Free Ashes of the Day by P.G. Forte Page A

guys, it’s a nice idea, but I don’t really think I…” His voice trailed away as he caught sight of their crestfallen expressions. He hated disappointing them. And what would it hurt? “I don’t really think I need more than two, wouldn’t you say? Like, perhaps, the two of you?”
    Nighthawk shrugged. “Yeah. Sure. Two’s a’ight. It’ll do for a start, anyways.” The quick look he shot at Heather suggested he didn’t think much of her as a choice, but at least he was too smart to voice his objection.
    “And maybe we can see if we can’t come up with a more modern term for it, all right? Like aide or adjutant or something along those lines.”
    “Oh.” Nighthawk shrugged. “Well, that’s okay. We could do that.”
    “Good. Now why don’t you two go someplace and talk about it, okay? No arguing though. Once you’ve come up with a list of titles and duties and stuff, we can discuss it more in-depth. But later, okay? ’Cause right now, I’ve got some work to do.”
    After the others left, Marc crossed to the door that led to his office. He unlocked the bottom drawer of the old wooden file cabinet and took out the bag of scrolls Heather had found during her search of the warehouse. He really needed to find a better hiding place for them. If Georgia ever learned of their existence, he wouldn’t put it past her to try and talk Conrad into forcing Marc to turn them over. He wouldn’t put it past her to send someone in here to steal them from him either, if it came to that. But he wasn’t about to let that happen. Not until he’d had the chance to go over everything, figure out what he had and—at the very least—scan them into his computer.
    He had the feeling they were important. Why else would Audrey have hidden them here? He wasn’t sure how exactly, but it was possible they could be the key to finding her, or to finding Elise, to figuring out what was really going on. They could be the key to a lot of things. Most of all, they gave him an edge. He didn’t want to lose that.
    So, while the ferals had been busy these last few days with setting his rooms up, Marc had not been idle either. He’d been holed up in his office, struggling with his rusty knowledge of Latin, studying the scrolls for hours at a time in an effort to puzzle out what Audrey had been up to. The scrolls had a lot to say about vampires—even his kind, the Infragilis . They had a lot to say about a whole lot of topics, including quite a few that neither Conrad nor Damian had ever thought to share with the twins. In the past few days, Marc had learned more about what it meant to be a vampire than he’d known his whole life.
    Some of the scrolls talked about Vesco Inedia, the so-called blood plague—a deadly disease reputedly created by alchemists during the Middle Ages as part of an attempt to eliminate vampires. No cure for it had ever been discovered and, as far as he could tell, the plan had very nearly succeeded. In the section that explained how the epidemic was halted and the plague eradicated, Marc got his first glimpse of Conrad’s darker side. Unless there’d been another vampire of the same name, it was he, apparently, who’d come up with a way to end the plague—by ordering the deaths of everyone who’d become infected, and then carrying out those death sentences, mostly by himself. It had done the trick, but the cost had been high and Marc couldn’t help but shudder at the thought.
    Another scroll seemingly described in detail how vampire venom could be used to create a powerful tranquilizing drug. After piecing together what Nighthawk had told him about Audrey’s activities, along with Conrad’s own admission that he’d been drugged by her, Marc had no doubt that was part of what she’d been doing here. It also eliminated the last shreds of doubt about who had left the scrolls behind. It had clearly been Audrey who had done so. That made the deciphering of them even more important.
    Marc had thought