She looked up when Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf entered her cell with a new battery of tests. “Ah,” she said, “Good afternoon. Thank you for arranging for me to look at this remarkable collection. I did not realize curse tablets were so focused on the supernatural. I had read that they called upon the wrath of imaginary daemons and gods, but not the real supernatural. Very interesting, indeed.”
“Anything useful, Female Specimen?”
“Ow!” He poked at her arm with a syringe. “So far, they all have to do with hauntings. Very concerned with ghosts, the Romans.”
“Mmm. Ya. I had read of this in my own research.”
Alexia went back to translating the next tablet.
Having collected a sample of her blood, the German abandoned her once more to the tender mercies of the embroidering Templars.
The moment she started reading the next tablet, Alexia knew she wasn’t going to tell Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf about it. It was a small one, and the boxy Latin letters were exceptionally tiny and painfully neat, covering both sides. Where all the previous tablets had been dedicated to daemons or to the spirits of the netherworld, this one was markedly different.
“I call upon you, Stalker of Skins and Stealer of Souls, child of a Breaker of Curses, whoever you are, and ask that from this hour, from this night, from this moment, you steal from and weaken the vampire Primulus of Carisius. I hand over to you, if you have any power, this Sucker of Blood, for only you may take what he values most. Stealer of Souls, I consecrate to you his complexion, his strength, his healing, his speed, his breath, his fangs, his grip, his power, his soul. Stealer of Souls, if I see him mortal, sleeping when he should wake, wasting away in his human skin, I swear I will offer a sacrifice to you every year.”
Alexia surmised that the term “Breaker of Curses” must correlate to the werewolf moniker for a preternatural, “curse-breaker,” which meant that the curse tablet was calling upon the child of a preternatural for aid. It was the first mention she had yet run across, however minor, of either soulless or a child of a soulless. She placed a hand upon her stomach and looked down at it. “Well, hello there, little Stalker of Skins.” She felt a brief fluttering inside her womb. “Ah, would we prefer Stealer of Souls?” The fluttering stilled. “I see, more dignified, is it?”
She went back to the tablet, reading it over again, wishing it might give her more of a clue as to what such a creature could do and how it came into existence. She supposed it was possible that this being was just as nonexistent as the gods of the netherworld that the other tablets called upon. Then again, it could be as real as the ghosts or vampires they were asked to fight against. It must have been such an odd age to have lived in, so full of superstition and mythology, to be ruled by the Caesar’s empire hives and a bickering line of incestuous vampires.
Alexia glanced under her eyelashes at the two embroidering men and, in a not-very-subtle movement, tucked the tablet down the front of her dress. Luckily for her, the Templars seemed to find their embroidery most absorbing.
She went on, scanning for the two key Latin phrases “Stalker of Skins” and “Stealer of Souls,” but there seemed to be no further mention of either. She weighed her options, wondering if she should mention the phrase to Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf. As it turned out, the preceptor brought her meal that evening, so she figured she might as well go straight to the source.
She took her time working around to the subject. First she asked him politely about his day and listened to the recitation of his routine—really, who would want to attend matins six times?—as she ate her pasta in its obligatory bright green sauce. The preceptor had called the long skinny pasta “spa-giggle-tee” or some such silliness. Alexia didn’t rightly care, so long as there was pesto on top of it.
Finally, she said, “I found an interesting tidbit in your records today.”
“Oh, yes? I had heard Mr. Lange-Wilsdorf brought them to you. Which one?”
She gestured airily. “Oh, you know, one of the scrolls. It said something about a soul-stealer.”
That got a reaction. The preceptor stood so fast that he knocked over the little stool he had been sitting on.
“What did you say?”
“I believe the other term used in the document was ‘skin-stalker.’ I see you have heard of these creatures before. Perhaps you would care to tell me where?”
Clearly in shock, the preceptor spoke as though his mouth were moving while his mind still coped with the revelation. “Soul-stealers are known to us only as legendary creatures, more dangerous than you soulless. They are greatly feared by the supernatural for their ability to be both mortal and immortal at the same time. The brotherhood has been warned to watch for them, although we have not yet encountered one in our recorded history. You believe that is what your child is?”