An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication
www.ellorascave.com
Constantine
ISBN 9781419912788
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Constantine Copyright © 2007 Alicia Sparks
Edited by Ann Leveille.
Cover art by Syneca.
Electronic book Publication September 2007
This book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously.
Constantine
Alicia Sparks
Dedication
To Dr. Conklin, my ancient history professor who taught me that there are twenty sides to every story and that just because history is in the past doesn’t mean it is written in stone.
Prologue
The Vatican, Rome
Constantine stood in the shadow of the great basilica, the structure that stood over the building he had created almost two thousand years prior. So much had changed since his fated time as Emperor of Rome. History had gotten so many things wrong. He had learned early during his time as a nightwalker that he was not the man meant to save Rome. He had never intended to do anything more than unite the land he loved, the land which had taken so much from him and given so little in return.
The ancient lantern glowed beneath the crescent moon, casting an eerie light over the grass. He clenched his fists until the blood seemed to pulse in his palms. He had to end this now. Tonight.
The scroll he had hidden away so long ago remained buried beneath the former structure, he was certain. Early monks had used the slim hallway between the old structure and the new as a secret tunnel. Constantine had watched and waited, shrinking away from desecrating the holy temple. His loyalty to the Christian God was long gone. His loyalty to anything other than Rome fled within his first hundred years in exile. Tonight his loyalty to everything save himself was nonexistent. He had learned from the dark lord who’d made him what he was that none could be trusted, least of all gods and humans.
He crept quietly to the side of the temple. There were ancient ways of breaking into the old structure. Tonight he would use all the magic he could muster, counting on the powers he had long since abandoned to guide him through the darkness and allow him to slip by the guards. The words were rusty as they fell from his lips but their meaning was the same as it had been in the days of battle against other Roman forces.
“Hide me from my enemies. Shield me with the light of the moon. In this sign, defeat all others.”
The guards slept as he moved past them. Walking on light feet, he moved to the altar, a place he had avoided for fear of what may lay beyond this strange death in life he had experienced for so long. How would it feel to die? He wondered as he gazed at the relics of faith before him. He had often thought himself invincible to the cold hand of death. As irony would have it, on his deathbed, as he had accepted his fate and given in to the powers of the masses, he’d risen from the ashes just as the phoenix or the Messiah. But he was no god. He was nothing more than a man trapped in the body of a demon.
Shoving his hands into his pockets, attempting to alleviate the chill that forever flowed through his veins, he turned from the altar and moved into the darkness behind the Christ figure. He knew the way to unlock the long-forgotten stairway leading to the tunnel that would take him to the foundation of his holy creation.
As his footfalls echoed in the darkness and the damp air crept into his lungs, he once more wished for death. If all that he thought to be true was in fact true, finding the scroll would be the first step to relinquishing death’s grip on his heart. Then he would seek out the ring that had been lost to two thousand years of history, a ring that had bound him so long ago to his friend Licinius, a man who was now his mortal enemy.
He had watched the night his son had charged it with the power of the moon. Only a true witch could harness the kind of power his son Constantine II had been capable of utilizing. Someone existed in this time who understood his struggles and was able to aid him in his quest.
When he’d first met Helen, he wasn’t sure that she was the one who could help him, but as he got to know her, he realized she was the only one who could understand and accept the secrets of his past. Even if they did not trust one another, Constantine knew that they had to form a truce.
Their lives were fated to intersect, and there was more to their relationship than just a sharing of the bodies. It was time he convinced her of this, but first, he had to gain back the items he had once lost.
Chapter One
Three Weeks Later
“I can smell your blood.”
Helen cringed as the vampire’s mouth came into close contact with her neck. Too close this time. Using her strength and years of black belt training she pulled from his cold embrace, spinning around, her arm on his, kicking him in the back of the head.
He stumbled forward but didn’t fall. Instead he turned, fangs bared, and lunged for her again.
This time her foot came into contact with his face, bloodying his lip, causing a red stream to flow down his chin.
“Come here, little girl, I’ve got some candy for you,” He snarled, wiping the blood from his lip.
She raised her foot again, with precision, planting her heel into his crotch. He let out an “umph” that sounded like a windbag deflating as he fell to his knees. His nails scraped against the wet sidewalk, still covered by freshly fallen rain.
“Bitch! You’ll pay for that.”
“Not as much as you will.” She reached into her coat, pulling out a gun. The days of stakes were long gone. Since the discovery of sunshine-powered bullets vampires were dropping like flies in the city streets. She aimed for his heart as he struggled to his feet.
“Hope you reloaded.” He opened his hand, dropping three bullets onto the sidewalk in front of her. “I was a pickpocket in merry old England back when Dickens was still working for his daddy.”
“Shit.” The word came out between clenched teeth as she strained to reach the knife she kept in her back pocket. Somehow, in the fight, her jacket had twisted around.
“Who’s gonna save you now, love?” He smiled, the blood starting to dry on his chin, the soullessness of his eyes chilling her to the bone.
She’d been up against some bad vampires but most of them had been too dumb to give her much of a challenge. This one was smart but not smart enough. As he lunged for her again she dropped to the sidewalk, planting her knife in his leg. His laughter echoed as he hit the ground near her.
“That all you got?” He pulled the knife from his leg and licked the blood from it before tossing it aside.
“It was an antique.” She stood over him, noting how the color was beginning to drain from his face. “I got it from my father.”
“What did you do to me?” he cried, his voice gurgling with death.
She turned and scooped up the bullets he had dropped. Placing them in the gun, she faced him slowly. “Father Henry. St. Luke’s. Now who’s the dumbass?” The bullets were enhanced with holy water, and had been blessed by Father Henry. They also contained a compound which made their explosion mimic the UV rays that often destroyed vampires.
She fired three shots into his chest and he was dust. The weaker vampires all seemed to submit to the enhanced bullets. It usually took at least three to knock them to the ground and eliminate them. With the stronger vampires, sometimes even the bullets didn’t help.
Picking up the knife, she wiped it off on the
leg of her jeans and then stuffed it back into her pocket, rearranging her coat as she moved.
“Damned vampires,” she managed as she kicked the pile of dust. That was the one good thing about them. They made good fertilizer.
She had only taken two steps when the sound of clapping stopped her in her tracks.
“Bravo. Good show. Now let’s see how you handle a real master.”
He stepped from the shadows just as she was pushing a stray hair out of her eyes. Sebastian Romov. She let out a deep breath as she let her gaze wander up and down his body. He was a true master, having spawned most of the vampires in the city.
“What do you want?”
“You killed one of my men. That means death.” A slow smile spread across his face.
He was too pretty to be a killer, looking like a Michelangelo painting. His long fingers adjusted his lace sleeves, revealing his old European flair. His red velvet jacket would have looked stupid on anyone without his clout. On him it reminded her of a dashing pirate she may have met in another lifetime.
“You and I both know you don’t have the balls to get rid of me.” She found another bullet in her left pocket and reloaded the gun. Pointing it at his chest, she met his smile.
“And you and I both know you will not pull that trigger.”
“And how do we both know that?”
“Because you want me, Helen. You need me too. You need my protection.”
“Protection?” She practically spat the word.
“Yes. This man you killed tonight. Thomas. Tommy. Timothy. I forget his name. He is nothing to me. I have so many children in this town, he is no loss. I allow you to kill for me. You take out the ones I wish to be rid of. I give you permission to kill them.”
“You think rather highly of yourself.”
“I can see inside your head, love. I can see your thoughts. You are scared right now.”
The gun shook in her hands. She silently cursed both herself and him. “Go to hell.”
“Then send me there. Shoot me.”
He tore open his shirt, revealing his chiseled white chest. The sound of his pearl buttons hitting the sidewalk rattled her in a way she did not like.
“I will kill you, Sebastian.”
“No, you won’t. But you would like to do it. It’s in your eyes, that desire. Or is it desire for something else?”
“Eat shit,” she managed before squeezing the trigger. She knew one bullet was not powerful enough to kill a vampire as old as Sebastian. It would take more than that to kill the vampire leader. Maybe it would slow him down for the night.
He grabbed his chest and fell to his knees, giving her an opening.
She pushed the gun into her jacket and turned to walk away from him, wondering why the vampire problem in this city had gotten out of control. Of course, she knew.
There were plenty of women and men alike who lived for the sensation they got when the vamps fed off them. She wasn’t one of them.
Her heels clicked against the sidewalk as she moved down the darkened street toward her antique shop. It had been a hell of a night, and she still had a meeting with the elusive Licinius. She had been trying to track the man down ever since she learned he was in New Orleans. She had finally managed to contact him but if he learned she was working with his mortal enemy he would disappear again, taking with him the item she knew Constantine needed.
How she had managed to hook up with one of the undead was beyond her. Of course Constantine was not like the vampires who roamed New Orleans. If anything he was more complicated. He was not a vampire but she still didn’t completely trust him. Instead he was something else, something forged at the start of the Roman Empire. He was a man from the past who did not die the way history indicated.
Turning the corner, she took a glance back to see if Sebastian had followed her. The sting from the bullet would be enough to render him useless for an hour or so. She hoped. Maybe that would be enough time to figure out what to do about Licinius.
She would play it cool, she promised herself. She wouldn’t let on that she knew who he was or what kind of power he had. If the story Constantine had told her was true then Licinius held one of the keys to his and Constantine’s immortality. There were twelve items in all. She had one of them, probably the most important of them. The other eleven were spread throughout the world, each one in the possession of a man who should have died hundreds of years earlier.
Removing her keys from her pocket, she made her way to the door of her antique shop. This was how she had come into possession of the ancient Aztec stone that her father had once protected. Her father had willed his antique shop to her and with it ownership of a stone that could lead to the Apocalypse.
Slipping the key into the lock, she stole another glance down the street, half expecting Constantine to be standing there. He probably knew she had been hiding something from him earlier tonight when they had run into each other. He still didn’t trust her and she didn’t trust him.
A smile spread across her lips. Sometimes that was the best kind of relationship.
The bell rang, announcing her entrance into the shop. Flipping the lights on, she stepped into the room and waited, knowing the next few hours would have an impact on the rest of her life.
Glancing at the clock, she figured she had time to clean up before her guest arrived. It wouldn’t do to meet a client while she had bloodstains on her jeans. Slipping into the tiny bathroom near the back of the shop, she reached for her extra clothes she kept on hand in case of an emergency. She attempted to avoid looking in the mirror. When she did she was shocked by her reflection.
There was a hardness around her mouth that had not been there when her father was alive. Her eyes were bloodshot and the vein at the front of her forehead pulsed from the tension of her new life. Wiping the blood from her cheek, she took a deep breath. How had she ended up here? How had her father ended up with these secrets that now controlled her life?
There were no easy answers. Right now she had too much to do to seek answers. She needed the ring Licinius possessed. It was another piece of the puzzle. Of course the advantage she held was access to a woman Licinius had once loved. If the stories her father told her were true, Licinius would do anything to find this woman.
After her quick glance, she ran a brush through her hair and fixed her makeup. At least she looked presentable now. Then she went back out into the main room and waited, hoping Licinius would show up before Constantine did.
Helen had given up on Licinius. It was almost midnight before a shadow darkened the doorway. She looked up to see the old man standing in front of her.
“Can I help you?”
“I spoke to you earlier. You have something of value to me and I have something of value to you.”
“Licinius.” She folded her arms across her chest and eyed the man. He did not look the way she had imagined. Unlike Constantine, who had remained young in spite of his nearly two thousand years of age, Licinius walked with a cane and looked as if he were at least seventy years old. His gray hair was neatly tied back into a ponytail and an old-fashioned black hat sat on top of his head. He was dressed in a suit reminiscent of old London.
“You must be Helen, Charles’ daughter.”
“Yes. My father mentioned that you might be willing to make a trade.” In his last few years her father had come clean about the reasons behind his disappearances throughout the years. He had been working with Father Henry at St. Luke’s in an attempt to both rid New Orleans of vampires and help gather the remaining items in order to stave off the destruction of the world as they knew it. It was a heavy burden but she had come to understand her father in those days and was more than willing to take up his life’s work.
“This is the item you are seeking.” He removed a ring from his finger and pushed it across the counter toward her.
Helen reached for it, her fingers shaking as she contemplated holding the future in her hands. She held up the ring, inspecting it beneath th
e light of her lamp. The carvings on the band reminded her of an old story her father had once told her, one about a ring with magical powers to conquer the world. As a child she’d had no idea he spoke the truth. As a woman she knew the power of what she held in her hand.
The stone looked no worse for wear. It was a large emerald that looked as if it had been rubbed to its shiny state rather than cut the way emeralds are today. The crest encrusted on the stone was one she did not recognize, one that probably meant something to someone but was lost on her. Constantine would know the meaning of the crest. He would know how these items fit in with each other. If she decided to share the ring with him.
“Are you willing to make a trade?” she asked, placing his ring on the table in front of her.
The man reached out and fingered the ring, his black leather gloves covering it for a brief second. “If what you have is authentic then yes, I am willing to trade.” His accent sounded Italian but she couldn’t be sure.
“I assure you, if you are who you claim to be, who my father said you are, then what I have for you will be well worth whatever value this ring has and then some.” She smiled and reached under the counter. Pulling out a lockbox, she opened it carefully and showed the man the contents.
They didn’t mean anything to her but she knew they would be beyond value to the man who stood before her.
“Tell me, do you know the legends of Constantine?”
“Roman Emperor. Something about a bridge.” She stared blankly at the man’s deep blue eyes, which made a nice contrast to his silver hair, a bit long for an older guy like himself.
“Battle of Melvian Bridge. A turning point in Western civilization.”
“The landing of Cortez. A turning point in the history of the world. But hey, I studied Spanish in school.” She shrugged, feigning lack of interest. She was not going to blow her cover and let him know that she knew anything about Constantine.
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