Free Blood of the Lamb by Sam Cabot

the Conclave had been as alarmed by his threat as he expected, his destruction was an obvious solution. Livia—the Noantri who had Made him and thus the only Noantri inherently dangerous to him—was its obvious agent.
    Many of his friends, Noantri who believed as he did about Unveiling, claimed the Noantri were superior to the Unchanged. Some had taken, in fact, to ostentatiously dropping “Unchanged” in favor of “Mortal,” a label so fraught that its use had been abandoned by the Community long ago. The extremist opinion held that, far from being forced into hidden, constricted lives, the Noantri ought to rule. That their fine sensibilities, acquired wisdom, and distant view of unrolling time made them better suited to governing than were the limited Unchanged.
    Jonah did not share this viewpoint, and he sniffed the stench of egotism in those who did. He suspected that each saw himself—or herself—as the Emperor of All when the transition came. And he remained skeptical at the idea that it was possible to benignly rule those who were, not to put too fine a point on it, your food source.
    The vision shared by Jonah and his group was a different one. After Unveiling, the Unchanged would understand two things: that the Noantri were not a threat; and that to be Noantri was to live so completely, to have senses so finely tuned and a mind so fully awake, that everyone would want to Change.
    And where would nourishment come from, when all blood was Noantri blood? The would-be Emperors sneered this question in the Noantri coffeehouses and bars, the baths and gathering places. The answer—offered patiently by partisans like Jonah, edgily by those less tolerant—was: science. Human blood, after all, was only a chemical compound. It could be cloned, synthesized, grown. Why not? Promising work was already coming out of Japan. More would follow. Until then, the Unchanged already donated blood by the barrelful, some of which found its covert way to the Noantri as it had for centuries. More to the point, many sold their blood to pay their rent or buy their beer. Why wouldn’t they keep that practice up, especially at the prices the Noantri could offer?
    The arguments went on and on. Talk of Unveiling was everywhere; according to those Elder than Jonah, it always had been, since the day the Concordat was signed. The Conclave had no objection to the discussion, in fact was willing at any time to hear a new line of reasoning pro or con. The position of the Conclave, however, had never yet been affected by argument. Unveiling would happen in time; this was not the time.
    But it was. Jonah was tired of hearing the arguments. He was tired of pretending, of evading questions with a smile. He had become afraid, suddenly, of losing the friends of his youth, as he saw them change, saw their faces line and their eyes soften. Livia had tried to comfort him, telling him these losses were part of the dark side of Noantri life, unavoidable and balanced by so much else. She repeated to him an aphorism, a saying of the Noantri: The Unchanged change; only the Changed remain unchanging. But her voice held sorrow as she thought of people she’d loved, long gone; and far from being persuaded to accept his friends’ bad fortune, Jonah had begun to see an entirely different course of action.
    Livia, he thought now, as he watched her turn and start slowly down the street. You’ll come to understand. This is, without question, the right thing. Even the members of the Conclave will be glad this happened, once it’s over. Then maybe—maybe—you and I can be together again. In any case, don’t worry; you won’t be killing me.

9

    In the vast, marble-floored hush of the Vatican Library’s Manoscritti Reading Room, Father Thomas Kelly jotted on a notepad, then pocketed his pencil to keep his bad habit at bay. No pencil-tapping here. Along with no photography, no food or drink, no ink pens, and no humming to yourself. And no touching the books