James Rollins - Blood Infernal

Ahead of them, Elizabeth uttered a single harsh syllable that Rhun recognized as a Hungarian curse. They all hurried to join her. She had stopped next to a wooden sign hanging over the street. Next to it, two dark blue doors stood open. Her eyebrows were drawn down into a scowl. She looked ready to rip the sign off its metal hinges.

On one of the doors, a bright silver circle enclosed a symbol of two flasks connected by tubes. The words Speculum Alchemiae Muzeum Prague were written around it.

“It’s a museum!” Elizabeth spat. “This is how your age guards its secrets?”

“Apparently so,” Jordan said.

Rhun moved closer. Pear-shaped flasks hung from a wrought-iron rack attached to the doors. A golden shield on the front labeled each one’s contents: Elixir of Memory, Elixir of Health , and Elixir of Eternal Youth .

Rhun remembered similar fanciful potions from his childhood.

Christian planted his fists on his hips, looking dubiously at the museum. “John Dee’s papers are here?”

“They were here,” Elizabeth corrected. “This used to be an ordinary-seeming house. It had a great room in front, and a sitting room in back, where alchemists would receive guests and talk about their works. Including scholars such as Tycho Brahe and Rabbi Loew. Old men with white beards hunched over crucibles and alembics. And of course, charlatans, too, like that damnable Edward Kelly.”

Rain ran into Rhun’s eyes, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. “What were they working on?”

Elizabeth shook drops from her wimple. “Everything. They searched for many things that would prove foolish and elusive, like a philosopher’s stone capable of turning base metals to gold, but they also discovered much of real consequence.” She stamped her small foot on the cobbles. “Discoveries that were later lost. Things the likes of which your modern mind cannot ever comprehend. And now you have turned it into a child’s amusement show.”

“Well, we came all of this way,” Christian said, slipping past her. “We might as well have a look.”

Everyone followed, drawing her with them despite her protests.

Two women welcomed them from behind a counter. The older one, a salt-and-pepper brunette, toyed with a necklace she was beading, while the younger one, likely her daughter, swiped at a glass display with a long feather duster.

Rhun surveyed the room. He ducked from the dried herbs hanging from an arched ceiling. All around, wooden shelves lined the walls, crowded with all manner of old books and more glass and pottery. He noted a large wooden door to the right of the counter. It was currently closed.

Elizabeth swept past him and went straight for the front desk, confronting the older of the two women. “Is it possible to see the receiving room?” she demanded. “And perhaps the rooms beneath?”

“Naturally, Sister.” The woman peered at Elizabeth over the top of a pair of half-moon glasses, studying the mix of nuns and white-collared priests with a bit of amusement. “We give tours.”

Elizabeth looked aghast, but Christian pushed forward. “I’d like to buy six tickets,” he said quickly. “When is the next available tour?”

“Right away,” the woman said.

The older woman took the euros Christian handed her and gave them each a large rectangular ticket.

The younger woman smiled at Jordan. She had kind brown eyes and looked about twenty-five. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a bun and tied with a purple ribbon. The color matched her shirt and a tight skirt that ended high above her knees.

Elizabeth stepped between her and Rhun, eyeing the woman’s tight garments with distaste.

“My name is Tereza,” the young woman said, trying her best to ignore Elizabeth’s scathing glare. “I’ll be your guide through the alchemist’s laboratory. If you’ll please follow me.”

Using a heavy key, the woman unlocked the door. As she swung it open, a waft of dank and moldy air rolled out. Rhun felt a prickling along his neck as he caught a whiff of something else. He remembered his days spent in the Egyptian desert, recognizing here the same sense of malevolence that he had hunted in the sands.

He searched around but found no evidence of danger. The other Sanguinists showed no such misgivings.

Still, Rhun moved closer to Erin.

With the tour guide leading them, Erin followed Rhun through the door and into a dark hallway. Jordan trailed behind, giving off a resounding sneeze at the dust. Or maybe he had mold allergies. Still, Rhun jumped at the abrupt noise, pushing Erin against the wall with an arm that felt like a bar of steel.

Jordan noted the protective gesture. “Be ready if I burp,” he told Rhun. “That’s much more dangerous.”

They continued onward. Erin studied the oil paintings lining both walls, likely reproductions.

Up ahead, Tereza waved an arm, while walking backward. “These paintings are of—”

Elizabeth interrupted her, thrusting out her arm toward various oils. “Emperor Rudolf II, Tycho Brahe, Rabbi Loew, and Rudolf’s physician … whose name escapes me at the moment. Not their best likenesses.”

She then walked right past their guide and into one of the rooms off the hall, as if she knew where she was going.

“Sister! Wait!” Tereza hurried after Elizabeth, and everyone followed them.

Elizabeth stopped in the center of a medium-size room, her hands clasped in front of her as if she were praying, but Erin couldn’t imagine that was true. Her haughty gaze swept the room.

Overhead, a round chandelier held two horned masks and cast an orange-tinted light on a bearskin rug that lay before a marble fireplace. Erin’s attention was drawn to an antique case full of old books, skulls, and specimens in glass jars.

Intrigued, she moved closer.

This is what it must have looked like four hundred years ago .

Elizabeth stepped over to the granite-topped desk along one wall, then to a curtained window behind it. She stopped and surveyed the room. “Where is the bell?”

“The bell?” Tereza looked nervous.

“There used to be a giant glass bell in front of this window. Large enough for a man to stand inside.” Elizabeth dropped to one knee and examined the tiles underfoot. “It left grooves on the floor. John Dee kept his device here instead of in his main laboratory below because he needed the sunlight for his experiments.”

Erin joined her, running her fingers across the floor. “Are these tiles new?”

Tereza nodded. “I think so.”

Elizabeth stood with a huff and wiped her hands on her damp habit. “Where was the bell taken?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tereza said. “So far as I know, there was never a bell.”

Tereza turned slightly away, muttering something under her breath. It sounded like a Czech expletive. Elizabeth answered her sharply in the same language, making the guide gulp.

Jordan stepped to Tereza’s side, touching her arm reassuringly. “How about we let this nice young woman tell us what she does know? After all, we paid for the full tour.”

Elizabeth looked like she was going to say something, but instead, she clasped her hands behind her back. She glanced over to the spot where she’d expected to find the bell, a calculating expression on her face.

Tereza took a deep breath, then tried to find her groove again. “Th-this room is where the alchemists would have received guests, but it wasn’t a simple sitting room. If you’ll note that each corner of the room bears alchemical symbols for Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.”

Erin turned slowly to examine each symbol. Off to the side, Elizabeth drifted over to the fireplace, keeping her back to the guide. She leaned against the mantel, as if she were about to be sick.