Page 75 of Hell Bent

But those had been fights she could win. She wasn’t strong enough to beat Linus Reiter any more than she was clever enough to get out from under Eitan Harel’s thumb. They were the same man. Linus would have happily drunk her dry and planted her in his backyard to feed the roses. Eitan would just keep using her, sending her on jobs until she didn’t come back.

She rubbed balm into the wound, replaced the bandage, and looked for a clean pair of Lethe sweats. She’d forgotten to bring back the last couple of pairs to be laundered, so she had to go up to the Virgil bedroom to pillage Darlington’s closet. They were too long and too baggy, but they were clean.

Her next stop was the Lethe library. She drew the Albemarle Book from the shelf outside, ignoring the faint screams and the puff of brimstone that emerged from its pages. The book held the memory of whatever had been researched last, and Dawes had clearly been studying some version of the underworld.

Alex drew a pen from the wicker table beside the shelf, then hesitated. She knew she needed to be very specific in her request. Vampires were all over folklore and fiction, and she didn’t want to have to sort through what was myth and what might actually be useful. Also, if you were too vague with the library, the walls started shaking, and there was a good chance it might cave in entirely. Maybe she should start smaller.

She scrawled, Linus Reiter, and returned the book to its place. The shelf rattled gently, and when it had settled, Alex let it swing open to the library.

There were more than a dozen books on the shelves, but as Alex sorted through them, she realized most were focused on the Reiter family and their grand home in Old Greenwich, Sweetwell. The Reiters were German immigrants and had made their money manufacturing boilers and water heaters. Sweetwell and its surrounding land had always passed from one Reiter heir to the next, but Alex suspected they were all the same man.

She was surprised to see one of Arnold Guyot Dana’s scrapbooks on the library shelf, a fat volume bound in navy blue, Yale: Old and New emblazoned in gold on its spine. Darlington had been obsessed with the scrapbooks dedicated to New Haven and Yale, and had cherished volumes sixteen through eighteen, which, along with Hiram Bingham III’s diary, had been pilfered from the Sterling Library years ago to hide vital information on Lethe and the flow of magical artifacts through the city.

Alex flipped through the thick pages of newspaper clippings, old photographs, and maps, until her eyes landed on a photo of a group of young men at Mory’s, all stern-faced, all suited. And there was Linus, in the back row, his face solemn, his pale blue eyes nearly white in the old picture. He looked softer somehow, more mobile in this photo than he had been sitting in his own living room. Had he been human then? Or already turned and having a laugh? And how was she supposed to best a drug-dealing blue blood Connecticut vampire?

Kittscher’s Daemonologie was also on the shelf, the same book Michelle Alameddine had recommended and that Dawes had been using for research. Alex flipped through, still hoping for a catalogue of monsters and ideally how to best them. But the book was as Dawes had described: a series of debates on hell between Ellison Nownes, a divinity student and devout Christian, and Rudolph Kittscher, an atheist and member of Lethe.

Nownes seemed to be arguing for Turner’s version of hell—a place of eternal punishment for sinners: Whether there be nine circles or twelve, whether pits of fire or lakes of ice, though the architecture of hell be indeterminate, its existence and purpose are not.

But Kittscher disagreed: Superstition and bunk! We know there are other worlds and planes and that their existence enables the use of portals—why, ask any Locksmith if he thinks he’s simply disappearing from one place and reappearing in another. No! We know better. There are other realms. And why should we not understand “hell” as one of these realms? Here, the transcript noted “loud applause.”

Some of what they were saying went right over Alex’s head, but she was pretty sure Kittscher was suggesting the existence of hell—and heaven—was a bargain between demons and men: Just as we may be nourished by meat or fowl, or survive upon a diet of simple roots and berries, so demons are nourished by our base emotions. Some feed on fear or greed or lust or rage, and yes, some hunger after joy. Heaven and hell are a compromise, nothing more, a treaty binding demons to remain in their realm and feed only upon the dead.

This was where the crowd turned on Kittscher and the notes described Nownes as “red-faced.” Nownes: This is what comes of a vision of a world without God—not only a life but an afterlife devoid of any higher morality. You suggest that we, creatures born of God and made in His image, are the lowliest of beasts, timid rabbits trapped in a snare, made not for great study or high achievement, but to be consumed? This is the purpose and fate of humanity?

Kittscher had laughed. Our bodies are food for worms. Why should our souls not be made meals too?

At that point both parties had nearly come to blows and a recess had been taken.

Alex rubbed her eyes. She’d been straight with Turner: She didn’t believe in his Sunday school version of the underworld. But she wasn’t sure she bought into Kittscher’s theory either. And why had this turned up in her search regarding Linus Reiter?

She combed through the index for any mention of him, then slid her finger down to V, for vampire. A single page was listed.

Kittscher: Think on the vampire.

(Jeering from the assembly.)

Herman Moseby: What’s next, leprechauns and kelpies?

(A call to order from the moderator.)

Kittscher: Have you never wondered why in our stories some seduce and some terrify? Why some are beautiful and others grotesque? These disparate stories are proof that demons remain in our world, some who feed on misery or terror, others who feed on desire, all of whom take the forms most likely to elicit those emotions.

(Terrence Gleebe is recognized by the moderator.)

Gleebe: In this scenario, is blood a vehicle or incidental to the process?

(Laughter from the assembly.)

Alex touched her fingers to the bandage on her neck. “Incidental, my ass.”

She thought of handsome Linus Reiter in his white suit. Why would a vampire become a drug dealer? There had to be a thousand ways to make money when you had that kind of power and that much time. But what if you fed on desperation? What if the money meant nothing but you required an endless buffet of fear and need? Alex remembered the hangers-on at Eitan’s house, the losers at Ground Zero, her own aching sadness, the desolation that had been her life, the scraps of hope she’d wrung from the moments of peace that a little weed, a little alcohol, a pop of Valium could provide.

So if Kittscher was right and vampires were demons, at least she knew what she was dealing with. But how to keep the monster at bay?

She left the library and took out the Albemarle Book, wrote: how to avoid vampires, nonfiction. Then she hesitated. Why had the library provided her with information on a vampire when she had specifically asked for books mentioning Linus Reiter? She kept the Albemarle Book open and returned to the round table where she’d left Kittscher’s Daemonologie. Reiter hadn’t been listed in the index. She flipped to the back of the book.

Minutes taken by Phillip Walter Merriman, Oculus, 1933.