A Discovery of Witches - Deborah Harkness [86]
Given my struggle to control anxiety, it was no wonder Matthew was always asking me out for a meal. It wasn’t my honeysuckle scent that made him hungry—it was my excess adrenaline.
“Thank you for explaining, Matthew.” Even after last night, I was still relatively ignorant about vampires. “I’ll try to calm down.”
“There’s no need,” Matthew said shortly. “It’s not your job to calm down. It’s our job to exercise a modicum of courtesy and control.” He glowered at Marcus and pulled one of the files forward.
Miriam shot a worried glance in my direction. “Maybe we should start at the beginning.”
“No. I think it’s better to start at the end,” he replied, opening the file.
“Do they know about Ashmole 782?” I asked Matthew when Miriam and Marcus showed no sign of leaving. He nodded. “And you told them what I saw?” He nodded again.
“Did you tell anyone else?” Miriam’s question to me reflected centuries of suspicion.
“If you mean Peter Knox, no. Only my aunt and her partner, Emily, know.”
“Three witches and three vampires sharing a secret,” Marcus said thoughtfully, glancing at Matthew. “Interesting.”
“Let’s hope we can do a better job keeping it than we have done at hiding this.” Matthew slid the file toward me.
Three sets of vampire eyes watched me attentively as I opened it. VAMPIRE ON THE LOOSE IN LONDON, the headline screamed. My stomach flopped over, and I moved the newspaper clipping aside. Underneath was the report of another mysterious death involving a bloodless corpse. Below that was a magazine story accompanied by a picture that made its contents clear despite my inability to read Russian. The victim’s throat had been ripped open from jaw to carotid artery.
There were dozens more murders, and reports in every language imaginable. Some of the deaths involved beheadings. Some involved corpses drained of blood, without a speck of blood evidence found at the scene. Others suggested an animal attack, due to the ferocity of the injuries to the neck and torso.
“We’re dying,” Matthew said when I pushed the last of the stories aside.
“Humans are dying, that’s for sure.” My voice was harsh.
“Not just the humans,” he said. “Based on this evidence, vampires are exhibiting signs of species deterioration.”
“This is what you wanted to show me?” My voice shook. “What do these have to do with the origin of creatures or Ashmole 782?” Gillian’s recent warnings had stirred painful memories, and these pictures only brought them into sharper focus.
“Hear me out,” Matthew said quietly. “Please.”
He might not be making sense, but he wasn’t deliberately frightening me either. Matthew must have had a good reason for sharing this. Hugging the file folder, I sat down on my stool.
“These deaths,” he began, drawing the folder gently away from me, “result from botched attempts to transform humans into vampires. What was once second nature to us has become difficult. Our blood is increasingly incapable of making new life out of death.”
Failure to reproduce would make any species extinct. Based on the pictures I’d just seen, however, the world didn’t need more vampires.
“It’s easier for those who are older—vampires such as myself who fed predominantly on human blood when we were young,” Matthew continued. “As a vampire ages, however, we feel less compulsion to make new vampires. Younger vampires, though, are a different story. They want to start families to dispel the loneliness of their new lives. When they find a human they want to mate with, or try to make children, some discover that their blood isn’t powerful enough.”
“You said we’re all going extinct,” I reminded him evenly, my anger still simmering.
“Modern witches aren’t as powerful as their ancestors were.” Miriam’s voice was matter-of-fact. “And you don’t produce as many children as in times past.”
“That doesn’t sound like evidence—it sounds like a subjective