The Book of Blood and Shadow (47 page)

“You didn’t tell me about the mouth,” the priest said.

No wonder Eli had worked so hard to convince me that Max was playing the part of Thomas the betrayer in our little Renaissance
revival. So what did it say about me that I’d so readily believed him? “You tore the letter yourself, didn’t you?” I asked. “Why? You just wanted more time to watch me squirm before you delivered me to him?”

“I told you, I swear I didn’t—”

“The Kostel sv Boethia marks the end of the path for those who seek the
Lumen Dei
,” Father Hájek said. “And so we wait here, and we watch, and they deliver themselves into our hands. As have you.”

Eli asked a question in Czech.

The priest shook his head. “English, please. You must forgive his rudeness,
vyvolená
. He is young.”

Eli cleared his throat. “I said, ‘What’s with the gun?’ ”

“I warned you that this would end as necessary. You chose not to listen. She is a danger.”

“You think I know too much? Trust me, I know nothing,” I said. “And definitely nothing about you. Or any of this. I’m happy to keep it that way.”

“It is what you know. It is also what you are.”

“The
vyvolená
.”

He nodded. “You are an innocent, and for what I must do I beg His forgiveness—”

“Feel free to beg mine, too.”

“—but it must be done.”

“We get her out of the country,” Eli said. “You know you can pull some strings, hide her where they can never find her.”

“Until the day she goes to them.
Kdo je moc zvědavý, bude brzo starý
.”

“Curiosity will kill you,” I murmured.

“You see? You know much.” The priest sighed. “Lie down, please. You may wish to close your eyes.”

Do something.

Do anything.

“Assist her,” the priest said.

Eli put his hands on my shoulders. The grip was gentle, the pressure firm. I let him push me to the stone floor. Stretch my arms out to the sides, press my cheek into the cold grime. The priest wore mud-spattered sneakers under his cassock. Beneath a sculptured saint, a spider skittered across its web. The stones butted each other with jagged edges, sharp and rough as the day they’d been laid—no foot traffic to smooth them down over the centuries. No visitors to this crypt, except the few who came to worship, the few who came to hide, the few who came to die.

I would not close my eyes.

“Please,” I said. “I hate the
Hledači
. I hate the
Lumen Dei
. I don’t believe in any of this—I don’t have any curiosity. You let me go, I will leave and never, ever, ever come back.”

“There is always a chance. And this we cannot risk.”

“Because it would be so wrong for us to finally know?” Eli asked. “We’ve been throwing away our lives for centuries, for what? Because we’re so afraid what would happen if someone finally asked the question and got an answer? Aren’t you ever curious? Don’t you ever wonder if we might be wrong?”

“She has corrupted you.”

“It’s not her,” Eli said angrily. His hands tightened on my shoulders. “It’s me, it’s this, all of this.”

“God demands faith, son. Some knowledge is not yours to pursue. God wills us to preserve his sanctity.”

“Then she’s right. Let God kill her,” Eli said. “It’s not our job.”

“You are young, and there are allowances to be made,” the priest said. Then his voice went cold. “But you will remember your oath. Hold her down.”

Father Hájek knelt before me and drew a small vial from beneath
his vestments. He poured a clear liquid into his hand, then brushed two wet fingers against my forehead.
“Per istam sanctan unctionem et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per visum.”

Through this holy unction and His own most tender mercy may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins or faults thou hast committed by sight
.

He pressed his oil-slick fingers to my ear.
“Per istam sanctan unctionem et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per audtiotum.”

Through this holy unction and His own most tender mercy may the Lord pardon thee whatever sins or faults thou hast committed by hearing
.

The last rites.

Eli leaned his head to mine. I bucked against him, struggling in his grip. If this was going to happen, it wouldn’t be while I lay helplessly on the ground and tolerated his pathetic apologies. He squeezed tighter. The priest chanted.

“Per istam sanctan unctionem et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per odorátum. Per istam sanctan unctionem et suam piissimam misericordiam, indulgeat tibi Dominus quidquid per gustum.”

I was actually going to die.

“Get ready,” Eli whispered.

I would not lie still; I would not close my eyes.

Please
. My mouth formed the word, but I didn’t speak it. I would not beg.

The sacrament drew to its inevitable end.

“Now,” Eli whispered.

I held my breath, and he let go.

And lunged at the priest.

And tackled him to the ground.

And a gunshot cracked.

And I was on my feet, and running, up the stairs, out the door, down the alley, away, unbloodied, alive, free.

And the shot echoed in my ears, and I wondered.

I didn’t look back.

17

I had to go back to the hostel.

I couldn’t go back to the hostel.

I had to warn Adriane.

I couldn’t lead them to Adriane.

I warred with myself—but all the while, I was running, and when I stopped, I found myself in front of the Golden Lion, because there was no other choice.

The room was empty.

I should have stayed with her, I thought. For a million reasons, I should have stayed.

I shouldn’t have acted like I was alone.

Because now I was.

18

“That other girl left this for you,” said the mulleted guy at the front desk, twisting his nose ring with one hand and holding out a torn slip of paper in the other. “She said I shouldn’t give it to anyone but you.”

She’d taken her chances with him after all.

She was safe.

They came looking for you. I hid. Meet you @ 9
the last place we were us. Ditch Eli. Stay safe. A

The last place we were us: It was in a different country, a different life. But I knew what she meant, and she knew I was the only one who would. The restaurant where we’d had our last dinner, where we’d had our last night with Max, and maybe she’d chosen it because it was convenient and easily alluded to and at the forefront of her mind, but maybe she needed to go back—to remember, one last time, being us, or to vanquish the ghosts—before we fled to the airport and never looked back. Maybe we both did.

But nine p.m. was hours away, and I couldn’t stay where they could find me. They could find me anywhere.

So I got lost.

19

The sky was bleached of color. Fog shrouded the city; spires bled into smoky sky. Cobblestones shimmered, slick with rain. I walked aimlessly, my shoes skidding on wet stone. Fat drops splattered on saints and clocks and hunched shoulders and crumpled wrappers and spits of meat. Still, from the tip of every tower, bright flashes, cameras like lightning bugs, tourists watching the rain fall and the city skitter.

Always, in Prague, someone watching.

My father had taught me about palimpsests, age-stained manuscripts that had been written over again and again, one layer of meaning peeking out from beneath another, and another beneath that. Nothing is ever erased, he had told me once, not long before Andy was. There are always traces; there are always signs.

That was Prague: a palimpsest. Dead eras like onion skins, one atop another, post-Communist on Communist on art nouveau on baroque on Renaissance on late medieval on early medieval
and on back to the original settlement, the angry Bohemians and their warrior queen. Graffiti sprayed on Gothic churches, cubist facades on Renaissance palazzi, Lady Gaga tracks spurting from tiny speakers at the base of a baroque storefront housing a selection of nineteenth-century-style marionettes probably manufactured in China. It was a Picasso version of a city, all noses and elbows and foreheads jutting out at impossible angles, oil layered over newsprint layered over canvas, beautiful and terrifying at once.

It wasn’t just the buildings; it was the people. History moved too fast here, washing over the city like a high tide that receded, day after day, each wave leaving its own distinctive detritus behind: the Nazis, the Soviets, the West. Imagine going to sleep in one city and waking up in another, still in the same bed, still in the same house, but with new laws, new uniforms, a new day outside your window. The old men who hoisted their grandchildren on their shoulders, the stooped women who collected tickets, they had been children in a city that spied on itself, that hid from secret police, that lost its jobs for speaking up or poached its jobs for telling tales, that was interrogated, that was locked away, that hid in dark rooms scanning for illegal radio broadcasts, that danced in the street as tanks rolled past, that spoke Russian and hated the taste of it on their tongues, that expected every day to be like the next … until one day, it wasn’t. These men, these women, did they envy the generation of willful amnesiacs who had been born into capitalism and freedom and plenty and preferred to believe life had always been this way? It was easy to imagine, because it was what I would have wished for myself. The capacity to forget. To wash in, fresh and smooth, with every new tide, no yesterday, no tomorrow. You couldn’t erase the layers; you could only hope to ignore them.

I shoved my hands into my coat against the cold, and my fingers closed against a scrap of paper in the pocket, in Max’s pocket.
Wait for me
, it read, inexplicably, in Max’s hand. I dropped it in the gutter and watched his words dissolve in the rain.

Time passed, rain fell, I walked. There was nowhere to be but lost. Without meaning to, I found my way to the cemetery.

The cemetery was closed, safe from the twilight behind its stone walls, but there was some comfort in knowing it was there, the weathered gravestones and sighing trees a few feet from where I sat on wet ground, legs crossed, back pressed to stone, straining to hear a faint chant or melody or prayer leaking from the nearby evening worship but hearing only bells, distant churches chiming yet another hour. I listened and breathed and assured myself that I was still alive, and I sat there watching the sky darken, without knowing why. Maybe I was waiting for him.

And eventually that was where he found me.

20

“You wanted to know if I was sorry,” Eli said.

I didn’t know why I hadn’t run. Instead, I let him lower himself beside me. I didn’t want to look at him, but I spared a sideways glance. He’d wrapped a bandage around his left hand, and he winced as he shifted his weight onto his right leg. I didn’t see any bullet holes.

“I am sorry.”

“So you followed me. Again.”

He shook his head. “I figured you’d be here. You have a thing for cemeteries.”

It was the worst thing he could have said. Like he was inside my head, worming his way into the places I’d thought were secure.

“Don’t,” he said. “It’s like the sixth or seventh place I looked. It was luck.”

I wondered what he’d read on my face, that he knew.

“Is this where you warn me not to scream?” I said.

“You’ve got nothing to fear from me.”

I forced a laugh.

“Did you miss the part where I saved your life?”

I ignored him. With the synagogue museums locked down for the night, Josefov had cleared out. The rain had tapered off, but a gloom hung over the empty street. It couldn’t have been more than five or six, but it felt like the dead of night.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I didn’t mean to—” He stopped, and lowered his head to his hands. They were trembling. But when he raised his head again, his face betrayed nothing. “Will you listen to me? No more secrets. I’ll answer anything. Just hear me out first.”

“The truth,” I said, the word a joke.

“The truth,” he said, like he meant it.

More likely more lies, I thought, and I’d had enough of those. But what if they weren’t?

“So talk.”

“It wasn’t all a lie,” he said. “Everything I told you about my family, the way I was raised, that’s true. My parents are Czech—but they’re also
Fidei
. Like their parents, and their parents before that. Et cetera. We’re born to the oath and the sword—that’s what they believe, and that’s what they taught me. Absolute faith, absolute obedience. The Church disavowed the
Fidei
centuries ago. It’s only survived by enforcing an insane level of discipline. You do what you’re told. You don’t ask questions. Like my parents didn’t ask questions when the
Fidei
sent them to America.”

“Just following orders,” I muttered.

“It’s not like that. The
Fidei Defensor
have pledged their lives to protecting the soul of the world. They truly believe the
Lumen Dei
could destroy us all. Whether by bringing down the wrath of
God for trespassing our human bounds—or by blowing us all up when people like the
Hledači
get their hands on the fuse. They’ll do anything to stop it.”

“Including shoot random American teenagers.”

He stiffened. “I told you I understood, about wanting a normal life. My parents were just pretending to be normal, to fit in. But I wanted it. You don’t know how much. College, a life, everything. And this year I finally talked them into it. I got out. Met people who didn’t have their destinies prescribed for them in the 1600s. People who’d been watching TV and getting drunk while I was memorizing the pressure points that would incapacitate enemies of the faith. I was going to do it. Tell my father I wanted out for good, that it was all crazy.”