“I’m serious, Alex!” “I know.” “I won’t touch it.” “I heard you.” Alexander smiled faintly.
“Why are you smiling?” “I’m not smiling.” But Alexander was smiling.
Damn!
Delia stared at him for three seconds.
Alexander turned the page of his novel with an expression so neutral it was suspicious.
Even too neutral.
Alexander listened to this resolution from his sofa without lifting his head from his novel, but Delia caught the corner of his lips moving upward half a centimeter, an expression that on an ordinary human face would read as, “Good luck, but I will not hold my breath waiting for the result.” “Annoying vampire,” Delia whispered, very gently, then picked up her bag and left.
“I can hear you, Delia,” Alexander scolded.
“I KNOW, NAGGY…” Delia teased, echoing Alexander’s earlier words.
The vampire glared in annoyance, but Delia was already outside the apartment.
The girl kept murmuring, “I KNOW, I KNOW!” as she strolled away cheerfully.
* Friday morning, Delia arrived at the museum with one resolution she had spoken aloud to herself in front of the apartment mirror before leaving.
“Don’t touch Hassan’s Jar!” Not do not research it, or do not work on it.
Just…
do not touch!
Safe distance.
Wear gloves if absolutely necessary.
And if her eyes started feeling heavy in an unnatural way, she would stand up, leave the room, drink water, splash her face, anything involving physical movement and fresh air.
A very sensible plan!
Robin was already at his desk when Delia arrived, with a cup of tea and the expression of someone who had slept well for the first time in a week.
His wife had fully recovered, he said, while handing Delia a second cup.
“What’s your plan for today?” Robin asked.
“Finishing the remaining Dudu Yai scroll translations,” Delia replied, opening her notebook.
“There are still two scrolls left.
The fourth is almost final, but the fifth…” she pointed to a page filled with red question marks.
“The fifth scroll has a different text structure from the previous ones.
More personal.
More like a personal journal than a ritual text.” Robin nodded.
“Be careful with the personal ones.
They’re usually the most interesting and the most unpredictable.” Delia had no idea how accurate that warning was until three hours later.
The fourth scroll was finished at twenty past ten.
The results were consistent with what Delia had found before, Dudu Yai’s hunting records, technical descriptions of how to drain supernatural energy from vampire blood, accurate lists of his victims.
Delia completed the final transcription, closed the translation tab, and stretched her fingers.
Then she took the fifth scroll…
From the outside, it looked identical to the others: darkened linen fabric, bound with dark red thread, in far better condition than its age suggested.
But when Delia unrolled it under the spotlight and saw its first lines, she immediately knew Robin was right.
This was different!
The fifth scroll’s writing was denser, slanted more than the previous scrolls, a sign of someone writing in a greater hurry, or under greater burden.
The line spacing was inconsistent.
In some sections, there were scratch-outs, rewrites, redo.
“Dudu Yai wasn’t at peace when he wrote this,” Delia thought.
She began translating.
The first twenty minutes produced text that was still familiar, a continuation of his methodological notes, explanations about the properties of old vampire blood versus young vampire blood, the differences in energy extractable from each.
Then, around the middle third, the text changed…
Not abruptly, like a cut-off and replaced topic.
More like someone writing a scientific report but involving things beyond reason.
“I found the third one,” the rough translation read.
“After the two previous cases I documented in the first scroll, I never expected to find a third in my lifetime.
Connecting blood.
A girl from an ordinary family, no witch lineage, no rituals performed, no ancestral pacts.
But her blood, when tested, reacted in ways my knowledge couldn’t explain.” Delia typed the translation, her hands moving slower than usual.
“This blood is dangerous.
Not to others.
But to its owner.
Because blood that can bridge two worlds is blood that can be claimed by both worlds simultaneously.
And no human can live fully in two places at the same time.” Delia stopped typing for a moment.
Thinking.
“I warned the girl.
She didn’t listen.
Or perhaps I didn’t warn her strongly enough.” Delia stopped typing again.
She reread that paragraph three times.
Then her hand moved to the next line almost without her permission.
“Connecting blood owners will always be found by supernatural creatures before they find them.
Not by coincidence.
But because their blood emits a frequency detectable only by creatures who have been beyond the human world’s boundaries for too long.
Creatures hungry for that bridge.
The first to find them is usually the most dangerous.” Delia tensed.
This feels like a horror story, she thought.
“The first to find them is usually the one who needs them most.
The two are not always different.” Delia swallowed hard.
“In the third case I discovered,” the text continued, “the creatures who found the blood owner first were old vampires.
I don’t know their exact age, but based on the energy residue left in their blood, it was very old.
Nearly a millennium, by my estimate.” Delia’s fingers stopped over the keyboard.
She was stunned.
“The vampire didn’t claim the blood brutally.
No force, no violence.
Instead, he formed a contract.
A blood contract, which in old vampire tradition is a binding far deeper than modern humans understand.
And the vampire’s name was recorded in one source I found during my research.
A source originating from what is now Central Europe.
From a noble family that went extinct three hundred years ago.” Delia frowned.
Growing more determined to continue the translation.
“His name…” Delia held her breath.
“In the original script, it was written as Aleksander.” Delia sat in complete silence for four full minutes.
She knew this because the clock in the corner of her laptop screen moved from 11:47 to 11:51, and she did nothing during that time except stare at the one word she had just translated.
Aleksander…
Alexander??
Not a coincidence, not a linguistic coincidence.
The Old Romanian script Delia had memorized so well over the past two weeks left no room for ambiguity here.
This was the same name.
The same person-er, the same creature.
Dudu Yai wrote about Alexander.
Dudu Yai, who had lain as a mummy in this museum for hundreds of years, in a sarcophagus no one could open before Delia came, with a fifth scroll she had not finished translating until this morning.
A scroll writing about the vampire who now slept on her apartment’s spare bed and commented on how she brushed her hair.
Delia closed her laptop.
Opened it again.
Closed it again.
“Okay…
Think with a clear head.
You’re an anthropology graduate.
You’re trained not to panic in the face of surprising findings.
You…
You live with a vampire whose name appears in the records of a black witch and vampire hunter whose mummy is two hallways away from here.” Delia opened her laptop for the third time and continued translating because even though her entire nervous system was debating what to feel, her researcher instinct could not leave this scroll half-finished.
“I don’t know what that vampire planned,” Dudu Yai wrote in his final paragraph.
“Whether he found the blood owner for a specific mission, by accident, or for reasons even he himself didn’t fully understand, I can’t confirm.
What I do know is that connecting blood in an old vampire’s contract isn’t just about food.
Not just about power.” Up to this point, she absurdly thought about herself as Alexander’s “breakfast” during the full moon.
“Throughout history, only one vampire has ever formed a blood contract with a connecting blood owner.
And the result wasn’t a hunt.
But a bond that couldn’t be broken by the death of either party.” Oh no!
Delia felt breathless.
“I didn’t have time to investigate further.
But if you’re reading this, whoever you are, the unfortunate curator who opened my scroll, be careful!
Not of the vampire.
Be careful of yourself.
Of your blood.
Of how you’ve already become more deeply connected than you realize.
And ask your vampire whether he knew this from the beginning.
Whether he knew it from the very first night.” Period.
The text ended.
Delia closed her laptop for the fourth time.
She did not open it again.
She sat with her back straight and a blank stare at the wall before her for quite a while, until Robin knocked on the research room door to remind her it was lunchtime.
“Delia?
Are you alright?” “Yes…
I’m fine, Mr.
Robin.” Her voice came out more stable than she expected.
“The fifth scroll is finished.” “Bravo!
How are the results?” Delia considered all the possible answers to that question.
“…Interesting,” she finally said.
“Very interesting!”