Vanquished (27 page)

“Jennifer?” Solomon said anxiously. “Dantalion? What are you talking about?” Jenn quickly filled him in.

“Lucifer? Dantalion is with
Lucifer
?” Solomon repeated. Either he was a very good actor or he had been truly caught off guard, just as they had been.

“My father’s been Dantalion’s spy while he’s been with you,” Jenn told him. “He’s been telling us all your secrets,” she lied. But she could have kicked herself. It had just occurred to her that they should have seen if Antonio could demesmerize her father and Sade both. They could still do that. Or maybe it would be dangerous. She was sure of so little.

“Dantalion’s alive. And he’s with Lucifer,” Solomon said again, as if he just couldn’t get over it.

“What about Milwaukee? What happened there?” Jenn demanded, changing the subject.

“That was done by rogue vigilantes, without my permission,” Solomon said. “I swear I had nothing to do with it.”

“That’s what you said when the president’s daughter was converted on national TV,” Jenn said.

“Do you think I would authorize an attack at the same time I’m trying to make peace with you?” he asked, sounding wounded.

“You tell me,” Jenn shot back. “In fact, I want you to tell me everything you’ve done. And are doing. All of it. Or I’ll come and get you myself, Solomon. I’ll drive a stake through your lying, evil heart. I swear it.” The rage inside her roared like a wild animal. She wanted to break something.

Kill someone . . .

“
You?
You aren’t . . . ,” Solomon began in a patronizing tone; then he cleared his throat as if thinking the better of what he’d been about to say. “Okay, okay, Jennifer. Here it all is.”

And he told her about his supersoldiers, and how he’d double-crossed Dantalion in Russia, and that he had a spy at Project Crusade who had told him about the virus. Antonio, Father Juan, Father Wadim, and Gramma Esther listened intently. It dawned on Jenn that she was the youngest person in the room, but she was the one in the leadership position. A little fillip of panic tickled the base of her spine.

I was chosen,
she reminded herself.
I can do this.

“So I came to you because I need allies. My vampires will fight with you against Lucifer,” Solomon concluded. “In return, I want the antidote.”

The antidote that they didn’t have. She decided to test him. Mentally crossing her fingers for luck, she said, “Oh,
come on. Your spy at Project Crusade must have some hidden away for you.”

“I think something happened to him,” he said. “The line went dead while he was briefing me.”

Jenn wondered if Noah had had anything to do with that. She’d have to ask him.

“What about your best friend, the president?” she prodded. “Can’t he get it for you?”

There was a pause. “You don’t have it either, do you,” the vampire said.

Jenn’s heart skipped a beat. “I didn’t say that.”

“What about the president?” Father Juan said loudly. “Doesn’t he want his ally to survive? Or is humanity turning its back on the charming vampire from California?”

“You don’t want to piss me off, priest,” Solomon hissed through the phone. “You really don’t. If I come at you from one side, and Lucifer attacks from the other . . .”

Father Juan smiled thinly. “Then you’ll deplete your troops before you face each other.”

Solomon went silent. Antonio and Father Wadim gave Father Juan a nod. Priest power.

“We’re very busy here,” Jenn said. “So let’s get to the point. If you want to join forces to fight Lucifer, prove it.”

Solomon chuckled. “I have to say, Jennifer. You’re twice the man your father is.”

“Maybe what we’ll do is wait you both out and let you die from the virus,” Jenn said.

“Oh, if only it were that simple,” Solomon said. “You have to know I have
massive
numbers of my followers on their way right now to blow up Project Crusade.”

She looked at the others in the room. If Solomon had an inside man, then he knew where Project Crusade was.

“But if they fail,” Jenn said.

“The virus will only inconvenience me, Jennifer. Some of my supersoldiers have no vampire parts in them. The virus won’t affect them. And of course we have escape routes. We haven’t survived on this planet for centuries without our own safe-houses.”

She glanced over at Antonio, who shrugged and shook his head, signifying he didn’t know if that was true.

“Think about it. We don’t have to breathe. We don’t need air. So if this is an airborne virus . . .” Solomon chuckled.

“Then why do you want the antidote?” Jenn persisted.

“I haven’t lived this long by narrowing my options.”

Antonio raised his chin. “Lucifer,” he said aloud.

So much for keeping off the radar,
Jenn thought, confused why Antonio had spoken up.

“Antonio,
amigo
, hi,” Solomon said, but his voice shook. “You know, it occurred to me to offer you to Lucifer as a way into his good graces.”

“He has no good graces. He doesn’t need you,” Antonio said. “You’re going to be fighting on two fronts—stopping the virus, surviving Lucifer. Our side doesn’t have to worry
about the virus. You’re running scared. But
we’ve
decided to stand and fight.”

“Fine.”
Solomon sounded defeated. “Fine.”

Antonio nodded at Jenn, who took back over. “So send us fighters,” she said. “A lot of them. Vampires, supersoldiers, and humans loyal to you. Send them right away, Solomon.”

She hung up.

“Greg will make sure the virus gets out,” Gramma Esther said. “Even if the black crosses have to blow the whole lab sky-high themselves to stop Solomon.”

“And Lucifer.” Antonio frowned. “Forgive me for jumping in during the call,” he said to Jenn. “But I know what Lucifer means to vampires.”

“Is he as scary as a virus that will kill every vampire on earth?” Esther asked him.

Antonio nodded once. “Scarier,” he said.

The room fell silent for a moment.

“Then it’s more important than ever that we create more elixir, so we can fight him,” Father Juan announced. “You said that the werewolves gave us permission to search for the Transit of Venus on their territory?”

“Yes,” Jenn said. “Father Juan, take Holgar and go. Go quickly.”

She turned away to hide her terror, and her resolve: Once she drank the elixir, maybe she could save Antonio. Or maybe after he drank it, he would be immune.

Let something save him,
she thought.

But it was not a prayer.

Jenn Leitner did not pray.

It was nearly dark when Holgar and Father Juan reached the territory of Viorica’s werewolf pack. As the two climbed out of their SUV, howls filled the sky. As if in response, snowflakes began to drift down.

Then a black wolf appeared at the top of the rise above them. It was a female, and Father Juan bowed.

“Viorica,” he said.

The wolf chuffed in response, and looked expectantly at Holgar, who took a breath and held it. He sniffed the air and growled deep in his chest.

The snow drifted down.

“For helvede,”
Holgar swore. “Nothing.”

He had confessed to Father Juan on the way there that he had begun to change when Solomon’s helicopter had landed and Paul Leitner had appeared. And that Viorica wanted him to.

Father Juan hadn’t asked if Holgar intended to do anything and everything that Viorica wished of him. They didn’t have time for werewolf-pack politics. He didn’t know that much about werewolves, but in his mind’s eye he imagined
males fighting for dominance, blood on the snow, injuries—and more distraction. The team couldn’t afford distractions.

The sleek black wolf slunk toward them. Her eyes glowed, and she purred. Then, as Father Juan looked on, she transformed into a fully clothed human woman. She was wearing white snow gear: parka, pants, and fur boots.

“Holgar,” she said, then spoke to him in what sounded to Father Juan like Russian.

He didn’t know what she said, but Holgar threw back his head and howled. Viorica joined him after a moment.

And other wolves—werewolves—appeared on the rise, observing. Their breath spun clouds in the icy air. One male wolf, silvery and huge, bared his teeth. The one beside him moved her head, a gesture of warning.

As Father Juan ticked his attention back to Holgar, he saw that Holgar’s ears had extended, flattened. Holgar’s jaw was longer, and tufts of gray wolf hair extended over his white-blond human hair. The woman murmured to him, then growled and pawed at him. She was making it clear that she wanted him. Then she took off one of Holgar’s snow mittens and examined his hand. The fingers had elongated, and fur rippled over the knuckles, but it was still a human hand. She turned it over and ran her tongue down the center of it.

Holgar howled again. Father Juan heard the frustration in it, and possibly the defeat.

And Father Juan closed his eyes and prayed.

St. John of the Cross lay on a pallet in a plain and simple room in December 1591, and everyone had given him up for dead. He held his beads, and made a prayer:

The soul takes flight, to repair the world. Oh, my soul, make good out of this long journey, so that I will achieve my true purpose and end my days in bliss.

Prayers are like magick, moving through the ethers of time and space. Like finds like, need finds need.

Fate finds destiny.

A prayer found the vampire Antonio de la Cruz. In 1942.

A prayer found Jenn Leitner when the vampire war broke out.

And in the snowfall in the mountains of Transylvania, Father Juan’s prayer found the mystical essence of St. Edmund, the patron saint of wolves, who had himself prayed many times for the protection of all species of canines, including those enchanted by moonblood.

The strands of their prayerful selves wrapped around each other, and Father Juan reeled, feeling himself changed as he prayed for Holgar. He tingled, and then he burned, and he knew that when the prayer was over, he would be different forever.

But such a thing had happened to Father Juan over and over again. For had not God Himself said, “Behold, I make all things new”?

Whatever needs to happen, let it happen,
Father Juan prayed.

He had prayed many times for the will of God to manifest through himself. It was God’s grace, and no special quality of his own, that made it possible. But it was not a thing to be undertaken lightly—because it did change him, and it was a changed Father Juan who would make the next prayer for the next battle. And so down through time had his prayers changed his essence and the world’s, until he was no longer sure where he ended and Mother Earth began.

Amen.

And of course one so blessed, so deeply blessed, knew that the Earth was as alive and as real as God—and so Father Juan worshipped Her, in Her incarnation of the Goddess.

So mote it be.

When he opened his eyes, a black wolf and a large silver one loped toward the waiting pack. Howls stretched toward the stars, toward heaven and the moon.

“Arrouuoo.”

The silver wolf looked over his shoulder at Father Juan, and howled.

“Arrouuoo.”

The pack answered Holgar, as the black wolf pranced around him.

Then the pack disappeared over the rise. Tired but happy, Father Juan started working his way through the snow in the same direction.

“Arrouuoo.”

And the howls became a chant that in Father Juan’s mind became a prayer for another:
Antonio.

And so little by little the world changed, because those who prayed changed.

A man who had prayed on his deathbed in 1591 wished for his soul to take flight, to repair the world.

Across the moon a bat flew, small and fierce and beautiful. Father Juan crossed himself, and prayed to God for strength.

“Bloody hell!” Jamie shouted from the snowy forest, planting his feet as winds blew hard at his duster, buffeting him like a kite. Through the waving tree branches, lightning illuminated the burning inn as the roof and timbers collapsed, crushing everything inside. Jamie swore, and swore again.

Surrounded by flickering ebony shadows, a man appeared in front of the inn. He strode toward the forest in a blurred, slow motion. Magick. Flames danced over him, then extinguished, then danced again. His eyes burned like coals.

Vampire,
Jamie thought; then,
Estefan.

“Skye!” he screamed. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Get the hell out!”

Jamie tried to step forward, but the wind knocked him down and sent him tumbling. Digging his hands into the dirt, he latched on to a root and held tight as the wind blasted at him. He saw the man walking, then saw nothing; then the man closer, and always his burning eyes.

Jamie hurt everywhere. He didn’t care. He smelled the stench of the dead in the fire.

The man seemed to move in unison with a heartbeat that thrummed through the ground. The root Jamie clutched pulsed like an artery.

Lightning burst in all directions from Estefan, crackling and smacking into trees. They sizzled and exploded, one after another, to the heartbeat rhythm. Crashing, bursting apart.

Estefan kept coming. He was staring with his burning eyes at something on the ground, and his smile cracked open his face. Teeth shot out in all directions like double, triple sets of fangs. Smoke poured from around his head and shoulders.