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Shawn
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Standing there in the room filled with pristine antique chairs, perfectly preserved end tables, and enough bookshelves to make a lot of libraries jealous, I noticed that there seemed to be no life here at all. Just these things and the smell of the people who had been here. Dietrich, who seemed to be lost in some sort of flashback, was walking around the room and looking at the things as if he was actually living in the past. Like this was three hundred years ago and he was visiting an old friend's house.
“These books are still here. I remember that I read most of them while I stayed with Alaric. I gifted him quite a few of these as well. They are research materials, as he called them. They were books that were written by our kind. Tales that were shared with the world under the disguise of fantasy.” He pulled a volume off of the shelf and I saw that it was a book of fairy tales that was written in French. “These were never as popular as the ones that came later, such as the stories by the Grimm brothers. However, I always loved them more. This here was a collection of vampire stories. They were love stories that were meant to show the world that we were not as evil as they all thought that we were. Those that dared to tell the stories of our people were ridiculed from both sides. Being in the public eye could be bad for us back then. There were far fewer of us then, and the humans were hostile toward us. Their memories of our friendships had long since faded, so all they knew was that we were monsters and beasts.”
I could hear the heart ache in Dietrich's voice then. He was saddened by what had happened to him and the people that he knew. I personally had never seen the things that he did. Not until now anyway. I had never seen humans or anyone else kill our kind just for existing, but that was something that Dietrich had lived through, and it broke my heart.
“Are there any new books here? Anything that might give us a clue as to who has been using this place lately?” I looked around the room, knowing that I would never be able to tell what was different or new. Everything looked new here. And that was going to make this harder for me.
.....
“I would need to look at them all individually. But from what I can see right now, it all looks the same. This will take some time if we were to investigate each book.” Dietrich was finally acting like he was in the present and not in the past. “I know that Alaric liked to hide things in books, there might be hidden messages.”
“What kind of messages? Like an added page, or something else?” I was confused.
“There was one time, when we were worried about a traitor in our midst, that we used a spare copy of his favorite book. We would use invisible ink to circle key words that we needed to convey to each other. If the words weren't available, we would write over the page with the ink and activate it with the candles later.”
“Invisible ink?” I asked him, letting his words wash over me and process in my mind. “You mean, like the way they have been writing in the sand, on the tree, and the other places where there are hidden words?” I jogged his memory about that.
“W..well yes, but those were not written with ink, it was written with runed water. Right? It's not the same thing, Leibe. Alaric used something different. Before, we were using ink. It was special invisible ink that he made. I..it was.. it was..” He trailed off and looked at the bookshelves in front of him. “It was the same thing, wasn't it?” He looked up at me, his eyes swimming and pain evident on his face. He was realizing that he was part of this. Not the most current events that were plaguing us, but he was part of the same things that had been happening. He had been using the same methods as these people were using now.
“Yes, Dietrich, I think it is.” All I could do was reach out and grip his shoulder. He needed me at that moment. He needed me because the man that was his friend, might have been the cause of all of this. He might have turned into something that Dietrich couldn't recognize as time went on.
“I can't believe it. I can't believe that Alaric would do this. I can't believe that he would create these monsters that are destroying our people.” That hurt was turning into anger now.
“You don't know if he did it, or if a descendant of his did. Alaric was human, like you said. He died a long time ago. So, why would they just now start doing all of this? If he trained his children and grandchildren to be murderers, then why weren't they killing our people with this mission two hundred years ago? Why weren't they trying to wipe us out back then?” I didn't want him to jump to conclusions. He needed to calm down and think about this as logically as he could. “There is a lot to look through here. We need to check for any information that we can find and see where these people went. They were here recently. I can tell by their scent. At the very most, they've been gone a week. And I doubt that it's been more than two or three days if I'm being honest.”
“You're right.” Dietrich turned away from me and looked at the room. “We have a lot to search through and not a lot of time to do it. We need to be thorough. We need to use all of our skills that we have available to us to check this room as thoroughly as possible. Let's look for messages in the books first. There might be something left behind. We need to light a red candle to see them though.” He was looking around the room once again and stopped when he saw a trunk that was sitting in the middle of the room. “There.” He started to walk away which almost made me threaten him with the leash again, but then I saw that he wasn't going far.
“What are you doing?”
“There should be candles in here. This is where Alaric kept them before. If they didn't change anything, then this is where they still are.”
Dietrich dropped to his knees in front of the sturdy wooden chest. It had a lock and hinges that looked like they were made from pure silver. And they were still as shiny as if they were just made. I just noticed that there was not a single speck of dust in this whole room. It was literally as clean as possible.
“Here. The red candles. These were what Alaric and I used to read the messages. We will close the shutters to block the natural light and light the candles. That will reveal any messages in the books.”
“Alright, but if we look at them one at a time it will take us forever. I say that I speed this up a little. Come on, you light the candles, and I will close the shutters.” I started to move toward the windows without even waiting for a response from him. I heard the sound of a match and then the light flared behind me. I was too busy with the shutters though. I was looking at the windows and using my telekinesis to move them. Otherwise, I would have had to open each window individually. That would have taken forever.
“Are you ready?” I asked Dietrich as I stood in the middle of the room. Dietrich had lit four candles and they were making a square around us.
“Yes. I'm ready. Go ahead, Liebe.”
“Alright.”
With that, I started to make the books fly off of the shelves. One shelf at a time of course. They made a circle around the candles and the pages fluttered back and forth, allowing us to see if there were any hidden messages.
There were none. Not in that first group of books. There was a lot more to go though. Hundreds of more books to look through. Shelf after shelf, the books fluttered in a beautiful, yet disappointing display around the room. Book after book was scanned and no messages were visible inside of them.
I strained my eyes to look at each of the pages as quickly and as thoroughly as possible. They moved fast, but I was faster. I had not trained for this, but I was a diligent man, and I was not going to let this situation beat me. I was going to do my best here. Not just for me, but for Dietrich and Trinity as well. They needed me. They needed my help here. And I would always be there for the two of them. I wouldn't fail. I wouldn't give up.
Another shelf. And another. And another. Again and again I check the books and their pages. Dietrich at my side doing the same thing. His eyes opened wide and began to water with the strain of looking at page after page. Still though, I hadn't seen one circled nor one written message on any of the pages. They just weren't there. There was nothing at all for us to find in any of the books that we had already scanned.
