The Shape Stealer Read Online Free PDF Page A

As soon as he sat he realized how tired he was from walking all day—and how thirsty. But he was even more grateful for a chance to unburden his heart of his story. It all came pouring out, over a bottle of excellent red wine. Will told Kepler all that had happened to him from the time he had followed his tutor to London: his first glimpse of Marguerite, his immediate and overpowering love for her, their brief, happy time together, the painful revelation that she was immortal, his decision to seek immortality himself, how he sought Dee out and made a pact with him to gain that immortality, and how Dee had tricked him into becoming a vampire. Kepler, who had remained silent through this long recitation—and barely sipping the wine himself—swore when he heard how Dee had tricked Will.
    “That behavior is typical of the man. He tricked me as well. When I first discovered the laws of planetary motion, Dee contacted me on the continent by messenger, with a proposal to publish a book introducing my work in detail in England, to be called Johannes Kepler: Reaching for the Heavens . It would have had a lot of beautifully engraved charts of the planets and stars, and he was to write an introduction comparable to the one he had written for a famous Euclidean textbook in England in the 1580s. It sounded like a great idea to me, especially as London was a hotbed of scientific experimentation and discovery at the time. To top it off, Dee offered to donate half of his share of the profits, which he assured me would be plenteous, to orphanages all across England. I was so moved by this great Christian gesture that I agreed to donate half of my own profits to the orphanages.
    “I didn’t find out until many years later that he had actually stolen all of the profits including mine, which he inaccurately reported to me as ‘disappointing,’ and had given nothing away to orphans. Worse, he had embedded signals in the planetary and star charts that summoned demons from all over the universe to join him in his damnable efforts at world dominion.
    “Only with great difficulty and the help of others have I been able to erase this misbegotten book from recorded history. But ending this terrible bookstore partnership has proven a more difficult matter. Unfortunately I have signed legally binding documents regarding the store, originally conceived of primarily to sell a French edition of Reaching for the Heavens , and have not been able to prove to a legal certainty Dee’s maleficent intent in the venture. But I will try forever if I have to; now it seems the man has stolen the very physical premises of said store right out from under my nose. That theft should help my cause, at least in a saner world, but the concern of these new economic courts in the European Economic Union for the defendant, always the defendant, only the defendant, has been incomprehensible and disturbing, believe me.
    “But as egregious as his mistreatment of me was, his sins against you are greater. To expose a young man to such a hideous monster as Marduk…”
    “You know of Marduk?” Will asked, shivering at the name.
    “Yes, I encountered him in London as Dee’s ‘aide’ when I traveled there to finalize arrangements for the book. He was one of the first things about Dee that made me suspicious. He is the foulest, most evil creature in the world. Thank God you left him behind in 1602.”
    “But we didn’t,” Will reluctantly admitted. “He came back with us.”
    His companion turned so pale that for a moment Will thought he might faint. “Marduk is here? In Paris? Now?”
    “Yes, he was in the tower when we traveled through time.” Will explained how his “dark angel” had appeared to him in Paris and instructed him to go to the Astrologer’s Tower in Catherine de Medici’s palace. How he had found Garet—whom he’d believed to be Marguerite—on top of the tower confronted by the foul beast in his own form.
    “That was the most horrible