A beautiful vampire swept into view, her sharp features accentuated by shiny black hair pulled tight into a bun and massive chandelier earrings brushing her jawline. Her eyes were crimson, her fangs extended. She was wearing a plunging scarlet sweater over black leather trousers and black boots with four-inch heels. On her right ring finger she wore a simple gold band decorated with a single ruby; there was something about it that seemed familiar to Skye.
“Christian Gaudet does not own the French Quarter,” the vampire decreed.
She glared at Nick, who dropped to his knees, then at Skye, who was so terrified that her legs gave way, leaving her with the semblance of curtseying.
“Au-Aurora?” Skye managed.
“Of course.” Aurora threw back her head.
Skye had prepared herself for this moment—for standing face-to-face with Aurora—but she wasn’t prepared. Menace radiated from Aurora like an exotic perfume. Skye felt as if she were suffocating, and the urge to cough seized her again. She clamped her hand over her mouth, then made a show of brushing the dust that had been the vampire off her face and clothes.
Aurora stepped back into the shadows, her burning eyes seemingly floating in space. Skye waited to be invited in, although it wasn’t true that vampires needed an invitation to enter a place. She simply didn’t want to wind up stabbed through the heart.
“Bring her in here,” Aurora said to Nick, and Skye almost screamed as Nick gripped her arm and propelled her forward, as if to prove that he was a badass vampire thoroughly loyal to his imperious new leader. He pushed Skye into the black room. Her spell of seeing was fading, and she was terrified she might accidentally run into something that was hidden in the darkness—a table, a chair, or Aurora herself.
She heard rustling ahead and pretended to stumble to give herself time to adjust. She wanted to boost her spell, but she was afraid to use up her magickal reserves. Her life depended on maintaining her vampire glamour.
“So, you’re looking for the sire who abandoned you,” Aurora said with a lilt in her voice. “Do you think your sire has an obligation toward you?”
What answer would please Aurora? Skye’s stomach clenched and she licked her lips, nearly pricking her tongue as she ran it across her fangs. “I—I don’t know,” she said. “All I know is that it’s hard to live among humans, without a family.”
“Where’s your friend, this Jon?” Aurora demanded. “Why didn’t he come with you?”
“He’s afraid,” she replied. “It’s been tough.”
Aurora regarded her closely. Skye fought hard not to react.
Finally, the vampire said, “You’re lying.”
NEW ORLEANS
FATHER JUAN, JENN, ANTONIO, ERIKO,
JAMIE, AND HOLGAR
What just touched me?
Jenn jerked to a stop as she moved along the corridor to the little nun’s cell Antonio had claimed as his own. Had something kissed her cheek?
Something that was not there?
With a soft cry she stumbled backward, shining her flashlight into the darkness. The beam quivered; she was shivering as hard as if she had been plunged into an icy river.
“Antonio,” she whispered, but her voice was dry as bone dust.
Did a darker shape hang in the space before her? A sense of menace washed over her in waves, cold and thick, like hands running down her face and chest.
“Aaaah,” something whispered, or was it her own voice, whispering for Antonio?
“Jenn?”
That was Antonio, sticking his head out of his room. She ticked her glance from the center of the corridor to his face; frowning, he came out of the room and hurried toward her, walking directly through the darkness.
“Go,” she urged, grabbing his hand.
He closed his own around hers and pulled her back toward his room; she dug in her heels, not wanting to pass through the hall. Throwing her a quizzical look, he stopped.
“¿Que tienes?” he asked her in Spanish.
“I don’t know. I thought something touched me. On my cheek.” She didn’t tell him that she’d thought it was a kiss. Why, she didn’t know. But she licked her lips and took a slow breath. “I’m too scared to move,” she confessed.
“Where did it happen?” he asked, gazing around.
“Where you’re standing,” she whispered.
“It’s just me.” He wrapped both his hands around her wrists, squeezing, and took her into his room. He shut the door and leaned against it while she hugged herself, trying to get warm again.
“Describe it.”
“I heard something and I—I felt something. I think this place is haunted.” She sat down on his bed, which had a very thin mattress and an even thinner blanket on top of it. She gathered up the blanket and put it around her shoulders, wincing as Antonio opened the door again and went into the hall.
“I see nothing, Jenn,” he told her. She made herself look through the open door; her flashlight beam caught Antonio in bold relief as he made the sign of the cross and murmured words in Latin. Then he came back into the room and shut the door.
“Nada,” he said as he sat beside her on the bed and put his arm around her. “Did you feel threatened?”
“Yes,” she replied, sinking her head onto his shoulder. Eriko wouldn’t have done that. She would have attacked the darkness and yelled for backup.
“It’s all right. I’m here,” Antonio said, and she shut her eyes tightly to hold back fresh tears. She was mortified. All she did these days was cry.
“Antonio,” she began, but he pressed her head against his shoulder, and she surrendered to her need to be comforted.
“We’ll tell Father Juan about it,” he said, but if he really thought something was out in the hall, he’d rush off to alert everyone. He didn’t believe her. He probably thought she’d imagined the whole thing.
Maybe she had.
No, she thought fiercely. It was there.
“We should tell him now,” she insisted.
Antonio hesitated. Then he said, “Father Juan is resting for a bit. In a few minutes you can take him some of the evening meal, and then you can tell him.”
Her stomach clenched. Father Juan was resting because he had given Antonio his blood. Sometimes she felt her mind struggling to bolt from the truth of what Antonio was, but it always wormed its way back into her consciousness. He was a vampire. He had to drink fresh human blood from the veins of human beings—not animal blood, not refrigerated or from a blood bank. If he didn’t, he would die.
“Okay,” she said weakly.
Something changed in him; he shifted, and his hand around hers tightened. His thigh, pressed against hers, flexed. Tension flowed through him like electricity.
“You know,” he began, “that I was a seminarian when I was converted. I was studying to be a priest. And I never . . . I have never been with anyone.”
She hadn’t either.
“But if I could, Jenn . . .” He kissed the crown of her hair, and her lips parted. Tingles skittered through her, and her face felt hot.
Silence fell between them. His fingers stroked the back of her hand, caressing her skin, and maybe he was unaware of just how deeply it affected her. Why Antonio? She had wondered about him all through their two years of training. Crammed into tight living quarters, undergoing brutal, rigorous training, the students of Salamanca had reacted to the pressure in many ways, including hooking up and breaking up, then getting together with someone else. Except Jenn never had. She had always wanted Antonio, but she’d assumed he didn’t return her feelings. He’d remained aloof, never anything more than friendly in a polite, almost courtly way.
On the night they had graduated, Father Juan had paired them as fighting partners, and it was only then that everyone had learned his secret: He was the enemy. Except he was one of them. A hunter.
When he saw that she still loved him even though she knew, he had moved to close the gap between them. And then stepped away again, convinced that it was
his devotion to the Blessed Virgin and all the saints that kept him from behaving like a monstrous, ravening beast. That he must seek holiness, and pureness, by embracing the vows of the holy orders of the Church: poverty, chastity, and obedience.
She knew she tempted him, and since she wasn’t religious, she didn’t believe that being with her would change him.
Most of the time, at any rate.
But on nights like this, when ghosts wafted in dark corridors and Heather was so far away, all she knew was that she didn’t know anything.
“Haven’t you ever had a girlfriend?” she asked, then flushed because it sounded so high school.
“I had someone who loved me,” he replied. And there it was, the despair. The horrible sorrow that lived deeply inside him.
“What happened to her?” She wrapped her hand around his and gave it a squeeze. “Maybe if you talked about it . . .”
“No one has ever heard the story,” he said. “God alone knows what I have done.”
She tried to raise her head, and he placed a careful hand across it, keeping her as she was.
“But if you’re a Catholic, and Father Juan is your priest, you should tell him. He can forgive you. Isn’t that how it works?”
He was silent for a long time. Against any other guy’s chest like this, she would have heard his heartbeat. But the silence between them lengthened. And if she had been afraid of the dark before, she was even more afraid now.
“I’m not sure what Father Juan is,” he said at last. “And he can’t forgive me. He can only absolve me. Only God forgives.”
“Is that what you believe?”
“I believe there is a divine plan,” he said quietly.
“But you don’t know that.” Her voice was almost fierce.
“I know that I would die for you.”
Then he turned toward her, and gazed at her, his crimson eyes filled with love.
His fangs lengthening with bloodlust.
“Before I let anything happen to you, I would die first.”
NEW ORLEANS
AURORA, SKYE, AND HEATHER
“You’re lying about everything,” Aurora said to Skye. “You’ve heard. You know about the plan. And you want to be on the winning side.”
“I—I,” Skye stammered. What plan? The plan to use Heather as bait?
“That’s a good move. A wise move. You impress me.”
“Thank you.” Skye made herself smile. “I confess. I heard you were coming here. So I said we should join—ask to join you. My sire was too scared of you.”
“A wise move as well.” Aurora cocked her head. “What can you offer me?”
“My allegiance?” Skye asked.
“Are you a good hunter?”
The question threw her off balance. Did Aurora know? Was she taunting her?
“Yes, I am.” Skye met her gaze.
“Well, I wish someone would hunt him. I can’t wait until he’s dead. Still, he served his purpose. The war was an excellent distraction. Then again, so is this ‘peace.’” She made air quotes. “While we get on with the real work.”
Skye knew she was hearing something important. Her training in interrogation—both as subject and as interrogator—kicked in. She had to let Aurora think she knew something, anything, about “the real work.”
“Solomon,” she said.
“Poor Solomon.” Aurora smirked, clearly having no sympathy for Solomon at all.
“Come,” Aurora said—to Nick, apparently. His fingers dug into Skye’s arm, and he walked her forward, turning sharply to the right without warning. She pretended to stumble again.
“What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?” Aurora asked.
Could vampires get sick? Skye had never heard anything that would indicate that. She filed that away and cleared her throat.
“Just hungry.”
Oh, Goddess, why had she said that? What if Aurora—
“Then feed, mi dulce,” Aurora said.
There was a hiss, and a whiff of sulphur; then she saw Aurora’s face in the glow of match light. The vampire was lighting a long white taper. And in the warm glow Skye suddenly smelled a terrible stench. Then, as Aurora raised the candle high, the light fell on a rusty cage on the other side of an octagonal room furnished in Victorian antiques. Something moved inside the cage.
Aurora walked toward it. As the light from the candle fell across the bars, Skye saw eyes. Big blue eyes.
Heather Leitner had blue eyes.
Skye fought hard not to react. It’s her. It’s got to be her. She heard a whimper, and panting; then the cage rocked as the person inside it scrambled backward, back into the darkness. And then a strange wheezing, as if Heather was having trouble breathing. Maybe she was sick. Maybe she was dying.
“Do you know who this is?” Aurora asked Skye, looking supremely happy. The smudge of dust on her high cheekbone was the only evidence that she had just staked a boastful vampire. Beside Aurora, Nick moved jerkily, like a windup toy, as if he was barely keeping it together. Skye back-burnered all thought as Aurora glided closer to the cage, moving like a snake. Skye’s gorge rose, all her witchly protective instincts warring with her self-preservation.
“This is the sister of the Hunter,” Aurora declared. “She’s delicious.” She licked the tip of her own forefinger like a lollipop, then held it out to Skye. Gazing at Skye with a sly little smile on her face, she said in a thick, low voice, “Would you like a taste?”
BOOK THREE
BARON SAMEDI
In the happy night,
In secret, when none saw me,
nor I beheld aught,
Without light or guide,
save that which burned in my heart.
—St. John of the Cross,
sixteenth-century mystic of Salamanca
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Salamanca Hunter’s Manual: The Hunter
The Hunter stands apart and unchanging, committed to the mission: the death of the foe. Though the world changes, you must not. Like an avenging angel you must not be deflected, distracted, or distressed. The battle between vampire and Hunter must rage until the demons are wiped from the earth. This is your charge and your burden. It cannot be lifted from you—and if you are indeed the Hunter, you will not wish it to be.
(translated from the Spanish)
NEW ORLEANS
SKYE AND HEATHER
Heather felt her throat close up as Aurora offered her to the new vampire with the blond braids. She moved as far away as her cage would permit and shook with fear. She could hear herself wheezing, but she dared not reach for her inhaler. She was sure they would take it from her if they found it. It was running low, too, and she had to save it for emergencies.
The new vampire moved closer, approaching the cage with teeth bared and eyes glowing. Heather heard herself make a whimpering sound. Then the vampire was standing next to the cage, staring at her hard.
And Heather knew her.
From her nightmares.
Heather began to scream. She had seen the other girl’s face dozens of times in her dreams. She had always been covered in blood and standing in a circle of dead bodies.
The nightmare-come-true wrinkled her nose in distaste and turned back to Aurora. “She smells sick to me. Thank you, but I can push off the hunger a little longer.”
Heather felt a ray of hope. Aurora had killed others for less. Maybe she would kill this one, and those nightmares would never ever come true.
Aurora smiled. “Very good. You’re right; she is sick. Nick, take her out hunting.”
The surfer vampire nodded, grabbed the new vampire by the elbow, and steered her from the room.
NEW ORLEANS
FATHER JUAN, ANTONIO, AND JENN
Antonio walked Jenn into Father Juan’s room. Their master was lying fully dressed in a narrow bed, two pillows beneath his head, which was cradled in his palms. A hunk of gauze had been taped to the inside of his left wrist—the wound Antonio had left behind.
“Jenn thought she saw something in the hall,” Antonio told the priest. “Like a,” he thought a moment, “a fantasma.”
“A ghost?” Father Juan sat up. “Can you describe it, Jenn?”
She was terrified all over again. He believed her. Which meant that he believed in ghosts.
“Dark. I think it touched me.” She gestured to her cheek. “It was cold.”
“Padre?” Antonio said, raising his brows.
“It could be magick,” Father Juan said, swinging his legs over the side of his bed. “Some sort of seeing.” He reached in his pocket and pulled out a rough, rectangular piece of murky, pinkish-white crystal. “I’ve been hoping that Skye would send us some images. But there’s nothing yet.”
Then light danced in the crystal, and all three of them bent toward it. Antonio squeezed Jenn’s hand as images blurred and stretched, then took shape.
Aurora’s face filled the surface of the prism. Antonio jerked, and Jenn instinctively drew back as Father Juan held up a hand.
“She can’t see you,” he reminded them.
Aurora moved to the right, and a cage was revealed. It was too dark to see who was inside, but Jenn knew. She knew.
She grabbed the crystal from Father Juan and stared hard into it, straining to see if Heather was still alive. But the picture went gray, and then winked out.
“Oh, God,” Jenn whispered. “Oh, please, please, God.”
“Amen,” Antonio and Father Juan said in unison, crossing themselves.
Eriko, Matt, Bernard, and Father Juan investigated the hallway while the others sat in the dining room at the cracked and peeling oval table. Old stained-glass mosaics hung on the walls, so chipped and faded they looked like weathered coloring-book pages. Saints with halos, lambs, flaming hearts.
The Catholic imagery reminded Jenn of her grandparents’ collection of old vinyl rock albums with their psychedelic covers. She wondered what lies her father had told her grandmother about her two missing granddaughters. If he thought Gramma would never find out the truth. And she wondered where her grandmother and her mother had gone.
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