Claws of Eternity ✔️

Chapter 32: White lights

JACK

Jack and Liz spent weeks searching for information on Lerra, but the Windsor archives were useless. With each passing day he grew more restless, partly because of the news of the Border falling in Edinburgh and Constantinople and partly, because Bryce was on edge. The last time Bryce was on edge, a rebellion against him started, hundreds of vampires were murdered and swallowed by the fire that started in Constantinople.

Vampires were not the only thing that died with the flames, all records on them died, too.

Jack sat in the library, drumming on the table. He was a nervous wreck ever since the Border fell. Ever since the news that Lerra De Noves wasn't in Cardona reached him. He knew it was only a matter of time before the same news reach Bryce and then he just might kill Jack for not telling him.

Jack waited on Liz. She was trying to persuade her historian friend into giving her scripts on slave exchange before the 15th century. There was probably no mention of Lerra, because the information in the scripts usually consisted only of prices at certain times. If anything else could be found there, Bryce would've already confiscated it.

He wasn't sure what he was looking for. Perhaps he was only trying to shorten his time, to quiet his nerves down. Maybe he didn't really want to find anything, maybe he was looking for proof that Lerra was exactly who she said she was. But he couldn't let it go.

Something tugged on his mind and he couldn't let it go. Lerra appeared right after the rebellion against Bryce; right when all the records of her potential past life died in the flames.

"I got them." Liz entered the library and Jack's heartbeat quickened.

She strode to the table and put all the old books down. Without a word, they both began searching through them.

"A lot of witches ended up in slavery when Inquisition began, so we will have to read a lot of books. I brought every record on every witch slaver my friend had, everything from the end of the 13th century to the middle of 14th, just in case Bryce's records are wrong. Any idea how we might narrow it down?" She asked, flipping through pages.

"Let's see," Jack began thinking out loud, "there are two possible stories. First, Lerra is telling the truth. Which means that either Bryce's records are wrong and Luciana was freed much later or somebody else freed Luciana when Lerra was a baby. In the latter case, it must have been someone from De Noves House and none of them were made."

"That would mean a human freed Luciana, someone from De Noves House?" Liz went with his line of reasoning.

"Yes, if the first story is correct, that is, if Lerra is telling the truth about who she is. Second story, Lerra is lying. That would mean she wasn't active in the vampire society before she "appeared" and no one knew who she was." Jack went on while piling useful books on one heap.

"What are you thinking?" Liz asked.

"What do these two stories have in common?" Jack countered and Liz shrugged her shoulders. "In both of them, the buyer has no money. There is no way a human De Noves member would have enough gold to purchase a witch like Luciana. If Lerra De Noves freed her herself, while not actively existing in the vampire society, she couldn't have used gold either."

"You're right, a vampire that nobody's ever heard of with enough gold to buy a witch? It would raise suspicion." Liz agreed.

Jack smiled.

"Luciana's freedom was paid with something else and that is what we're looking for." He concluded. Liz nodded and began searching through the books.

Jack did the same. Infinite names showed in front of his eyes, mostly only first names. He would have searched for Luciana's name but he was almost certain she wouldn't be in the books under the real one, so he decided on other tactics.