Vanquished (21 page)

“She was mesmerized,” Father Juan said.

“And so are all of you,” Noah retorted. “You want so badly to be the good guys that you harbor a murdering demon in your midst. You risk everyone’s life so that you can pat yourselves on the back.” He pointed at Jenn. “You’ve seen her neck. Tell me, Jenn, did he stop himself from killing you? Or did someone else stop him? Did you put up a fight? I don’t think so.”

Jenn wanted to say that Antonio had been about to stop himself when Holgar had burst into the room. But she had been barely conscious. She really didn’t know what had happened.

I didn’t resist. I couldn’t.
Her cheeks went hot.

“I have my answer,” Noah said. He shrugged, and a dozen Uzis pointed straight at him. Holgar brought Jenn against his chest.

“No,” she said. “No.”

“Noah, we need you, too,” Father Juan said. “What else did you find out? What else do you know?”

“Nothing,” Noah said. “So now . . . you don’t need me.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Jenn said sharply, trying her hardest to regain command of the situation. But she was barely keeping it together. “You saw me kick Jamie’s ass.”

Noah smiled. “I saw you kick a lot of ass.”

“And you swore to follow me as your leader.”

Noah fell silent. Jenn could feel Holgar’s heart pounding against the back of her head. She heard him growl very low in his throat. His arm pressed tightly across her collarbone. Loyal Holgar.

“I want you to swear again. And I want you to swear that you won’t kill Antonio.” His lips parted, and she narrowed her eyes. “Swear it, Noah.”

He knit his brows. “All right. Unless—”

“No conditions,” she said.

Resigned, Noah dipped his head. “Agreed.”

Antonio watched.

Back and forth, back and forth, in time to the incessant chanting of monks, hidden away behind a prayer screen.
Back and forth, sitting cross-legged away from Antonio, Sade rocked. It made it just a little more difficult to catch every word of the confrontation upstairs, but Antonio could hear it well enough. Noah wanted to kill him for biting Jenn. A virus was about to be unleashed on all vampires everywhere, including him.

Then it will be over,
Antonio thought.
And except for the mop-up, we’ll have won.

Just . . . he wouldn’t be there to see it. A tide of emotions surged through him—a mixture of deep fear and sorrow. Although he believed in heaven, he didn’t know if he would be welcome there. And like any of the faithful—even like Christ, who had begged to be spared—he was afraid to die. His own priest had told him that the instinct for survival was the strongest driving force of the human animal. God had made it so.

His sorrow at the thought of leaving Jenn was nearly overwhelming. He could feel the ache in his unbeating heart. The thought of never seeing her again—

You told God Himself that you would die for her.

She will be safe from all vampires, including you.

The voice in his head was like someone else’s voice. Someone who understood. Someone who would be there, at the end.

And hearing it, Antonio found peace.

“It’s a fair trade, Sade, don’t you agree?” he said aloud.

Sade just kept rocking.

Silently.

“So now we come to who opposes you,” Katalin told Solomon. “That will be the obstacle in your path to achieving your ambitions.”

Solomon sat across the table in Katalin’s pretty little hideaway in his private quarters and watched her freeze as she put down the next card in his tarot reading. He glanced down at the image of a winged, horned demon crowned with an inverted pentagram and a naked man and woman chained to a pedestal beneath him.

The Devil. He stared at it for a long time. Disbelieving. Incredulous. Infuriated.

Terrified.

It can’t be true. He’s not real.

“This card represents someone in your life who holds power over you. And he will harm you unless you find a way to protect yourself,” Katalin said in a strained voice.

“You’re lying,” Solomon said, rising from his chair. He leaned across the chair and lashed out at her with his fingertips. He missed her cheek by centimeters, and that infuriated him even more. He grabbed the table and threw it across the room. It shattered against the wall, muffling her cry as she leaped to her feet and ran in the opposite direction. “Someone put you up to this. What is this, a joke?”

“Solomon, I’m not. I swear to you I’m not.” In her fear she began to babble. “It’s your card. You cut the deck yourself. Please, I would never lie to you.”

He left Katalin’s room without another word, went into his private office, and shut the door. Then he sank down into a chair.

“It was just a card,” he said aloud. “He’s just a myth.”

The Devil. And who was the Devil but Lucifer, vampire king of shadows? The vampire said to have defeated Dracula. The vampire other vampires feared. Just a myth.

He wouldn’t have been so shaken if he hadn’t been pushing Katalin so hard for information. Crystal balls, pendulums, rune stones—he’d had her run through them all. And each had given him a tiny piece of the identity of his most dangerous opponent: One said that he was ageless; one proclaimed him “above the mountains.” It went on and on until the last puzzle piece: that damned tarot card.

The Devil. Lucifer was the Devil incarnate.

Solomon shook. He hung his hands between his knees and lowered his head, fighting for composure. Maybe someone had put Katalin up to giving him that answer. To distract him. To scare him. But who could get to her? He kept her under lock and key.

“It’s a lie,” he whispered.

His phone rang, and he was so startled that he nearly
fell out of the chair. He fished in the pocket of his jeans and held it up. He brightened. It was one of his spies, deeply embedded at the new headquarters of Project Crusade, in Budapest. A human, code-named David Book.

“Yes,” Solomon said.

“I can’t talk long,” David whispered into the phone.

“Then get to the point,” Solomon snapped. “Do you have something?”

“
They
have something.” David took a deep breath. “It’s a virus, Solomon. It’s going to make vampires extinct.”

Solomon laughed, but it was a hollow, frightened sound. After the tarot card, it was hard to believe what David was saying. But David was his most trusted spy, of all his spies. And he had a lot of them.

“There’s no such thing,” Solomon said. “Nothing on earth that can do that.”

“There will be. It’s the ultimate weapon, and there’s no protection against it.
None
, Solomon.”

Solomon silently cleared his throat. His hand trembled.

“Prove it. Send me a picture, anything.”

The line went dead.

Solomon stared at it, disbelieving. Then he speed-dialed Jack Kilburn, the president of the United States, on their ultrasecret private line. No one else had the number, and Kilburn always answered, day or night. Kilburn might know something about this.

Sure enough, after one ring the connection was made.

“Jack,” he said jovially, hiding his consternation, “listen. I just heard—”

“This is Alberto Sanchez, President Kilburn’s chief of staff,” an unfamiliar voice informed him. “President Kilburn is unavailable at this time.”

Solomon was speechless. No one except the president had
ever
answered this phone.

“Do you know who I am?” Solomon asked in a friendly, conversational way. The leader of the Vampire Nation didn’t lose his cool when talking to lackeys.

“Yes, Solomon, I do,” said Sanchez, in a voice completely devoid of deference.

“What’s happened to Kilburn? Has he been assassinated?” Solomon asked. His mind was racing. He didn’t understand what was happening.

“The president is in a meeting. If you would care to leave a message—”

Solomon jerked as if he’d been slapped. Without another word he hung up. He began to shake, sick to his soul. This couldn’t be happening. The president was severing their relationship. It had to be true, then. The humans had a weapon. And the president knew it.
If only I had converted him, he would be stopping the use of that weapon right now. I should have done it. Then there would be vampires the black crosses would have to spare. Good vampires.

He jerked. Good vampires. There
was
a good vampire
they had to spare—the one everybody wanted to get their hands on. Maybe even Lucifer.

Antonio de la Cruz. They had probably already provided him with the antidote. He probably had it with him.

And Solomon knew where Antonio was.

Jenn lingered at the door that led downstairs to Antonio’s cell. It was the same door Noah had tried to pass through less than twenty-four hours before. She took a deep breath and reached for the latch.

“No,” said a voice behind her.

It was her grandmother. She was dressed much like Jenn, in jeans, boots, and a heavy coat. For a second, Jenn thought Gramma Esther was coming with them to parley with the Transylvanian werewolf pack. But it was so chilly inside the monastery that everyone—except the monks—was bundled up.

“I want to say good-bye,” Jenn said. “Just in case.”

Gramma Esther shook her head. “You need to keep your head in the game. Good-byes can really mess you up. Trust me, I know. Charles and I had to say good-bye so many times, to so many people. After a while we stopped, because it was just too painful.” A fleeting, somewhat bitter smile flashed over her mouth, then was gone.

“Don’t let Noah hurt him,” Jenn said. “Please, Gramma.”

“I’m here, Jenn,” her grandmother said. “I’ll do what’s right.”

Jenn took a breath. She didn’t know exactly what her grandmother meant.

“You need to walk through a different door,” Gramma Esther said. “The
front
door. And you need to leave all this behind and concentrate on your mission.”

“Ready, Jenn?” Holgar asked, coming up behind her. He was wearing a parka with a fur-lined hood. When in human form, werewolves felt the cold. He handed her an Uzi and her Salamancan jacket.

“Your parka’s by the door,” he told her. “Let’s go.”

Jenn gave her grandmother one last look, and Gramma Esther nodded.

Please, protect him,
Jenn thought, slipping one arm into a sleeve.

And then she walked through a different door.

* * *

Jenn and Holgar took one of the monks’ SUVs—not a snowmobile, because the weather had turned bitter. They also needed protection in case their meeting with the werewolf pack didn’t go as hoped. The snow came down hard, and it was difficult for them to find the little warming hut that the monks had suggested might serve as a place to overnight.

Neither slept. Jenn tried to call the monastery to check
on Antonio, but the snow impeded her cell reception. In the morning Holgar drove, and soon they had penetrated deep into a thick forest of frozen white trees, cutting the high beams of the truck. Then the howls began, and Jenn looked out the window. Flashes of light-colored shapes darted through the trees, and the howls grew louder, louder still. She glanced at Holgar.

“No, I’m not sure this is the right thing to do,” he said, as if she’d asked the question aloud. “But it’s nice to know you have faith in me. To come along for my ride.” He quirked a grin at her. “I can tell what you’re thinking. I can read your body language.”

“It must be nice to be a werewolf,” she said, smiling faintly back at him.

“The best.”

The path they carved took them up a steep mountainside, but the tires held. As they angled upward, the light-colored shapes slowed, then gathered on the rise before Jenn and Holgar. Wolves, staring down at them with golden, glowing eyes. Their howls nearly shattered the windshield, and Jenn reflexively gripped the armrest.

“That’s my cue,” Holgar said, setting the emergency brake but leaving the motor running.

“Our cue,” Jenn said, grabbing her Uzi.

“
Nej
, stay here,” Holgar protested as he looped the strap of his submachine gun over his head.

“Not a chance.”

Jenn’s gloved hands were ready to fire off a barrage of ammunition; her snow boots crunched on the snow as she walked toward the wolves. Werewolves, facing her. Six crouched, showing their teeth. Behind them, sitting tall and proud, two more glared steadily at her and Holgar. One was pure black; the larger one was completely white. The alpha pair, she guessed.

Her heartbeat picked up, her body’s natural reaction to danger. The first time she had seen a pack like this, the werewolves had been attacking the students and teachers at the Salamancan hunters’ academy. One of them had killed Taamir, the only other survivor from Noah’s combined Jewish and Muslim fighting band. And in the fracas Holgar had killed the werewolf he’d once been engaged to.

The second time she’d seen a pack, Antonio had saved his traveling companions from them. He had been
good
.

Or maybe he was just guarding his food supply,
a little voice whispered in her head.

A gust of wind smeared ice crystals against her eyes. She raised a glove and wiped them away. Immediately the black wolf lifted its forepaw, as if in greeting.

Holgar said something that sounded Russian. The werewolves shifted very slightly, as if in response. Then the white wolf threw back its head and howled. All the wolves followed its example, including Holgar. Though he was still in human form, the most amazing sound burst from his mouth. It echoed off the mountains, firm and strong. It was beautiful,
but it was so loud that Jenn wanted to cover her ears with her hands. Instead she let her head drop backward, and she howled too.