The Archangel’s Promise
“Darling.”Charlesstoodupfromthebreakfasttablewhen he saw Allegra. He looked invigorated, returned to his former strength. But his confident smile faltered when he saw the distress on her face.
Allegra strode forward and told the servants to leave them alone. Charles nodded and the room cleared.
“Last night—I thought I would give you one night so that you could be honest with me and tell me what happened. I believed you last night, Charlie. I believed everything you said.”
Last night, when they were together, he had sworn that nothing had happened in Florence; that she knew the whole truth, and this feeling she had—that something terrible had happened—was just her guilt manifesting itself as fear. He said he would never lie to her, had never once lied to her. She believed it was her guilt at her mistake that was keeping them estranged. He had asked her to forgive herself so that together they could continue to keep their world safe. She had healed him, and she could feel the bond strengthen between them with each kiss they exchanged.
Last night, after he had pledged his honesty and his love, they had returned to each other. She had thought she’d come to the end of their separation at last. But now it seemed they were standing at the precipice once more.
“I told you the truth. I don’t understand—who have you spoken to?” he asked.
“What have you done, Charles? Who was in that ambulance? What really happened between us in Florence?” She clenched her fists. “I cannot be part of a lie. I don’t know what’s true, I don’t know what to believe. But I’m starting to think that maybe Cordelia and Lawrence were right all those years ago.”
“You’re throwing Roanoke in my face again? Is that it?”
Charles accused. “You know there was never any other substantive evidence of—”
“No matter what you say, I know you’re hiding something, and you’re not sharing it with me, and
that
is the real reason we are estranged. Not my mistake. Not my guilt.
Something you did, Charles. Something you did has changed the history of our world. I can feel it. That is the reason why I don’t love you the way I did before. Because even if I don’t remember what happened, I
know
.”
“Allegra, please. Listen to yourself. This is preposterous—these things you are accusing me of—how can you hate me so much. I promised you I would keep our people safe, and I have.”
“You are going to destroy us with your blindness and your pride.”
“The gates are holding! I gave my strength to their cre-ation. There is nothing to fear.”
She did not hear him. “You will destroy us until we are nothing but shadows of our former glory. We have lost so much already. Paradise is closed to us forever and still you do not understand,” she cried. “You’re not the same person you used to be. Something’s happened to you… and you won’t let me help you.”
Charles’s tone turned icy. “Allegra, why are you here? If you will not return to me, then why?”
“I don’t know. I think I just wanted to see you again for the last time.”
“You will bond with your human familiar, is that it?”
“Yes.”
Charles held his head in his hands and rubbed his temples. When he spoke, his voice was dark and terrible. “Do what you want, but know that I am destroyed if you bond with him. You will never see me again. We shall be estranged forever. I will not be able to survive this, Allegra. Know that my life is in your hands. You have seen what the bond can do.”
“It’s too late, Charlie. You’ve lied to me for the last time.
You made your choice. This is mine.” The bond will claim its own. Perhaps she would die, and perhaps Charles would as well. She did not know. Regardless, it was up to her to find a way to stop whatever he had set in motion, whatever he was keeping from her, whatever was causing vampires to disappear. She was Gabrielle the Uncorrupted, Queen of the Coven.
She had a duty to her people. She did not know if she would succeed, but she had to try to undo what he had done.
As Allegra walked out of the room, she was sure of one thing. She would never see Charles Van Alen—Michael, her former beloved—again. Not in this world and not in this lifetime or any other.
It was not only Charles’s immortal heart that broke that day.
Dangerous Harvest
Deming Chen kicked off her jeweled heels.
She’d run so far she had no idea she was still wearing them until she stumbled on a stone in the indoor courtyard.
During her week at the castle, she had learned several things.
most important, that it was better to be quiet. She had fought, shown her claws and her strength too early, and so she had been chosen for this punishment. She’d heard that Dehua and Schuyler had been able to get away from their ladies-in-waiting, who had been blamed for the loss, and she was annoyed with herself for having made things harder on herself by attacking too soon. She should have waited until she was alone with only the Red Bloods instead of trying to skewer that ugly toad of a demon who’d picked her for his bride.
She’d weathered an entire week in the company of those simpering ladies, who hated her already because her friends had escaped and gotten them into trouble. The women pulled her hair when they combed it, and laughed at her inability to walk in the high-heeled slippers. Her groom, the demon Baal, had visited her once she had been transformed into a proper little whore: her hair a glossy black, lips a pouty scarlet, breasts rouged and powdered, lifted and presented in the skin-tight halter.
Baal was large and terrifying, with two great horns on his wide forehead, and a long black beard. He towered over her, but Deming was not afraid. When he inspected her form and cupped her breasts, she spit in his face. But he had only chuckled.
“I will enjoy this,” he’d said. “Once you are mine, you will learn to love me, my sweet fallen angel.”
Deming bided her time and waited for the right moment.
She let the ladies-in-waiting grudgingly feed her plums and peaches; let them curl and set her hair. She’d weathered the beauty treatments and the simmering resentment.
Her bonding gown was white, the color of death, the symbol not lost upon the Blue Bloods, who traditionally only wore white at funerals. This was no wedding dress; it was funeral attire. The demon did not care that she wasn’t human and would not be able to bear him any Nephilim. She had been sold to him as a novelty—the chance to bond with one of the Fallen.
The Virgin Eve, the traditional night before the bonding, was her chance, she knew. The ladies talked of nothing else but the feast that awaited the Silver Bloods and demons in Tartarus. On the Virgin Eve the ladies would return to the brothel for a celebration of their own, their work done for the week.
Deming saw the opportunity once she was alone, but a troll had been sent to guard her. She’d made quick work of the monster, using its own collar to choke it to death. She hid his body in one of the rooms leading up to the tower—the ones with the dead bodies of Baal’s former brides.
She started running and did not stop. But the dress was hard to run in, so Deming tore off the hem at the thigh and kicked off her heels. She was barefoot, but now all she had to do was find the path back to the gate and she would be free.
She was almost at the entrance of the drawbridge when she heard the sound of screaming coming from inside the castle. Her rescuers. Damn it. Didn’t they know she could take care of herself ? This was only going to complicate things. She made her way back to the great hall and practically bumped into Sam.
“Deming!”
“Sam!”
The Venator cracked one of his rare smiles. “You’re…”
“I’m good,” she assured. “Aside from some unwanted groping, I’m okay. You think I’d let a demon touch me and live?”
He hugged her tightly. “I know. I wasn’t worried….”
“Let’s get everyone and get out of here. I just found out something—one of the trolls told me I wasn’t meant for Baal after all. He was just checking me out for someone higher up who wanted me for himself,” she said urgently. The troll who’d come to fetch her had spilled the beans with a smug smile, which had made its death even more satisfying.
But before Deming could say anything more, there was a silver flash and a loud boom from the great hall, which shook the castle to its core.
Deming and Sam turned around.
Jack had been mistaken. It was not a Hellhound that had risen from the deep.
They saw a great horned beast, larger than any demon, looming over the melee. “That’s not a demon,” said Sam.
“That’s a Croatan.”
“That’s what I was trying to tell you,” Deming said. This was malakai, the Steward. On earth he had been known as Forsyth Llewellyn, Lucifer’s strongest ally, and his appearance in the underworld meant that he was even stronger now, as it proved that he was able to breach the wall between the worlds freely and that no gate could hold him. After taking Deming he would take her blood spirit as well, and planned to con-sume her strength into his.
The Silver Blood reeked of death. His foul stench filled the air. He had a bull’s head, and when he laughed, his yellow teeth glistened with saliva. His forked tongue was pierced with a dark bronze ring. His face was covered with dark fur and clotted with blood. When he screamed he breathed the Black Fire.
Sam and Deming ran toward the battle to help their friends, their swords drawn, but it was too late. The beast’s spiked tail was already buried in Mahrus’s chest.
The Venator fell to his death.
The Porter’s Fee
“We’re going to have to jump off again, before it gets to the end of the line. The fewer hounds we see, the better. I don’t know how long they’ll listen to me if I’m leaving,” Kingsley told them, as the train began to slow down. The land outside was the same dusty desert as from the beginning of their journey, Oliver noted. He wasn’t looking forward to perform-ing another superhuman trick, which came so easily to the two vampires; but he supposed he didn’t have a choice.
“Ladies first,” Oliver said, letting Mimi have the window.
She pulled herself to the edge and then flew off, rolling into a ball as she fell onto the sand.
She looked up at them. “It’s not bad! Come on!”
Oliver tried to do the same, but instead of rolling, he fell hard on his ankle, which twisted on the landing.
Kingsley leapt next, and fell on his feet, standing, of course. He helped Oliver up. “Is it broken?” he asked, meaning the ankle.
“No. Just sprained, I think,” Oliver said, limping a little.
They walked away from the tracks and soon came upon a familiar-looking checkpoint—the gas station and sawhorse guarded by the two trolls that Mimi and Oliver had first en-countered on their journey into the underworld.
“What about them?” Oliver asked.
“Those guys work for Helda. They don’t answer to Leviathan,” Kingsley said. “Hey,” he said mildly to the trolls.
The trolls let them pass without comment. They looked a bit bored.
Mimi let Kingsley walk on ahead, staying with Oliver, in the guise of helping him with his sprain. “Lean on me,” she said.
“Thanks,” Oliver said. “I’m glad you got what you wanted.”
“Not quite yet,” Mimi said. She felt her hands go a little numb at what she was about to do. She hadn’t really given it much thought until now, since it was so distasteful, even for her. Oliver had been a good friend throughout their entire adventure. But she had no choice. It was time to pay the porter.
A soul for a soul. Mimi prepared to do her worst. “Listen, before we can go, there’s something I need you to do for me,” she said, without looking at him directly. “I hope you understand it’s not personal.”
Oliver sighed. He’d had a feeling something like this was going to happen. He liked Mimi, but he trusted her as far as he could throw her, and during his time in the underworld he had carefully weighed his options. He knew he didn’t have very many, but he had been hoping that somehow Mimi would change her mind, that she would find another way to get them out of Helda’s kingdom. But it was apparent from the determined set of Mimi’s jaw that this would not be the case.
“You’re going to leave me here,” he said.
Mimi did not flinch. “Yes.”
“Does Kingsley know?” Oliver asked, watching the erstwhile Duke of Hell banter with a few trolls hanging at the gas station. It was all so much fun for everyone else, wasn’t it, Oliver thought, trying not to feel angry. He knew what he had gotten himself into. Mimi had given him a choice in the beginning and he had chosen to descend into the Kingdom of the Dead with her.
“No. He doesn’t know that part of it. I didn’t tell him,”
Mimi said. “I don’t think he’d let me do it if he knew.”
“Probably not,” Oliver agreed. Kingsley was a chivalrous kind of guy, and Oliver bet that his pride would never allow him to accept his release at the life of another, and a human at that.
“So… is this going to be a problem?” Mimi asked.
Oliver tried not to laugh. Mimi was such a piece of work.
What a selfish little bitch. She didn’t care what she did or whom she hurt, as long as she got what she wanted. “You’re serious about this, aren’t you?”
“I told you not to come with me,” she said, sounding like a child who’d been told they weren’t going to celebrate her birthday after all. “It’s your fault for trusting me.”
He brushed her arm away from his shoulder. His ankle still hurt. If he had to stay down here, what was all that jumping for, then? All that sneaking out of Hell? Oliver looked around. The underworld, when you thought about it, wasn’t so bad, really. maybe he could get used to living in slight discomfort; hook up with one of the sirens; get used to living with the smell of the trolls.
“Maybe I should let you. It’s not as if I have anything to live for up there anyway,” he mused. Wasn’t that why he had come down with Mimi in the first place? Because he had no more purpose? Because he wanted to do his part to save the Blue Bloods? The Covens were crumbling, the vampires were retreating, Schuyler was gone. What did he have left?