Montague knew Demitri was referring to Burton. Demitri always resented both Burton and Montague himself for keeping watch over his practices. Even in his exile, Burton had enforced restrictions on the minister’s research. And Demitri never liked restrictions.
But it had been too long now since Montague last saw Burton Lang. He thought about every scenario, trying to theorize what could have happened to his sensei. Daily, Montague read through incoming letters and visitor logs for Burton’s alternate names, wondering if he would ever write, or better yet, return suddenly after three months. Perhaps the new queen would hear Burton’s case, Montague thought. Especially since Montague was her personal healer. She trusted him and knew that he would never put her in danger. It was a new kingdom with a new council enforcing new rule. Montague never accepted that Burton was dead. An apprentice never gave up on his teacher.
Something didn’t feel right. Even though Montague had beheaded the suspected host of the Nekrums, the air still felt unsettled to him.
“We are on the brink of new discoveries that will change our world forever.” Demitri raised his glass to the crowd. “Here is to our future: to science, to medicine…” He hesitated. “…and to Gabriel!”
At the second wave of applause, Montague sat before the rest. Four glasses of wine were taking effect; the blood spots on the palm of Demitri’s bandage looked as blue as a jaybird. No, he thought, my eyes must be playing tricks on me. For a moment, Montague blamed the illusion on the wine. I’m drunk, he said to himself. But just as he was about to disregard the sight, Demitri glanced down at him as if acknowledging Montague’s discovery. Demitri closed his fist, hiding his bloodstained palm.
People cheered and whistled goodnight. Castle maids began sweeping peanut shells and mopping the ale from the marble dance floor.
As the room emptied, a rush of fear surged within Montague, wiping away the fog of his intoxicated mind. What he’d seen suddenly became clear to him and wanted to investigate immediately. Never had he read about men with blue blood, but he remembered Burton telling him about how the Nekrums could possess multiple bodies by crossing blood, spreading their biotechnology across several minds, thus controlling them. Those in the hive mind could influence others as well. It would support his suspicion toward Demitri’s strange behavior. Maybe, Montague thought, the headmaster was being influenced, experimented on, bribed, or blackmailed in some way. If he were to find answers anywhere, it would be in Gabriel’s Diary. He hurried off to the library.
Since the day Burton Lang was exiled, Montague had been the sole guardian of the diary and, on most occasions, kept it with him. Now, living in the basement of the Ikarus library, he was safe to leave it in his heavily guarded chamber. It contained thousands of pages written in several languages, some of which were unknown to him. Most of the diary was not yet interpreted. But the message between the words had been written by angels. And Montague had spent his entire life learning from Burton Lang how to read the language of light and translate angelic symbols. Not only had he interpreted the beginning of Gabriel’s version of history, he’d made copies of his translations to share the information with the rest of the dwindling numbers of members of the Resistance, now no more than a handful.
At the end of the study hall, he descended the spiral staircase to his quarters in the basement where the sacred book was kept. Gabriel’s Diary sat atop a waist-high ivory pedestal. It was surrounded by a brilliant pearl-white glow. The room was filled with the aroma of mint and sage. When Montague placed his hand over the metal emblem of intertwined circles embossed on the diary’s cover, he felt an intense vibration under his palm.
Montague opened the diary, written by the man who had brought Men to this planet. He leaned in closer to read the small print with his aging eyes and for hours he skimmed through hundreds of brittle pages for any information that might give him more clues about the supernatural threat.
On the floor of his new study, Montague crouched at the center of piles of papers, sipping on jasmine tea and picking at a bowl of nuts to settle his growing hunger through the long hours of his research. For a while he puffed on bogweed and pondered the past. Montague was certain he had made a clean strike through the farmer’s neck. He replayed the scene in his head over and over again. And farmer Paddett, who Montague believed was the host, was now dead—headless. But the colonies of exiles were clearly still following orders. But whose? Maybe the mages were given the Nekrums’ plan in advance, in the event of the host’s death, Montague thought. Or maybe the host wasn’t gone at all. The rogue moon was still orbiting the planet. The Nekrums were still here.
Burton had told him that the host would befriend the community by helping to develop its future. The traitor would then turn on his people, taking advantage of a trusting society, while the innocent were still blind to his objective. This traitor could deceive even the most clear-sighted of leaders. His goal was to harness the colony’s most intelligent mind. Aside from Burton, who possessed divine knowledge, Demitri Von Cobb was always known as the most brilliant mind in the land.
Montague finished translating a passage in Gabriel’s Diary and its relevance to what he had just witnessed in the ballroom shocked him. Gabriel wrote that the host will have blue blood. The microorganic intelligence required additional copper in the bloodstream so the electromagnetic conductor would enable swift communication between the host and Nekrums. It strangled the nervous system into submission and shut off conscious awareness and free will in the brain, thus controlling the body. When mixed with red blood cells, the copper-rich blood turned
