Read Red Serpent: The Falsifier for Free Online

no going back.
    As he walked on and his eyes adjusted to the bright path, Alex wondered how this place was possible. Did the Council build this secret passage? Did they even know it existed? Maybe Uncle John was keeping secrets from the rest of them.
    Fifteen minutes passed and Alex could see another silver door at the end. He quickened his pace, eager to find whatever it was that he was looking for. He checked his watch. 2:35 AM. He wondered whether his guardians were still awake, waiting for him.
    He reached the second entrance and saw that it had no handle. Alex touched it to see if anything would happen. Nothing. He tutted in irritation and searched around to find a switch or key to open the door, but there was none. Then he heard the same whirring noise he had heard at the entrance. Out of nowhere, a robotic voice echoed in the corridor. “Please state your name,” it said.
    “Alexander Howe III,” he replied.
    “Access Denied!”
    He tried his mother’s name, “Miriam Howe.”
    The voice didn’t say anything. The whirring sound grew louder and faster. Finally, the voice said, “Access Denied! Three attempts left until total lockdown.” His guardians hadn’t told him anything about this. Surely they hadn’t forgotten? He tried his uncle’s name. That didn’t work either and nor did his grandmother’s name.
    This was his last chance. He thought of going back to ask his relatives, but he suspected they would not hear him through the closed door. Again, he searched around for some clue. Just then, he noticed a small inscription in Cuneiform on the door. He touched it and immediately a thousand different inscriptions appeared, all in ancient languages. There was Hebrew, four different dialects of Aramaic, Sanskrit, Egyptian, Arabic, Urdu, and many others. Alex realized they all read one thing. A name. Aidan. He read it aloud and the robotic voice said, “Access Granted!” The door slid just like the first one, revealing a room. Once he entered, the door materialized again behind him.
    The room was large with hundreds of books crammed on shelves all around. In the center was a small waterfall. Alex gasped. The flowing water was red. His cheeks tingled as he came to the realization that it was in fact blood. The blood flowed down from the fountainhead into a small pool.
    His stomach churned. Fear crept up his skin. He turned around, paranoid that there might be some kind of monster behind him. A chill crawled up his spine. What if there were vampires here? He tiptoed cautiously over to the pool to take a closer look. But then he stopped, afraid that if he came any closer, something would jump out and kill him. He waited and looked around once again, keeping his right ear pricked for any sounds. The sound of the cascading blood echoing through the room was the only thing he could hear.
    Alex wandered around the rest of the room. There were chairs and a Louis XVI style desk. There was also a coffee table, exquisitely decorated in gold and platinum, and four lounge chairs, a deep red sofa, and two recliners around the coffee table. He walked over to the bookshelf on his left. The literature ranged from science, history, political science, legends, classical, Greco-Roman literature, Shakespeare and ancient literature. There were scrolls from Alexandria, Taxila, Nalanda, Athens, Rome, and many other ancient centers of learning. Alex returned to the desk. On it there was an old book.
    It was bound in leather and the cover showed a silver cross with a brass snake wound around it. In plain English, the long title read The History of the Dynasty and a Plain Translation of the Verse of the Ardemic Prophecies. Beneath this was the subtitle, Included: Supplementary Material on the Secret Histories and on the Lineage of King Anaxagoras XXIX by John Benjamin Howe. Alex opened the book to see strange writing in a language unknown to him. Next to these were the corresponding English translations. He browsed through and read