The Nosferatu Scroll by James Becker Read Free Book Online Page B

probably
was
buried as a vampire, but by people who didn’t find that concept in any way offensive, a kind of vampire cult, if you like.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes. I think those jars were deliberately smashed when the grave was opened later. Pottery was never normally placed inside Christian tombs, but if it had been, in a sealed environment, it should have remained intact. The fact that those jars—there were at least two of them—were broken suggests a deliberate act. And why would a pair of sealed pottery vessels be placed in a tomb? To me, the only thing that makes sense is that they were there for the benefit of the dead woman. And if they thought she was a vampire, they would probably have contained blood, most likely human blood. I’d love to get my hands on them and analyze what’s left of the contents.”
    “Are you serious?” Bronson asked, startled. “A vampire cult?”
    “They’re not unknown,” Angela said, “though I’m not aware of any operating in Venice around the time our woman was buried. The inscription on the lid of her tomb was badly weathered, but I did take a few pictures of it, and I’m pretty sure the year she died was eighteen twenty-five. At least that bit of the inscription was still legible. And I’m guessing that the grave was opened again before the end of the nineteenth century, and that the ritual killing of the vampire inside it took place then.”
    Bronson leaned back and stretched. The chair he was sitting in was cramped and really too small for him. “It seems to me that you’re deducing the existence of an entire—and pretty bizarre—secret society on the basis ofa few bits of smashed pottery and one crumbled neck vertebra on a two-hundred-year-old skeleton.”
    “No, there’s something else.” Angela reached into her handbag, and pulled out a small, heavily discolored black object, which appeared to be bound in leather. “This was lying under the body,” she said. “I think it was originally inside a wooden box, probably placed under the coffin, but over the centuries both the coffin and the box rotted away. I spotted what was left of the box underneath the skeleton, but when I touched it, the wood crumbled away to nothing and I saw this.”
    “So now you’re a grave robber,” Bronson said.
    “I trained as an archaeologist,” Angela replied, “and ‘archaeologist’ is just a polite word for a tomb raider. It’s what we do. And if I hadn’t picked it up, it would have either been sealed up again in the grave or taken by some tourist who would have no idea what it was.”
    “And what is it?”
    “I think,” Angela said, “it’s a kind of diary.”

5
    The dark blue powerboat was speeding through the inky darkness of the Venetian night, heading south, past San Clemente, toward a small island situated some distance from its nearest neighbor.
    This island covered only three or four acres, and was dominated by a large and impressive Venetian mansion, a five-story edifice in gray stone that sat at its highest point. Directly below the house was a substantial stone-built jetty capable of berthing perhaps a dozen powerboats. At first sight, the jetty seemed ridiculously large, but the lagoon provided the only means of access to and from the property.
    Four other vessels were already secured to the buoys that edged the jetty, but the driver of the blue powerboat had plenty of space to maneuver. He brought the boat alongside the landing stage, put the gearbox into reverse, and expertly stopped the vessel close enough for one of the other men to step ashore. In moments, both mooring lines were secured and the engine shut down.
    The driver assisted his two passengers in manhandling the rolled carpet onto the jetty, where they lowered it to the ground.
    “I think she can walk from here,” one of the men said, unrolling the carpet and pulling Marietta Perini to her feet. The man with the Taser checked her wrists were still securely bound, ripped off her gag,