Blood Codex

Chapter 30

Crowley and Rose were led through into a long room redolent with the scents of ink and parchment. Crowley reveled in the smell, like the big library in Sweden or the best secondhand bookshop, a smell that had said magic to him since childhood. Though he wondered what kind of magic might be present in this particular library.

“This is the reading room,” the archivist said. “You want to start here?”

A long table dominated the room with high-backed wooden chairs along either side. Shelves jam-packed with volumes and files covered every wall. A second, mezzanine level of shelving circled the room above them.

The archivist indicated a doorway at the end, lit with a hard fluorescent strip. “Through there to the lofts and other areas.” He looked pained. “Your clearance is fairly generous. Would you like me to accompany you?” His tone of voice clearly implied that he desperately wanted to accompany them and be rid of them as soon as possible.

Rose lit up her irresistible smile again. “Thank you, but no. We’ll be fine.”

The archivist winced, but nodded and withdrew. No other researchers were present in the reading room and Crowley suddenly had the sensation of being a kid locked in school overnight, somewhere he shouldn’t be with a wild run of the place.

“So really, how did you pull this off?” he asked.

Rose grinned. “I have my ways.”

“There’s got to be something serious to this, though,” he pressed. “Being left to our own devices in here?”

Rose drew in a long breath. “I’ll tell you, but it’s a secret you share with no one!” When he nodded his assurance, she went on. “I have a contact at the Vatican museum who was once an altar boy, and he had a… special relationship with a man a couple of decades ago. That man is now a cardinal, right here in Vatican City. And no, I’m not giving you any names.”

“A special relationship, eh?” Crowley said. “I think I know what you mean.”

Rose nodded, twisted a wry smile. “My contact has undeniable proof of the relationship, and needless to say the Cardinal is happy to do the occasional favor for him these days. This time, he passed one of those favors on to me.”

“You’re amazing,” Crowley said, genuinely impressed. “I mean it, you have hidden depths, incredible friends, you kick butt when you need to.”

Rose laughed. “Calm down, Jake. I don’t need a fan club!”

“Well, you’ve got one, president and lifetime member, me!”

Rose put a hand on his shoulder, her palm warm. “Well, thanks. And you’re pretty fan-worthy yourself.”

There was a moment of silence that Crowley was reluctant to break, but Rose did it for him. “All these shelves are far too small to hold anything close to the size of the Codex Gigas,” she said. “And besides, it would hardly be in the public reading room. Let’s go deeper.”

They went through the brightly lit doorway and passed through an area with official Papal correspondence in shelf upon shelf of bound volumes.

“Not likely to be here either,” Crowley said, feeling the weight of the documents and the weight of history pressing down on him. “This is a monumental task, looking through something of this size. It’s huge. Where’s our best bet?”

Rose shrugged. “No idea. I guess we start exploring. I know there are massive archives in the lofts above the west wing of the Cortile del Belvedere. That would be this way.”

She moved on and Crowley followed, eventually climbing up steep stairs into a seemingly endless room with tightly packed metal shelves laden with boxes and files, all filled with documents. The place was dim, soft strip lighting spread far apart above the narrow passages between the shelves. Their shoes rang out on the polished cement floor as they walked. Crowley scanned the spines of manuscripts, neatly handwritten in fading ink marking histories of centuries past, featuring names like Borgheses, Avignon, and Napoleoni.

“This place is mesmerizing,” he said quietly. “So much information…”

Rose paused, looked back the way they had come. “I read that the total length of the shelves in this section is over thirteen kilometers.”

“We can never hope to cover all that in anything less than several weeks of careful study,” Crowley said, feeling lost. “But then, this doesn’t look like the place either. All the shelving is too small to house anything like the Codex Gigas.”

“Let’s try the bunkers,” Rose said. “They’re the most recent addition, commissioned by Pope Paul VI, in the sixties, I think.”

They made their way back down, through more corridors, then down again to the first of the two underground floors.

“Even more shelves here,” Rose said. “Forty-three kilometers of them this time.”

Crowley groaned. “Holy crap.” He laughed at the unintentional joke. “Literally!”

Rose laughed along. “Well, we need to check anyway. Documents pertaining to royal families are kept here, among other things, so maybe there’s info on Rudolf’s family.”

“Maybe,” Crowley agreed. “But that’s going backwards. We already know he had it and lost it.”

They walked along more shelves, thousands upon thousands of pages of information, the sheer volume of it all starting to become a little overwhelming. But still, nowhere that looked even vaguely likely to house something the size of the Codex.

“I don’t think we’ll find anything here,” Rose said. “But according to my earlier reading, the most special items are kept in a climate-controlled area adjacent to this level. I wonder if our clearance extends that far?”

Crowley shrugged. “Let’s find out.”