"What was that?" Akshainie called as she ran over to us. She stopped when she saw Henry, then turned to me. "You're a priest! Can you not simply heal him?"

"I do not think that word means what you think it means!" I answered.

"To the water!" She didn't even wait for us to acknowledge her words before she was off again, slithering through the cave at top speed. Tadzio and I looked at each other, then I threw Henry over my shoulder and ran after her.

When I got to the brook she was already in the water with her eyes closed, chanting and holding her hands over the surface. The water around her and under her hands was glowing. I knelt down at the edge of the water beside her, unsure what she wanted me to do.

"I am not a healer," she said, softly, "but if the River Network will allow it, I can buy him some time." I nodded, as I heard Tadzio approach and stop next to me. She held her arms out to me, and I handed Henry over and stood up to watch. As she lowered him into the glowing water, I glanced over and noticed Tadzio had the book.

"Why did you grab the book?!" I demanded.

"It may yet be useful," he answered. 

"I will get us the real thing, and that should not be in the hands of mortals!"

"Well it's a good thing I am no longer mortal, isn't it!"

"By the gods," Akshainie hissed, "could you idiots do that somewhere else?" I grunted and glared at Tadzio, whose eyes grew wide as the pages began to faintly glow again.

"Give me the book," I said. Tadzio handed it to me, and I walked about a hundred feet away and focused. The glow remained for a moment, then began to fade. Once it was gone, the book caught flame, and let out an otherworldly scream that sent birds flying away. I did not relent or let go of the book until it was completely consumed and the fire in my hand died out. I walked back to Tadzio, who was sulking.

"I would have probably been fine, but you know I would accept if I wasn't," he said.

"If and when you die, old man, it will not be just to prove me wrong."

"Oh, but now it must be! One last joke on my way out." Henry coughed, and we both knelt immediately to check on him. Akshainie was lifting him from the water and his wounds were still faintly glowing; they looked much better, but he would still need medical attention.

"Can you get him to a hospital?" Tadzio nodded, and Akshainie handed Henry to him.

"Will you not come with us?" I sighed.

"No," I said, looking to Akshainie. "I think we need to get that book, and I fear the fastest way is in this very brook." She smiled, extending her hand to me.

"Very well. It was good to meet you, Miss Akshainie. Bene, until next time." I nodded, and watched him run off with Henry before taking Akshainie's hand and falling beneath the brook into the River Network.

Henry finally pinpointed the location of this relic shortly after the rest of us had gone to bed, so despite his excitement it was generally agreed that we would set out first thing in the morning.

Where we were going was a cave about two miles from our cabin. It was near a few other small openings in the rocks, and apparently a significant portion of his time researching was learning which cave we wanted and which path to follow once we'd entered. We traveled light; while there was the possibility we would need to spend some time in the cave, Akshainie and I knew we could go an extended period without food and water and Tadzio brushed off any concern but made sure to grab his extra large travel mug for coffee, which meant only Henry had a day's worth of supplies on hand. Akshainie decided to grab a snack on the way, however, and snatched a couple fish out of a brook as we passed. She offered one to each of us, but Tadzio declined and Henry expressed concern about eating raw fish. She shrugged and started eating hers as it was; I heated mine up in my hands before doing the same.

I grew thankful for the time Henry spent in research when I saw how much of a maze the cave was. He had managed to draw up a map by piecing together accounts from various journals and interviews he had found, bought, or conducted himself, and that map led us well through the cave and only made us stop and verify our orientation twice. We finally found ourselves in a dead end chamber, engraved with symbols from all over the world that strongly resembled the markings I found in the cave where I first encountered the Brood. I informed Akshainie of this, and she demanded everyone stop and help record what we found. Henry pulled a digital camera from his bag, taught her how to use it, and then insisted the rest of us press on to the darker section ahead.

As we shone our lights on the end of the chamber, we found a rough-hewn pedestal with a large, dust-covered, leather-bound book. Henry blew it off, and I recognized the shifting letters on the cover.

"This is a replica of the Book of Shadows?" I asked.

"A replica?" Henry replied, turning to me.

"Why are we looking for the Book of Shadows?"

"Remember, when we first met, and I told you there was a rumored tome with all the information we could ever want about demonic forces? This is that book!"

"You seem concerned about this," Tadzio said.

"We could have saved a great deal of time if you had simply told me this is what we were looking for."

"You knew the Book of Shadows was here?!" Henry demanded.

"I know where the Book of Shadows is, and this is not the place."

"Why have you never mentioned this!? How long have you known?"

"I've always known. I...did not know it was relevant. I know where it is, I have never asked what it is."

"The Pope hiding it in his personal library, Bene?" Tadzio asked, leaning back against a wall.

"No, it..." I sighed and rubbed the bridge of my nose. "It does not belong to the Church. It belongs to me."

"You own this book and don't know what it is?" Henry yelled, picking up the book. I noticed a faint glow begin to emanate from the pages but did not have time to react before he grabbed the front cover. "This book contains everything, Benedict! You can track every demon in real time with it, if you can break the code!" He threw the cover open, and just as he went to point at something on the page a bolt of dark lightning erupted from the book and struck him in the chest. The book fell to the ground as Tadzio and I ran over to him. He was unconscious and barely breathing, his shirt torn open and his chest badly burned; the back of his head was bleeding from where it hit the wall, and his arm looked like it was laying wrong, possibly broken. Tadzio began cursing in Spanish as he checked Henry, then turned to me with fear in his eyes.

"I do not think there is a hospital close enough to save him," he said.

This Akshainie woman has been growing ever more impatient. Today she just stood there, staring at me and sharpening her swords, which was clearly a threat at least partly because I'm moderately confident they are actually the embodied concepts of swords, and not prone to wearing down like true metal. When she left the room for a bit, I left Henry with the translation work and slipped out. When she returned to check on us, I was staring at her and sharpening my swords. Turns out she's into it, and we spent the next two hours talking about technique.

I talked to Benedict later who pointed out that I had made it sound like we were ready for them when I told him about finding the tome, and I reminded him that he usually takes much longer to arrive than he did this time and we thought we had a few days to finish our preparations. I asked him if he honestly thought Henry and I call him as soon as we're ready to act and then sit around waiting for him to fly from Europe somewhere and deal with America's new customs requirements. He didn't answer, but I think he actually did think that.

He asked again what we were even looking for, and I told him I didn't know the name of the thing, just that it was a book Henry thinks he tracked down somewhere near our rented cabin in the Oregon wilderness; a book that may tell us much about the Brood of Nachash and Buné. He suggested I help keep Akshainie occupied by doing some sword training with her. I may try that.

I had begun trying to reach out to Tadzio last week, and he finally got my message and arrived the day after I met Dr. Harris. As I couldn't go to the town offices, he went to gather all the information he could about the property I saw Mr. Withenow enter after the therapy meeting. It was after dusk when he returned, and we had papers detailing the history of Lot 87 spread around my hotel room within the hour.

It had been a small hospital, that went out of business after World War II when a nearby town became a major suburb and could boast a much larger and better facility. The building sat empty ever since, but has changed hands a few times and is currently owned by a group called the Jörmungandr Trust, who bought the land in 1981. I called Henry at Tadzio's request, and he went to an investigator he knows named Mark Larmais. What we got back was a docket of financial information that was a mess to sift through; but as soon as I saw Edward Withenow as a representative, I knew we were on to something.

​We spent a few days sorting out records and found that the land trust was affiliated with a half dozen other shell companies or groups, with their hands in international trade, political activism, and personal security. Most of them incorporated a red spiral into their logo, and some looked very similar to the particular spiral I had seen in the basement of the Frozen Pines Inn.

"I think," Tadzio said, looking over the chart we had drawn in the process of tying everything together, "you've been hunting a very small part of a very large problem." I handed him a coffee and took a sip of my own before nodding.

"The problem is, where's the head? Is it the cult? They don't show up anywhere on here."

"I think maybe this is all the cult, Bene. But look, it seems like a lot of these groups split up and went their own ways for a while, and have only reconvened in the last few years."

"You think the Barzai is reuniting what was once a more powerful empire."

"I think we need to decide whether that hospital on the edge of town is really important enough to risk our lives investigating."

"Well. My life."

"It still hurts when I don't die."

"Right. Sorry."

"But I'm serious. Why here?"

"There's a powerful presence there, Tad. I think it's where the last priests were taken, and if that's the case, I know the Barzai has been operating out of it in the recent past. Maybe he still is."

"That's a big maybe."

"Do you have a better idea?" He sighed and looked over the chart again.

"Just. Make sure someone knows where we're going."

We were standing around my table, which was covered in open books and notes. Over the weekend we had touched on all of this as much as we could, but I also had mass to tend to and the church's expectations for my Sunday afternoons, so this was the first time we could really spend a large chunk of time picking at what we knew. It would also probably be the last; we would keep in touch about anything we found, but Henry was flying back to the United States early the next day. In the course of our discussions, I had pieced together that he had met Tadzio while doing fieldwork, the exact nature of which he never explained but seemed related to the half-human child of a water spirit that was particularly important to him. Having never actually met another nephil in my life, I was hoping he would be more talkative about this other one he knew. Sadly, this was a matter he was not interested in discussing.

"This is the earliest reference to Nachash as an actual being that I own," he said, resting his hand on the reprint of a book originally printed during the Spanish Inquisition as I entered the room. "I know of an earlier reference, a mysterious book so rare I get conflicting accounts of what it's even called, printed around 1270. But nothing earlier."

"So this is a relatively new religious order?" I asked, setting a mug of coffee in front of him and then taking a sip from my own. He absently lifted it to his lips and then set it aside again, looking over to a page of notes he had nearby.

"To a European Catholic, sure."

"So we know when the Brood of Nachash was formed?"

"No. We know that there are no surviving records of any reference to Nachash as an actual being from before the late thirteenth century. It does seem somewhat unlikely that the cult existed very long by that date, given the complete silence in the record, but we can't really know. The most likely alternative is that they existed but called their god something different."

"But before then, Nachash was just...what?"

"An Anglicized version of the Hebrew word for 'serpent' used in the Fall narrative of Genesis 3. Outside of language studies of that actual passage, I have found little evidence to believe it had any use outside of Hebrew until either the cult or the spirit appropriated it."

"Is is possible that other groups that center on serpents are related to it?" I sat down and picked up one book, which included a brief reference to Nachash among a number of chaotic deities.

"It's worth looking into, I guess. It is, at least, possible that the cult will have borrowed imagery from other serpentine orders or even folklore, even if there's no direct relationship." As we looked over the information we had, it was decided that we needed to expand the scope of our studies. Henry had other matters to address, so he agreed to be available for the occasional bit of research, but had to keep his focus elsewhere. I knew that my resources were going to be limited as long as the Vatican had me off the case, so I thanked him for the help and admitted that it may be a while before I can contact him with anything new. I hated to put the matter aside, but I was growing concerned that I would soon have no other choice.

When I initially called Henry Matteson, his wife had just filed for divorce and he was largely unavailable for about five months. By the time he was available to speak at any length, I had been reassigned as priest to a small church in the Alps, which almost felt like being filed away, and my access to a phone was limited. We spent the next few months working out basic introductions and what I already knew of the Brood of Nachash, and then he arranged a visit. I was sitting in my car in front of the small regional airport, reading a newspaper, when he arrived. I folded my newspaper and helped him load his two bags, one of clothes and one of selected books and photocopies, into the car. The beginning of the ride was largely small talk, about the flight and how his son was handling the divorce.

"Are you aware of any new activity from the Brood?" he asked in German, as we began to climb the mountain that hid my village. I shook my head.

"The leadership was killed two years ago and I don't know how organized they are about replacing it," I said. "And I have not exactly been privy to any intelligence the Church has gathered."

"Hm." He looked out the window as the rock to his side gave way to the view of a valley. "I've asked around about that town in Tennessee you mentioned. It sounds like there's some recent activity, but it's hard to nail down."

"How did you find out about the Brood, anyway? You never quite gave me an answer."

"Mostly old references. Honestly, I hadn't really pieced them together enough to realize the cult was out there until you asked. I'd be surprised Tadzio connected us if it wasn't him."

"How long have you known him?" He turned back to look out the windshield, thinking for a moment.

"I don't think anyone knows him, Benedict," he answered, softly. "But we've worked together on and off for about five years."

"He comes to you for research, I assume? I was under the impression your work is largely academic."

"Largely, yes." The sun was already behind the mountain as we rounded a bend to reveal my village. I explained that the accommodations I could provide were mostly just a secondary room in my own quarters, added by an abbot some generations ago who used the church as a base to preach throughout the region. We unloaded the car, had a light supper, and then he retired to sleep off the flight. He left me with one book, however, which he explained I was welcome to keep. It was the memories of a man who had wandered the Appalachian range in the 60s and 70s, dealing with a host of living superstitions and the odd monster. Henry told me there was a story in there that sounded very much like it may be connected to the Brood, but encouraged me to take my time and read it all. If ever I should find myself hunting the Brood in America again, he insisted, I should know what to expect. I took to my chair by the fireplace and kept company with that book until I fell asleep.