Les vampires de Manhattan

by Melissa de la Cruz

  Oliver sighed. Nephilim attacks, pentagrams, and now human blood on the eve of the biggest moment of his life. He couldn’t shake a sudden sense of foreboding. Oliver believed in omens. And this wasn’t, couldn’t be good.

  3 HAPPILY NEVER AFTER

  THE MYTH OF PERSEPHONE was such bullshit. The goddess’s daughter gets kidnapped by the lord of the underworld and has to live six months on earth and six months in Hell, and the whiny little bitch acted as if it was a punishment.

  At least Persephone got six months on earth every year.

  Mimi Martin took a sip from her glass of white wine and rolled it on her tongue, savoring every drop. The buttery richness of the white Burgundy did a lot to liven her mood, just as it always did, but somehow today even that wasn’t enough. “Happy anniversary to me,” she said to the empty seat across from her. She was having lunch by herself that Monday, had stolen away from work with the intention of indulging in a long and luxurious meal to forget about the train wreck that was her marriage.

  So why did she just feel irritated and alone?

  It was ten years since the final battle and Lucifer’s defeat. Seven years since their wedding, and her husband was nowhere to be found. Kingsley had chosen to remain in the underworld while Mimi was up here, back in New York, alone. It was only supposed to be a trial separation; Kingsley had even joked that it was their “Persephone clause.” But she had been away for only a month, and it was already hard to imagine going back anytime soon. Not even if she missed him so much she cried herself to sleep most nights, hoping he would change his mind, forsake the underworld, and decide to join her.

  Damn him. Damn him to Hell, she thought, aware of the irony.

  The waiter brought her a bread basket and she tore into the baguette ravenously, slathering butter over a piece of the airy, crusty bread before taking a huge bite. She missed her husband so much she couldn’t forgive herself for what she was doing—what she had done. She had left him. She had actually left Kingsley Martin. The love of her life, her soul mate, her husband, the man for whom she had sacrificed so much. Mimi had been certain that if anything, it would be Kingsley who would prove to be unfaithful, that he would be the one to leave, to go back to his wild ways, bored by the monotony of monogamy, and that she would be the one left bereft, heartbroken, and alone.

  Instead it was she who had said adios. She who had told him she just couldn’t take it anymore. Not another day in the underworld. It wasn’t him. She loved him, she still loved him, deeply, desperately, but she couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t live there. Mimi twirled the silver ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, remembering the day Kingsley had put it on. She had been such a happy bride; she had never been happier in her entire life. And for a while, they had been happy, ecstatic, even though they lived in Hell. They were so hot for each other, to make an awful pun. She had promised him forever, had promised him the rest of her immortal life. But how was she to know forever meant… forever? That it meant never eating a great meal in New York again, never shopping on Madison Avenue, never visiting the Met, never seeing the leaves change, never having a glass of champagne ever again.

  Of course she shouldn’t have been surprised that he had chosen his lofty position over their marriage. Kingsley Martin, the Angel Araquiel, was lord of the underworld, Duke of Hell, and every creature and soul behind its gates was a subject in his unearthly kingdom. One thing about Kingsley, he took his responsibilities seriously. She knew that, and yet she had still demanded that he choose her over everything.

  Mimi sighed and startled at a sudden sound. There it was again—a faint ringing in her ears. An annoying noise that came and went, a high-pitched trilling; it could turn anyone mad. She shook her head impatiently, trying to make it go away.

  “Have you decided, madam?” the waiter asked, returning with his notepad and holding the pencil expectantly.

  Madam?

  Was he talking to her? She could barely hear him over that horrid ringing in her ears, but yes, he had called her madam. The nerve!

  Okay, so she was no longer the slim-hipped, dewy-skinned sixteen-year-old who rampaged through New York’s best nightclubs. She was an old, married—even worse, separated—lady now. But she was still beautiful, wasn’t she? The long, thick blond mane was as lustrous as ever, the catlike green eyes just as smoldering, and come on, she could still fit into her superskinny jeans! And this dress she was wearing was practically skintight. But it was so unfair to discover since she had left the underworld that she had actually aged. Although in her defense, living in the underworld was, um, hell on the skin.

  Mimi decided to forgive the waiter. She liked this place, a darling little French bistro in the far West Village. On weekdays during lunch hours it was filled with models, artists, and the occasional celebrity. It was a cosmopolitan, attractive crowd: tall, eye-catching women in swathes of colorful scarves and battered leather jackets, bearded men in horn-rims reading Le Figaro, groups of young editors and photographers huddling over iPads, discussing their latest shoots. She frequently ordered the same thing. Oysters on the half shell, the chicken paillard, and a glass of white wine. She liked that the waiters wore proper neckties and aprons just like in Paris, and took down your order instead of memorizing it, an irritating gimmick she was sure originated with bored actor slash servers in Los Angeles.

  “Yes, I will start with the onion soup and the assiette de saumon fumé, then the steak frites with béarnaise and a side of the légumes verts.”

  “Very good,” he said, expertly whisking away the menu.

  She sipped her wine and looked around. This was what she had missed all those years living in the underworld—life, color, vibrancy—the sound of conversation all around her, tinkling glassware, the scraping of chairs across the floor, the sun shining brightly through the glass windows, so unlike that strange netherworld where the sun never rose or set and the sky was orange from the glow of hellfire. Kingsley had had this idea that he was going to remake the underworld anew, bring life to the barren lands. When the War ended, after the demons had been locked back in their cages, he had grown more interested in fertilizer than fighting. For years she had worked by his side, tending their small green patch until it had grown so large that flowers bloomed in Helheim once more. She remembered Kingsley kneeling in the garden, humming happily to himself as he weeded.

  For a while she had been content—that dreadful word—because she had everything she wanted. She had him, after all. They were supposed to live happily ever after. So why did she fuck it up?

  Because she missed home, she missed New York so much it was like a toothache that never went away, a real physical pain that throbbed, much like the ringing in her ears. What was that? There it went again, that annoying noise. She tried to ignore it. In any event, she couldn’t spend the rest of her immortality gardening. She wasn’t cut out for it, no matter how much she tried to change, tried to muster enthusiasm for her husband’s small successes. When she met Kingsley he was sex on legs; he was the head of the Venators, a cocky, mouthy, devilishly handsome alpha, whose life was as big as his heart and as busy as his outsize personality. Now he was a stodgy farmer. She hated to admit it, but she missed the guy he had been. She just wasn’t cut out for life in the suburbs. When she was growing up in Manhattan she used to joke she’d rather move to Hell than Brooklyn, even though the outer boroughs were so chic now.

  The waiter presented her with a crock of French onion soup, the Gruyère cheese crusted to a golden brown and oozing over the sides. Mimi dug in eagerly, letting the gloppy richness of the cheese and the perfectly cooked, slippery onions ease the pain of being alone at thirty. They called it comfort food for a reason.

  She’d been so bored in Hell she would have killed herself if only she could. Her last few days at home had been tense; they had argued a lot, with Kingsley accusing her of being overdramatic, selfish, and spoiled as usual, while she had called him complacent, stubborn, and docile. She never thought it would happe
n to them—the long good-bye, the drifting apart, the slow fade that ended so many marriages, so many unions. She had thought they were special, and it was a bitter disappointment to discover they were just like everybody else. Struggling to make it work. It was so ordinary—and Mimi had never been ordinary (ever) in her entire life—that it made her want to scream. And so she had. Screamed at him until he finally surrendered and agreed to the “trial separation.”

  Of course, she had expected him to leave with her. That was the thing, the unspoken argument between them—she couldn’t believe that after everything they had been through together, he had just let her go. She had made him choose. Hell or me. And he had chosen wrong. Had let her walk out of his life, just like that. He didn’t even beg her to stay. He had just watched her walk away from him, and so she hadn’t looked back, not even to wave good-bye.

  Mimi had returned to the city with little fanfare. She avoided her old friends, especially Oliver, as she didn’t want to explain why she had left Kingsley and didn’t want to answer any uncomfortable questions or see the pity in their eyes. Manhattan was a small island, and the Coven an even smaller community, but so far she had escaped notice. One of the things she’d learned as a former Venator, after all, was how to disappear. She promptly settled into an apartment in one of the fabulous new buildings by the water in west Chelsea—once upon a time her father had been the richest man in the city, and she herself had briefly been Regent of the Coven—so though she was so happy to be back in New York City she could live in a box, a six-bedroom penthouse overlooking the Hudson River was so much better. She found work in a small art gallery because she needed something to do, and it turned out answering phones and making jokes with the artists and buttering up the clients was something she was good at.

  It was a nice enough life, although one she never thought would be hers. She had no idea what she had thought her future would bring exactly, but certainly living this bohemian life downtown was not what she had in mind when she was the reigning queen of the Upper East Side. For one thing, she never thought she would hold a job. She was going to be one of those people who ran the world from behind the shadows. Instead she was a simple clerk, someone who did as instructed and worked to make things comfortable for other people.

  The rest of her meal arrived, and she cleared her plates quickly but lingered over coffee. She was still feeling melancholy and unsure of what happened now, where her life would go from here. She had no desire to date, but she didn’t want to be alone, either. She was still married, even though her husband was nowhere to be found. Truth was, she didn’t want anyone else but him, but they couldn’t be together, so that was that.

  She paid and walked out of the restaurant, her high-heeled boots clicking over the cobblestones.

  The gallery was buzzing when she arrived as her boss, a high-strung man named Murray Anthony, was haranguing his hapless young assistant. They were loaning a few of their paintings at the last minute for some fancy party at the Modern next week, but nothing had been wrapped or shipped yet. The museum had called wondering where the paintings were, and now Murray was having a meltdown.

  “Here, let me help,” she said, getting up to lend a hand as the two of them packed the crate.

  “Mimi, thank goodness you’re here. I got off the phone with the museum to find Donovan about to roll the work! Can you imagine? They’d be ruined!” Murray said, glaring at the guilty party. “They have to arrive flat, flat, flat! He was going to send it in two FedEx poster tubes taped together! The lady who’s throwing the party doesn’t mess around.” His eyes continued to throw daggers at his assistant. “Donovan said she was practically screaming at him the other day, but can you blame her?” He sighed.

  “What’s the party for anyway?” she asked.

  “A shindig they’re calling the Four Hundred Ball, a party for some secret society,” Murray said, sounding totally bored. “Another group of self-important New Yorkers, no doubt. Apparently, they want this series of paintings because it’s all red and the party will feature an exhibit called Red Blood. Go figure.”

  Mimi stared at him, not quite believing what she’d just heard. So the Coven was throwing a Four Hundred Ball again, were they? She felt a little wistful, remembering one of the very last ones they had before the War had taken over. She had made her debut at the event, claiming her rightful legacy as Azrael, Angel of Death. As much as she had tried to avoid returning to the past, somehow her subconscious, or the universe, had pushed her to this place. Everything happened for a reason, as Kingsley liked to say.

  So the Four Hundred Ball was to include an exhibit called Red Blood—a nice little vampire inside joke, since Red Blood was what Blue Bloods called their mortal kin. The paintings the museum had requested from the gallery were large-scale canvases painted all over in a deep, rich scarlet color. The work was textured, visceral, and somewhat gory, so dark it looked almost like blood, which was the point. The artist, Ivy Druiz, a rather pretentious young woman, explained that they were representations of women’s fear—red being the color of menarche, of childbirth, of pain. Mimi tended to roll her eyes at such easy political, pseudofeminist assertions of “art,” and while it wasn’t quite to her taste, she understood the appeal of a simple statement, not to mention their clients paid a lot of money for the pieces.

  “Let me do that,” she said, as she picked up the crate with ease and set it on a rolling board.

  “Who are you, Superwoman?” Murray asked, lifting his circular, gold-rimmed eyeglasses that made him look like a grown-up Harry Potter to admire her strength.

  “Something like that.” She smiled. “I’ll call the museum and tell them they’ll have it this afternoon.” She knelt down and helped Donovan carefully pack the rest of the pieces. “Don’t let him get to you. He just gets a bit neurotic right before openings,” she told him, speaking like a pro even though she had started working there only a week earlier than he did.

  “Thanks.” Donovan smiled. “He’s much easier to deal with now that you’re here. But I’ve got this—looks like you’ve got a client.”

  She stood up, brushing lint from her knees and smoothing her hair. Murray was standing at the front of the gallery, talking to a tall, dark-haired stranger who was staring intensely at a sculpture nailed to the wall. He was wearing a black coat, black jeans, and black boots. Mimi felt her heart thump. She knew that set of broad shoulders and that shock of jet-black hair anywhere.

  “Mimi,” her boss said with a beaming smile. “You never told me your husband was so cute!”

  Kingsley Martin turned around. He looked skinny and hot, like a rock star who’d just stepped offstage, and he was wearing his Venator gear again. Her heart skipped a painful beat, and her breath caught in her throat. God, she’d missed him.

  “Hello, darling,” he drawled, cool as ever, even as his eyes were filled with sadness and pain. “Happy anniversary.”

  4 LEFT BEHIND

  IT WAS THE HOLY MOTHER of pentagrams, Ara thought, as she and Edon walked toward it—seven feet in height and diameter and made of blood. Painted crudely on a wall in the tunnels underneath Canal Street, most of it had crusted and dried by Monday afternoon when they arrived. They would have gotten there hours earlier, except there was a delay on the paperwork to get Edon outfitted with the proper blades and ammo, and the chief wouldn’t let them leave with him unarmed. By the time they were ready to roll, it was lunchtime, and her new partner didn’t take kindly to missing a meal.

  The Venator team who had found the pentagram the day before looked impatient for relief. One of them, Ara was rattled to find, was Deming Chen, the beautiful Chinese Venator who had lost her identical twin during the final battle. Venators who knew her before then whispered that the loss had hardened her, and she hadn’t been all that cuddly to begin with. Deming narrowed her almond-shaped eyes at them, but to Ara’s surprise, the usually aloof commander greeted Edon with an affectionate punch on the shoulder. “Well, well, look what the cat dragged in! W
hat’re you doing here in our timeline, wolf boy?” she asked.

  “Slumming, obviously,” he replied with a slow grin. “Good to see you, too, angel.”

  Deming gave Edon a bear hug, and he shot Ara a victorious look as if to say, She doesn’t mind being called angel.

  “So what’s going on?” he asked.

  “Not much. Nephilim raising their ugly heads again. Now we’ve got this nonsense to deal with, and the Regent’s freaking out because the Four Hundred Ball’s on Saturday,” Deming said, motioning to the pentagram. “I thought you were working with Bozeman’s crew?”

  “Yeah, we tracked down a Neph cell in Morocco, took care of it.” He shrugged. “The brass sent me here when they heard about those pentagrams, see if I could be of any help.”

  “Well, we need all the help we can get. How’re the boys?” she asked him.

  “Good, good, you know, the same. Rowdy.”

  Deming smiled. “You been working undercover or something? You look like… well, you know what you look like. Take better care of yourself, will you?” she said to Edon in the tone of a scolding older sister.

  He grinned. “Yeah, something like that. It’s good to know you still care, D.”

  “Shut up, it was just battle sex.” Deming laughed her throaty laugh, incongruous with her small frame, and which made her look even sexier than she already was. Deming always managed to look as though her Venator uniform was cut by a designer couturier, and for all Ara knew, it probably was.

  “Is that what it was? Didn’t feel like it at the time, angel,” Edon teased.

  “We were all just happy to be alive,” Deming said with a serene smile on her face.