Blood Codex

Chapter 33

Crowley reached for the book, then paused. He dug in his pocket and pulled out the linen gloves the archivist had given him earlier, then carefully removed the tome from its hiding place. He grunted under the weight of it, then Rose, her hands similarly covered, helped him maneuver it free.

The weight of it was almost overwhelming, as was the scent of its leather bindings and thick pages. It was three feet tall and nearly two feet across. The pages made the covers flare at bit at the edges, the book as thick as Crowley’s hand was long from the heel of his palm to the tip of his middle finger. He ran his hand over the cover, amazed to be in the presence of it at last. Something so old, supposedly so powerful. And not the fake in Sweden that everyone knew about, but had they discovered the unsullied original?

“Hey look.” Rose pointed into the cabinet.

Removing the book had revealed other items that had been secreted behind it. Small statues of stone and wood, documents, tablets. “Man, I wish we had time to look at all this stuff!” Crowley said. He pulled his phone out and took a series of quick photos into the cabinet, his flash a stark beacon with each one.

“We need to be careful,” Rose said. She rose on her knees to look over the strange cupboard, scanned quickly left and right. “Someone could come any minute. It’s weird the book is hidden here on the diplomatic floor.”

“I don’t know,” Crowley said. “It makes a certain sense to hide it somewhere people wouldn’t think to look. Better than putting it behind a door with a sign reading ‘Seriously evil stuff hidden here’. And it’s just as well that guy down in the sealed archives knew it was here, because only his nervousness tipped me off. If he was a better poker player we might never have looked up here as closely as we did.”

“All true enough,” Rose agreed. “But now what? We certainly can’t take it with us. We need to focus on any bits that differ from the known copy.”

Crowley pointed across the room. “There’s a quiet corner over there. Come on.”

He quickly slipped the false shelving back into place and put the books back in. Between them, they each took one end of the Codex and shuffled across the room, behind a large double-doored cabinet into a shadowed, dusty corner.

“I’ve spent hours while we’ve been traveling studying images of the Codex from the Swedish files,” Rose said. “Let me see if I can spot any differences.”

“Museum brain at work again, eh?”

She grinned at Crowley. “That should be my superhero name.”

He laughed softly. “The Mighty Museum Brain comes to save the day.”

Rose began riffling through the pages as carefully as she could. Several times she made some noise of discovery, assured Crowley she hadn’t seen that particular page before, and they both took snaps with their phones.

Several times, when Rose pointed out a particular page or passage that she was sure she hadn’t seen before, Crowley felt uneasy. Though he couldn’t read the words, something about their very shape on the page seemed to ooze evil, as if the ink itself had a malevolent personality and the words only emboldened that.

There were numerous drawings not present in the Swedish copy of the Bible, and one section of five pages in a row that were entirely new. Some of the pages bore cryptic designs that reminded Crowley of Satanic and occult rituals he had seen in his previous researching. A lot of it seemed almost clichéd, as though someone were playing at occultism, then a page would be turned to reveal something heavy with such a foreboding presence that Crowley had to resist the urge to physically step away from the thing, to turn and run and never look back.

As they both photographed everything they could, they repeatedly shared looks of concern, almost pain, clearly finding some relief in the fact that it wasn’t only one or the other who felt disturbed, but that they both were discomforted by what they had found.

They finally reached the end and Rose said, “This end paper is different. Look, the design is not unlike the squatting Devil that we’re used to, but what’s this weird script beneath it?” She snapped a photo and Crowley leaned in to look, took a photo of his own.

“Another one I don’t even like to look at,” he said. “It feels almost…” He looked up quickly, head tilted to one side. “We need to get out of here.”

Rose looked up at him, then back over her shoulder. “What is it?”

“Someone’s coming. In fact, several someones.”

They pocketed their phones and grabbed up the book between them, hurrying low between cabinets back to the cupboard emblazoned with the strange fish priests. Footsteps rang out through the large room, coming from at least one room away, but getting closer.

“Do we have time for this?” Rose hissed.

“We have to hide it again, in case we need to come back for another look. If they know we’ve found it, they might move it somewhere else and we’ll never see it again.” Crowley pulled the shelving forward, books and all, and jiggled it incautiously to get it free. The footsteps drew nearer, now accompanied by voices. One voice was deep and serious, angry, another wheedling and obsequious. A third voice joined it, all speaking in quick Italian.

“Come on,” Crowley growled and the shelves popped forward, scattering the books at his feet.

They slid the Codex Gigas back into place and Crowley pushed the shelving back in to conceal it. The footsteps and voices sounded terrifyingly close, surely inside the room now. Crowley and Rose grabbed handfuls of books, crammed them onto the shelves willy-nilly, with no concern for the welfare of their covers or pages. Voices almost on top of them, Crowley pushed the cabinet doors closed, but they sprang back, meeting resistance. Eyes wild, he shuffled the books on the shelves, tried to get them to sit in neat alignment. He tried again and the cabinet door clicked closed.

The voices stopped, then started again quickly, moving directly toward them. Crowley stayed low and scrambled around the cupboard to crouch behind it. Rose pushed in beside him, her breath shallow and fast. Footsteps stomped up to the other side and the voices started in again, rapid and annoyed. They were so close that Crowley could smell the cloying cologne of one, the clinging incense on another. He nodded toward a tall cabinet directly across from them, winced and dove for it. He quickly made room and Rose slid in beside him, quiet as a shadow.

He grinned and pointed. There was a way between two more tall cupboards, then a row of smaller ones that led close to a far wall. Beyond the small cupboards was a door into the next room and he knew from memory that they could go from that room down stairs to the corridor and make good their escape.

He heard the doors of the cabinet with the fish priest motif click open and a voice raised to a new level of fury. He winced in annoyance. Whoever was there had seen their haphazard stacking of the books. Their desire to conceal the Codex Gigas again seemed to have been a waste of time. A sense of loss clawed at Crowley’s gut.

“Go!” he whispered, and ran in a low crouch between the tall cupboards and down behind the low row. Rose on his heels, they shot from the room into the next and made a beeline for the exit. In moments they were running down echoing stairs, laughing like fools, heading for the sunshine outside, with no sounds of pursuit behind them.