She was only hurting everyone—her twin, her love, herself, her Coven—by refusing to acknowledge the truth: that she could not have this. There was no escape from an immortal destiny, and this, whatever this was, those golden months in the green valley living as a vintner as if she were nothing but an ordinary girl, was just as false as pretending she did not feel any vestigial love for her immortal mate. She loved Charles, but she could not deny that the love she felt for Ben was much stronger, and deeper to the core of who she was. It was as simple as that.
But alas, Allegra Van Alen was not an ordinary girl. She had to accept that, or Ben would die. She was sure of it now.
There was nothing that mattered to Charles as much as keeping the Coven whole. He would sacrifice anything for it, including the Code of the Vampires. There was no way he would let Ben live; for as long as he was alive, Charles knew Allegra would pine for him and she would never give herself to him fully.
She made her decision.
“I want to speak to my brother,” she told the guard.
Kingsley martin saluted. “I’ll get him right away.” Allegra felt grateful that it was Kingsley who guarded her prison and not any of the others. They had been friends once. In Rome she had helped him with the Corruption in his soul. Few trusted the reformed Silver Blood, but Allegra had always been fond of him. She remembered him as a young boy, Gemellus, the weakling.
When Charles entered the room, Allegra threw herself at his feet and bowed her forehead so low it touched the edge of his wingtips, and her tears drenched his shoelaces.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” she sobbed.
“Allegra, don’t do this, you don’t need to. Get up, please. I can’t bear to see you this way,” Charles said, kneeling down to her level and trying to remove her arms from his legs. “Please don’t.” His face was full of anguish, and she did not know who found this harder to bear—him or her. They shared this pain together, as they had shared everything else. He felt everything she did—of course he did. He was her twin, and her anguish was his own.
He was hurting to see her demean herself this way. But it was her love that was on the line, and she had no shame or pride anymore. “Don’t kill him. Don’t kill him, Charlie. Please.
I’ll go with you. I’ll say the words and we’ll be bonded. Just.
Don’t hurt him. Please.”
THIRTY-FOUR
A Righteous War
Jack noticed that something had gone wrong right away when he saw the lights go out at the temple. “Something’s happening. Let’s move,” he told the group. But the temple was empty when they got there, and there was no trace of the girls—or of any kind of scuffle. Even the candles were lit, and the place was quiet and peaceful. There was only the forebod-ing stare of the jackal god, looking down, as if mocking them.
“Where’d they go?” Sam said, raking his hair. “I can’t feel them in the glom.” The telepathic connections had been severed the moment the lights went out. Not a good sign.
“There’s got to be a hidden path somewhere in the temple. If we didn’t see them leave, then they had to go under,” Jack said. He knelt on the floor and began tapping it, but there was only a dull sound that meant it was solid rock. If there was a passageway underground, it must only open to a certain incantation or spell. He tried several, unsuccessfully.
Ted had walked the perimeter, but reported that there was nothing out there either—there was no sign in the cemetery that anyone had even come to the temple. They’d been watching the place for hours, and still the girls had slipped through, disappearing into thin air. No. They knew exactly where they had been taken: to the underworld, to become demons’ brides.
Jack steadied his breathing. He consoled himself with the knowledge that the three girls were dangerous as well: two were trained Venators, the deadliest of their kind, and armed.
Schuyler would fight, he knew, and he tried not to feel angry and helpless. He had to think. If the passage went underground, then it meant the gate couldn’t be too far away, which meant Schuyler was right: it was in the city somewhere. Probably just under his feet.
Not a minute had passed when he suddenly saw it: the spark went live, and in his mind’s eye he saw Schuyler bursting through a wall, into a room inside a pyramid, followed by Dehua and an older woman.
“They’re in Giza,” he told the team.
When Jack and the Lennox brothers arrived at the tomb, Schuyler and Catherine were talking in hushed voices. Jack did not remark on the way they were dressed—they all knew the reason why the Nephilim were taking girls—but to see the grotesque parodies of white wedding dresses was too much.
Jack didn’t think there had been enough time for this elabor-ate preparation, but he remembered that time moved differently in the underworld. The girls had probably been down there for hours. He would kill every demon in Hell if one of them had as much as touched a hair on Schuyler’s head.
“Where’s Deming?” Sam asked immediately.
“We had to leave her,” Schuyler explained. “It was my fault. The demons disarmed us before we could move. I’m sorry. I didn’t think we would lose you guys.”
“We’ll get her back,” Dehua said, her voice raspy and her eyes red and dry. “Don’t worry, Sam. Deming can take care of herself.”
“I trusted you,” Sam said, his voice tight, looking directly at Schuyler. “From now on, we do things my way.”
“I’m sorry,” Schuyler said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t think this was going to happen.”
“I don’t need an apology. I need to find a way back down to the underworld. The gate is here, right? Let’s go.” He nodded to his twin and to Dehua. “Show us the way,” he said, noticing the gatekeeper for the first time. “This is your gig, isn’t it?”
Catherine said, “If you go now, you will only bring harm to yourselves, and will have little chance of getting her back, as every demon in Limbo is looking for these two right now.” She motioned to Schuyler and Dehua. “The Castle Styx is in the borderland. If she’s been taken there, it means she’s been selected as the bride for the Harvest Bonding, and we have some time, as that’s not until Lammas. She’ll be left alone until then. No one will touch her, and you can rescue her during the Virgin Night right before, when the castle will be empty, as the demons will be feasting in Tartarus.”
They watched Sam process this information. Finally he exhaled. “Fine. We’ll wait till then. But I’m going to run this mission. No more mistakes.”
Jack put his coat around Schuyler’s shoulders to help her cover up, and the Venators left to confer on their own. The group seemed to have split, and once again the Lennox twins were wary of Jack and Schuyler, making it clear they preferred to keep their own counsel. Dehua refused to look at them as they left.
“You all right?” Jack asked. He had refrained from showing any emotion until now.
“Thanks to Catherine.” Schuyler squeezed his hand, silently thanking him for the jacket. “I just need to get out of this wretched costume.”
“So you’re Halcyon,” Jack said, turning to the gatekeeper.
“I don’t know if you remember me.”
“It would be difficult to forget Abbadon of the underworld.” Catherine smiled as she shook Jack’s hand. “I’m sorry we are meeting under such circumstances, but I suppose it can’t be helped. Come, let’s find a better place to talk.”
*
Catherine lived in an apartment in the Giza suburbs. The building was one that had been built in the nineteenth century, and divided into living spaces to house professors at the university and young families. It was small but comfortable, and it looked as if the gatekeeper had lived there for a long time. There were Life magazines from the 1930s on the coffee table, and an eight-track tape player and rotary telephone.
Catherine put on a kettle of water to boil. “As you can see, the gate is in terrible danger now that the Silver Bloods have found its location on earth,” she said. “It’s a pity we never foun
d the Croatan who had infiltrated our Covens until it was too late.”
“But Michael said all the Croatan were destroyed during the crisis in Rome,” Jack said, knowing how weak that sounded.
“Michael said a lot of things,” Catherine said with a wry smile. “Not all of them were true. He did not want the Coven to fear the enemy. Which is why he created the Order of the Seven. When the gates were created, there were Silver Bloods who were trapped on our side, and Michael and Gabrielle formed a team to hunt them down. It was our first duty as gatekeepers.”
Schuyler watched Jack’s face fall as he learned this information—to know that he had been kept in the dark for centuries. “It is true, then, what Mimi always said. The Uncorrupted never trusted us—which is why we were never told of any of this,” Jack said. “They still see us as traitors. Lucifer’s generals, even though we tried to change the course of the war.”
“Your sister always was observant,” Catherine agreed. She brought out napkins and plates. “It’s only a matter of time before they will be able to bring it down. The hounds slip through with regularity; now even a demon or two can manage it,” she said. “They were never able to do that before. I did what I could through the years to throw them off the scent.”
“The decoy in Florence,” Schuyler said.
“Yes. It kept our enemies off balance for a while.”
“And the Petruvians—was that part of it? Part of the plan?” Schuyler asked, feeling a little frantic. “Are you aware that they kill innocent women and their children in the name of the Blessed?”
“Like I said, I did what I could. I trained the Petruvians myself.” Catherine poured steaming water into a fat porcelain teapot. “And here I do the same. I try to break out the girls before they’re bonded to the Croatan.”
“But what if they’ve already been seduced?” Schuyler wanted to know. If they are already pregnant with the Nephilim child? What do you do then, gatekeeper?
Catherine set the table, removing biscuits from a tin and arranging them on plates with the fleur-de-lis design. “I slit their throats,” she said, without a trace of guilt or shame.
“Come, eat,” she said, taking a seat at the table and motioning for them to do the same.
“And the babies?” Schuyler’s voice shook.
“The same,” Catherine replied.
Schuyler went pale and could not breathe. She saw in a flash the long and bloody history of Catherine and the Petruvian priests: the babies spiked on bayonets, the girls with their bellies slashed from hip to hip, the blood and the burnings, the bitter war waged in secret.
“It has to be a mistake,” Schuyler said, looking at Jack, who only bowed his head. I did not know. There is no excuse for that kind of brutality, not even for the vampires’ survival.
The gatekeeper dipped a biscuit in her milky tea and took a bite before answering. “There is no mistake. The Petruvian Order was founded by Michael himself. I was charged to maintain its existence.”
THIRTY-FIVE
The Living and the Dead
“We’re leaving?” Oliver asked with palpable relief after Mimi had outlined the plan. She had stormed into his room looking murderous, and he had been worried for his safety for a moment. Thankfully, all she’d done was kick the pillows that had fallen on the floor, and after that she’d simply sunk into the couch next to him, a deflated little red balloon with all the fight seeped out of her.
“I bribed one of the demons with a vial of my blood. God knows what he wants it for.” Mimi shuddered. “He said if we want to get out of here, all we need is to catch some train that will take us straight to Limbo.”
“What about Kingsley?” he asked.
“What about Kingsley?” There was that murderous look again.
Oliver turned off the television. The show he’d been watching—about an alien who was part of the family and played by a puppet—was just about the height of inanity, and he was glad to find a reason to stop watching. He approached Mimi gingerly. “He’s not coming back with us?”
“No,” Mimi said, and she kicked the coffee table. “Ouch!”
she yelped, holding her foot. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”
Oliver nodded. “Okay.”
Mimi went back to her room. She wanted to be alone. Her heart was broken, shattered to pieces, but she felt nothing.
Just numb. She had been hanging on to this love—this hope—that she would find happiness one day. That she would have a happy ending. But instead there was nothing for her here. It was clear that there never was. She had read it all wrong. Kingsley had never loved her. He didn’t feel the same way about her anymore, and possibly never had.
Her journey was over, and she had failed. She would return to the Coven, where hopefully she would be able to piece her life back together, and piece the vampires back together as well. She didn’t know what to do next. Look for her brother?
Find revenge? She felt too exhausted to think of revenge at the moment. She needed a good long cry, but she did not want to give Kingsley the satisfaction of hearing her sob. She hoped she’d hurt him when she’d hit him. His cheek had turned a deep scarlet, but the shocked look on his face was even better.
There was a quiet knock on the door.
“Go away,” Mimi growled. “Oliver, I said I don’t want to talk about it!”
The door opened anyway. “It’s not Oliver. It’s me.” Kingsley hovered at the doorway, looking tired and nervous. His left cheek, Mimi noticed, was slightly pink.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“I came to apologize,” he said, slouching against the wall.
“It was rude of me to belittle your efforts. I didn’t mean to make fun.”
“Whatever.”
Kingsley looked at her kindly. “I’m truly sorry to disappoint you. I’m… quite flattered that you cared so much to come all this way.”
“So you didn’t miss me… not at all?” she said, daring to ask one of the questions she had wanted to ask since they were reunited. Had she misunderstood everything? The way he’d looked at her before he disappeared—and the fact that he had asked her to break her bond and steal away with him—was it all a dream? All that time she had grieved for him, mourned for him, dreamed of him, schemed for a way to get him back…
and it was all for nothing? He’d never felt the same for her?
How could she have been so stupid?
“I’m so sorry,” he said, patting her on the back as if she were a child.
Good god, if he’d meant to console her, he was going about it exactly the wrong way. He was making her feel like a silly schoolgirl who’d had a crush on her teacher. “Right.”
Mimi nodded. She just wanted him out of her room and out of her life. She never wanted to see him again. If there was one thing she hated more than Kingsley’s indifference, it was his pity. “I think you should go now.”
But Kingsley stubbornly refused to leave. “Listen, come take a ride with me. I want to show you something. It might explain better than I can.”
Mimi heaved a sigh. “Do I have to?”
“I promise I’ll stop bothering you if you do.”
“Fine.”
He drove them out of the city, beyond the borders of the seventh, to the endless swaths of nothing that surrounded Tartarus. The dark incalculable void where nothing grew and nothing lived, and there was only the dead and those that kept the dead. They drove into the vacant barren land, to the black irradiated earth, the devastated valleys where the Black Fire had raged from the beginning of time. In middle of the infinite darkness he stopped the car and got out, motioning for Mimi to follow him.
He knelt by the side of the road and asked her to do the same. She crouched down next to him.
“See that?” he asked, pointing to a small red flower that was sprouting from the ashy black desert. “Remember what it was like before? Nothing could grow here. But it’s different now. It’s changing. The underworld is changing, and I’m
part of the reason why.”
It was just a weed, but Mimi did not want to take away Kingsley’s fierce pride in its existence.
“It’s going to take a long time, and maybe it will never be as beautiful as earth, but who knows.” He touched the petal of the flower with the tip of his finger. “There’s nothing for me up there, you know,” he said quietly. “It’s peaceful down here.
I belong here.”
She could read between the lines: this was the reason he would never return with her back to earth. To return to his former existence would only bring him pain. In mid-world, Kingsley martin was a pariah, neither angel or demon but a Silver Blood, a vampire who was shunned and distrusted by his own people.
Maybe he’d loved her once, or maybe he hadn’t, but it was all irrelevant now. Whatever love he had was gone. Perhaps it had never been real. Only his pride in this small growing flower—that was real.
Mimi finally saw what she had been denying from the moment she’d laid eyes on him again. Kingsley looked different because he was different. Down here, he was whole, he was himself. He was not plagued by the screams of the thousands in his soul. While he was Croatan, he was also free.
Now she understood why Helda had said, If you can get him to leave with you, you can have him.
Kingsley would never leave the underworld. He had everything here: adventures, new experiences; as the Angel Araquiel he would bring life back to this dead land. She did not want to take that away from him. If she loved him the way she said she did, she wanted him whole. maybe this was what love meant after all: sacrifice and selflessness. It did not mean hearts and flowers and a happy ending, but the knowledge that another’s well-being is more important than one’s own. It was so awful to grow up and realize you couldn’t have everything you wanted, Mimi thought.
“I’m glad you’re happy,” she said finally, as they made their way back to the car.
“No one’s happy here, you know that. But I am content, and maybe that’s enough for me.”
They drove back to Tartarus in silence. Mimi was afraid of saying something she would regret, and Kingsley was lost in thought. When they arrived back at the palace, the trolls seemed to sense their mood and kept out of their way. There was nary a servant in sight, when usually they were constantly hovering, offering cakes or champagne or hookers and hot tubs.
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