Bring Me To Life #3
Aubrey’s mouth twitches. “No, I just think all the characters in that movie would have had a lot fewer problems if they’d practiced basic archival hygiene and not read the incantations while poking around in random tombs.”
“I am not an idiot,” I announce. “If anything, I’m going to get myself haunted by mispronouncing a phrase nor will I be a cautionary tale for the next century of shifter academia.”
The dragon nods, satisfied. “Excellent. Proceed.”
The next thirty or so pages are nothing but text.
No chapter breaks, no illustrations, not even a change in ink color to trip us up.
Sometimes I pause to examine a particularly weird cluster of characters, but never for more than a few seconds.
After that, the layout changes again. There’s a diagram in the margin—a geometric thing, all radiating lines from a central point, like a sun but made of triangles instead of rays.
The triangles get bigger the farther out they go, and each is filled with tiny, even denser script.
“That looks almost like a summoning circle,” I say, squinting at the page. “Or what I’ve seen depicted as one in the media, I guess. But take a look.”
Renard’s eyes light up. “Yes, but not for a being. I think it is more likely a map, or a way of structuring information. See how the triangles nest? It is a recursion.”
Aubrey logs the page with his camera and draws his own version of the diagram on his pad and then waves for me to go on.
I turn more pages. Now every other one has a new shape—a lattice of interlocking hexagons, a spiral made out of tiny dots, a set of concentric circles with notches at irregular points around the circumference.
Some are so complicated that even looking at them for too long makes my eyes ache.
“This one looks anatomical,” I say, pointing to a page about two-thirds in. “But it’s not a human, or any animal I’ve ever seen.”
Renard lifts the book so we can all look closer.
The drawing is a cutaway of a skull, but it’s got twice as many chambers as it should, and the jaws are joined in four places instead of two.
It’s very odd, and I have no idea what it could be referencing in the slightest. We keep going, but the diagrams get stranger as we progress.
One is a grid of perfect cubes, each with a tiny dot in the center; another is a set of what look like molecular models, but they’re labeled with the same script as the text.
On one page, there’s a border of repeating triangles around a diagram of…
something, and I realize the triangles are the same as on the cover.
“I want to try something,” I say, and use my gloved finger to trace the triangle. I half-expect to get a shock, or to suddenly see a hidden message, but nothing happens except that my hand tingles, and the sense of anticipation gets stronger.
Renard watches me, curious. “What did you expect?”
“A vision. A blood memory. Maybe a pop quiz from my Fae side. Something, you know?” I shake my head. “If there’s magic in this book, it’s doesn’t give a fuck about me.”
Aubrey grunts. “I think that is enough for tonight. It’s getting late, and we have other things to do. We can send the pictures and notes along before tomorrow morning.”
I close the book with a soft click, the covers making a low, final sound. Rennie takes it to wrap it up in the cloth again, his motions precise and almost gentle. I peel off both sets of gloves and drop them onto the table.
“Well,” I say, “we learned it’s very old, very weird, and possibly enchanted to bleed whoever tries to open it. Not a total loss, but not enough.”
Aubrey sets down his pad and rubs his eyes. “I was hoping for more. Maybe a clear threat, or at least something that points to Rockland’s endgame and from that, the Society’s. But this—” he gestures at the rewrapped book, “—is just a locked door.”
“Sometimes you spend all night on a puzzle and the answer is that you need to sleep on it,” Rennie says with a shrug. “Maybe it will come in a dream or maybe we will continue examining it tomorrow night and find more. It is not a waste; I am sure.”
I look at the boys and sigh, but it’s not a sad sigh, more… resigned. “Let’s go upstairs so we have time to eat with the others, guys.”
Renard gathers up the tools and wipes down the table one more time.
Aubrey flicks off the lamp and pockets the key to the archive room.
We exit together, the sense of anticlimax trailing behind u s like a scent, but also a sense of relief.
At the top of the stairs, I pause, feeling the faint pulse of the book as if it’s in the crook of my arm.
“We’ll get it, you know,” I say, more to myself than anyone. “We always do.”
Renard smiles, faint but genuine. “Of course. That is the only reason we are still alive.”
Aubrey gives me a side-eye that says I’d better not have bled all over the notes, and I beam back at him, happier than I should be.
This will all make sense at some point and once it does, the Society had better watch out.