Page 81 of A Dawn Of Blood

Grinning, I turn to the rest of the team. “Alright, everyone, did you know—”

“Here we go again,” Lorcan says with a sigh.

“Shhh,” I shush him. “Please, you grumpy old man, just let the thirteen-year-old me have this moment. That’s how old I was when I first read about the Library of Alexandria, when I realized I had a dream, and when my dream got shattered, all at the same time. I never knew I’d actually get a chance to see a part of it. So,” I start slowly, throwing him a teasingly warning look, “did you know…”

He shakes his head, but doesn’t interrupt me.

“Thank you,” I say sweetly. Then I let my eyes sweep over them all again, catching Cain staring at me intently. “Did you know that this Library used to house like a hundred thousand written works? And did you know what, among other things, they did to expand it so much?”

“What, Anna?” Raven asks with actual interest in her voice.

“If you were someone stopping in the port,” I answer readily, “and if you happened to have books on board, they’d literally take your books from you, copy them and give you the copies so they could keep the original. Isn’t that insane?”

“Yes,” Nuala says, “nowcan we go in please?”

I throw her a flat glare. “Just for the record, you’re all being so very lame right now, everyone except Raven.”

*

It’s in silent wonder that I make my way down the stairs and into a huge anteroom with walls built from large, sandy blocks and sconces lighting the airy, shadowy space.

“Afternoon,” I come to greet the shifter male sitting at what seems to be a Service Desk across from the entrance.

Allegedly, they’re all snake shifters in this institution, part of some ancient librarian order.

He smiles at me. “Welcome to the Library of Alexandria. May I be of assistance?”

I beam at him. “Yes, we’re looking for anything you might have on either Odin or Frigg. A tour would be nice as well.”

He gets up. “By all means. Follow me.”

“Ammon,” someone calls out, appearing the very next second as if out of thin air. A female snake shifter with her eyes narrowing at Cain.

“Yes, Master?” Ammon asks.

Master turns to look at her subordinate. “What do you think you’re doing?”

She doesn’t wait for a reply. She turns to Cain again. “My apologies, but if he had let you walk in, you would’ve been killed on the spot. You see, vampires are strictly forbidden here.”

“What do you mean?” I demand as I step forward.

The woman looks at me. “It’s mostly because of your kind that our order needs to remain underground, lest we want more books to suffer the fate of the ones that were destroyed centuries ago.”

“Alright, can you just let the four of them in then?”

She shakes her head. “I’m afraid not.”

“Pst, Anna,” I hear Nuala call out.

“Ah yes,” the woman addresses her, “you’re about to call her aside to suggest using some kind of magic to trick us or to break in. Let me save you the effort, my darling. This order hasn’t survived this long on weak defenses.”

I think for a second. Egyptian order, established during the Ptolemy era, enemies of vampires. A thought pops into my head. “Well,” I tell the woman, “I guess I’ll need to tell you who we are then.”

“Anna,” Lorcan hisses at me in warning.

I ignore him. “Does the name Phinelis mean anything to you?” I ask the shifter woman.

Surprise flashes through her eyes. She instantly dismisses her subordinate, making me realize I was right — Phinelis really is an old fae family name from the North African region.

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