Juan stared at the priest in alarm. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as one can be when one is having a vision,” Father Giovanni replied, “for the first time in his life.”
“Then why did you come back?”
Father Giovanni looked next at the crucifix on the wall. “God told me He needed me, but that it was my choice.”
“To die in the service of God is the finest death anyone can have,” Juan assured him, not sure what else he could say. “And we all die.”
Father Giovanni nodded and then offered his collar to Juan. “I’m excommunicated, then, Father.”
Juan shook his head. “Rome has made an error. You wear that with pride. You are serving God. You are His priest. The students who believe need to see you wearing your collar, to know that you still have faith. It will give them courage.”
Father Giovanni nodded. Anger again rose in Juan. God’s people were dying for what was right, and they were being threatened for it by the very people who should be supporting and canonizing them. Why did it always have to be this way?
He heard a footstep at the back of the chapel, and soon Master Molina was kneeling beside them, bending his head in prayer. Then the other three instructors came in and joined them. So few of them left to care for ninety students.
He heard the shuffling of many feet as those students came and joined them, gathering around the teachers instead of sitting in the pews as they ordinarily would.
Juan closed his eyes. I am not alone.
We are not alone.
BOOK THREE
SEKER
Upon my flowery breast,
Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him,
And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.
—St. John of the Cross,
sixteenth-century mystic of Salamanca
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Did you think that we weren’t there?
Did you think we didn’t care?
We’ve seen every tear you’ve cried
Hung on every breath you’ve sighed
We want to dwell in your heart
Together always, ne’er to part
And when you taste our undying thirst
You will feel how we are cursed
LAS VEGAS
TEAM SALAMANCA MINUS ANTONIO;
TAAMIR AND NOAH
Jenn sat in the back of a black, windowless van with her arms folded across her chest, dividing her attention between Greg, who sat across from her, and Jamie, who lay unconscious on the vehicle’s floor. “Who are you?” she asked at last.
Greg gave her the ghost of a smile. “We’re the good guys.”
A minute later the van pulled to a stop, and Greg swung open the door. They were in a parking garage. Where, she wasn’t sure, but it couldn’t have been too far from the church. The two black-cross men who had been with Greg carried Jamie out of the van and into a waiting elevator. Jenn followed with Greg.
They exited into a penthouse suite, and Jenn marveled at the views of the city with all its blinking lights. A man in a black turtleneck, who was also wearing a Jerusalem cross on a chain around his neck, waved the men carrying Jamie over to a dining table, and they placed him on it.
“Don’t worry, he’s a doctor,” Greg said.
As the man began to set up IVs for the transfusion, Jenn realized that she had been so tired and so stressed for so long that she had passed beyond worried. Sinking down into the chair, she gave serious consideration to what it would be like if Jamie’s and her positions were reversed.
Death would be a blessing, a release from the fear and the fighting. There were moments when Jenn struggled just to remember why she was fighting instead of giving up, accepting the world the way that it was, and trying to get by in it until someone recognized her as a former hunter and killed her.
She shook her head. It was the exhaustion and the horror over Antonio that was doing her thinking for her. She needed to put those thoughts from her mind.
She didn’t want to watch the doctor work, so she turned back to Greg and cleared her throat. “Now, tell me exactly who you are and what’s been going on,” she said.
He pulled up a chair and sat down. “We’re part of a shadow organization working inside the United States government. We’ve never given up on winning this war. We’ve been working to create a weapon that will change the balance of power.”
“Like the disease that scientist was working on in Madrid?” Jenn had been in America when her team had been sent to help safeguard Dr. Sherman and had failed. She had been told, though, that after the scientist was turned into a vampire, commandos wearing the black Jerusalem cross had snatched him from under the noses of both the Cursed Ones and Team Salamanca.
“Exactly like that,” Greg said.
“And . . . you were in Russia?”
He grimaced. “Afraid we didn’t quite pull that one off. We didn’t get Dantalion or his data. Everything went up.”
“We were going in,” she said. “We could have done it. You got in our way.”
He shook his head. “Then it would have been your people getting blown to smithereens instead of ours.”
She closed her eyes. “Jamie heard someone talking to Dantalion in English. An American, he said. From Solomon. Filling Dantalion in.”
“What?”
“Telling him about Aurora. And us. He said that Eriko had been killed.”
Greg leaned forward. “Did Jamie describe him?” He glanced at the fallen hunter as if he wanted to jostle him awake.
“The man was wearing a gas mask and white camouflage,” she said.
“That doesn’t narrow it down much. But it should come as no surprise to us that he and Solomon were working together. Solomon’s got half the world working for him.”
“You should have told us you were there. And what you were doing.”
“Sorry. We can’t move quite as freely as you can. This meet-up’s not exactly sanctioned,” he said, “and that’s telling you more than I should.”
She sighed. “Just our luck to have wimpy allies.”
“We will win this war,” Greg said. “We just need time.”
“We’re fresh out.”
A cushy chair was brought in. Jenn sat down gingerly, never taking her eyes off Greg as the doctor wrapped a tourniquet around her upper arm and tapped a vein in her forearm. Greg’s face was grave.
“I’m afraid that’s true,” Greg said.
“Here we go,” the doctor said. Jenn winced as the needle went in.
“Why don’t we team up? Why do you only help us in the ways that you do?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “We’re not ready to be exposed like that. The best thing you’re doing for this war is acting as an inspiration for those mustering the courage to rise. And keeping the Cursed Ones distracted, so they look your way instead of ours.”
“We’re bait?” she asked angrily. Their lives were worth more than that.
His expression never wavered. “Yes, and no. You’re a mighty force to be reckoned with, and in time I think all of you will figure that out. But word about you is getting around. You could also become a public face to this conflict.”
“You’re doing great,” the doctor told her.
Jenn had never thought of it that way before, but as her lids flickered, she could remember the excitement back at Salamanca when she would walk by the students. They looked up to her and the others, needed them, and aspired to be them. And soon those students would likely replace the Salamanca hunters.
She turned her head so she could look at Jamie. At the rate they had been sustaining injuries, it was only a matter of time before they all got killed.
“We should at least have a way of contacting you,” she insisted.
“It’s too dangerous. Tonight’s events have done nothing but underscore that. Don’t worry, though. We’re always keeping close tabs on Team Salamanca. And we’re not the
only ones.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, beginning to feel a little woozy.
His face stretched and blurred in front of her. “You’ll find the answer to that yourself, in time.”
Greg wouldn’t tell Jenn anything else, and she slept fitfully on a couch, worrying about Jamie and Antonio, fighting to reconcile the monster she had seen in that church with the guy who had kissed her so tenderly. Who had kept watch over her during their two years of training. She thought of something her grandfather used to say: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Had Antonio fooled her all this time? Father Juan had given Eriko the elixir, then “demoted” her from leader of the team. Had he given the elixir to the wrong person? And had he been equally mistaken about giving Antonio a position on the team?
If I had to go against what Father Juan told me to do, would I have the nerve?
Dawn came, and she hadn’t really slept. She, Greg, and an unconscious Jamie were waiting at the rendezvous when the others showed. One look at their grim expressions told Jenn everything she needed to know. Antonio was still alive. Her heart sang for one moment before plummeting. If he was still running loose, there was a very real possibility that she herself would have to stake him. All the time that she had worried about Antonio, she had never seen herself in this position. Never the one to end his life. Would she have the deep-down strength Noah had spoken of? Or would she falter at the crucial moment?
Would he kill me, then?
The others greeted her and fretted over Jamie, who was still unconscious. Skye told Jenn that upon Eriko and Holgar’s return, she had taken the baby to a nearby hospital, swaddling her in warm blankets and then leaving her at the entrance. Then she’d cast a summoning spell and had waited in the shadows until a hospital staff member had come outside and found the child.
They all piled in the van, which Greg had outfitted with some stakes, two crosses, and a vial of holy water. They huddled together on the floor, and Greg threw a tarp over them. He had explained that a well-placed hundred dollar bill and the proper guard would ensure that the inside of the van would not be looked at too carefully at the checkpoint, but they had to remain still nevertheless.
“And keep those weapons stowed,” he added.
Jenn found herself holding her breath, wedged between Noah and Jamie as the van rolled to a stop. Noah took her hand, and she let him. Time passed; she wasn’t sure how long, but she was sure they had been discovered. Then the van rolled forward, slowly, and picked up highway speed. Under the tarp it was hot and dark, and a few minutes later, when Greg pulled it off, she sat up in relief, her stomach queasy.
Half an hour farther on they pulled over to the side of the road. A beat-up pickup truck was sitting there.
“Here’s your ride,” Greg said. “I’ve heard Antonio’s holed up for the day about three hundred miles north. Little town called Ridgeback. Population is practically nil. They’ve got a motel, a gas station, a couple of stores, and that’s about it.”
“Thank you,” Jenn said as she exited the van.
“Don’t thank me. Just keep doing what you’re doing,” Greg said seriously.
“We will,” she assured him.
She held out her hand, remembering Gramma at Papa Che’s funeral. She had shaken Greg’s hand too. Maybe he thought of Gramma too, as he warmly shook Jenn’s hand. Behind them the rest of her team piled out of the vehicle and descended on the pickup.
“Tell your grandmother hello,” he said as he jumped back into the van.
Jenn waved and turned to her team, not having the heart to tell him that she had no way of contacting Esther Leitner.
Skye felt drained as she sat in the bed of the pickup with Holgar. She had volunteered, hoping that the feel of the wind and sun on her face would help refresh her, recharge her. She longed to take off her shoes and feel the dirt between her toes, and conduct a restorative ritual. She was going to need to take care of herself shortly if she hoped to take care of anyone else. Jamie had come around, but he was groggy and reserved—not at all himself. Skye could tell Jenn was worried about him too.
She leaned half against the cab and half against the werewolf. She could tell by the way he had his head lifted and was flaring his nostrils that he missed running through the forest. Missed being in nature. She did too. Although for Holgar it had to be a much more primal, intense experience. Sometimes Skye envied that, though not the reason why. She rested her head against Holgar’s shoulder, and he didn’t seem to mind.
When her hunting partner had come back with Taamir and Noah unharmed, she had been so intensely relieved it had momentarily eased her despair over Jamie and Antonio. As it turned out, each member of Team Salamanca was still alive. It was what Father Juan would call a miracle. And if they could kill Antonio, that would probably be a miracle too.
She had seen Antonio in that church, though, had felt his thoughts and then literally read his mind. Had that really happened? He had thought “Utah,” and now they were headed that way after him. She must have, but how?
Maybe it was a sign. Maybe Skye was supposed to reach out to him, bring him back to his senses. Antonio had overcome his vampiric nature before. Could he do it again? If he could, then maybe there was hope for Heather, or for all vampires.
Her thoughts turned to Estefan and whatever it was he had become. Less than vampire, more than witch. He had driven her mad on the palace grounds, if only for a few moments, and she had almost died because of it. Terrifying. She shivered.
Mistaking her action for physical discomfort, Holgar wrapped his arms around her to warm her. She closed her eyes, savoring his warmth, feeling the raw earthiness that was him. So much power, so much strength. And so much good. He was what Estefan should have been.
But Estefan loved his own worst nature and was trying hard to cultivate it. There had to be a special hell for those who chose to become like the Cursed Ones—if such a place existed.
Noah drove the entire distance—more than four hours—before stopping. They pulled up outside the dusty motel on the outskirts of Ridgeback. Skye hopped down from the bed of the truck and went into the lobby with Jenn to make sure that she wasn’t recognized and that no identification was requested.
She murmured the spells as softly as she could while the transaction was carried out. Two rooms were obtained, and the team staggered inside, bone weary.
Skye sank down on the one bed and stared at Eriko. She looked like some insane anime character with her stiff, blood-coated skirts and her bra. Eriko’s shredded blouse had been lost somewhere. Skye started to laugh.
“It’s not funny,” Eriko said, turning red.
Jenn turned to look, and then she, too, started to giggle. “It is, a little,” she said.
All that they had brought to the States was still in their hotel room in Vegas, and lost to them now. Skye was glad she had left everything she’d cherished back in Salamanca. Moving slowly, Jenn shrugged out of her turtleneck. She was wearing a black tank under it, and she tossed the turtleneck to Eriko, who ran with it into the bathroom and closed the door.
A minute later Skye could hear water running, and Eriko emerged after a few minutes, hair wet. The turtleneck was mismatched with the mess of a skirt, and Skye wished she had some clothes to share with Eriko. Hopefully they could find a thrift store nearby.
After sleep, that was. Skye let herself collapse onto the bed. As she closed her eyes, her stomach growled. And after food. Sleep, food, clothes. That sounded right.
Jamie had slept for much of the ride in the pickup. Now he lay on his back, staring up at the ceiling and dreaming about how many different ways he could kill that Curser Antonio. The bite wounds in his neck hurt like the devil and were beginning to itch. He was still shaky from the blood loss and transfusion.
But he would find some way to kill that vampire if it was the last thing he ever did. To think he had trained with him, fought with him, trusted him. Okay, he had never trusted Antonio.
On t
he floor Holgar yipped in his sleep, and Jamie turned his head to stare at the werewolf.
And you’re next, bloody animal.
They slept four hours and then rose. Holgar stretched his muscles. They needed to find and take down Antonio while it was still light outside and they had a chance of cornering him.
It was a shame. The old Antonio had been a good guy and deserved better. But this new Antonio was insane. Holgar had risen while the others slept, with the thought of going after him by himself. He wanted to protect the others, particularly Jenn and Skye. Jenn didn’t need to have Antonio play mind games with her. And Skye needed a rest. Plus, his partner was so tender-hearted; he had a feeling she was going to try to reach out to Antonio, in an effort to bring him back to the good side. Even if it were possible, Holgar believed it would take time and resources they just didn’t have to deal with a renegade vampire.
Ultimately, though, Holgar had waited. In a fair fight between himself and Antonio he wasn’t sure who would win. And if he went off by himself and got killed, it would make it that much harder on everyone he was trying to protect.
Jamie teetered slightly on his feet. “You okay?” Holgar asked.
“Fine,” Jamie said.
Holgar felt his hackles rise. It wasn’t like the Irishman to go so long without being mouthy. It didn’t bode well.
“All right, everyone, lock and load,” Jenn said grimly.
It was kind of funny. None of them had guns. Holgar had taken count, and among them they had eight stakes, two crosses, and one vial of holy water. He’d gone into battle with less, but not willingly.
The map in the pickup truck’s glove compartment had shown the town and an abandoned farm on its outskirts. They stopped at a combination hardware and feed store for some chain, an ax, and a large burlap sack, and Eriko rummaged through a rack of T-shirts and sweatpants.
As they drove to the farm, Holgar hoped that this would all be over soon. He felt as if he were going to an execution, and all his good humor deserted him. The situation was tragic.
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