Chapter 19 Francois #2
“We need to get some of those spells written down. See if any of them hold the key to destroying the Ancients. Or if they can at least confirm for us what they were doing here. You do that while I look through a couple of the grimoires you brought with you,” Kayla said.
“We need the ones that only you know. You know, the ones you’re holding in your head. ”
“Okay.” Maeve nodded. Then she looked at me. “I remembered quite a few.”
“It will be one of the last ones,” I said. “Can we do them backwards?” When she’d said she could remember the spells, I’d only thought about loading her up, not how to extract the correct spell from someone with only a rudimentary understanding of ancient language and magic spells.
“I think I can.” She nodded again, a determined set to her jaw. “Let’s give it a whirl, anyway.”
Kayla pulled a chair from under one of the desks and took a sheaf of blank papers from the drawer. “Can you write them?”
The corners of Maeve’s lips tilted in the smallest of smiles. “Probably with more accuracy than I can recite them. If I tried to say them, and Frankie wrote them down, we really would be raining frogs in here or something.” She laughed softly.
Kayla’s gaze shot to me as Maeve said the word Frankie but I just stared at her, daring her to comment.
Eventually, she shrugged and cleared her throat before handing Maeve a pencil. “Yeah, let’s give this shit a whirl.”
Maeve bent over, and before long the only sounds in the room were the scratch of her pencil tip and the occasional paper swish as Kayla turned a page in one of the books we’d found hidden in the secret rom.
After a while, she stopped and looked over Maeve’s shoulder. She pressed her fingertip onto one of the spells Maeve had written down in neat, precise handwriting. “This one,” she said. “This is about reanimating a vampire—even one who has undergone final death.”
“Father,” I murmured. “They wanted him.”
“Looks like it.” Kayla grimaced a little, her lips pulling taut.
“But what’s really interesting…” She indicated one of the spells in the books she’d been flipping through.
“This talks about draining magic from powerful beings. I think it might be exactly what we need. The Ancients can spell cast, and we need them to not be able to do that.”
I chuckled. “Yeah, that ability is really cramping our style, for sure.”
Kayla chewed her lip. “Looks like we have some good news and some bad news.”
“Oh? Did I remember something wrong?” Maeve frowned at the page again.
“Not at all.” Kayla looked at her book again.
“The news is in here. We can take away their magic, but it’s not something that works immediately.
It’s a spell that will drain their powers over time, so although it should give us the outcome we want—turning the Ancients into normal vampires so we can imprison or kill them—I don’t know how long it will take them to reach that state. ”
“So they could bring my father back before we neutralize their threat?”
Kayla shrugged. “Maybe. I hope not.”
“And are you sure that’s what the spell Maeve remembered is designed to do?” I had so many questions. Whatever Leia had given me in the chalice had set my mind on fire. I was alert and interested and engaged. Not distracted or tired.
If normal virgin blood could do this for me, what would Maeve’s blood do? I glanced at her, hardly able to dare hope that she might allow me to exchange blood with her.
“Are you sure that’s what that spell is for?” I clung to the hope that maybe we’d gotten it wrong between us, but Kayla nodded.
“Oh, yes. It’s old and it’s dark, but it’s almost identical to the one in here.” She grabbed a large, dusty grimoire from a very high shelf and manhandled it to the desk before I could even offer any help. “Look.” She spent a couple of moments flipping the pages.
“But why would they want him?” I still didn’t want to imagine it.
It was easier to deny that such a man could be resurrected than to entertain the possibility as reality.
I glanced at the spell she’d opened the book to.
She was right. They were pretty much the same.
“I think it has something to do with strength, but I don’t get why when they’re so strong already. ”
“Yep.” Kayla agreed with me as she leaned against the edge of the desk.
“They’re this strong and their circle isn’t even complete.
Imagine if they complete their circle. Once the whole circle is filled, they can pull on divine magic.
” She shrugged but the movement was anything but careless. “Once they have that…”
“But they haven’t needed him.” I shook my head. “He was apart from them for so many years.” I was really just speaking out loud. My whole life seemed like a lie. “I never knew.”
“From what Nic says, no one really knew about the Ancients. Why would you have expected to know?”
I didn’t reply. If I hadn’t been half-crazed half the time, if I hadn’t lived so much of my life trying to numb any and all pain, maybe I could have saved all of us this. Somehow.
“What can I do to help?” I was all in.
“Well, they obviously need your dad but both spells also refer to lineage magic. It’s a form of necromancy. Resurrecting the dead through the blood of their descendants. Someone of the same family line.”
“I’m the only one,” I murmured. “But they tested my blood. They didn’t want me because my blood was tainted.”
Kayla swallowed and moved to sit in a chair. “I’m not sure it was ever about you, Francois, no matter what they told you. I don’t think they ever intended to make you an Ancient. They just wanted your blood.”
“To raise his father?”
I’d almost forgotten Maeve was there until she spoke.
Kayla nodded. “I think so. They took Francois’s blood, and they can use that to bring émile back.”
I shuddered. The world would be a much worse place with my father back in it.