“The cycles are the key to our existence; they guarantee our continued invisibility in the human world. According to the Code, the expression of each spirit is closely monitored and recorded. There are lists and rules that govern who is called up, and by whom and when. There was no record of Allegra being allowed to bear a daughter in this cycle. So the mere fact that you were born was already a violation.”
From birth she had been a mistake, Schuyler thought. Her mother . . . that still, silent figure in the hospital bed . . . why did she choose to have me? Schuyler wondered.
“But so what? That still doesn’t explain it. Why would they even care about that? What’s it to them? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I know,” Jack sighed.
“You’re not telling me everything,” Schuyler realized. He was protecting her. ‘tell me the truth. There has to be a reason why they’ve been trying to kill me.”
Jack hung his head. Finally he spoke. “A long time ago, during the crisis in Rome, the Pistis Sophia saw the future. She said that one day, the irrevocable bond among the Uncorrupted would break. That Gabrielle would spurn Michael and bear a daughter with a Red Blood. And that daughter would be the death of the Silver Bloods. Sophia has never been wrong.”
“So I’m their death?” Schuyler found it absurdly funny. “Me? They’re scared . . . of me?” A half-hysterical yelp escaped before she could stop herself. It was so absolutely ridiculous. What could she do to harm them? As the Inquisitor had pointed out, she had used her mother’s sword and missed. She might be fast and strong and light, but she was not a fighter, not a warrior, not a soldier.
Jack crossed his arms. “It’s nothing to laugh about. Leviathan would have killed you right there that night in Rio if he had known who you were. And now that he knows he was so close and failed to kill you, he’s tracked you down here to finish the job.”
“But how do you know Leviathan has tracked me?”
“Because I have been tracking Leviathan,” Jack said grimly. “My father and I have been tracking him for months.”
“Charles is here?” she asked. She wondered why the news did not make her feel safer. Charles Force was the greatest of them all. He was Michael, Pure of Heart, the Valiant, Prince of the Angels, Supreme Commander of the Lord’s Army. She had been looking for Charles herself, and to know that he was here in Paris, and as her protector, or one of them, anyway, should have gladdened her heart. But it did not.
Charles Force was not a friend. He was not an enemy, but he was not a friend either. But maybe now she would be able to find out what Lawrence had asked her to do. Charles would have to tell her about the Van Alen Legacy. Schuyler had to know. She owed her grandfather that much. Jack nodded.
“Yes. He decided to come himself when the Conclave would not send the Venators after Leviathan following your testimony. We have been one step and two cities behind him for months. When Leviathan led us here, to this party, we thought he was after the countess, as she was instrumental in bringing about his imprisonment on Corcovado. But when we saw you in the ballroom, we suddenly knew what his real intentions were. Charles sent me to make sure you were safe while he took care of Leviathan himself.”
So basically she was in danger from the baddest demon around. Wonderful. She was running from the Venators when she probably should have been running toward them, now that she knew what was truly after her.
“So you believe me? You believe that I didn’t kill Lawrence like the Conclave thinks?” Schuyler asked.
He looked down. “I can’t speak for the Conclave. But I have always believed you. I’ve always believed in you,” he said softly.
“Right.” She nodded, trying to appear businesslike, to hide the fact that she had been moved by his faith. Jack believed her. He was on her side. He didn’t hate her, at least. He didn’t hate her for breaking his heart. “So what now?”
“First things first,” he said briskly. “Let’s get out of this dungeon. I was worried you would choose this place to hide. And I think you’ve noticed it smells pretty awful down here.”
CHAPTER 19
Bliss
Muffie Astor Carter (real name Muriel) was a Blue Blood in every sense of the word. She was educated at Miss Porter’s and Vassar, and had worked in the publicity department of Harry Winston before marrying Dr. Sheldon Carter, who had found fame as the plastic surgeon to the Park Avenue set. Their bonding was one of the more controversial ones in recent memory, as it had taken each quite a few attempts to find the other. He was her second husband and she his third wife.
She was also one of New York’s most popular socialites. Jealous rivals sniped that the public just took a liking to her name. It was so outrageously preppie it sounded like a joke. But it was not; it was the real thing, like Muffie herself, who embodied a horsey, Bedford, WASP authenticity in an age of brash nouveau-riche hordes adding “von? or ‘de? to their names and who didn’t know a Verdura from a Van Cleef.
Every year Muffie opened up her sprawling Hamptons estate, “Ocean’s End”, for a fashion show to benefit the New York Blood Bank. It was the highlight of the August social calendar. Located at the end of Gin Lane, the property sprawled over six acres and included a manor house with a separate and equally lavish guesthouse, a twelve-car garage, and staff quarters.
The sweeping grounds featured two pools (saline and freshwater), tennis courts, a lily pond, and professionally maintained gardens. The Bermuda grass was cut by hand, with scissors, every other day, to keep it at just the right length.
Balthazar shook Bliss’s hand with a limp handshake and passed her on to Muffie with a wan smile.
“I’m so glad to see you looking so well, my dear,” Muffie said, giving Bliss the most insubstantial of embraces. Muffie had a broad, recessed forehead with nary a wrinkle (her plastic-surgeon husband’s most effective advertising) and the perfect blond coif pervasive on the Upper East Side. She was the epitome of the breed: tanned, slender, graceful, and appropriate. She was everything Bobi Anne had wanted to be but could never match.
“Thank you,” Bliss said, trying not to feel too awkward. “It’s good to be here.”
“You’ll find the rest of the models in the back. I think we’re running late as usual,” Muffie said cheerfully.
Bliss walked toward the backstage area of the tent, swiping a canape from a tray and a glass of champagne from one of the buffet tables. Henri was right: this was an easy gig. It wasn’t a real fashion show, merely a presentation to wealthy clients in the name of charity. Whereas a real fashion show was a chaotic commotion of energy and anxiety, attended by hundreds of editors, retailers, celebrities, and covered by hundreds of media outlets around the world, the Balthazar Verdugo show on Muffie Carter’s estate was more like a glorified trunk show, with models. It was so odd to be back in the real world, to be walking on damp grass (sinking in her heels, really), munching on appetizers, and looking out at the Carters’ amazing ocean view, an unbroken line of blue stretching over the horizon, and to find out that in some parts of the world, even their world, the world of the Committee and the Coven, there were some who remained indifferent and downright disinterested in what had happened in Rio.
Muffie and the other women on the Committee whom Bliss bumped into at the party did not bring up Bobi Anne’s death or the massacre of the Conclave. Bliss understood that they simply went on about their lives: planning parties, hosting benefits, doing the rounds of couture shows, horse shows, and charity causes, which filled their days. They did not seem too worried or distressed. Cordelia Van Alen had been right: they were in the deepest denial. They didn’t want to accept the return of the Silver Bloods. They didn’t want to accept the reality of what the Silver Bloods had done and were planning to do. They were satisfied with their lives and they didn’t want anything to change.
It had been so long since any of them had been warriors, soldiers, arm-in-arm and side-by-side in battle against the Dark Prince and his legions. It was hard to imagine this group of underfed overly Botoxed socialites and their slacker children as hardened warriors in a war for heaven and earth. It was as Cordelia had said to Schuyler: the vampires were getting lazy and indulgent, more and more like humans every day, and less inclined to fulfill their heavenly destiny.
It dawned on Bliss that this was what had set Cordelia and Lawrence apart, they cared. They had kept their vigilance against the forces of hell and had sounded an alarm. An alarm that no one was too keen on hearing. The Van Alens were the exception to the norm. It only made sense that Schuyler would be just like them. Her friend had never felt comfortable in the world of the leisured rich, even though she had been born into it. But Schuyler wasn’t the only one. Even Mimi and Jack Force were different. They had not forgotten their gloried past. Just one look at the way Mimi flaunted her extraordinary vampire abilities was enough to convince anyone that there was more to that skinny bitch than just the capacity to shop.
But these people, this self-satisfied group of elites who had barely even blinked at the news of the massacre, these people called themselves vampires?
“Exactly. Just like the members of the Conclave, they will be easy enough to overcome when the time comes.”
Bliss shivered. She had gotten used to being alone, and had forgotten that the Visitor could pop in at any time.
CHAPTER 20
Mimi
El Sol de Ajuste was located in Cidada de Deus, The City of God, the notorious slums in the western part of the city that had inspired a major Hollywood movie and a subsequent television show, City of Men. Of course, the real city was nothing like the cleaned-up Hollywood version, which was the equivalent of a ‘slum tour’ arranged by hotel concierges: showcasing fashionable grittiness. The reality of poverty was much harsher and much uglier, the towering mountains of trash, the stench of sewer and garbage, the bare-bottomed children languishing on the streets, smoking cigarettes; the way no one batted the flies away, they were way past caring about something so simple as flies.
The bar was nothing more than a tin shack, a lean-to with a roof and a wooden counter pocked with holes. When Mimi and the boys arrived, a group of rowdy toughs were harassing the barback, the boy who cleaned the counters and sopped up the spilled beer with ragged towels. Mimi recognized the fierce-looking tattoos branded on the gang members’ cheeks: they were members of Commando Prata, Silver Command, a notorious street gang, and responsible for most of the criminal activity in this part of the ghetto. This was going to be interesting.
“Voc? deve tr’s pesos?” the barback insisted. You owe me three pesos. “Caralho! Vai-te foder?” The fat one laughed and cursed at the boy, pushing him against the wall.
The elderly proprietor stood behind the table, looking frightened and annoyed to find his employee being harassed, as well as finding his small establishment suddenly crawling with strange, black-clad foreigners.
“Can I help you?” he huffed in Portuguese, keeping an eye on the kid. “You! Leave him alone?” he cried as one of the gangsters tripped the boy, sending him falling facedown on the floor.
In answer, the fat bully gave the cowering boy a sharp kick in the head. There was a sickening crunch of a steel-toe boot against bone, and in a quick movement, one of the gang had a knife to the bartender’s throat. “You got something to say to us, old man?”
“Put down the blade,” Kingsley ordered in a quiet voice.
“Piss off,” the leader said. He was a skinny kid with a pockmarked face sitting in the back. He held up his automatic weapon as casually as a soda can. The local drug lords acted as an unofficial police presence in the shantytowns, playing judge and executioner at their whim. But the only law they upheld was their own.
“Happy to, as soon as you let these good people go,” Kingsley said smoothly. There were twenty gang members and only four Venators, hardly a fair fight for the sorry group of Red Bloods. If the vampires wanted to, they could destroy everyone in the room without warning. Mimi could see it already: a pile of corpses on the floor.
She felt her blood rise to the challenge, but it was a superficial rise, the kind of shallow excitement one felt upon watching a boxing match when you already knew the outcome. These thugs thought they were so tough, but they were nothing: fleas on the backs of buffalo, hyenas before lions. Mimi wished for better sport, a bigger challenge.
The street gangs were not afraid of the foreigners, however, and were faster than the Venators gave them credit for. Before Kingsley could turn around he was cut with a blade, a tear on his sleeve revealing an ugly wound.
That was enough. Mimi spun around, kicking two of them to the ground and forcing another to his knees. She was about to draw Eversor Lumen, Light-Destroyer, when she heard Kingsley’s voice in her head. “No weapons! No deaths!”