Blood Ex Libris

  Blood Ex Libris

  Sex & Blood & Ancient Scrolls™ Book One

  Raven Belasco

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my father. He never managed to finish his novel, although he worked on it his whole life. From him I inherited the problem of “I forgot to buy the damn milk because I’m in the fucking 18th century, that’s why!” which is no doubt as frustrating to those around me now as it was to those around him.

  It’s also dedicated to Cairngorm McWomble the Terrible—who would much rather that I be walking him right now instead of faffing about writing this. He has no idea (nor, to be honest, does he care) how many plot problems have been resolved as I escort him on his walkies. He is the finest companion a writer could hope for.

  — Raven

  The Blood Ex Libris Team

  Thanks to our Beta Readers:

  Mary Morris, Kelly O’Donnell, Daniel Weigert, Crystal Wren

  Thanks to our JIT Team:

  Debi Sateren

  Deb Mader

  Rachel Beckford

  Jackey Hankard-Brodie

  Diane L. Smith

  Peter Manis

  Paul Westman

  Kerry Mortimer

  Editor

  SkyHunter Editing Team

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Author Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Am’r Language Dictionary

  Blood Ex Libris Furrin’ Words

  Connect with Raven

  Prologue

  It’s half-past-apocalypse, and I find myself sharing a weird bush-tree with this strange little rodent-thing for the same reason: we wanted to have a moment of privacy to do our business.

  Well, I think it’s a rodent. It seems to have more in common with a kangaroo, and it’s mostly composed of outsized ears and a tail. But it, whatever it is, is kindly sharing this bush and this moment of solitary retreat with me. When you have shared the deeply vulnerable experience of squatting with any living creature, you tend thereafter to feel a commonality and respect for your fellow squatter, even if it is a ludicrous little bouncing thing. And since I now know what a ludicrous little thing I am compared to much more powerful things, I am doubly prepared to respect other living creatures. Even if they bounce and have extremely silly ears.

  I can smell explosives and fire. I am covered in blood, and while I’d love to say it’s mostly the blood of my enemies, I think it’s half and half at best. OK, probably mostly mine. My ears are ringing, and my vision is a bit funny. I keep seeing things out of the corners of my eyes, or even right in front of me. I blink, and there is nothing there.

  I think I’m in quite a bit of pain. My uncertainty about my pain level is due to the side-effects of shock—something I appreciate for the first time in my life. Although of late, I have been in shock so often, and so intensely, and now for such a sustained period of time, I’m amazed I haven’t burned out my adrenal glands or nervous system.

  But apparently I have not, and I’m grateful for the small mercy because when I look down and see all the blood—see the fabric of my trousers and the skin of my thighs slashed to ribbons, clotted into a ragged crusted mess between my legs—I feel a moment of shock and a rush of nausea. It’s good I can look at awful things and feel as upset as a person should. It proves I’m still a person, if not precisely a normal human. Not anymore.

  Holding my squat, I try not to think about how my thighs feel. I look at the bouncy mouse-thing for distraction. It’s done now, and it stands up on impossibly tall hind legs to look at me. Its “arms” would make a Tyrannosaurus rex feel well-endowed. I combine that thought with its pink little whiskered nose twitching at me, and I find myself giggling. Definitely shock.

  I have to go back down now. Underground. Back down into demolished caverns filled with murderous monsters. At least they’re my monsters, which is a better situation than last time I was aboveground. I can’t be certain a worse kind of monster isn’t lurking about up here even now. I make such a tempting target for snatching; if they smell me, I don’t think they could resist. And with all this blood, and the accumulated filth of everything I’ve just gone through, I don’t see how even a normal human being could avoid smelling me.

  The sun is coming up. I cannot handle the thought of the light-induced migraine, which will be added to my pains if I don’t get back into the safety of darkness. Back to the protection of my monsters.

  He’s there waiting for me at the crack in the rock, which is one of the remaining openings not blown into smoking heaps of rocks and bodies. He is being polite—giving me a little space, a little privacy—but I know I need to hurry up and get back down there. I mean, I don’t even know if the one person—albeit another monster—I can trust to always be truthful with me is all the way dead, so I need to go back down and help my blood-covered monster. My beloved.

  Chapter One

  I can visualize the first time we met so clearly. The children’s reading hour is every Friday at 4 PM during the school year. It was my favorite part of the job—because let’s face it, I didn’t get into librarianship for the money. The children’s and young adults’ section of the library is decorated in warm primary colors, brightly lit to chase away the ever-darkening days of November. Sitting in a semi-semi-circle around me were the restless five-year-olds up through the boredom-affecting twelve-year-olds, as usual. For once, they were all listening quietly as I read aloud James and the Giant Peach, although ten-year-olds Emma and Skylar were making each other friendship bracelets, and I thought six-year-old Noah was more or less asleep. I was just getting to the part where the Centipede tells off the Cloud-Men when I found myself losing my place, unable to focus.

  He was on the other side of the children’s area, sitting in the shadow of the empty puppet theatre behind Jessie and Avery, ages seven and eight—both of whom, along with the rest of the kids, were now staring at me, wondering why I’d stopped dealing them their Dahl-fix. He did not fit in this primary-colored world; his pale olive skin did not go well with crayon-yellow and construction-paper-green. His oval eyes were just nondescript dark eyes under the fluorescent lights, deep-set and shadowed in his face. The long black curls that fell around his shoulders did not reflect the bright reds or blues in interesting highlights. His forehead was too wide, and his nose too aquiline and long. His clothes were more eye-pleasing: a black shirt that draped like silk from wide shoulders, and very nice black leather boots peeped from the bottom of the well-tailored black trouser legs. The monochrome black made him protrude incompatibly with that warm, bright world. It also made him seem taller than he was.

  He smiled at me and made a minuscule gesture indicating, “Please, do go on,” and I abruptly remembered the over-sized peach and audience of confused children. I applied myself studiously to the telling of the tale, ignoring the sensation of his presence with painstaking effort. It worked; when I looked up at the end of the hour, he was gone.

  For the next few days, I personified distraction. For example, I misfiled several new books, including a rather graphic adult fantasy novel, which did not belong in the children’s section. My two co-work
ers, Andre and Zuzanna, each took me aside at different times, asking if I was OK. I assured them I was fine, went back to my desk, and stared off into space at the dark stranger whom only I saw.

  He showed up next at Beowulf’s. I wasn’t surprised. In this small town, there aren’t overly many options in the late-night-café-with-coffee-you-can-actually-drink department. We didn’t even rate a Starbucks, so it was the only place to go in town. Luckily for me, it not only proudly produced both excellent food and beverages, but it was also only a block from the pint-sized public library where I spent much of my time. I would start my day with their dark chocolate mocha, and end it with their special-of-the-day for dinner, lingering over a cup of oolong tea and chatting with various book-minded locals. I even held a modestly successful monthly reading group there, which drew a varied crowd of rose-growing old ladies, students with piercings and trendy hairstyles, the local curmudgeon, and the local motorcycle club, which had only one member more than the curmudgeon club.

  I would generally be at Beowulf’s ‘til it closed, whether or not it was reading group night. There was nothing to call me back to the in-law apartment over Mr. and Mrs. Muckenfuss’ garage. Ma Muckenfuss had furnished and decorated it in finest “country grandma” style, and the only things there I really liked to look at were the brick-and-board bookshelves I’d stacked against almost every wall. There was also nothing to do except put in unpaid hours working on the library website, which was by now far grander than the Helen Abigail Winstringham-Fenstermacher Memorial Library truly required.

  It’s not that I was bored. It is important to keep small-town public libraries open and available to all, and I was hands-on with getting kids excited about reading and keeping the library as full of current and thought-provoking books as we could afford and shelve. But for one who’d dreamed of becoming an archivist, I’d fallen pretty far down. The only “old” books we had were the town council logs and birth records from 1853 onwards and the Helen Abigail Winstringham-Fenstermacher Collection, which was mostly recipe books, H-A-W-F’s personal journals, the complete works of James Fenimore Cooper from 1896, and some turn-of-the-century Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck catalogs. Not exactly thrilling stuff.

  The little dragon-shaped cast-iron teapot—Beowulf’s was dedicated to the details—had been refilled once already, and I was considering going home and starting to read a new series of science fiction graphic novels as my weekend activity when Mr. Mysterious came in. The nighttime lighting was kinder to him; his skin looked healthier in the amber-shaded light, and his all-black fashion statement seemed less ridiculous in a café-at-night setting. He still could have been taller.

  Why should it matter to me? I had to ask myself. It was not like he was going to fall passionately in love with me, sweep me off my feet, and take me away from all of this. Although if he had moved into town, or was at least staying for a while, I hoped I’d get to know him. Maybe we had another potential reading group member: one who was a bit of eye-candy for me for once.

  My reveries were interrupted, however, by the subject of them asking if the chair across from me was taken. I looked around Beowulf’s, which was mostly empty. Since I had snagged one of the two cushiest chairs in the café, he must simply be being polite about choosing the other. Still, I could at least get to know who he was and if he was just passing through our neck of the woods, or staying a while.

  “My apologies for interrupting you,” he said, smiling. Very white teeth.

  “Oh! No, not at all! I was just, um, looking at my tea. Um, nothing that can’t be interrupted!” How did I manage to sound both inane and hysterical in so few words?

  “Ah. Do you...read tea leaves?”

  “Huh? Oh, read fortunes? No, no, of course not. I mean, not that there’s anything wrong with that...” I shoved my glasses up my nose and said to myself, OK, idiot-girl, stop your mindless babbling before you scare him off.

  There was a pause as he brought his espresso cup to his lips. Put it back down on the little plate. “I am new in town. My name is Alexandru Solin.”

  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Solin. I’m Anushka Rossetti.” I held out my hand. We shook. Internally I raged at my ridiculousness: shaking hands was far too formal for just meeting someone in a café. Could I not get even the most simple social interaction right? At the same time, another part of me was distracted by his pleasingly low voice, with just enough of an accent to make it devastatingly sexy. Steady now, girl!

  The conversation continued through my internal conflict. “Please,” he said with earnest intensity, “call me Alexandru.”

  I took a deep breath. This was always the awkward part of any introduction. “In that case, please call me...Noosh.”

  He looked startled and said, “Excuse me?” No one hears it right the first time, or they assume they haven’t. I wish I’d been given a normal name and could thus have a normal nickname since it would make socializing much less awkward from the get-go. Obviously, I could use all the help I could get in that department.

  “’Noosh.’ It’s my nickname. I’ve had it since I was, oh, five or six, I guess. I couldn’t say my own name, and that’s what I came up with. It’s stuck since it’s easier to say one syllable instead of three. I’ve gotten used to it.”

  “Noosh.” He said it slowly as if he were tasting it. “It does not flow off the tongue as ‘Anushka’ does, but it has its own character. It is strong but also charming.” A pause. “In my country, ‘Sandu’ is the pet name for Alexandru, but it is very informal.”

  I just stared at him. What do you say to that? I thought of describing “Sandu” in return, but all I could come up with was it sounded a bit like “Xanadu.” Which I wisely did not share. I just kept my mouth shut, which usually makes people think I’m wiser than I am. Or at least not quite as socially inept.

  “You work in the library, do you not, Anu—Noosh?”

  Well, that started me off. I am passionate about my job, even if it’s not quite the prestigious career I’d hoped for with the ink still damp on my Master of Library Science degree. Alexandru asked the right interested, sympathetic questions to keep me pouring my story out. I don’t usually talk this much, and certainly not to somebody I’ve just met.

  It was when the Beowulf’s staff was starting to make the noises baristas make when they want to go home and wash the smell of coffee grounds off that I realized I’d monopolized the entire conversation and knew nothing about him except his name. Not only a terrible way to make a first impression, it was also more than a bit frustrating. What had come over me? I’m not usually that clueless.

  “I’m so sorry for talking your ear off, Alexandru. I’d really like to get to know more about you,” I apologized as I started gathering up my coat and bag. My glasses fell off as I bent over and I had to awkwardly shove them back onto my face, damning myself for not having gotten a better-fitting pair.

  He smiled warmly, which made me feel all melty inside. Far too melty. “It is no problem, Noosh. I enjoyed hearing all of it. And I look forward to talking with you again.”

  And with that, he swept out of Beowulf’s, his three-quarter-length leather jacket—having magically gone from being laid over the arm of the chair to on-and-fitting-snugly—gleaming mutedly under the streetlight. I stared after him. It’d been a prime night for staring. Indeed, including the recent days’ bouts of staring into space, I might see if there was a world record I could break.

  Chapter Two

  He was at the children’s reading hour again the next week. I was going to have to talk to him. It’s not that we’re ageist at the Helen Abigail Winstringham-Fenstermacher Memorial Library, it’s just parents generally don’t like strange men—strange foreign men with long hair who dress all in black—hanging out with their children. The kids didn’t seem to mind or even notice him. Utter self-involvement for the win! I valiantly continued with James and the Giant Peach, despite being able to feel Alexandru Solin’s presence.

  After Skylar, Emma, Noah,
Avery, Jessie, et al., were collected by their respective parents, I wandered as nonchalantly as possible over to him. He was leaning against a bookshelf, engrossed in Bunnicula. “If you apply for a library card, you can take it home with you,” I said, feeling cool and smooth and in control, “although only if you are a resident of Centerville.” There. That totally didn’t sound like I was fishing for the answer.

  “I am afraid I am living over in Blackacre,” he said apologetically, and I had to stifle myself from asking, “So why aren’t you in their public library?”

  “Beowulf’s has the best coffee I have found in the area,” he said. I found it a doesn’t-explain-half-enough explanation but was distracted when he added, “I was wondering if you would be dining there tonight?”

  “Tonight and every night, unless I defrost something at home,” I heard my mouth reveal without input from my brain. Shit! Why’d I tell him that? It makes me sound like a loser as well as being a librarian, which of course equals geek. Geek and loser. Way to go, Miss Cool, Smooth, and In Control.

  “I myself never cook,” he responded, winning my eternal gratitude.

  “It’s not much fun cooking only for oneself,” I hazarded.

  “It is not,” he said solemnly. Well, there was another question answered. “So,” he continued, “is that a yes? Will you dine with me this evening?”