She hadn’t been listening to them? My God, she could barely get Vin to talk to her.
“Do you think I don’t?”
“I think that you are so good at shouldering burdens, you often do not see the weight carried by others.”
Worry gnawed at her. What weight did Vin and Gemma feel they carried? But she could not press for details. “Do I ask too much of them?”
“No. But remember, now that he will be a husband and father, his world has changed. And his priorities.”
Of course they had. “Yes, Father.”
He moved to the sink to wash the honey and butter from his hands. “I am glad you have come tonight, Rosa.”
Yes, she’d sensed that he was troubled and angry. “Can I do anything to help?”
“No. Unless you can return trust to parishioners from whom it was taken. And if you can make it easier to forgive the one who has abused his position and taken advantage of a child.”
Rage swept through her veins like fire. No, she could not make it easier to forgive such a man. Long before Father Wojcinski had brought a five-year-old Vin to her door, wounded by the loss of his mother, then the “care” of one of his mother’s boyfriends in whose home he’d landed, Rosalia had been unable to forgive anyone—priest or otherwise—who abused a child in such a way.
“Who?”
He turned from the sink, wiping his hands on a towel. He regarded her gravely. “If you find out, Rosa, I will accept that it was God’s will for you to know.”
Because he knew she would find out, and put the fear of God into the man. She did not know what to think of Father Wojcinski’s easy acceptance, however. Always before, he had urged her to reconsider her role in the lives of mankind before using her abilities against them.
And despite his acceptance, she felt no easing of the emotional turmoil within him. “Is this all that has kept you awake so late? Was this man a friend?”
“I have never met him.” With a sigh, he sat again at the table. “The first time I heard such an accusation, I thought it could not be true. I believed that a mistake had been made, that a simple rumor had gained teeth, and he would be found innocent of the charges. I believed in his innocence until I could believe it no longer.”
“You heard the evidence against him?” When he nodded, she said, “I have seen too many men and women condemned by mere rumor to fault you for that belief.”
“Yes, Rosa. But this time . . . my first thought was not of his innocence. I assumed his guilt, instead. I felt resigned to it.” Removing his glasses, he rubbed his hand over his eyes. “All men are capable of sin, but only a few are capable of doing that to a child. Yet my first response is condemnation.”
Ah. “So the depth of your cynicism has shaken you.”
“Perhaps given me a good rattle.”
His weary smile aged him, and a feeling akin to panic suddenly roiled through her belly. How long before she lost yet another friend? Fifteen years?
No time at all.
He slipped on his glasses again with another sigh. “But that is my burden, Rosa. I should not lay it on you.”
A burden she recognized, from centuries of conversations in this room. She pulled her thoughts together and expelled the fear. “Nonsense. You haven’t been the only one to bear it—though you held out against it far longer than the others.”
Now his smile lightened his face. “How many before me?”
“All but three.”
“And what comfort did you offer my predecessors?”
“To be glad they are not burdened as I am with eternal optimism, because disappointment often follows it. At least a cynic is happily surprised now and then.”
“Yet you still possess that optimism.”
“And I remain eternally hopeful that I will lose it.”
He laughed quietly. Rosalia sipped at her coffee, smiling, and a comfortable silence fell between them.
After a moment, he leaned back in his chair. “Now, tell me why you are here.”
Deacon. She looked through the window, out into the dark. “I’ve developed a plan to slay many demons.”
“It is a dangerous path?”
“Yes. But fear is not why I . . .” She couldn’t bear her reflection in the glass. She faced him. “I’ve forced a good man onto that path with me. I can’t win without his help. But he hasn’t offered it. I’m using him.”
“So you are no better than the demons.”
Precise in eating and in words. These sliced like a razor into her heart. “I like to think that I have better intentions—”
“I imagine you do like to think that.” His solemn gaze didn’t waver. “But if the suffering of even one good man is needed to gain victory, it is not a true victory.”
She knew that. She knew that.
Tears burned her eyes. Though she wanted to turn and run into the shadows, this was why she had come to him. He would open her up and expose her, so that she could see herself.
It formed a grotesque picture.
His face softened as he studied her. “And I suspect, Rosa, that it is not just the suffering of one man, but a woman, as well.”
Now he was kind, and that hurt almost as much. Her breath shuddered. “It is only that since I have come back, I feel as if every purpose I’ve had was stripped away.” And though she’d been missing for over a year, it had been but a moment to her. A moment in which everything had changed. “Lorenzo is gone. Svetlana and Christina and Giacomo—everyone at the abbey—they are all gone. Vin has returned but is almost unreachable. And the Church has . . . I am nothing to them. Only my duty as a Guardian is clear, and that duty is to slay demons. To protect those that I can. And yet to do that, I must force another to my will. That has never been my purpose. That has never been my way.”
“So you either lose yourself to this, or you risk losing everyone else.”
How clearly he put it. She wiped her cheeks. “Yes.”
“That will be a poor victory, Rosa. So either you must quit your plan—”
“I cannot,” she whispered.
“Or you must convince this man to walk this path with you.”
She laughed. Yet another task that was easier said than done. But he was right. Completely and utterly right.
Father Wojinksi leaned forward. “You say he is a good man and that your cause is noble. So why isn’t he convinced?”
Shaking her head, she said, “I don’t know. I have told him everything that is at stake, yet he only . . . he only . . .”
She trailed off, losing the order of her thoughts as a new one occurred to her: She did know why. She had only given him hypotheticals. Nothing personal. Nothing immediate. Deacon needed a clear threat or a reason to care. She hadn’t given him one.
And she hadn’t given Deacon as much as she already had from him. She knew what drove him, knew him through to his soul. She’d seen his suffering. But he had no connection to her. He had a purpose, driven by grief and anger. He had no idea her purpose was driven by the same.
“Rosa?”
A long breath steadied her. “I was wrong, Father. It was fear that brought me here.”
Fear that if she opened her heart to him, she might finally lose it. But in protecting herself, she had jeopardized everything.
If her plan succeeded, surely all that every human, vampire, and Guardian stood to gain was worth the risk to her heart?
And so she would.
Rosalia called Gemma when she arrived back in her Paris hotel. Vincente answered Gemma’s cell, and she heard the faint sound of retching in the background.
She clucked her tongue in sympathy, and tried to conceal how very much that pitiful noise thrilled her heart. A grandchild. Simply incredible. “Morning sickness?”
Vin grunted a reply caught halfway between wonder and terror.
Smiling, Rosalia sat at her computer, checking Deacon’s accounts. She wasn’t surprised to find that he’d already purchased a ticket and boarded a flight that would arrive i
n the city before dawn. She’d watch over him after that. Taylor’s unexpected presence meant Rosalia needed to adjust her daily schedule.
“I’ve had to return to Paris,” she told Vin.
“Paris? Gemma said that you’d planned to return to the abbey tonight. Did you have problems in Budapest?”
“No. Everything went perfectly.” Except Deacon hadn’t come back to Rome with her.
“So Deacon is with you now?”
“No.”
Vincente’s silence said far too much. She’d failed to convince Deacon; now her son doubted if she’d pull off the rest of it, too. “Mother, you’re planning to go up against the nephilim. Are you certain—”
“Yes.” She could do this. If Deacon helped. And if she discovered who Malkvial was. “Did Gemma finish the preliminary work on St. Croix?”
She heard Vin’s frustrated sigh. “Yes. Here she is now.”
“Rosa!” Gemma came on, and something in her voice reminded Rosalia of the girl who’d listened so closely to her stories.
“You’ve found something,” Rosalia guessed.
“Oh, you’ll never believe this. St. Croix’s father drowned in a boating accident when he was eight years old. He owned a small accounting firm, which St. Croix’s mother, Madelyn, took over after he died—put herself through classes, bought out the partners, and worked her ass off building the firm into a financial powerhouse, Wells-Down Investments.”
Rosalia had heard of it. “Impressive.”
“Yeah, but St. Croix, he’s something else. He went off the rails. Just as a teen, he’s got vandalism, drug possession, breaking and entering, auto theft—you name it, he probably did it. By fifteen, he’d been expelled from three schools, even though his mother donated enough to the third one that they named a library after her. At sixteen, he just drops off the map. Then ten years ago, he shows up again in the States—touted as some financial whiz, five a.m. to midnight, ruthless bastard that chews up failing businesses and shits out gold.”
“He underwent a complete personality change?” Just like her father had.
“And that’s not all of it. He returned to London and went after Wells-Down.”
The bastard. “Did he get it?”
“He did. And five years ago, he just shut everything down, closed up shop.”
A cruel bastard. Breaking up the company and selling it for pieces would have hurt less. “And his mother?”
“Disappeared right after. But not just Madelyn—her personal assistant, Rachel Boyle, vanished at the same time.”
Rosalia closed her eyes. “That can’t be a coincidence.”
“The police and Boyle’s family didn’t think so, either. But there were no bodies and nothing to hang on him, so whatever he did to get rid of them, he got away with it. He went on to eat a few more companies, then joined Legion three years ago. He’s based in London, though he travels everywhere Legion is.”
“Where is he now?”
“Here in Rome. He arrived today. I’ve already got the info on his hotel. I’ll start surveillance tomorrow.”
Rosalia sucked in a sharp breath. Legion didn’t have offices in Rome. And that was much too close to Gemma and Vin for her liking. She held the phone to her ear, torn between the impulse to return and her need to stay in Paris.
Gemma easily read her silence. “Stop worrying, Rosa. I have it covered until you arrive.”
And she could handle it—both of them could. Even though Vin had been gone for ten years, he’d spent that decade building a security and investigations firm. If Gemma needed backup, there were few people with more knowledge and experience than her son.
“All right,” she said. “Thank you. I’ll try to return tomorrow night. Sleep well.”
“No chance of that,” Gemma said lightly, but the truth behind her statement struck Rosalia hard. Because of the nephilim, the young woman wouldn’t sleep well. Perhaps she never would again.
And Rosalia would do everything in her power to make the nephilim pay for that.
Taylor swam up out of the dark, into the sun, and collapsed to her hands and knees in hot white sand. Her body heaved, again and again, as if she tried to expel him, but he was already gone, sitting quietly at the back of her mind, like he hadn’t just taken her over and raped her will.
Bastard. The goddamn bastard.
Her breath came in sobs. She sat back on her ass, the lone person on an empty beach, turquoise waves crashing in on her left. Blood covered her hands. A part of her recognized the smell—demon blood—and she had a broken memory of crimson skin, of a sweltering jungle, of the sword in her grip. Slaying a demon, just like a Guardian should be. But she wasn’t a Guardian. She was Michael’s fucking puppet.
Rage and frustration boiled into a scream, but she bit it back. He wouldn’t drive her to that. She focused inward and thought, I hate you, hoping that he would hear it, hoping he would understand it was for him.
She hadn’t wanted to become a Guardian. But when it had come down to the decision between dying or living, she’d signed on. But she hadn’t signed on for this.
And she was so damn tired of fighting him. Exhausted, down to her soul.
Bracing her elbows on her knees and pushing her hands into her hair, she stared out over the sea. She didn’t even know where she was—or why he’d brought her here. But she had to leave soon, find Rosalia, and teleport her and the vampire to another city.
Soon.
She closed her eyes. The waves should have lulled her to sleep. Should have given her a little release. She could only feel him.
I hate you.
A harmonious voice answered her, “I hope that emotion is not directed at me.”
Taylor lurched to her feet, her toes flinging sand as she spun around. Only the grigori had voices like that, but the only ones that Taylor knew were Michael and Khavi. This wasn’t Khavi, though she had the same bronze skin and black hair, the delicate frame. This one had the regal bearing of a queen, and a soft, understanding expression on her exquisite features. Her dress looked something between a toga and a sari, white cloth twisted at her narrow shoulders, crossing over her breasts. The separate skirt tied at the waist and was fluttering around her ankles in the breeze.
Anaria.
Ohfuckshit.
“Stay,” Anaria said, and Taylor’s intention to teleport the hell away seemed to fizzle out with that command.
She expected Michael to take over, the darkness to ascend—and though she felt him, tense and watchful, he didn’t rise up.
Anaria tilted her head, studying her. “Why did he come?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know where we are,” Taylor blabbered, then stared at the woman. Jesus. She hadn’t meant to answer. But something in Anaria’s voice, in her face . . . compelled her.
But Taylor couldn’t get angry. She tried. She just couldn’t work it up.
And that scared the shit out of her. Human or Guardian, one thing she’d always been able to count on was getting good and pissed when she wanted to. And whatever Michael did, at least he didn’t fuck with her emotions.
Anaria sighed. “Don’t be afraid.”
Taylor almost laughed. Apparently, Anaria couldn’t compel that, because her heart still pounded and fear raced through her veins.
“Come with me, then,” she said.
Taylor followed.
CHAPTER 8
Anaria lived on a private island in the Aegean, complete with a sun-warmed mansion overlooking the sea. Taylor didn’t know how Anaria managed to pull that off, until she realized that the almost sixty humans sharing the grigori’s home weren’t humans at all, but the nephilim. One of the humans that the nephilim possessed must have owned the island before he’d kicked over and gone to Hell.
It was almost like walking through a retirement home—one that drew its residents from every part of the world. Which made a hell of a lot of sense, though Taylor hadn’t considered it before. When the Gates to Hell had closed, Lucifer had freed
the nephilim from prison so that they could enforce the Rules on Earth, but the nephilim couldn’t just fly between the realms. They possessed the souls of the damned as the humans died. And except for a few—the youngest in her early twenties, Taylor guessed—they had a lot of white and gray hairs between them, and quite a few men without any hair at all.
For the most part, they acted like humans, too—eating, talking in little groups, some off by themselves and reading. A bunch of zombies having a big family reunion.
But they bothered her. She thought they bothered the hell out of Michael, too, though he was staying quiet. And it wasn’t until Anaria invited her out onto a big, sprawling patio to sit and talk that Taylor realized why: Every one of these bastards had done evil enough that they’d been destined for Hell. Though the nephilim possessed the human and took control, the human’s personality still remained.
And one of these fuckers had raped and murdered the vampires in London.
Anaria sank gracefully onto the foot of a lounge chair, studying Taylor’s face. She wondered how deep the scrutiny went, but Anaria must not have picked up on the determination hardening Taylor’s every thought and reaction. Anaria smiled, and it was beautiful—and Taylor didn’t feel the same compulsion to smile back.
“Michael has always been stubborn. I imagine he circled the world trying to find me.”
Find Anaria, or the nephilim? “Probably to ask you to spare London.”
Anaria’s voice gentled, as if she spoke to a child. “We are sparing the vampires. People were never meant to suffer the nosferatu’s curse, the bloodlust. People were meant to walk in the sun. They are abominations.”
One of Taylor’s few friends was a vampire. Only years of practice dealing with bigoted assholes kept her temper in check. “Abominations? Have you ever actually spoken to one?”
“I have spoken with many. And I know that next you will say that they are like humans—they love; they laugh. That is all true. But their very existence is a cancer, one that can spread without check, and destroy the protection of free will in every human.”
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