Chapter 30- James

James was delighted by the interception, whatever it might prove to gain, but if the Hunters—particularly their commander, Marlon—were expecting the package, then it must be of some importance to them. The question stuck around, why?

James pulled the parcel out and sliced open the tape seals with one of the blades at his hip. The return address seemed to be one of those shared-office corporate types. Likely phony at that. His men could verify that fact, but James was betting that Marlon wouldn’t be so careless as to leave a reasonable paper trail.

He tipped the box, and the contents—a thin, leather-bound book sealed in bubble wrap—slid into his hand. Skinning the cushioned plastic away from the antique, then frowned, baffled. It was just a featureless, half-empty book. A journal of some kind. Handwritten passages scribbled in what appeared to be a mixture of Latin and German covered a few of the pages; the rest were blank except for crude signs and marks doodled here and there in the