White Nights: A Vampires of Manhattan Novel

by Melissa de la Cruz

  In the back row she was waiting. To anyone else Catherine Denham might look like an ordinary young woman, neither tall nor short, neither stocky nor slight, who dressed in what Jack thought of as “girly” clothes, floaty and floral, with too much baby pink. Pretty, but too earnest in expression, like some kind of born-again vegan, or someone who spent her evenings at choir practice or knitting class.

  But Jack wasn’t just anyone. When he saw someone he knew from a previous incarnation, he could place them instantly. Jack Force never forgot a face. And Catherine Denham’s face was identical to that of Marie Anne de Bourbon

  He slipped into the pew next to her and Catherine remained gazing towards the altar, the bland expression on her face unchanged.

  “Why here?” Jack asked, his voice low. The other people in the church were sitting far away, but he wanted to be careful.

  “I’ve always liked this church,” Catherine said, still not looking at him. “It’s so out of place around here now, with the Stock Exchange and all the banks. It reminds me of the way things used to be. Though it’s not that old, really. This is the third church on this spot. It’s third life, I guess – right?”

  “I didn’t mean the church.” Jack felt a surge of impatience. “I meant why New York? Why now?”

  Catherine turned to face him, her dark eyes unreadable.

  “We’re family, aren’t we?” she asked. “I’m here to look after your children.”

  “And that’s all there is to it? Come on, Marie …”

  “Catherine. It’s Catherine now, Jack. Unless you want me to refer to you as Louis D’Orleans?”

  Jack didn’t reply. The demure exterior was just a façade, as Jack had suspected. There was an archness to her tone now that was much more familiar to him. Catherine Denham was the reincarnation of Marie Anne de Bourbon, the young woman who married Louis, Duke of Joyeuse, back in the early eighteenth-century. Jack was reincarnated as Louis D’Orleans, Mimi as his wife Elisabeth de Lorraine-Lillebonne. Louis of Joyeuse was their beloved son, as brave and adventurous as Lily, as kind and thoughtful as Sy. He’d grown into an athletic young man, an expert archer and rider, an accomplished swordsman. The Paris coven had high hopes for him.

  Louis and Marie Anne were deeply in love – Jack had no doubt about that.

  “I think about him every day,” Catherine said, as though she could read his thoughts. “Do you think that’s how it is for everyone who loses a bondmate? Your mother lost hers, didn’t she?”

  Catherine was right. Trinity had lost her bondmate, Salgiel, in ancient Rome. No wonder Jack’s mother had felt adrift thought the centuries. No wonder she settled for what seemed like a loveless marriage with the Prince of the Angels, the man who would never get over the betrayal of his own bondmate. Their grief – both Trinity and Charles – for the love they’d lost had tainted Jack’s childhood.

  He hung his head, his own grief for Louis swirling back.

  “Five years. That’s all we had together.” Catherine’s voice had a hard edge now – anger that the centuries hadn’t soothed. Louis had been murdered by a Silver Blood. Lucifer couldn’t destroy Azrael and Abbadon, but he could send his agents to kill their son.

  “I know,” Jack told her. “But this is a new life, and we can’t wallow in the past.”

  He only half-believed this, but it felt like the only thing to say.

  “I wish I could be as forgiving as you.” Catherine leaned forward, her slender wrists resting on the next pew. “I want revenge – in this life, any life. I don’t care. But Louis must be avenged, and I’m ready and able to do it.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Jack, a chilly doubt seeping through him. Suddenly it felt very cold indeed inside the church. He wanted to be outside among the lush green trees, among the bustling, sweaty people thronging lower Broadway.

  “I just wanted to reassure you that I’m ready this time in a way that I wasn’t when … when they killed Louis. I’ve been training for this since I was the same age as the twins’, pretty much. No one would think it to look at me, but I’m a much deadlier assassin than my brother.”

  “Well, good.” At last something about Mimi’s nanny-hiring was beginning to make sense. “We’re trusting you completely to guard the twins. I can’t lose a child again. It was devastating for us as well.”

  Jack could barely bring himself to think of Louis’ blood-drenched body, disemboweled and lifeless, lying in a forest glade. It was an early summer’s day, just like this, sunny and breezy. Louis’ horse had stayed with him, reins jangling as he picked at long blades of grass. Not content with leaving a snaking trail of intestines, the Silver Bloods who’d killed him had etched a blood-rusted pentagram into Louis’ pale forehead. And, as the ultimate desecration of his body, they’d yanked out his incisors, taking those emblems of his vampire status as ghoulish souvenirs. Vampires who hunted other vampires disgusted Jack. Their only end was evil. Their means were grotesque and violent.

  He and Catherine sat in silence. It was impossible to keep the past away, especially when the Silver Bloods were back, refusing to accept defeat.

  Catherine glanced at her narrow silver wristwatch.

  “I have to go,” she told Jack, gathering up her tote bag. “I’m glad we had a chance to talk. You haven’t said anything to Schuyler, have you?”

  It was more of a statement than a question.

  “Not yet,” he said. Catherine stood up.

  “Not ever, please. Mimi thinks it’s better if we keep this between ourselves.”

  Typical Mimi, Jack thought. To her, Schuyler would always be an outsider.

  “We don’t need her to worry about the past. More than anyone, she needs to focus on the crisis now. She has powers of recovery that we don’t, and those may be very important with the battles coming up.”

  “But she’s the twins’ mother,” Jack argued. “I don’t know how it hurts to let her know about you and your … past life. Your relationship to me and Mimi.”

  Catherine bent over Jack in a way that suggested, to any tourist wandering in with a guide book and camera, that she was kissing him goodbye.

  “Schuyler’s never had a past life,” Catherine whispered. “This world is all she knows. Don’t make things more complicated than they need to be.”

  Jack grabbed her arm to stop her from walking away.

  “Remember your job,” he muttered, trying to keep his voice down and his temper in check. “Guarding the twins. That’s the most important thing. When this operation is over, I’ll help you get revenge. I promise.”

  “Promise?” Catherine leaned close again. She looked skeptical, almost disdainful. “What do promises mean when Lucifer is on the march again? This is much more than an ‘operation,’ Jack. If it was as simple as that, the Venators would be taking care of it, and you and Schuyler would still be hiding away in California, pretending to be human.”

  When Catherine shouldered her bag, it looked incongruously large for her narrow shoulders. She strolled to the center aisle where a cluster of tourists in long shorts and fluorescent sun visors were reading aloud from a guidebook. Jack watched her go. Was she right? Was it better for Schuyler to keep focus on the battle-at-hand rather than worry about everyone’s pasts and the wrongs that happened?

  “George Washington worshipped here when he was president,” one gray-haired woman announced to the group. Catherine paused, and placed a gentle hand on the woman’s arm.

  “He worshipped at a church on this spot, but not this exact church,” she told them, in her sweetest choir-girl voice. “The church Washington knew was demolished so this one could be built. This is a reincarnation, you might say.”

  The tourist group murmured their thanks and Catherine wafted out the door, without a backward glance at Jack.

  9 | Sic transit gloria mundi

  Squinting because of the glare, Oliver checked the piece of paper in his hand, and peered up at the building looming over them.

  “This is Tensta?” he
asked the cab driver.

  “This is Tensta,” replied the driver, in a clipped perfect English. “Are you sure this is where you want to go? Tensta is not a nice part of Stockholm.”

  That was an understatement, in Oliver’s opinion. He’d felt more at home in the transit lounges of Frankfurt airport, where he’d spent half the night after his connection was canceled. When he’d flown into Stockholm this morning, spying the glinting blue waters and lush green islands of the city, Oliver had assumed he was headed for somewhere clean, pristine and Scandinavian. Not housing projects on the northern fringe of the city – rank after rank of soulless, interchangeable tower blocks encircled by multi-lane ring roads.

  Though maybe a soulless area was the perfect place for him right now. The perfect place to find someone like Finn, who’d sold her soul to Lucifer. Mac, Edon’s brother, had seemed adamant that Oliver should go to this address in Stockholm as soon as possible, so here he was. Once again, doing what a wolf told him to do – for better or worse.

  “Thanks,” he told the driver, handing over a sheaf of Swedish krona. At this rate he’d need to get more money from Schuyler soon – the taxi ride practically cleaned him out.

  Oliver knew nothing about Tensta, but he suspected the suburb wasn’t covered in most Swedish guidebooks. It looked like Eastern Europe during the Cold War, the kind of place Oliver had seen on depressing documentaries The apartment towers had that gray, unloved look to– all tower blocks and graffiti, with surly immigrant kids hanging around on corners. The moment Oliver stepped onto the sidewalk and closed the door, the cab performed a wild U-turn and zoomed away, as though the driver was eager to get out of Dodge before he got ambushed.

  He checked the paper in his hand again. A police car sped by, chased by dark-haired kids on bikes. One of the kids, wearing a baggy Real Madrid T-shirt, squealed to a halt and hurled a rock at the police car’s back window. His aim was good, but the rock just bounced off the glass. The car didn’t stop, and the kids all howled and shouted at it, in either triumph or rage.

  The stone-thrower glared at Oliver. He couldn’t be more than ten or eleven, Oliver thought, but he had the hardened face of a cynical criminal. His voice – when he asked Oliver a question in lilting Swedish – was still high and squeaky.

  “Sorry,” Oliver said, shrugging. “I don’t understand.”

  “English? OK,” said the kid. “I was asking if you are here to buy drugs. But I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?” Oliver couldn’t help being amused. The kid shook his head.

  “People like you who want drugs, they drive up in their car and keep the engine running. You come here in a taxi. So you must be a social worker. Or a journalist. Do you want to interview me?”

  Now it was Oliver’s turn to shake his head.

  “I’m not a social worker or a journalist, and I’m not here to buy drugs. I’m just here to stay for a while. In the Jarva building. Am I saying that right?”

  “No, but it’s OK,” said the kid. Two girls in hijabs scuttled by, heads down, darting puzzled glances in Oliver’s direction. “Follow me.”

  Maybe he was stupid to trust this kid, but not even the Nephilim relied on such young recruits. And without his help, Oliver would never have found his way through the concrete maze of walkways and dingy stairwells.

  “Why were you chasing the police car?” he asked the kid, who looked surprised at the question.

  “Nobody likes the police here. They took away my brother for nothing. No reason, man.”

  Oliver nodded but didn’t ask any more questions. He shouldn’t have asked anything at all. The last thing he wanted to do was raise suspicion. He didn’t need to hear this kid’s life story, and he didn’t need to answer any questions himself.

  “There were riots here a couple of years ago,” the kid told him, wheeling his bike around a graffiti-splashed corner that smelled like urine. “Things are getting bad again. You picked a bad time to come.”

  “I guess so,” said Oliver. This kid had no idea what a bad time it was, not just for this crumbling project, but for the whole world.

  An older teenage boy, darker skinned and frowning, leaned over the railings two flight up. He shouted down to the kid, gesturing at Oliver. The kid shouted back up at him and pointed to the next walkway.

  “He thought you were a journalist, but I told him no.”

  The teenage boy glowered down at Oliver.

  “Go home, American tourist!” he shouted, and Oliver decided it was time to get moving. Dodging Venators and Nephilim was bad enough; he didn’t want to have to contend with disaffected youth as well. They knew how to fight dirty.

  “Jarva is this building over here?” he asked the kid. He wished he had money to give the boy, but he only had a few krona notes left, and no idea what they were worth. “I can find my way from here. Thanks.”

  “Watch out for the cops!” the kid called after him, and Oliver grinned. The cops were the least of his problems. Right now he needed to get to this safe house – or safe apartment, at least – without attracting any more attention. The elevator doors were sashed with bright police tape, but Oliver wasn’t planning on getting into such a confined space anyway. The apartment scribbled on his piece of paper was on the third floor, and he could take the litter-strewn stairs up.

  He had the address but no key. Oliver could smell a lot of things right now, including baked-on dog excrement, meat frying in dirty grease, and the astringent scent of spray paint, but he couldn’t smell wolves at all. What if this wasn’t a safe place to stay? What if it was just another trap?

  The third-floor corridor must have been white once upon a time, but now it was gray and smudged, an empty beer bottle lying on its side outside one door. Inside one apartment people were arguing, and something hard thunked against a wall. Oliver picked up the pace, headed for number eighteen. Not a lucky number, or an unlucky one either, he hoped. And not the kind of place someone like Oliver Hazard-Perry – in his past life – would ever have frequented.

  The door to apartment eighteen was as featureless as all the others along this dingy corridor. Oliver flattened himself against the wall and sniffed. Nothing. No aroma of wolf, at any rate. He reached out a hand, appalled to see it trembling. What was he going to do – cower in this hallway for the rest of his life? He was a wreck. This life of running and hiding couldn’t go on for much longer. Physically and emotionally, he was shot.

  When Oliver turned the handle, the door clicked open. Unlocked – that could be good or bad. He remained standing to the side, letting the door swing, waiting for something or someone to pounce, listening for the click of a gun or the slightest hint of a footstep. All he could hear was the muffled shouting further down the corridor, and the clattering of pans in another apartment. Someone was calling out a window, shouting in Arabic, and children’s voices shouted back in reply. There were footsteps too, and laughter. Young men coming up the stairs.

  Oliver darted into the apartment and closed the door behind him. A short hallway led to the living room, small and square, ashy black curtains closed; one hung askew on its plastic rail. The only furniture was a low sofa, a faded red, pockmarked with cigarette burns. The room had the faintest smell of fake lavender, the lingering aroma of a now-dead air-freshener. An open doorway to his left led to a bedroom; the bed, only partly visible, was a single, the mattress bare. The other doorway, to his right, led to the kitchen: what Oliver could see was similarly spartan. Depressing but functional, just like his life right now.

  The bathroom was off the stunted hallway, windowless and grimy. The remains of a cabinet clung to the peeling wall above the sink, but the mirror was gone. The faucets were working, so Oliver splashed cold water on his face, trying to steady his breathing. He was here. He was alone. He’d stay here until he got another message – from a Marrok brother, hopefully – to move on. He might even be in the same country as Finn, though why she was here, and what she was up to, he didn’t know. The thought of se
eing again thrilled and terrified him at the same time. His fangs tingled, and deep within him he felt a surge of desire.

  Oliver smelled the intruder before he heard him, and his reaction was visceral and instinctive. He swung around, mouth open in a roar, fists clenched. He saw golden hair and wide blue eyes, as blue as the waterways he’d spotted from the plane.

  Then something hit him hard, swiping the back of his head, and the world turned black.

  10 | Only Dreaming

  These last moments of the night, before they softened into dawn, were some of Schuyler’s favorites. Usually she didn’t mind waking up early if she got to watch the sky turning from charcoal to pink. In New York it was always especially beautiful, she’d always thought, because of the way the rising sun glinted off the skyscrapers, and the city seemed to glimmer. Like a crystal ball, maybe, or a snow globe. Something that suggested a whirl of promise and excitement for the coming day.

  But this morning she was wide awake, Jack slumbering next to her, and Schuyler felt anything but happy.

  This was their last night in the city, staying in Kingsley and Mimi’s apartment, before they flew out. Kingsley wanted them in Stockholm. He couldn’t tell them much yet – just that the New York Coven was bankrolling a covert operation in Sweden. Kingsley could barely bring himself to say it, but it looked as though one of the gates of hell was opening up again, somewhere deep in the Swedish forests. The intelligence from wolves suggested that was the next trouble spot.

  And Sweden was where Oliver was. Schuyler knew that, even if Jack didn’t. She had intelligence sources of her own, and from them she knew that the last currency Oliver bought was Swedish krona.

  All roads led to Stockholm, apparently.

  Schuyler was troubled about what they were getting into – of course she was. But that wasn’t the reason she’d woken up early feeling so unsettled and unhappy. It was the dream she’d been having. Not a nightmare, exactly, though it had been disturbing enough to wake her. It was as vivid as a nightmare.