said. “Figured you’d be more familiar with that than me.”
“I am,” he told her. “The Latin’s not the problem. It’s written in some kind of code.”
She leafed through a few pages. “You want me to figure out the code? What am I—a secret agent or something?”
“No,” he said. “Just a resourceful, tenacious woman.”
“Not sure I’m up to code breaking.”
“Two thousand years of Church secrets in there,” he said.
She smiled and looked back at the journal again. “I’ll take a shot at it.”
“I thought you might,” he said.
She looked up at him. “You seem different somehow.”
“I’m not afraid anymore,” he said. “For seventeen hundred years, I’ve been fighting against fear. But you can’t get anywhere fighting against something. You have to fight for something. Something that matters. Something like love or faith or justice. It gives you a power that evil doesn’t have.”
“And what are you fighting for now?”
“For those who can’t fight for themselves.”
“Sounds like a pretty good cause,” she said. “Buy me a cup of coffee, and I might join up. You guys do drink that stuff, right?”
“We stay up all night,” he said, moving to the back of her chair. “What do you think?”
She chuckled, and as he began to push the chair, she fiddled with the umbrella holder, raising it higher so he could duck under it.
“You don’t need to,” he said.
She finished and locked it into place. “I’m guessing you don’t catch cold, sonny. But you look kind of silly standing out in the rain like that. There’s enough room for both of us under here.”
He nodded and ducked underneath.
“I’ll carry the shield,” she said. “You drive.”
“Sounds like a plan,” he said, pushing her chair slowly. “But we have to get one thing straight.”
“What’s that?”
“You need to stop calling me ‘sonny,’” he said. “I’m seventeen hundred years older than you.”
She laughed again, and Christian found himself smiling at the sound. There was a long road ahead, but for the first time in centuries, he wasn’t traveling alone.