The Chronicler and Mr Smith by Angie Martin

Author:Angie Martin [Martin, Angie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

T he discolored, blemished pages from the journal of a fifteenth-century chronicler blurred the longer I stared at them. More than five hours into my study session and I had only made it through one book. What I really wanted to read eluded me, no matter how many times I spoke the words to the library: Blood seekers in dreams.

Despite Keira putting me at ease when she revealed she had also dreamt about blood seekers, as soon as I entered the library, something nagged at the back of my brain. Something that told me the dream had been too real. Yet, the chronicles seemingly held no answers.

They did lead me to something else, though. Something I had been wondering since learning about blood seekers. What did they look like? The ones who had broken into my hotel suite appeared normal in the darkness, but they were only silhouettes. One held a gun, so I knew they had hands. But, decaying from the inside out could not be attractive, if they even rotted on the outside. From what I had learned, the blood kept them from complete deterioration, but that smell. The odor of death. I couldn’t imagine ever getting used to it.

I flipped the pages in the journal before me, seeking out what I knew had to be in there. I stopped about halfway through the book when I ran across it: a sketch of a blood seeker. I skimmed the few paragraphs above the drawing and learned it was a creature the chronicler had encountered and beheaded that very night. As if to prove his words, a light smear of blood graced the bottom of the page. I stared at it for a moment with my heart beating irregularly, contemplating that it belonged to a blood seeker who had been dead for centuries.

The first sketch on the blood-stained page was the profile of a normal man with nondescript features. Since drawn in pencil with various shades of black and the yellowed page acting as the contrasting white, I couldn’t tell his color of eyes or hair. Both appeared to be dark from the heaviness of the lead in those sections. His nose, pointed sharply toward his thin lips, had a hump in the middle, lending to a crooked appearance, one that could have belonged to any face from that era.

On the opposite page, another sketch of the man, facing toward the reader, portrayed him with an open yet unsmiling mouth. His teeth all appeared to be in order, though slightly rotted in some areas, as indicated by shading. Circles underneath his eyes dragged his lids down to gaunt cheeks, and deep wrinkles penetrated his forehead. Still, nothing abnormal.

My breath shuddered in my throat at the next page. The chronicler had again drawn the same blood seeker, but the new picture showed him with his head tilted back. The missing lower jawbone gave full visibility to the roof of his mouth. There were several small slashes drawn in behind his normal teeth – three rows of them, each row with a smaller number of slits.

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