Drew D'Amato:Bloodlines:02 Read Online Free

black eyes stared right through him, like he could see everything he was hiding.  Vlad cracked a smirk.
    “Peterson, I take it.  Do you have a first name?”
    “Robert.” 
    Vlad noticed his English accent.  “Not a good ring to it for a vampire, think of something more Victorian. ”
    “I will.”
    “Do you have the Bible on you?”
    Peterson was carrying a gray backpack.  He unzipped the top of it and took out a centuries-old leather bound book.  The pages were piss yellow—aged—curled at the edges.  On the cover was the symbol of the Order of the Dragon—a dragon curled in a circle eating its own tail, with a blood red cross on its back. 
    Vlad took the book and opened it.  The script was written in ancient ink.  Vlad flipped through the over hundred pages of it.  Everything was written in an ancient code.  He felt powerful nostalgia as he held the book.  He thought of nights by candlelight with Radu looking for the answers of what had happened to them.  Reading the history of the Order of the Dragon, and the true history of the Templars.  The rush built up inside him, but quickly died.
    “This information is worthless to me without it decoded.”
    Peterson took out a zip drive from his pocket.  “Everything in the book has been translated onto this file.  It is the only copy.  We didn’t even allow Henderson to have one.”  He handed it over to Vlad.
    “Well, you better have a laptop on you.  For all we know you could have child porn on here.”
    “No, but I have better.”  Peterson dug back into the backpack and took out a three-ring binder with paper inside it that looked to be the thickness of a movie script or a thesis.
    “This is the Dark Bible translated.  My boss does not want this information stored on a computer unless it is necessary.  He fears hackers or anything of that sort.  This zip drive was just a back up, but he intends on using this translation for now.  I am stunned though; you really don’t know this code at all?”
    “My brother knew the codex for it.”
    “Radu?”
    “Yes, you know, you could spend some of your energy hunting him down, too.”
    Peterson said nothing.  Vlad took the manuscript from Peterson, and read the first three words.
    Lord forgive us.
    “This has been translated,” Vlad said.  “I remember how this book started.”
    Vlad was breathless.  Jericho kept his wits.
    “So how do you plan to retrieve the Blood?” he asked Peterson.  “Why this meeting in the bathroom?”
    Peterson dug deeper into his backpack.  He pulled out an identical backpack.
    “Most airlines only allow one carry-on so I used this trick.”
    “I like the way you think.” 
    “This was why I wanted to meet here, so I can give this to you.  This is the plan.  First, I will need the Bible back.”
    Vlad looked at him with suspicion.
    “Not the zip drive, just the actual Bible.  I will need it to pull off my plan.”
    “Explain this plan before I hand anything back to you.”
    “I’m going to meet the other team downstairs.  Zachary is the man holding the Blood.  I’m going to tell him that our leader wants the Blood and the Bible in the same luggage.  He does want to risk any mix-up.  I will of course need the Bible on me to show some validity, since he has not heard of this plan himself.  I’ll put the Blood in the backpack with the Bible.  You will have the other backpack with nothing in it.”
    “So you are taking the translation too.”
    “Yes, for the same reason.  I will do this exchange in a bathroom down there, and you two will stand off somewhere and leave the other backpack on the ground.  We’ll figure out exactly where, when we get down there.  When I get out from the bathroom I’ll walk next to you, put the backpack on the ground and we’ll make the switch.  Each of us picking up the other’s backpack.  You will have the backpack with the complete coffer, and the translation; and I will check in a luggage with just my