10.

The Vampire council is not the only group that thinks the only good necromancer is a dead one.

From the ninth to the thirteenth century, the Catholic Church conducted a secret campaign to rid Christendom of necromancers. According to the doctrine of the time, necromancers were not just an abomination against the will of God, they were a threat to the natural order of life and death.

The campaign was carried out by a select group of monks called the Brotherhood of True Death. The original aim of the Brotherhood was to keep the line between the living and the dead sacred and unalterable.

Given that goal, I’m sure you’re not surprised that they hunted vampires as well as necromancers.

But therein lies the problem. Anita, you are living proof that the best vampire killers are also necromancers or animators. After a few centuries, the ranks of the Brotherhood came to be filled almost entirely with men who, had they chosen to exercise their power, would have been necromancers.

No one really knows when the Brotherhood crossed the line and began to practice what they persecuted. All we know is that by the thirteenth century, the group had become like a cankerous sore in the body of the Church. It was a corrupt organization that used its power to find necromancers, steal their knowledge and put them to death.

Although it is still alive today, the Brotherhood met its official end when a librarian named Erasmus of Ghent, who started hearing voices and decided that the voices were from God.

Some say it was all that time in the Brotherhood’s library that sent Erasmus around the bend, but I’ve never found anything less maddening than the quiet presence of books. Whatever the reason, Erasmus waited until the Brotherhood had gathered for its annual Convocation at the main monastery in central Germany. He set fire to the building.

He must have been pyrokinetic. The Convocation was held in a stone castle. He burned it to the ground. Unfortunately, we’ll never know for sure what happened because Erasmus was in the castle when it burned.

The only way anyone knew he was responsible for it at all was that he had sent a letter to the Pope explaining the crimes of the Brotherhood and why he had to ‘cleanse it with the Holy Fire of God’. The letter did not arrive in Rome until two months after the Brotherhood had been reduced to ashes.

"Well," I said, breaking the spell of silence that had fallen over the room as Hex spoke. "That explains the zombies that attacked us this evening, but not the presence of the book, or how it made Officer Jenkins think that Dominic Dumare had written on the inside flap."

"The book," Hex said, with a faint sigh. "Some people believe that before he lit fire to the Brotherhood of True Death and their library, he condensed the secrets of necromancy into a single volume, the Necronomicon.

"Some scholars of the occult have speculated that the power of the gathered knowledge was so great that the book actually developed a will of its own. Others believe that it was cursed, or haunted by a malevolent spirit.

"Whatever the theory, the few recorded appearances of the book have shown it to impose an almost Machiavellian control over the lives of the people who come into contact with it. But it also offered an unparalleled store of power and knowledge to anyone who possessed it.

"The lure of power has made the Necronomicon a sort of Holy Grail of necromantic knowledge. Many have sought it. Only a small few have found it, but those who believe never stop searching."

"So I guess I really haven’t seen the last of Virginia Weal," I muttered.

Hex gave me a questioning look, and I told him about my confrontation with the wimpy witch of the West.

"No, you probably haven’t seen the last of her. Those who search for the Necronomicon are a fairly obsessed group. Though, it’s odd that a witch would be after the Necronomicon. It wouldn’t be of any use to her."

"No use? Even if she couldn’t read it or perform the spells, this book is pretty powerful on its own." I said. "And that trick with the blood that it played on Officer Jenkins seems to be catching."

"If this book is the Necronomicon, it’s powerful for you, because you’re a necromancer." Hex explained. "The ersatz Mrs. Weal could gain no power from it because necromancy and magic are fundamentally different. Death and Life.

"Besides," Hex slanted a curious look at the book on the table. "Judging by the hallucinations you described, the book seems to have taken a particular fancy to you.

"But, enough talk. Let’s have a look." He plucked a pencil out of the mug on the table and used the eraser end to flip open the cover of the book. "Hmm," he said, paging past the blank facing page. He stared at the title page for a long minute.

"If this is a forgery, then its a good one. This looks like Erasmus’ writing. He had atrocious penmanship."

"If he burned in the fire, how do you know what his writing looked like?" Richard asked.

"The letter he sent to the pope is still in the Vatican archives."

"You’ve been in the Vatican archives?" I asked, incredulous.

"Among other places." Hex answered without giving my obvious doubt much thought. He continued, "I was a rare books expert when I was alive. In 1848, the Vatican had some questions, and they called me in for answers."

"And now you’re a doctor, too," I said, falling into the tone of sarcastic banter we had used on the stairs. "You’re a real Renaissance man, Hex."

He smirked. "No, I’m not that old. I was born in 1783." I grinned at his joke.

"However, I’ve had more than a century of nights to spend reading and learning, Anita. When you’re facing a life of possibly infinite years, having a hobby helps to pass the time."

It helped to pass the time. Hex was almost as much of a master of understatement as Jean-Claude. But unlike my vampire lover, Hex’s wrinkled face was a mirror of his thoughts.

What I saw in his face was that Hex Stanton loved his books. Any of them, all of them. He was as comfortable in their dry, dusty company as I was raising zombies. His books were almost a part of him. If he were ever cut off from them, the possibly immortal Hector Stanton would wither and die.

He bent over the book again. He passed the end of the pencil along a few lines, flipped the page and scanned a few more. "Humph!" Hex gave a good old-fashioned grunt of frustration. "Even if this is the final work of our favorite mad monk, the Brotherhood have been wasting their time trying to get it. It’s gibberish."

"Its in Latin," I said.

"I read Latin, Anita. This is gibberish in Latin."

I pulled the book towards me for a closer look. When my hand touched the Necronomicon, the letters swirled and swam on the page. They reformed themselves into plain English.

"As drastic as my actions are, I know that they will not bring an end to the blight upon the body of our Mother Church that is the Brotherhood of True Death. I can only hope that by imbuing this tome of knowledge with the awareness and will of the Spirit that guides me, I will provide aid to future generations with the secrets that defeated the Brotherhood in my own time.

"If you are reading this, then you possess the power necessary to unravel the ties that bind the Ennead to this Earth. I only hope and pray that the knowledge contained herein is enough to defeat them. May God go with you, and may He have mercy on my soul for what I am about to do…"

I jerked my hand away from the book and the letters swirled back into Latin gibberish. "Shit. I think we’ve got the genuine article here, Hex."

"I no longer doubt that, Anita," he answered.

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