“S
o do you think it’s true?”
Stuart asked me.
We’d arrived back at the B&B, and Stuart had pulled me into the hallway just outside our room. Inside, Eliza sat on the bed and Allie stood guard. The door was cracked, and I could see my daughter, diligent and wary, with the knife tight in her hand. Timmy was safe and sound in the room he shared with Allie, asleep in his portable playpen, the TV playing softly to keep him company if he woke up.
“Is she related to you?” Stuart pressed.
I ran a hand through my hair. “How the hell do I know? For that matter, how the hell
can
I know? Am I supposed to run a DNA test?” The words snapped out of me, and I immediately regretted them. “Sorry,” I said with more calm than I felt. “This has kind of thrown me.”
“Me, too,” he said. He sighed, then held out his arms. I moved into them gratefully. “Whatever you need, I’m here,” he said. He held me tight for a moment, then eased gently away. With one finger, he tilted my chin up. “Soon, though. Soon, we’re going to talk.”
“I know,” I said. “Right now, it’s her we need to talk to.” I glanced back into the room and took a deep breath. Then I held out my hand for Stuart. For his support. For his love. “You’ll stand with me?”
“Always,” he said, and we went into the room together.
Eliza looked up when we entered. “I get that you don’t believe me,” she said. “After all the stuff I’ve seen growing up, believe me, I get it. But it’s true. And—” Her voice broke and she looked away. Her skin turned splotchy in what I recognized as the familiar warning sign of oncoming tears. But she backed it off, took a deep breath, and started to talk. When she did, her voice was remarkably level, and I felt a twist of almost maternal pride.
“It’s okay,” Allie said. She slid down so that she was sitting on the floor, her back against the wall. She still held the knife, but it was clear that, like me, she was softening toward this girl. “Just tell us and we’ll go from there.”
Allie’s words resonated with me, and I glanced at Stuart.
Just tell him how I feel. Just tell him, and we’d go from there.
Not now, though. Right now was about Eliza. And as I moved to sit on the floor next to Allie, the girl on the bed who looked so much like my daughter started to tell her tale.
“You didn’t really know your mom, right?” she asked, peering at me.
“No,” I admitted. “I don’t remember her at all.”
She nodded as if she’d expected the answer, but it was a moment before she spoke again, and it took all my effort not to fill the silence. To tell her how I’d been four years old and wandering the streets of Rome. I wanted to say that, but I didn’t. Because if she was who she said she was, then she should know some of that already.
“Your mom’s name was Amanda,” she said. “Did you know that?”
I shook my head, hoping I looked calm despite the way my heart was twisting.
“She was my mom’s sister. My mom’s Deborah, by the way, but everyone calls her Debbie.”
“My aunt,” I said, the word so soft I wasn’t sure I’d spoken it aloud.
Eliza nodded. “They were pretty far apart in age. Your mom was in her early twenties when she died. Twenty-four, I think. My mom was sixteen.”
I nodded, trying to keep it all straight in my head. “Go on.”
“Well, anyway, apparently our grandmother—yours and mine, I mean—was a Demon Hunter.”
I cocked my head. Surely if that were true Father Corletti would have told me. He may not have known who my parents were when I’d first come to
Forza
, but he’d learned recently about the connection between my parents and Eric’s. Surely he would have learned this, too?
Eliza must have read my mind because she shrugged. “She wasn’t working for
Forza
when your mom was killed. I don’t think she had been for a long time.”
“Rogue?” I asked. A lot of Hunters were rogue. Most were simply people who knew the truth. They understood that demons walked the earth, and they’d made it their mission to hunt. Some were loosely organized, but most worked on their own. I’d believed that my parents fell into that category. Just two people who knew about the darkness that mars our world, and had made it their mission to step up and fight.
“I think so,” Eliza said. “But I think she was with
Forza
when she was younger.”
“You think?”
Eliza shrugged. “She died when I was pretty little.”
“A demon?” Allie whispered.
“No. Cancer. She’d been out of it. No hunting, no nothing. At least as far as I know.”
“All right,” I said, still trying to wrap my head around all of this. “So our grandmother died when you were little. But you knew her?”
Eliza nodded. “Oh, yeah. We lived just down the street from her in San Diego. She’d make pancakes every Sunday.”
I glanced at Allie and saw that she was biting her lower lip. She had grandparents—Stuart’s mom and dad. But they weren’t her blood kin. They loved her, but I knew she felt the difference. The loss.
I knew because I felt it, too.
“Anyway, I guess I’m getting off track. The point is that she—Grandma, I mean—wasn’t hunting when I was little. She never said, but I think that’s how my grandfather died. I never knew him. I think they hunted together and he died and she retired. I mean, that happens a lot, right?” She looked at me and then at Stuart, then back to me again.
I hadn’t retired because Eric died on the job, but I nodded anyway. What she described wasn’t my path, but I knew that it was a common one.
“Anyway, back in the day, I guess that Amanda got all wrapped up in the demon hunting thing. My mom was a lot younger, and wasn’t interested or else she didn’t know about it—I’m not sure. But I know that Amanda met a guy and they had a kid. She was pretty young. My age, I think. I’m eighteen,” she added, which confirmed my earlier guess.
“I’m the kid?” I asked, my throat tight. “Or do I have a sibling out there somewhere?” Just thinking about the possibility made my chest hurt. At my side, Allie gripped my wrist, but whether to comfort me or herself, I didn’t know.
“No, just you,” Eliza said. “And when you were about four, Amanda and Todd—that’s my uncle, your dad, I mean—well, they got deep into some sort of demon shit.”
“Todd,” I said, letting the name roll over my tongue. My father’s name was Todd.
She cocked her head to look at me. “So, like, all of this is new to you? Honest?”
“Keep going,” I said, deflecting the question. Most of it was new, yes. But I did know that my parents were in the middle of a big demon-y mess when they were killed. I knew because Eric knew. Because my parents had been killed trying to stop his parents from performing a ritual to bind a demon inside him.
My parents had failed—and that demon had burst free just a few months ago, nearly destroying Eric in the process.
All those years ago, my parents had apparently left me in a ratty motel while they went off to hunt. I’d always believed that I’d simply been an anonymous lost child wandering the streets of Rome. Now I know that was a story that Father Donnelly, one of the priests high enough up the food chain to know about
Forza
, had told Father Corletti who then, as now, was in charge of overseeing
Forza Scura
, the secret branch within the Vatican charged with hunting, destroying, and studying the demonic forces that move about in our world.
Like me, Father Corletti believed I was simply an orphan, possibly abandoned by my vacationing American parents. I was raised in a church-run orphanage, then indoctrinated into
Forza
even before I’d reached puberty, doing research first and then later tracking and taking out demons in the field.
I’d only recently learned that my parents had lived that life, too. Instead, I’d spent my youth imagining them as simply average Americans. In my mind, my mother stayed at home to tend to me, reading me books like
Curious George
and
Goodnight Moon
. My father owned a gas station—I’m not sure why that caught my childhood imagination, but it did—and would come home smelling of grease and Irish Spring soap. He’d pick me up and kiss me and swing me around until I was perched on his shoulders. They hadn’t abandoned me, of course. As far as my imagination was concerned, they’d been brutally attacked by a vile mugger, much like the origin story behind Bruce Wayne’s transformation into Batman. With her last dying breath, my mother had told me to run, and I had, only to be rescued, both literally and figuratively, by the Church.
It was a fantasy that had been surprisingly comforting as a child.
It was a fantasy that I found all too hard to give up, even now that I knew the truth.
“Kate?”
I glanced at Stuart, only then realizing that he’d come to sit on the floor on the other side of me so that I was now sandwiched between my husband and my daughter. He took my hand, his expression one of deep concern.
“I’m okay,” I said. “This is all just a bit . . . much.”
Eliza pulled her knees up to her chest, her bare feet on the bed cover. “I’m sorry,” she said, as she hugged her legs tight. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No,” I said. “I want to hear. I’m glad to hear.” I drew in a breath. “Tell me more.”
She licked her lips, her eyes darting to Allie before she continued. She was three years older than my daughter and was traveling through Rome on her own. Eliza was an adult, albeit a young one. But I could still see the little girl inside her. And yes, my heart was melting just a little. Despite telling myself that I needed to be cold—that I needed to be careful—I could feel myself warming up.
More important, I could feel myself believing.
“Really,” I urged gently. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m glad you’re telling me this.”
She drew in a breath as she hugged her knees tighter. “It’s just that—it’s just that I wanted so bad to meet you, you know? Once my mom told me to find you.”
I caught Allie’s eye. “Your mom knew about me?”
She nodded. “Yeah, she—” Eliza cut herself off. “It’s easier if I tell the whole story in order. Okay?”
“Sure,” Allie said before I could answer. “We just want to hear.”
“Right. Okay. So, like I said, your mom and dad were here. On the trail of some demon. I don’t know the details. I don’t think my mom did, either.”
Did
. The word seemed to fill the room, and I suddenly felt cold. I steeled myself, though, and said nothing. I wanted the story, not grief or explanations. And, yes, I wanted this unknown aunt to live in Eliza’s words for as long as she could. Because if she was dead, that reality would strike me soon enough.
“Was your mom here, too? Your grandma?” Allie asked.
“No. They were both back in San Diego. Like I said, my grandma was out of the demon thing, and my mom was only sixteen. So she was just doing school. But then—well, then they disappeared. Todd and Amanda, I mean. They just seemed to fall off the planet, and you along with them.”
“Did they look?” Allie asked.
Eliza shrugged. “I guess Grandma thought they went into hiding or something. Honest, I’m kinda fuzzy on the details. Maybe she figured they’d been killed—and you, too—or maybe she was looking and just couldn’t find anything out. But my mom wasn’t in the loop. I mean, she was younger than I am now, and that wasn’t her life. Not really. Not then. But when my mom was in college—San Diego State—she found all this stuff about
Forza
and demons and everything when she was helping Grandma sort out all the junk in her garage.”
“She asked questions and then took up the family business,” Stuart said wryly.
Eliza nodded. “She wanted to know what happened to her sister. And I guess somewhere along the way it ended up being just as much about fighting the demons.”
I grimaced. “That has a way of happening. Once you see evil, it’s hard not to fight it.”
“I get that,” Eliza said. “I’ve been doing it pretty much my whole life.”
“Who’s your father?” Stuart asked.
She lifted a shoulder. “His name was Max. He was a Hunter, too. She met him about five years after she started hunting and had me when she was just shy of thirty. I guess Grandma had been training her, and then Max took over and they worked together. Then they had me.” Another lift of her shoulder. “He died in the line, you know? But it’s not the kind of job where they give you a medal.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not.” I stood up and went to look out the window. The day was clear, and I could hear the laughter of children playing in the street and the din of traffic as the cars and trucks moved from place to place. “Why didn’t they join
Forza?
”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Eliza said. “I’m not—I mean, I’ve been working with my mom for years, but she’s never been much for oversharing, you know?”
“I get that,” Allie said, and I turned from the window to scowl at her.
“Excuse me? You are so much more in the loop than you should be.”
Allie looked at Eliza and rolled her eyes, the gesture so genuine and spontaneous I almost laughed out loud.
From the look on Eliza’s face, I think she almost did, too. “Anyway, once I was born, she ratcheted back the hunting. We had a house close to Grandma, and she’d watch me when Mom went away—I learned later she was off hunting. And I learned that she’d been poking around about Amanda and Todd and you for years. I know she must have gotten some solid intel because she started to plan a trip here. And she even contacted
Forza—
I mean, she’s talked to them before, so that wasn’t a huge leap. She may have been rogue, but not secretly rogue, if you know what I mean.”
“I get it. Go on.”
“That’s pretty much it,” Eliza said. She licked her lips, then looked down at her hands that she was twisting around in her lap. “And then just over a week ago there was—there was an accident,” she said. Her eyes glittered with tears. “A truck ran a red light, and—”
She cut herself off and shook her head violently. “Anyway, she was in the hospital, but she was too messed up. She didn’t make it.”
“Eliza,” I said. It was all I could manage. Already the room was swimming through my eyes, too. Already, I could barely feel the pressure of Stuart’s hand tightening around mine.