MariElena would die.
Jack would be taken.
There was nothing Schuyler could do but scream.
THIRTEEN
Angel Time
There was so little time to do anything out in the real world, where she had been captured and attacked. So Schuyler looked inward, into her soul and into the glom. Time did not exist in the same way in the inner universe.
She opened her eyes to the murky waters of the twilight world, and felt the heavy constriction of the dark spell that held her captive. In the glom, her bindings manifested as a coil of snakes writhing around her skin. She felt their scaly wetness wrap around her body, clutching her ever more tightly. They were all around, slithering against her waist, around her legs, slipping through her fingers. She could smell their oozy stink, and shivered to hear the rasp of their tongues.
A stasis spell worked as part of the compulsion--mind control--essentially an order to make you believe you were trapped, which was why it was one of the most difficult factors to master. You had to stop believing what was right in front of you.
Schuyler focused on the snake nearest to her head. She could feel its cold reptile body working its way around her shoulders. She turned so she could face it eye to eye. It was a fearsome king cobra, its hood spread as it reared to attack. It bared its fangs and hissed.
But before it could strike, Schuyler overcame her revulsion and reached down to grip it by its tail, and with one fluid motion, she pulled the snake away from her body and crushed its serpent head under her heel.
In a flash she was back in the real world of the cave, holding her mother's sword. "Stop!" she commanded, her voice ringing with fury.
The priest hastened to thrust the knife through the girl's neck, but before the blade could penetrate her skin, Schuyler had parried it away, and it clattered on the rocks. MariElena fell to the ground, and Ghedi with her, felled by Schuyler's compulsion to surrender.
That was all Jack needed. With a vehement roar, he broke his bonds and transformed into the fearsome Angel of Destruction, magnificent black wings sprouting from his back, his horns curled to sharp diamond points, and his eyes a bloodcurdling crimson. He picked up the now quivering bounty hunter and crushed him against his talons.
"Jack, no. Don't kill him!" Schuyler cried. Let there be no blood spilled today.
"Listen to the girl. . . ." the bounty hunter gurgled.
Schuyler put a gentle hand on Abbadon's feathered extensions, feeling the majestic power underneath their silky weight. She had been frightened once, to see him in this light, but now that she saw his terrifying true face, she found it beautiful.
He turned to her; as Abbadon he looked at once nothing at all like Jack, and yet more like him than ever.
He was going to hurt you. Please, my love.
Then he was Jack again, ruddy-cheeked and handsome. He pulled the bounty hunter to his feet. "Go. Tell my sister that her parasite has failed. Tell her that nothing and no one can bring me back." That was all the bounty hunter needed to hear. He disappeared before taking another breath.
Schuyler collapsed into Jack's arms, and they held each other.
I thought I was going to lose you, she sent.
Never. We shall never be separated. Jack bent his head against her shoulder, and she leaned on his chest so that she could hear his heart beating a steady, ordered rhythm against hers.
Never.
The Artist's Studio
Florence, 1452
In the morning, Tomi returned to her work at the studio. The Master would not return until tomorrow, and there was still so much to do. She greeted her fellow assistants and took her place at the back of the room, where she resumed carving a relief meant for the east doors of the Baptistery. The work was painstaking and exact, but Tomi reveled in it, finding glory and beauty in the fine details. She was soon lost in thought, her hands quickly running over the marble, while her mind lingered over the events of a month before.
What did it mean that a human carried the mark of the Prince of Darkness? Had their old foe found a way back to Earth? It could not be. They had sent the devil down to hell, had locked Caligula behind an impenetrable gate. Together they had sent the Order of the Seven out to the world, to secure the paths of the Dead. The man wearing the Citadel robes had been an impostor. No one had ever seen him before. He was a stranger to their town. Andreas believed that the human had lied and that the creature was no demon, but Tomi was more given to anxiety.
She was sixteen years old; already she knew who she was and what she was meant for in this world. After the crisis in Rome, in every consequent lifetime, the Venators had made it their mission to track down the remaining Silver Bloods who were trapped on the other side of the Gate and still walked the Earth. No one else in the Coven knew about the errant surviving Silver Bloods. It was a secret the Venators kept in order to keep peace in the community. The Blue Bloods had nothing to fear from the Croatan; Andreas had kept their people safe for hundreds of years. Hunting down the
Croatan was as routine as a cat chasing field mice. Necessary and efficient.
But now this. Tomi saw the triglyph again, the blood etching on the man's arm, and dropped her knife, making an ugly smear on the bas-relief.
The Master would not be pleased.
"You are troubled, my friend," Gio said, picking up the knife and handing it back to her. "Do not be. We will take care of this."
She nodded. "I only wish Dre was here." Andreas del Pollaiuolo was the youngest adviser to the court of Lorenzo de Medici, working to solidify the family's grasp on power in Florence over the other ruling families of the city. The Medicis' banking interests spanned all of Europe with a network of branches in all the major cities. It was a cover that made it easy for Dre to travel the continent without arousing suspicion.
But Tomi knew there was another reason Dre worked so hard to ensure the Medicis' influence would reach far beyond their beautiful city. The crisis in Rome was forever utmost in his mind. While he had succeeded in banishing Lucifer from the world, he had been unable to halt the decline of the glorious Republic that the Morningstar, as Caligula, had corrupted. Rome was lost.
Dre was intent on rebuilding its glory. He was determined to finish what he started, pledging to resurrect the glory of Rome and the culture of antiquity, and vaulting it to a new level. Already he had rewritten the Code of the Vampires to shape human history and imbue mankind with Blue
Blood sensibility and values--the celebration of art, life, beauty and truth. He would bring about mankind's rebirth, he told her, in their numerous conversations about what they hoped to achieve in this cycle. He had already given it a name: The Renaissance.
But all this work took her beloved away from her, and since the night of the chase, they hardly had a moment together.
He was always like this, her Michael. Andreas. Cassius. Menes. Whatever his name was, he was always hers. Her strength, her love, her reason for being. They would fight this new threat together. She would await his return and then impress upon him the urgency to unmask their hidden enemies and discover the truth behind the Red Blood's mark.
PART THE SECOND
MIMI FORCE, REGENT OF THE COVEN
New York
The Present
FOURTEEN
Vipers' Nest
Self-pity was not a word in Mimi Force's vocabulary. Instead of cursing the loneliness and isolation she felt from losing both her twin and the man she loved--two separate people for the first time in her long and immortal life--she busied herself with Conclave business, burying her grief and rage in her work and finding solace in presiding over the bureaucratic administration of a large and flailing organization.
That old hag Cordelia Van Alen used to describe the current era as "the twilight of the vampires"--as if a heavy velvet curtain were falling across the stage, and it was time for the Blue Bloods to exeunt left. (Mimi always liked those old English words. Exeunt was a vastly more interesting way to shuffle off this mortal coil--as if the vampires were ready to take their bows in front of a standing ovation rather than simply limping away into the sunset.)
If this was their end, her end, then it was an intolerable one. Mimi hadn't lived a multitude of lifetimes to end up so alone, without the security blanket of
Jack to steady her, without Kingsley's endearing arrogance to keep her on her toes. She wasn't going to give up so easily.
Mimi opened the door to her new office. A week ago, ever since Forsyth Llewellyn had gone missing after the "bonding disaster"--as everyone called the travesty that had been her bonding day--the Conclave had agitated for a new leader. To her surprise, it was her name that had come up in the draw. A week after the disastrous bonding, Ambrose Barlow, a sprightly gentleman of a hundred and one years (cycle extensions had been granted to allow