A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [110]
Thwarted, Marcus had behaved like the child he was, howling with frustration and shaking with need. When Matthew hunted down a deer to feed the young man who had been reborn as his son, Marcus quickly sucked it dry. It sated his hunger but didn’t dull the thrumming in his veins as Matthew’s ancient blood suffused his body.
After a week of bringing fresh kills back to their den, Matthew decided Marcus was ready to hunt for himself. Father and son tracked deer and bear through deep forests and along moonlit mountain ridges. Matthew trained him to smell the air, to watch in the shadows for the smallest hint of movement, and to feel changes in the wind that would bring fresh scents their way. And he taught the healer how to kill.
In those early days, Marcus wanted richer blood. He needed it, too, to quench his deep thirst and feed his ravenous body. But Matthew waited until Marcus could track a deer quickly, bring it down, and drain its blood without making a mess before he let him hunt humans. Women were off-limits. Too confusing for newly reborn vampires, Matthew explained, as the lines between sex and death, courtship and hunting, were too finely drawn.
First father and son fed on sick British soldiers. Some begged Marcus to spare their life, and Matthew taught him how to feed on warmbloods without killing them. Then they hunted criminals, who cried for mercy and didn’t deserve it. In every case Matthew made Marcus explain why he’d picked a particular man as his prey. Marcus’s ethics developed, in the halting, deliberate way that they must when a vampire comes to terms with what he needs to do in order to survive.
Matthew was widely known for his finely developed sense of right and wrong. All his mistakes in judgment could be traced back to decisions made in anger. Marcus had been told that his father was not as prone to that dangerous emotion as he’d been in the past. Perhaps so, but tonight in Oxford, Matthew’s face wore the same murderous expression it had at Brandywine—and there was no battlefield to vent his rage.
“You’ve made a mistake.” Matthew’s eyes were wild when he finished poring over the witch’s DNA tests.
Marcus shook his head. “I analyzed her blood twice. Miriam confirmed my findings with the DNA from the swab. I admit the results are surprising.”
Matthew drew in a shaky breath. “They’re preposterous.”
“Diana possesses nearly every genetic marker we’ve ever seen in a witch.” His mouth tightened into a grim line as he flipped to the final pages. “But these sequences have us concerned.”
Matthew leafed quickly through the data. There were more than two dozen sequences of DNA, some short and some long, with Miriam’s tiny red question marks next to them.
“Christ,” he said, tossing them back at his son. “We already have enough to worry about. That bastard Peter Knox has threatened her. He wants the manuscript. Diana tried to recall it, but Ashmole 782 has gone back into the library and won’t come out again. Happily, Knox is convinced—for now—that she first obtained it by deliberately breaking its spell.”
“She didn’t?”
“No. Diana doesn’t have the knowledge or control to do anything that intricate. Her power is completely undisciplined. She put a hole in my rug.” Matthew looked sour, and his son struggled not to smile. His father did love his antiques.
“Then we’ll keep Knox away and give Diana a chance to come to terms with her abilities. That doesn’t sound too difficult.”
“Knox is not my only concern. Diana received these in the mail today.” Matthew picked up the photograph and its accompanying slip of paper and handed them to his son. When he continued, his voice had a dangerous, flat tone. “Her parents. I remember hearing about two American witches killed in Nigeria, but it was so long ago. I never connected them to Diana.”
“Holy God,” Marcus said softly. Staring at the picture, he tried to imagine what it would be like to receive a photo of his own father ripped to pieces and tossed into the dirt to die.
“There’s more. From what