The Damned

by Nancy Holder; Debbie Viguié

  Ten minutes later Skye removed her hand from Eriko. Everyone stopped, waiting for a sign.

  “I think she’s going to make it,” Skye said, her voice hoarse. “We’re going to need to stay here for a while, though, before we can move her.”

  “How long?” Jenn asked, her voice strained.

  “I don’t know,” Skye said. “I’ll work around the clock, Jenn. I’ll make her better.”

  “I can stay with her. Maybe you lot should go after Aurora,” Jamie offered.

  “No,” Jenn said, her voice quiet but firm. “We get in trouble when we split up. We’ll stay until Eriko can travel. Besides, she’s not the only one who needs to heal.” She looked at Jamie.

  “Then this is our place. Our ground,” Jamie said. He reached up and yanked his tattered Salamanca patch from his shoulder, jabbing it into the snow.

  “We didn’t put down our flag in New Orleans,” Skye said.

  “We failed New Orleans,” Jenn murmured.

  “I don’t know what happened here,” Jamie said. He looked at the smoky sky. “Wonder if there’s survivors. Ain’t gonna look.”

  Skye trailed a fingertip down Eriko’s forehead. “We need to take care of our own.”

  Holgar nodded, then with a sigh lay down, cheek to the snow, wishing like anything he were a wolf and not a man, even as the dawn spread its rays in the east and the reign of the night came to an end.

  Jamie, ever so gently, lay down next to Eriko and stroked her hair while Jenn, Taamir, and Noah made quiet plans. Skye turned and looked at Holgar, eyes full of pain, and he lifted up an arm. She hesitated for only a moment and then scooted over next to him before lying down, using his arm as a pillow. Her body was tense, as though she were unsure about the contact.

  “I didn’t bring them here; I didn’t,” she said. He heard the pleading for understanding—and perhaps for forgiveness—in her voice. “I should have spoken up about him before, but I didn’t know he was working with Aurora.”

  “Get some rest,” Holgar whispered and she nodded.

  “I should have—”

  “Shh. We all have secrets, min lille heks.” He stroked her back as she slowly relaxed.

  Including me, he thought.

  Skye lay still, feeling the warmth of Holgar beside her, wishing she had the strength to heal him. He had saved both her and Eriko, and she knew he was in excruciating pain from his wounds. Even his ankle wasn’t fully healed. She could tell from the way he’d run when he was carrying her.

  How had everything gone so horribly, horribly wrong? The lab was destroyed; that was a good thing. Dantalion had been stopped for good. Mission accomplished. But at what cost?

  Antonio knew everything about the resistance cells they had been gathering information on across the world. People who were already risking their lives by standing up to the Cursed Ones were in even greater danger now that Aurora had captured Antonio. The Salamancan hunters had to rescue him before something happened. By now, though, Aurora and Antonio were long gone. And so was Estefan. She hadn’t felt him in her mind since Holgar had saved her. It was a relief, but it worried her because she was pretty sure they were now far away.

  Where are they taking Antonio? She thought about her glimpse into Estefan’s mind. She tried to focus it. The mind was a strange thing. It could show you perfect replicas of certain memories, like the house of mirrors. Other times it presented images that were tinted by emotions and context, almost like impressionist paintings. She stared closely at the vision of Aurora and Antonio held in her memory, trying to tell if there was anything else she had seen in Estefan’s mind at that time.

  Goddess, help me to remember, she prayed silently. She breathed deeply in and out, to cleanse herself of fear, anger, uncertainty, even the sensation of Holgar’s warm arm beneath her cheek. She tried to focus on that image, tried to put herself in it.

  What had Estefan been thinking of Aurora and Antonio at that moment? Aurora was standing, while Antonio lay unconscious at her feet. She was clearly the victor. She was the master, and Antonio was the servant. And there, behind Aurora, had been a shadow. It was Estefan, laughing at Antonio’s plight, himself victorious because Aurora was victorious. Himself a master because she was a master.

  Fascinating, but it told her nothing that she wanted to know. Skye sighed. When she woke she’d cast the runes, see if she could get a sense of the direction that they might have traveled. Though something told her they were heading back to America.

  Why? Was it because that was where she’d seen Aurora before, so she associated her with America? Why not Spain, since Aurora was Spanish? She could be anywhere on the planet. China, Australia, Alaska to see the aurora borealis.

  Alaska. America. Aurora borealis. Swirling, pretty lights. Natural lights. Not like the lights they would be seeing. Not like the lights reflected in Aurora’s eyes.

  Skye focused on the image again. There were lights reflected in Aurora’s eyes. She concentrated as hard as she could, trying to empty herself completely, trying to decipher the picture.

  There was a word. A word spelled out in the lights. It meant something to Estefan. It was what he thought of Antonio and Aurora together. Where they were, no, where they were going.

  The word was . . .

  LOS ANGELES

  SOLOMON

  “Mei,” Solomon said to his assistant as she was shown in to his home office. He was writing an e-mail at his desk. Solomon had a lot of desks in a lot of offices. This one was made entirely of glass—glass desk, glass chair with black cushions, black leather sofa, glass block fireplace. Spare. Very New Hollywood.

  He also had lots of assistants. He just seemed to run through them so fast. But he had taken an interest in Chinese hottie Mei. Fangs a bit extended, he smiled approvingly at her bat-with-heart necklace. Everyone was wearing them. Even vampires.

  As he hit send, he gestured for her to sit on the couch. “Please.”

  She complied. “You said you needed to speak to me right away?”

  Although she was smiling, he could see she was afraid. That didn’t surprise him. Most humans were afraid of him. The smart ones, anyway. Which left him with an interesting dilemma: Should he and Danny start testing on the smart ones or the dumb ones first?

  “Here’s the deal. We’re going to start shooting the Russian section of History.”

  “Russia?” she cut in, shifting nervously. “I didn’t know we were planning a Russian section.”

  “It’s been under . . . development.” He sat next to her. Her heart was thundering. “So this is what I’m pondering—casting the parts. We’ll have to make sure we use an inter national superstar for the lead. It’s a vampire named Dantalion. Heard of him?”

  She shook her head.

  “You will. But as we go on down the food chain, so to speak, I’m wondering how many actors we ship over there versus looking around in Russia, maybe some of those other countries over there—Lithuania, Mongolia. Thoughts?”

  Mei crossed her legs and played with her necklace. He figured she was dying for him to change her into a Cursed One.

  “Can you tell me more about Dantalion? What’s the Russian part about?” she asked.

  “I’m waiting for confirmation on the script right now.” He couldn’t help a chuckle.

  Ping. He glanced at his in-box. Well, well, well, speak of the devil. The new message was from Dantalion’s lab. His Danny boy. Kruta.

  “Hold that thought, Mei.” He clicked on the attachment icon. A folder opened with dozens and dozens of attachments, and each was so massive they were probably going to eat up all his memory. He looked at the names of some of the files, labeled in Russian and English, like all Dantalion’s reports on the hybrid project. The attachments kept downloading. It looked like it was all of Dantalion’s files, as if he had sent the entire contents of his computer to Solomon.

  Good. Solomon had told his people to promise to rescue Dantalion once he hit the panic button, if and only if he sent Solomon al
l the data.

  Promise to rescue, but not deliver on the promise.

  His phone should ring any second.

  It did.

  “Mei,” he said, looking up.

  She’d been politely staring at the fireplace. She jerked and flashed a cautious smile at him.

  “Go find something to do.”

  “Okay, Solomon,” she said. “Sure.”

  He connected to the caller.

  “Dantalion has been neutralized, sir,” an American voice said on the other end of the line.

  “Killed,” Solomon confirmed.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “No complications?”

  “Black crosses attempted to extricate him. They were repulsed.”

  “Excellent. I’ll expect a full debriefing in an hour.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  The line went dead.

  The files continued to download.

  RUSSIA

  TEAM SALAMANCA MINUS ANTONIO; TAAMIR AND NOAH

  Using Noah’s “smoking room”—a cave—as temporary shelter, Jenn checked in with Father Juan via Noah’s radiophone, and he confirmed that they had to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the smoking ruins of the palace as soon as they could. She glanced around at her sleeping teammates and decided that in late afternoon they would take the truck and head for the nearest village.

  She confessed to Father Juan that they had no idea if Dantalion was dead.

  Same with Antonio.

  Late afternoon came, and Jenn was the first member of the team awake, for the simple reason that she hadn’t slept. She had replayed the disaster over and over in her mind, trying to figure out how she might have done things differently, all so she could try to keep from thinking about the fact that Antonio had been captured. She couldn’t think about it yet, wouldn’t think about it yet. If she did, she wouldn’t be any good to anyone. And first they had to get out of Russia.

  Is Dantalion dead? Did the black-cross guys show up because they’d been following us? Who are they?

  Late in the evening she walked about a quarter mile from their camp and checked back in with Father Juan. She conferred about her team’s injuries, asking if he had heard anything, scryed, or had a vision that would tell them what to do.

  Nothing.

  “So, do you have a plan yet?” he asked her.

  She was caught off guard. She had expected him to tell her the plan. She hadn’t expected him to leave the next move up to her.

  She took a deep breath. “We have to get Antonio back or . . . stop him from telling Aurora what he knows.” She was a coward; she couldn’t bring herself to say kill him. Not yet.

  “Bueno,” he said. “Now the mission is defined. If you need anything, call my cell. Don’t call my office number.”

  “Are you away from the university?” she asked.

  “Not exactly,” he said, after a pause.

  His response piqued her curiosity, but she had learned when she first started at the academy that there was no getting information out of Father Juan until he was ready to share it. She would just have to wait. After she hung up, she returned to their camp, and found Noah quietly heating some rations over a fire. He was smoking a cigarette. Without thinking, she waved her hand to dissipate the smoke.

  He smiled at her and dropped the cigarette into the fire. Flushing, she crouched next to him and smiled faintly back. It felt like a bit of a miracle, after the death of Svika and the loss of Antonio, that either of them could smile. She took it as a good omen for the future.

  “We’re going after Antonio,” she said quietly, so as not to wake the others.

  “I know.”

  “What will you and Taamir do now?” she asked.

  “Well, Jenn,” he said. “That’s up to you.”

  She raised a brow. “Aren’t you needed back home?”

  “Everyone is needed everywhere,” he said. “But we’re here. With you.” He gazed steadily at her.

  A warm tingle played at the small of her back. She thought maybe she should discuss the possibility with the others. Noah and Taamir were great fighters, and though she felt a momentary pang at adding outsiders to their little group, she realized that there was no cohesion to the Salamanca team anyway and the addition of the two could only help them. Maybe it would even give them a little more discipline, though as her eyes drifted to Jamie, she sincerely doubted it.

  “We could use you,” she said.

  “You already did. You should have told us that Antonio was a vampire,” he said.

  She felt herself go white. He gave her a little confirming nod.

  “Yes, I know. When he and Eriko volunteered to stay behind, I saw a flash of red in his eyes, and his fangs came out, just a little,” he said.

  “But you didn’t say anything.”

  Noah shrugged. “He was on your team. You’re his leader.”

  “Yeah. And he’s been captured.”

  He put his hand under her chin and raised it. There were tan lines around his eyes. This was a guy who spent a lot of time in the sun.

  “We’ll get him back.” She was aware of his touch. She was lonely and scared, and she needed arms around her, someone’s shoulder to cry on. She could tell he knew it, and would welcome it if she went to him. He was warm, and brave, and here. And he was human.

  “Thanks,” she said, pulling away. “I need to check on everyone.”

  “Anytime.” He looked at her steadily. “Just say the word.”

  She moved away and went back into the cave. Everyone was swaddled in sleeping bags. Eriko was breathing more easily than she had the night before. Holgar’s back, though hideous-looking in the sunlight, seemed to be healing well. Jamie’s mottled skin was beginning to scab over.

  Skye’s eyelids flickered, and then she sat up suddenly, her eyes zeroing in on Jenn’s. “I know where Aurora has taken Antonio,” she said.

  Jenn felt her heart skip a beat. “What?”

  “I saw it.”

  “Where?”

  “Her new stronghold. Las Vegas.”

  LAS VEGAS

  ANTONIO AND AURORA

  “You might as well kill me,” Antonio panted. “I’ll never tell you anything.”

  Aurora made a clucking sound. “Do you really think that’s why you’re here? Information? No, I have other ways, easier ways of getting that.”

  She sat back in her white satin chair. Everything in her suite was white—walls, furnishings, carpet.

  “Then what do you want from me?” Antonio gasped. He was bound between two pillars in the foyer, dangling above a white marble floor.

  “You’re going to be a little present,” she said, resting a hand beside his head. “Sergio’s little lost lamb, the one he couldn’t find and bring home.”

  Antonio felt sick at the mention of his sire, at the monster who had made him a Cursed One.

  Aurora was wearing a tight white dress with gold accents that made her look like a Grecian goddess. Slowly, sensuously, she pulled a dagger out from a holster strapped to her thigh and held it up for Antonio to see.

  “This blade is so sharp it can cut through anything,” she purred. “I’ve been testing it out, trying to find a flaw, a weakness, but so far—”

  She made several swift swipes, and his shirt hung in tatters. She pressed the tip of the blade against his chest just above his heart and drew a line downward, then crossed it with another one in a mockery of him and his beliefs.

  “It cuts through everything,” she said as she plunged it into the middle of the cross and pierced muscle and bone to stab his heart.

  Antonio screamed with pain as he felt his putrid blood flowing out along the blade. The knife was silver, not wood, so the impact did not kill him, but he had never felt pain so intense before. It made his entire body tremble.

  “Antonio, the priest; Antonio, the good vampire; Antonio, the hunter. All of these you are, and yet I think there is one title that cuts more deeply. I think you ar
e Antonio, the man in love with Jenn.”

  He jerked at the mention of her name, and the blood flowed more quickly along the blade.

  “You know, that’s what people don’t understand. Sure, you chose to stop killing years before she was even born, but I think she was always here, in your heart,” Aurora said. “That’s why you don’t break; that’s why you don’t bend; that’s why you don’t succumb to the bloodlust that is your nature, even when a spell is cast on you.”

  His thoughts flew to New Orleans, where he had struggled to control himself and the desire to kill Jenn, to drink her blood. He had thought it was because she was eroding his self-control. Had it really been a spell instead? That was part of why he had been keeping his distance from her. He was terrified that he would hurt Jenn, the closer they became to each other.

  Aurora pulled the knife from Antonio’s chest, and it hurt just as much as getting stabbed. He bit his tongue in agony. The wound began to heal quickly but Antonio felt a little sick and weak, more than for a wound anyplace else. Aurora watched as the skin sealed over until he was whole again.

  When the pain stopped, Antonio sagged against his restraints, relief flooding him.

  “So, you would endure anything for her, deny your nature for her, be anything for her,” Aurora continued.

  “I would die for Jenn,” he said, lifting his head defiandy. That was something no one could take away from him. He loved her, and he would give everything for her, sacrifice himself without thought to save her.

  “I know you would,” Aurora said, as she traced the tip of the blade over his chest and down his stomach. “I can’t decide if it’s romantic or pathetic, to be honest.”

  “It’s what separates me from the animals, my capacity for self-sacrifice.”

  She laughed. “Spoken like a good priest. Only, are you referencing us when you talk about animals?”

  Her eyes began to glow red, her fangs to lengthen. She looked like an animal, a wild, rabid animal who would kill him in a moment if he said or did something, anything, to upset her, or even nothing at all.

  “You are less than an animal,” he said.