Remembering exactly where he had left the book the last time he’d set it down, Vail made quick work of retrieving it the second time. He strode quietly down the stairs that led to the archive, keeping a halfhearted watch for his relatives even though he was sure that everyone had already retired to their rooms for the night. Those that were still awake would have gone out to hunt a while ago and wouldn’t be back anytime soon either. The manor was silent apart from his careful footsteps, and the trip was pleasantly uneventful.

As expected, the tome was on the same shelf he had placed it on during his last visit, so he pulled it down and headed back to his own room to look through it with Victoria. There was no guarantee that it held the answers they were looking for, but it was the best chance they had. Peter had been firm in his decision to remove her from the Hygrace family’s property as soon as she was ready to go tomorrow. As far as either of them knew, this was the last night that they could spend in search of a way to turn her into a vampire. He hoped transmutation, whatever it was, could be the ritual that his uncle had described to him in the past.

When he got back to his room, Vail closed the door behind him and made his way over to the bed. “This,” he said to Lady Crest, holding up the leather-bound book. “Should be what we’re looking for.” Settling down on the mattress with his back propped against the headboard, he gestured for her to sit beside him and cracked the tome open on his lap. The pages inside were covered from top to bottom with fine print and hand drawn depictions of humans and vampires, differentiated by fangs that protruded from the mouths of the latter.

He studied the images with interest before focusing on the text. “It’s written in Romanian,” he noted, recognizing the characters right away. “It’s been a few decades since I’ve last read this language, but I think I can still translate.” His eyes flitted over the words as he skimmed the first few pages. The beginning of the book was a detailed record of family lineages, names of vampires who had turned humans, and the names of the humans whom they had turned. It was interesting content, and he would have spent more time poring over it if they had more than just one night to do so. However, for the sake of getting to the point, he flipped past the anecdotal accounts until he found a page with a promising title.

“[i]Ritual de schimbare[/i]. Transformation ritual,” he read aloud, heartbeat quickening with anticipation. It had to be the information they were after. The related drawing was somewhat confusing though. He knitted his brows, unsure what to make of it. From what he could tell, it just looked like a vampire feeding on a human. Fangs were buried in the neck, and the victim’s mouth was agape is if he was in shock or pain. It was no different than what he did to satisfy his bloodlust on an average basis, but none of the people he fed on had ever turned into vampires. There had to be something else going on, so he turned back to the text in search of the answer.