by Nancy Holder
“The hell with it,” Jamie said, throwing down his shovel. He fell back against one of the towering stones, then slid down to the dirt on his arse. He turned the scrying stone over and over in his hands. He knew Father Juan didn’t like him. Maybe he’d given him a chunk of crystal with no magickal properties whatsoever and sent him off to England just to be rid of him.
“Jamie, lad, how can you think that?” he asked himself in a mocking tone. “Father Juan is your priest.”
Yeah, and it was a priest that had let werewolves kill his family. Jamie was fairly certain his own grandfather had gunned down the priest in retaliation.
It was the O’Leary way.
“Damn it, Father Juan,” Jamie said aloud.
Then, as he looked up at the sky, thick gray clouds bubbled out of nowhere and rushed to cover the sun. The sky turned gunmetal gray. The clouds boiled.
A flash of lightning leaped from the clouds and struck the megalith across from him. The whole thing lit up like a neon sign.
The one he was leaning against began to vibrate and hum. And to grow hot.
“Bloody hell!” he shouted, leaping to his feet.
A new bolt of lightning hit the ground inches from his feet. A jagged fissure burst open, and Jamie darted to the left.
A harsh wind whirled around him, spraying him with dirt. He heard the whine of a motorcycle engine in the distance. He cocked his head. Not just one, then. Not even just two. Many.
And they were coming in his direction.
BUCHAREST, ROMANIA
JENN, HOLGAR, AND ANTONIO
Holgar was in a fury. All he had wanted was a drink of water. And as no humans seemed to be around, he had dropped to the riverbank to lap with his tongue, realizing that it was too polluted at the exact same moment that another werewolf in full wolf form attacked him from behind.
The two tumbled into the water. Still unable to transform at will, Holgar knew he couldn’t let the wolf get the upper hand, or he would die. So he flung himself on top of his attacker and held him under the water. The werewolf thrashed, struggling for breath. Finally it stopped struggling, going completely limp. Still Holgar held him down, until he changed back into a human.
Then Holgar lifted his head. The man spewed water and inhaled a deep breath.
“Who sent you?” Holgar demanded.
His answer was greeted by silence. Grimly, he pushed the man’s head back below the surface. The man flailed his arms weakly.
Holgar pulled him back up.
“Who—?”
“Lucifer. Save me,” the man said in Danish. His blue eyes were bloodshot, his face gray.
Holgar froze. Lucifer was Antonio’s grandsire.
“Vampire Kingdom,” the man said. His voice was barely above a whisper. “Spare the werewolves.”
“For helvede!” Holgar cried as he dropped the man and raced back into the forest separating the river from the safe house where Antonio and Jenn were. In his mind’s eye he saw a pack of werewolves and human collaborators breaking down the door, murdering Jenn and staking Antonio. He whined; then he felt himself begin to change. Hair covered his hands; his fingers began to extend.
He threw back his head and howled.
Then everything reversed and he was human again. Just human, running as fast as he could, bursting out of the copse of trees, across a narrow road, into the warren of structures, to their front door.
“Hey!” he shouted, because he shouldn’t call out their names. “Hey!”
There was no answer. He tried the latch. It was locked. He pounded once, then threw himself against the door as hard as he could. No good; he tried again. This time it gave.
He burst across the threshold to find Antonio with his fangs sunk into Jenn’s neck. She was struggling against him, but he had both her hands in one of his, stretched above her head.
So much blood. Dear God, Jenn—
With a roar he tackled Antonio, and they rolled together away from Jenn. Holgar hit Antonio in the face as hard as he could, then whirled around, scooped up Jenn in his arms, and bolted for the doorway into the sunlight. The blessed sunlight.
His clothes were streaked with blood. It terrified him how much blood there was.
Then he saw two men in dark robes rushing toward him. Each had a cross extended.
“Saint Andrew,” one said, in heavily accented English. “What’s happened?”
“Antonio is in there; he’s gone bad,” Holgar said frantically, struggling to convey his meaning in English. “Where can I take her?”
“We have a vehicle.”
The man turned and pointed to the opposite end of the alley, where a dark gray van sat idling. A man behind the wheel gestured to Holgar.
Behind Holgar, Antonio’s voice rose in anguish.
“Jenn! What have I done? What have I done?”
“We’ll deal with him,” the man said to Holgar. “Take care of her.”
“It’s light out,” Holgar reminded him. “If you take him out in the sun—”
The man looked at him with a deadly serious expression. “We know.”
BOOK TWO
ANKOU
I remained, lost in oblivion;
My face I reclined on the Beloved.
—St. John of the Cross,
sixteenth-century mystic of Salamanca
CHAPTER SEVEN
It’s true; you can’t trust anyone when you’re a hunter. It’s the hardest, most terrible truth that can ever be learned. How do you fight when those who are supposed to be on your side can turn on you in a moment? Even those who love you?
I wish I had never gone to Salamanca. I wish I had lived my life in ignorance. But then I could have ended up just like Brooke. Or Heather. I don’t know which is worse. Death or conversion?
I’m not sure how much more I can take.
—from the diary of Jenn Leitner,
retrieved from the ruins
LAKE COMO, ITALY
HEATHER
She was hungry. Or thirsty. She didn’t know what to call it. All she knew was that it burned, hotter than anything she had ever known.
Which was ironic, because her skin was cold as ice.
Which was terrible, because there was nothing she could do to warm it. Not that she felt cold or warmth, not in any real way.
Heather walked across the marble floor, then her toes curled as they sank into a thick circular carpet.
She didn’t remember where she’d lost her shoes. It didn’t really matter. Her skin was practically impervious to everything now. Even when she’d stepped on some broken glass, her cut had healed the moment she plucked the shard from between her toes. The pain had been nothing, more like the whisper of a touch to let her know that something was different. Wrong.
Everything about her was wrong. And tired. And cold.
And so very hungry.
She thought she might have eaten someone a while back. She wasn’t sure. It sort of all blurred together.
A rabbit.
She knew she’d eaten a rabbit at some point.
Bugs Bunny.
Thumper.
White Rabbit.
Brer Rabbit.
Peter Cottontail.
Yes, she had eaten someone named Peter. But he wasn’t a rabbit.
She’d give anything right now for a rabbit.
Something moved in the dark, and she dropped behind a couch to the plush white carpet, fluffy like a bunny. She balled her fists into the velvety twists and listened.
She was in a palace. Lucifer owned it. She’d heard others talking about him. They were scared of him.
She’d never believed in the Devil. Now she was a devil. But not for long. Because she was going to kill Aurora and then—
She wouldn’t let herself think about “then.” Couldn’t. All she could think about, all she must think about, was Aurora. She mustn’t eat until she ripped the woman’s throat out and drank of her blood.
Like she drank mine. Drank it all up.
> Damn, she was thirsty.
She listened as she heard the voices of two vampires. One had a strong Russian accent. She felt like she should hold her breath so they couldn’t hear her.
But she didn’t breathe.
Not anymore.
One more reason to kill Aurora.
“We’ll be leaving within the hour. Are all the preparations made to transport my matroyshkas?”
“Yes, sir. They’ve been readied for the journey.”
“Good. And the other thing?”
“Taken care of.”
What other thing?
Her curiosity passed. It wasn’t important. All that was important was killing Aurora.
“Good. Lucifer, Aurora, and I leave tonight for Transylvania.”
The other vampire started to snicker and then quickly stopped.
“And no one must know of my plans.” The Russian’s voice was hard, and she knew what was coming next.
“You can trust me,” the stupid vampire who hadn’t figured it out said.
There was a slight noise and then a gurgling sound. The scent of blood filled the air, and a moment later a body hit the ground with a thud. She could see ash swirl in the air as it disintegrated.
“I can trust you now,” the Russian said.
She listened as he walked out of the room. Then Heather scrambled out from behind the couch and ran toward the pile of ash on the floor, but the blood had already turned. She picked up the ashes in her hands, whimpering, tasting it.
The blood was all gone, but she had smelled it.
She started to cry, and blood tears streaked down her cheeks. She wiped them with her fingers and then sucked the drops from her skin, shaking with desire.
Soon she would have to feed.
SOUTHERN FRANCE
FATHER JUAN AND ESTHER LEITNER
They were in the middle of nowhere. Father Juan pushed his way through the thicket, feeling dozens of branches from the different shrubs catching at his clothes. Behind him Esther trudged, silent, a trooper who didn’t complain about the cold or the scratches or the seemingly endless wandering around.
At her insistence he had put aside the clothes that would mark him as a priest and wore camouflage clothes he had packed in a duffel. Although they helped him blend into his surroundings, they itched.
They were fugitives. Outlaws.
Condemned by the Church, hunted by the Cursed Ones. It was hard to draw breath, because it seemed their cause was such a hopeless one.
That’s why God makes me live, he thought, trying not to be bitter.
“You’re awfully quiet, Padre,” Esther said, breaking the silence. “Spending too much time in your own head?”
He chuckled. “Don’t we all?”
“A little hard to escape sometimes,” she noted drily. “An old lady like me doesn’t want to spend too much time there.”
“You’re not old,” he said, too quickly.
“Uh-huh. Speaking of old, been meaning to talk to you about that.”
He felt his skin prickle. Esther Leitner was sharp, with the cunning of a fox and the vision of an eagle. He had often sensed that she was watching him, studying him. It had been so long since any had done that with eyes that truly wanted to know the truth, and it frightened him a little.
“What is it, Esther?” he asked.
“Well, Juan, you strike me as a very old man.”
“War makes men old.”
“And lies make men older.”
Her eyes were locked on him, intense, probing. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.
They climbed deeper into the thicket where outlaws and, later, Free French Forces and so many others had hidden. He only hoped the flower they sought had also remained hidden. The entire area was under vampire control. Still, the sun was shining high in the sky, and as thick and tall as the brush was, a Cursed One would be hard-pressed to find cover from the burning of the sun.
“You have the eyes of a very old man,” she persisted.
He didn’t say anything.
“You look young, but you’re not.”
That caught him by surprise. He struggled not to give any sign of his intense discomfort. Esther would make a formidable enemy, and he had the sudden, overwhelming realization that he had underestimated her.
And underutilized her.
She, too, had spent a lifetime hiding her identity. Of course she would look at the world differently, assume others were hiding things as well. Maybe that was all it was. Perhaps he could allay her concerns.
Esther grabbed his arm with enough force to turn him to face her.
Her eyes were hard. “Listen, you want to hide who you are from my granddaughter and all her friends, that’s fine. But I need to know who I’m fighting with.”
“I promise you we’re on the same side,” he said.
She pursed her lips. “You know, I did a little research while we were staying at the monastery.”
He licked his lips. “Oh?”
“Yeah. I’ve got my suspicions about who you really are.”
He realized that denying it would do him no good. But he was not going to admit it, either.
“You don’t want to fess up, fine. But I need to know one thing,” she said, squinting at him.
“What?”
“How are you still alive?”
Somewhere to the left a roar split the air.
He spun to face the sound, and Esther aimed her submachine gun.
In the hush she whispered, “What is it?”
He crossed himself. “I don’t know.”
The tops of the bushes began to shake, and the sounds of breaking branches crackled through the air. The ground beneath his feet began to tremble.
“That can’t be good,” Esther muttered.
And then they saw it. It was tall, approaching seven feet, and its skin was chalk white except for where it was covered with dingy gray fur. Ragged military clothes hung off its nearly naked body. Its head, shoulders, and chest were bulbous and misshapen, and its overly long arms ended in claws. Its legs were knotted with muscles, and its feet were bare.
“Hybrid!” he shouted, grabbing for his Uzi. He pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. “It’s jammed!”
“Got it,” Esther said, as she let loose with her own submachine gun. The bullets thudded into the thing as it kept coming toward them.
Father Juan thanked the Holy Mother that the monstrosity didn’t have super speed. But Esther’s bullets weren’t slowing it down.
He raised his hands, murmured a spell, and let loose with fireballs that hit the hybrid, one after another, in the face. The creature screamed, sounding all too human, and raised a hand to its eyes.
And then it charged Father Juan and Esther. With a shout Father Juan threw up a protective barrier, and the creature crashed against it so hard that it bounced back and fell on its back.
Esther dashed forward, and he barely had time to drop the barricade before she, too, hit it. She leaped on top of the creature and emptied what had to be most or all of her clip into its skull and chest. The bullets ricocheted off the bony protrusions of its head.
Which meant beheading it would probably be out of the question.
Father Juan raced up beside her. The hybrid was bleeding from several chest wounds. The face was batlike, with an inverted triangle of cartilage and two holes for nostrils. The eyes were dark black, and its mouth was a jagged mess of fangs.
Father Juan conjured a fireball and showed it to the creature. “Are there more of you?”
The hybrid groaned and shook its head, but snapped its jaws at them. Blood and saliva mixed together. And something green and foul-smelling.
“It’s sick—infection, gangrene, something,” Father Juan said.
“Then it should take this as a kindness,” Esther said. She jabbed it in the eye with the barrel of her submachine gun and pulled the trigger.
Blood splattered everywhere, and Juan jumped back with a shout.
<
br /> Esther nudged the body with a toe as it slowly began to turn to ash.
“Why did you do that?” he demanded, anger flooding him. “We could have taken it hostage, questioned it.”
“We did question it. No others around. That’s all we needed to know. Anything else wasn’t worth the danger of trying to keep him subdued.”
“Jenn would have listened to me,” he snapped at her.
“Jenn hasn’t lived as long as I have,” she retorted.
He took a deep breath, struggling to regain his composure. He took one last look at Dantalion’s monstrous creation and then turned away, not wanting to watch it decompose any further.
“It might have been able to tell us if the flower we’re looking for is anywhere near here. It might have seen it,” he said bitterly. It was a foolish wish; he doubted something so small and fragile would have mattered to the creature.
Esther bent down. “Maybe it already did,” she said.
He looked sharply at her and saw that she was pulling something off the bottom of the creature’s left shoe. A moment later the shoe had turned to ash along with the leg. She stood slowly and showed him what she had found.
A crushed flower petal.
A blood-red rose petal.
“Is this it?” she asked him.
He stared in disbelief. It was a petal of the Tears of Christ.
He looked up at Esther in wonder, and she smiled at him. “You might be older than dirt, Father, but stick with me and maybe I can teach you a thing or two.”
He nodded mutely. She was just lucky, he thought, but he didn’t believe it. He believed that someone—God, or the Lady—had made this happen.
She pointed to the direction from which the creature had come. “I suggest we go that way.”
He nodded and then set off, leading the way. She fell into step behind him and a moment later spoke again.
“You never answered my question.”
“God keeps me alive. I don’t know why. Every time I think it’s over . . . it’s not.” It hurt to talk about it, but there was a sense of relief, too. “When there is great danger to mankind, I’m there. He wants me to help.”
“For how long?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I believe that if we win this war, then He will finally let me be at peace.” He took a breath. “At least that’s my hope.”