“Hello, Mr. Deacon.”
Deacon’s expression didn’t change, but Rosalia knew that bothered him. Caym and Rael’s lieutenant had called him Mr. Deacon.
“Hello, Karl,” he replied.
Good. Oh, good. Deacon positioned himself above the demon without a single challenge. Thank God for St. Croix.
“I understand you have a proposal for me.” Malkvial spread his hands. “This is a place for making vows. Not for leading friends astray.”
The demon went straight for Deacon’s heart, reminding him of how he’d betrayed Irena. Deacon responded as if it hadn’t touched him. “I have a mutually beneficial business proposition. But we aren’t friends. Let’s not pretend.”
Malkvial straightened up, ripping off a piece of the wooden altar rail as he stood. Rosalia hugged herself, and Vin’s hands tightened on her shoulders. Not just massaging now. Reminding her to stay in place.
“Yes, let’s not pretend.” The demon approached Deacon with slow, measured steps down the aisle. The sharp point of the splintered wood dragged along the stone floor. “Let’s not pretend that a vampire can be of any use to me.”
“ ‘And the blood that heals shall bring the dead unto judgment, and the judged unto Heaven.’ ” Deacon quoted from the prophecy that predicted that vampire blood would help destroy the nephilim, and send Belial to the throne in Hell. “It sounds to me that we’re of some use.”
“Your blood. Not you, Mr. Deacon.” Malkvial’s eyes flashed crimson. “And let us not pretend to forget that you have shed the blood of my demons.”
“I brought my proposal to Valeotes, but he wouldn’t deliver the message. And the message you tried to deliver in Amsterdam wasn’t what I needed to hear.”
The demon stopped halfway down the aisle. “And what would you like to hear, Mr. Deacon?”
“That you’ll leave the vampire communities alone.”
Malkvial struck quickly. Leaping forward, he swung the rail’s blunt end at Deacon’s head, knocking him sideways. Flipping the wood around, he shoved the point through Deacon’s gut.
Oh, God. It should have been her. Rosalia clasped her hands together, shaking furiously. It should have been her.
“I can’t see that happening, Mr. Deacon.” Malkvial twisted the rail and stepped back. “I’ll kill all of you, just like this.”
Deacon gripped the wooden shaft impaled through his stomach. He yanked out the rail, tossed it aside. “I’ll trade the nephilim. Our lives, for the nephilim.”
Laughing, Malkvial shook his head. Turning around, he grabbed the end of a pew and swung. The heavy bench hit Deacon in the chest, smashing him back against the stone wall.
Vin was shouting her name. Dimly, Rosalia realized she was dragging him toward the door.
“Mama! You’ve got to let him finish, or it’s all for nothing!”
“Let me go.” She couldn’t bear this. If she had to Fall, so be it. “It should be me.”
He shook her, hard. “You can’t always protect us. Do you believe he can do this?”
God, she did. And knowing he could was the only thing that might keep her there. She nodded.
“Then let him.”
She’d warned him. Thank God she’d warned him. He didn’t have to prepare himself for the pain—just fight to keep from smashing the demon’s head in.
His stomach burned. He pushed his fist into the hole in his gut, holding everything in until it healed. The pew had taken out a couple of his ribs. Every breath shot dizzying pain through his lungs. But he could talk.
“The Guardians are no help to us. Cities of vampires are dead thanks to the nephilim, and the Guardians haven’t stopped them. And London is next.” Deacon paused to spit out his blood, to take another agonizing breath. “I don’t give a fuck about the prophecy or what Belial hopes to take in Hell. I just want to save our asses.”
“How do you propose to do that?”
“You break the Rules. You bring those fuckers in one at a time. You kill them.”
Malkvial blinked. He stared at Deacon for a long moment, before his lips widened in a smile that chilled his blood. “Thank you for the suggestion, Mr. Deacon. We absolutely don’t need vampires for that.”
A sword appeared in his hand—to kill him this time, Deacon realized. Faster than the demon, he sidestepped to avoid the swinging blade and said, “You need us to get the humans.”
Malkvial paused with his sword raised over his head.
“If your demons break the Rules by snatching people, they’ll come at you, one on one, and you’re dead.” Deacon backed up a step to give himself more room if Malkvial jumped him again. “You’ve got to bring the humans in—somewhere closed up, so that when the nephil comes he’s got nowhere to run. And you better have enough of your friends with you that you can take them all out, even if the nephilim manage to kill some of you. And you know they will.”
His eyes narrowing to crimson slits, Malkvial remained silent. Considering it, Deacon realized. He pushed home, calling in every asshole thing that might appeal to a demon.
“Hey, I’ll be doing you a favor. You pull this off in front of Belial’s other demons, and the lieutenant position is yours, and Theriault is stuck with his thumb up his ass. And all we vampires want in exchange is to be left the hell alone.”
“All of us, in a closed area?”
“However the fuck you want to do it. I’m just thinking that those nephilim are goddamn fast, and you don’t want them to escape and go running to Mommy.” Deacon shrugged. “I won’t be the one trying to kill them. You choose the place. I’ll meet you here in three days, one hour after sunset. You give me the location, and we’ll have the humans there by dawn. Then we clear out. You do your thing.”
Malkvial cocked his head. “We?”
“The vampires grabbing the humans.” Deacon wiped his mouth again. The scent of blood around him was overpowering. “My communities will be knee-deep in it, breaking the Rules to help you. Each community leader will deliver a human—and you can bet no one is running to the Guardians.”
“You’ve thought this through.”
Deacon’s laugh was short and bitter. “I got fucked over once by a demon. Then I got fucked over again by Guardians. All I got out of that was a dead community. So, yeah, I’ve thought this through.”
And pulled it all out of his ass.
The demon nodded. “You’ll understand that I won’t settle for a handshake, Mr. Deacon. I can’t afford you betraying me. We’ll seal this agreement with a bargain.”
He hadn’t made one with Caym; he’d just been beaten. And a bargain put his soul on the line, but he felt safer with one—it meant the demon would keep up his part.
“All right,” he said. “Here’s my part: My communities will bring the humans to the location you choose. After that, you let us live and forbid your demons from killing any of us.”
Which didn’t really mean anything. The bargain only prevented Malkvial himself from killing the vampires. With every other demon, all bets were off. He could have asked for Malkvial’s protection, instead—but there was no way in hell Deacon could bring himself to do that.
If Rosalia’s plan went through, all the demons would be dead, anyway.
Malkvial’s eyes gleamed. Yeah, he knew he was getting a damn good deal. “And if they don’t follow my direction?”
“Then I’m talking to the wrong demon.” He let that sink in. “And the humans—no killing them. Slap ’em around, whatever. No killing.”
“You ask a lot.”
“Yeah, well, you kill them, the Guardians find out, and they’ll be after our asses. They’ll frown at vampires who push the Rules a little. But if we’re connected to people dying, then they’ll start hunting us down. We just want to be left alone, not always looking over our shoulders. And you being demons, I think you can come up with ways to have your fun.”
“I think we can.” If his smile hadn’t reminded Deacon that demons were pure evil, then the glee in Malkvial
’s voice would have. “You have your bargain, Mr. Deacon.”
Two hours later, Taylor teleported him out of the catacombs, as arranged. If anyone had been watching the church, they’d assume they had just lost him.
He went straight to the kitchen, found the blood he needed in the refrigerator, pushed back behind a shitload of food. He took the glass out to the courtyard, and that was where Rosalia found him a few minutes later. She sat next to him, holding a rolled-up crêpe that smelled of cinnamon and sweet cream.
“You were brilliant,” she said softly.
“I made a bargain with a demon. If I don’t bring the vampires together and pull this off, I’ll be freezing in Hell with Michael.” He took a swig, feeling the electric flavor over his tongue, but no sound with it. “The irony is, if I’d had made a bargain with Caym, I could have said my people weren’t to be touched. But I didn’t think of it. Everything I knew about demons could be summed up with: If you enter into a bargain, you’re totally fucked. But it would have saved my people. Even at the cost of my soul, it’d have been worth it.”
She studied his face, silent, looking through him.
He took another drink, then said, “I wish you’d been there at the beginning, Rosie. I have no doubt you’d have seen a way out.”
Her eyes glistened, her face crumpling, and she looked away. “I wish it, too.”
“Better than being there at the end, anyway.” By that time it had all gone to hell, and nothing could have pulled him out.
“I watched you slay Caym,” she said. “It was a thousand times more satisfying than watching Michael slay my father.”
He had to laugh. “So bloodthirsty, yet you look so sweet.”
She smiled at him, then bit into her crêpe. Filling oozed out the end, and she caught it with her fingers. He couldn’t look away from her mouth as she licked it off.
“Apostle’s fingers,” she told him, her cheeks coloring. “I made so many. I’ve already given half away to the neighbors and to Father Wojcinski’s church, but I’ll still be eating them for days.”
He laughed. Overcompensating for something, no doubt. “You can’t save them for the wedding?”
“They won’t keep.” She grimaced a little. “And they aren’t very good. I’ve never had a talent for cooking.”
“But you keep trying?” he guessed.
“To the neighborhood’s dismay, yes.” She seemed to hesitate, then said, “I want you to know—I realize that you think the only reason I needed you to help me is that you’re ruined. And it’s true, that’s why Malkvial believes you. But I have a hard time letting others do what I want done.”
“No kidding.”
She didn’t smile. “I almost destroyed everything we’d accomplished so far. Even though I prepared myself, even though I knew he’d attack you, I almost went into the church.”
He hadn’t expected her to say that. “What stopped you?”
“Believing that you could pull it off. And I don’t think that I could have sent anyone else in without believing I’d sent them to their death. I couldn’t risk someone’s life like that—and I’d have destroyed it all tonight. But I knew you’d convince him. And you did.”
He couldn’t respond. Her trust and her belief in him were humbling.
Now she smiled, a sad little curve of her mouth. “I know you don’t see yourself as I do—but you risked everything, including your life, to save people you loved from a demon. The only difference in what you tried to do and the sacrifice I made to become a Guardian is that I was lucky enough to succeed.”
That was a nice thought. But the line between a Guardian and Deacon wasn’t so thin. “That ‘only difference’ was a whole lot of lives.”
“Intentions have to count, don’t they?” She looked out into the garden. “I’m about to ask you and other vampires to break the Rules. That’s what demons do. They use others to break the Rules, so they don’t have to. In this, it doesn’t matter if I succeed or fail, because either way the humans will suffer for it. And so my intentions are the only thing that differentiates me from a demon.”
He shook his head. “What else can you do, Rosie?”
He didn’t expect a reply, but he should have known she’d already considered it—and had an answer.
“I could Fall, and be the human that the demons torment. I could Fall, and be the one who rounds up the other humans. I should punish myself afterward, and Fall for my part in it.” She tilted her head back, looked up at the dark sky. “But I know I won’t. Because as sorry as I am, I’d do it again if I thought I could save all of the humans and vampires that the nephilim intend to crush. And because I’m more useful to everyone as a Guardian.”
“And I should have walked into the sun after my community was destroyed. I know I won’t.” As sorry as he was for everything that had happened, Deacon would have done it again if he thought he’d save his people. He smiled at her. “We’re a pair of sorry bastards, aren’t we?”
She laughed through her tears, and he wanted to crush her against him. Her hand found his. “Thank you, Deacon. For being here.”
“I have good reasons to be here.”
Her wistful smile tugged at his heart. “Tell me one.”
Yes. He owed her that. But instead of saying it, he pulled her closer and kissed her. She kissed him back so sweetly, so fiercely, he could almost believe she needed him, that she loved him.
He called himself a fool. But realizing that within three days’ time she wouldn’t need him anymore, he carried her up to her room.
And he let himself believe, for a night.
CHAPTER 22
He didn’t leave her bed until sunset. Taylor teleported him to Nice, where he boarded a chartered flight to Paris. He arrived at Yves and Camille’s apartment shortly after midnight—and found that she had already done most of his work for him.
Rosalia had obviously fed her the lines. Camille spouted the same bullshit that Deacon had handed to Malkvial the night before, and although Camille must have wondered what the real game plan was, Deacon couldn’t have detected it from the conviction of her arguments: The Guardians couldn’t save them, Belial’s demons had the best chance of destroying the nephilim, and Deacon’s bargain with Malkvial would guarantee the vampires’ safety afterward. She’d only needed to stress once that Deacon had risked his soul to make the bargain.
But Camille hadn’t stopped there. She’d flown a dozen vampires in from London, and only the most heartless among the elders were able to declare to those twelve vampires that they didn’t give a shit whether the nephilim massacred their city. And of the three that could say it, each deferred to Deacon when he reminded them that he’d saved their asses and destroyed the demons in their cities that week—and that it would take no effort at all to kill them, and make the decision himself.
He hadn’t wanted to pull that crap, but he had no time for assholes who didn’t give a fuck.
The loudest objection came when they learned of their obligation to procure a human—until Deacon passed around the files Rosalia had given him. One by one, the objections faded . . . and Deacon noted that some of the vampires suddenly looked eager, every trace of reluctance gone.
Rosalia had chosen their targets well.
By the time the vampires left, each taking a file and a list of instructions with them, Deacon was ready to return to Rome. Camille walked with him to the door, flipping through her human’s profile.
“Everyone else was given the name of a human from their city,” she said. “But I have a priest from Rome. Isn’t that interesting?”
“He’s included as a favor.”
She arched her delicate brows. “To a friend of a friend?”
He had no idea if Camille knew John Wojcinski, but he wasn’t naming names, anyway. “Something like that.”
Camille nodded. “And it would be these kind of men,” she murmured. “Murder is so often called the worst crime, but there can always be extenuating circumstances—and let us be t
ruthful, and admit that some of those who are murdered deserve it. But to hunt a child, to abuse them in this manner . . . it’s deliberate, predatory, and there’s no question of its immorality or the child’s innocence. There can never be an excuse.”
He recognized those words. He’d said them to her once.
Glancing up, she interpreted his expression perfectly. “Yes, you’ve said that to me. But you were not the first I’d heard it from; that distinction belongs to the woman I called Mother. But is this something we can all live with?”
She was wondering whether Rosalia could, Deacon realized. Camille knew that this went against the moral fiber of every Guardian who’d ever earned her wings.
But so did letting demons and nephilim slaughter her friends.
“Yes,” he told her. “We can all live with it.”
She hoped that she could live with herself for this.
As a cop, never in a million years would Taylor have considered bringing even someone as blind and as dangerous as Anaria into a scenario like Rosalia had described. But the rules were different here. And she wasn’t a cop anymore.
From the tallest tower in the city, she looked out over Caelum. God, it was beautiful here—a shining marble disk on an endless sea. She’d never imagined anything like this realm, with its towers and domes and temples. Every stone seemed to sing to her, to recognize her presence. When she rested her palm at the edge of the tower’s peak, the marble fit her hand, as if reshaping itself to her touch.
She didn’t know if it sought her, or Michael.
But she could feel his touch now, rising up almost gently. She didn’t trust that. Gentle . . . because he wanted something from her? Up until Rosalia talking to him, he hadn’t had a problem taking it.
Her teeth clenched. Her eyes closed. “What the hell do you want from me?”
The memory came on her quickly, not a flash but deep inside, the cold morning air against her bronze skin—and more death. So much more death. But not of demons or nosferatu. The strong scent of human blood saturated the air. Warriors wearing breastplates of bronze and greaves protecting their shins lay near shields cleaved in half.
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