Crusade

by Nancy Holder; Debbie Viguié

He took the stairs four at a time—as he was a vampire, he could almost, but not quite, fly. Moonlight gleamed through skylights on the courtyard, which was bursting with dead plants in large black urns, and sightless Greek statues.

  There was the red front door. He wanted to get inside as soon as possible and get Heather and leave before the sun came up. He ran up the steps, hesitated, and then twisted the knob. The door swung inward.

  They were either careless or completely sure of their power over the humans of the city. He walked inside. There was no one immediately in sight.

  No one, in fact, at all.

  Heather wasn’t there.

  Swept along by the raging sea of the terrified crowd, Jenn stumbled backward, keeping her gaze fixed on the abandoned apartment building. She was freaking out: This wasn’t the plan; Antonio wasn’t supposed to go in by himself. She was fighting to move forward, but short of using Krav Maga on a hundred people at once, she would have to content herself with inching forward. Then Jenn spotted Skye’s rasta braids bobbing about twenty feet ahead of her.

  “Skye!” she shouted.

  The witch didn’t hear her. Then Skye raised a hand and started through the crowd, toward the building. Jenn followed her line of sight and saw Antonio, alone.

  Heather, Jenn thought. Where is Heather?

  She started shoving people out of her way, blocking someone’s fist, hunching her shoulders and lowering her head like a football player. Protests and swearing came with her efforts, but she kept pushing, and she got across the street less than ten seconds after Skye. Both Jenn and the witch stopped just short of Antonio, whose eyes were glowing.

  “Not there,” he said. “Never there.”

  “What?” Jenn cried.

  He put his arms around their waists and drew them into the alley, out of the madness. The noise was deafening. Jenn’s boots crunched on gravel. The moon—half full—gleamed on Antonio’s blue-black hair. If he had been human, he would have been panting and out of breath.

  “There was no scent of a human in that place. They didn’t move her there. Either Nick was lying to us, or Aurora lied to him.”

  “Bloody hell,” Skye said, clapping her hand to her face. “Then where the hell is she?”

  “Oh, no, no,” Jenn wailed. “No, Heather!”

  “Jenn.” Antonio put his hands on her shoulders and bent his knees so that he could look into her eyes. “Listen. You have to be strong. You have to stay focused. The parade is still going. Aurora is not with your sister. That means there’s hope.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Jenn said. She took a deep breath. “But you’re right. I have to stay focused.” She turned to Skye. “You have to try your scrying stone again.” Before Skye could say anything, Jenn licked her lips and gave her a hard look. “You have to, Skye. And you have to make it work.”

  Skye made a face as she fished in her pocket and pulled out the small rectangular stone. “It didn’t work before.”

  “We were underground. You’ve done voodoo since then,” Antonio reminded her. “That opens up more channels of arcana. And I have continued to pray for you.”

  “You have to have faith,” Jenn said. The words were out of her mouth before she’d realized she was going to say them.

  “Close your eyes, Jenn and Skye, and pray with me,” Antonio invited them.

  Jenn hesitated. She still didn’t believe, not the way he did. But she closed her eyes, tears running down her face. Time was ticking. The parade was winding through the streets of the French Quarter, and who knew what route it would take. Or if Heather was hidden in one of the floats, being savaged by Aurora.

  “Amen,” Antonio murmured, and the three opened their eyes.

  Skye looked into her stone and gave her head a shake. Nothing.

  “Una vez más,” Antonio said. “One more time.”

  “We don’t have time,” Jenn said, grabbing the stone. She looked around. “Oh, God, we don’t have time.”

  Gently, Antonio cupped her chin and gazed in her eyes. She jerked her head. She was done with this.

  “Close your eyes,” Antonio said.

  “Antonio,” she pleaded. “We have to do something.” Then she huffed, remembering that they’d already had this conversation, back in the convent.

  Nothing in her wanted to repeat failure, but she had no idea what else they could do except run haphazardly all over the Quarter, hoping Skye could recognize the building. Yes, they could do that.

  “Shh,” Antonio urged her. “For Heather.”

  Frustrated, scared, she closed her eyes. Please, God, or Goddess, or luck or fate, or . . .

  The face of her beloved grandfather, Papa Che, blossomed in her mind. She could see him so clearly—the calm, dark eyes, the freckles on his nose, the bushy brows and the smile.

  Oh, I loved you. I still love you, she thought. I’ll love you as long as I’m alive.

  I will fill your shoes.

  And something happened. Something shifted. Something changed. Jenn felt it like a warm vibration running down the center of her body, like someone plucking the string of a harp. It thrummed through the core of her, then stilled.

  “Yes!” Skye shrieked.

  Jenn jumped. Then she and Antonio stared into the crystal as Skye held it out to them. Jenn leaned in, squinting at it, seeing a courtyard and, behind it, a building with a winding spiral staircase.

  “That’s it!” Skye shouted.

  She turned right. The crystal dimmed. Left. It brightened.

  “Let’s go!” she shouted.

  “Here, behind the building, in the alley,” Antonio said. He grabbed Jenn and Skye’s hands, and they broke into a run. The brick alley was pitch-black, but Jenn knew he could see where to go. He dragged them along; she was running so fast she was falling over her own feet. She stumbled; he slowed. She was holding him up, and so was Skye.

  “I see a name behind the staircase!” Skye shouted. “It’s on Saint Peter. There are numbers: one, two, five, and another I can’t read.”

  “Antonio, go!” Jenn shouted. “We’ll follow.”

  Antonio’s response was to let go of both of them and fly like a bat into hell.

  He was there in less than a minute. Up the stairs he raced, and through the front door, breaking it off its hinges, ready to kill a hundred of his kind to save Jenn’s sister.

  The smell of fresh blood filled the air, and he found himself in an octagonal room furnished with antiques.

  There on the far side a cage stood open, the body of a young girl draped half in, half out of it. In a moment he was staring down at the body of Jenn’s sister. Rage filled him.

  They were too late.

  She was dead.

  He bent down, and suddenly the stench of death filled his nostrils, strong, pungent, and not right. He crossed himself as he jumped backward.

  “That’s right; I converted her,” a voice purred behind him. “I am her sire.”

  He spun to see Aurora staring at him, fangs bared playfully. “She tasted horrible. She was nearly dead. But she’s mine now.”

  Antonio had no words.

  “So, you’re the traitor,” she said, moving slowly toward him as if she were floating. “The vampire who helps the humans hunt us. I’ve been waiting a long time to meet you. Your sire speaks so fondly of you, Antonio de la Cruz.”

  Antonio hissed and lunged for her, a scream of fury shaking him.

  Holgar watched as Resistance fighters threw off Mardi Gras masks and capes, brandishing submachine guns as they charged the crazy vampire floats. Bernard, Matt, Andrew, and Marc mowed down vampires and that voodoo man, Papa Dodi. From their balconies the police opened fire, shooting into the crowd. The humans were shrieking and running everywhere.

  A fire erupted inside one of the buildings. Smoke billowed and rose into the sky.

  Vampires flew off the floats like rats, eyes bloodred, fangs glistening. One, a man, grabbed the nearest woman and sank his teeth into her neck. The Cursed One beside him took dow
n a huge man, dropping him to his knees. Blood streamed down the vampire’s face.

  Holgar pushed people out of his way, tracing the route he’d seen Antonio, Skye, and Jenn take. He reached the end of the alley to find Jenn and Skye, but no Antonio.

  “Saint Peter,” Skye got out, showing him the stone.

  He nodded. “Find Eriko and Jamie,” he told them.

  A block from his destination he crouched low as he heard a scream of fury. It was Antonio.

  He threw himself toward the house, bounded up the stairs, and flew through the opened doorway.

  Antonio had his hands around the throat of a female vampire, who was hissing and scratching at him. They were both clacking their fangs together, snapping them open and closed like wolves.

  Holgar pulled stakes free from his pockets and tried to close in. Antonio and the woman started moving so fast, though, that he couldn’t track them, let alone take a chance of missing her and killing Antonio.

  He roared in frustration and spun around as he heard cursing. Half a dozen vampires entered the room. He slammed his stake into the chest of the first one, who died with a look of surprise on his face.

  Eriko and Jamie found Jenn and Skye. Without a word Eriko picked up Jenn and carried her piggyback down the street. People were running everywhere, screaming. A woman with a head wound jerked past them. Machine-gun fire sounded a staccato counterpoint to the waves of sirens.

  Jamie and Skye ran together. Then a vampire burst through the crowd, headed straight for Eriko.

  “Hunter!” he yelled, challenging her. “You’re a Hunter!”

  “Put me down,” Jenn told her, and Eriko complied. Jenn spared one look as Eriko pulled a stake from her trouser leg, spread her legs wide for balance, and readied for battle.

  Running on, Jenn spotted the house. She put on a burst of speed from reserves she had never dreamed she possessed. Clanging up the stairs, she burst into the house with Skye and Jamie.

  Aurora and Antonio were slashing at each other, and more vampires were circling, hissing, as Antonio flung a stake into the chest of one directly behind him. The Cursed One exploded.

  Holgar was in the thick of the fray, scratching with his human nails and biting everything that came near him.

  Past them Jenn saw her sister, and she ran toward her, despite the chaos and fighting going on around her.

  One look told her everything she needed to know: Heather’s throat was torn open; blood pooled around her. Her eyes were half shut.

  And though there was no spark of life in them—not yet—they glowed as red as the fresh blood on her lips. Vampire blood.

  She’d been converted.

  “No, Heather, oh, Heather, I’m so sorry,” she wept.

  With a sob she fell to her knees. The room spun. She wanted to scream and cry and beg and hate and kill, but it was too late.

  Too late.

  Heaving, she pulled out a stake and prepared to drive it through Heather’s heart. In her mind she saw Heather and herself walking along the beach, Heather in a bright pink bikini, squealing as a wavelet snuck up on her and washed over her toes.

  “It’s so cold!” Heather cried.

  “It’s filled with sharks!” Jenn shouted back.

  Shaking herself, Jenn wiped her tears away. Keening, whimpering, she lifted her arm, swung it downward . . .

  . . . and Antonio grabbed it and stopped her so that the tip was just short of its mark. Behind him Eriko, Jamie, and Skye had arrived. And so had Marc, and at least a dozen Resistance fighters, shooting their weapons in the close quarters and staking the vampires.

  “Antonio, Antonio, I have to do this,” Jenn screamed through the noise. “They changed her.”

  “No, you don’t,” Antonio said, trying to wrest the stake out of her hand without hurting her. “I can help her. I can save her.”

  Around them the fight raged. Vampires went up in dust. A young revolutionary fell dead next to her, his neck broken, his dead eyes staring at her, urging her to do the right thing.

  This is the test, she thought as the world seemed to go cold and black around her. She heard none of the fighting, saw nothing but the stake in her hand and Heather’s red eyes. I am a hunter, and she’s a vampire.

  Colder.

  Darker.

  She couldn’t do it.

  This is the moment of trial for you. This is when you accept your calling. This is when you do what you were born to do.

  “I have to,” she ground out again. “We can’t take the chance.”

  “You have taken a chance on me,” Antonio urged. “Let me at least try, for your sake and for hers.”

  Jenn stared at him for a moment, her heart warring with her mind. Antonio was injured; deep, bloody scratch marks covered his face and chest. A hole gaped in his shoulder where he had been stabbed with something. He was shaking, and she realized suddenly that he was close to collapse. She reached out for him.

  Suddenly Eriko and Marc came to a stop before her, a vampire turning into dust between them. Marc turned, saw Antonio’s fangs, and lunged toward him, screaming, “Vampire!”

  Antonio was too weak to defend himself. Marc knocked him backward and knelt on his chest, swinging a stake downward. It made contact, driving deep into Antonio’s chest—but missing his heart. Eriko rammed into Marc, knocking him across the room and screaming like a banshee as she followed him. She grabbed his head and slammed it into the ground.

  “He’s a vampire,” Marc yelped, voice filled with pain. “You need to kill him! Or let me kill him!”

  “You shall not,” Eriko said, yanking a stake free and threatening Marc with it.

  “Stop it!” Jenn screamed. “He’s on our side; he always has been.”

  Marc wasn’t buying it. He lunged forward, and Eriko hit him, hard, across the side of the face. Again. She brandished her stake, aiming it at his chest.

  Jenn jumped to her feet, grabbing Eriko around the waist. She screamed into her ear, “Eriko, stop; you’ll kill him. He’s a human, an ally. Stop!”

  Suddenly Eriko dropped her stake and backed up as Marc scrambled to his feet, a frightened look passing over her face. She and Marc stood, panting, four feet apart, murder in both their eyes.

  Holgar shouted across the room. “Eriko! We need you over here!”

  Eriko turned and headed off. Marc stared from Antonio to Jenn and back again. “He’s been like this the whole time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Merde.” He spat. “You are liars!”

  “Would you have helped us if we’d told you?”

  Marc looked her in the eyes. “Of course not.”

  Jenn shrugged.

  “Sorry about your sister,” Marc said, before diving back into the fray. And there was such malice in his tone that she staggered backward, as if he had struck her.

  Eriko must have said something to Holgar, because a minute later he came up beside her. He looked down at Antonio, who was trying to stand. The vampire was bleeding severely from wounds on his face and neck, and part of Marc’s wooden stake was lodged in his chest—far from his heart, but blood bubbled up around it and dripped to the floor.

  “What do you need?” Holgar asked Jenn.

  She pushed her blood-streaked hair out of her eyes and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. “We’ve got to get Antonio out of here.”

  “And we’re taking Jenn’s sister with us,” Antonio said in a raspy voice.

  “Is Aurora dead?” Jenn asked.

  Holgar shook his head. “She got away. She put a stake in Antonio’s shoulder and ran before any of the rest of us could get her.”

  The wolfman slung Heather over his shoulder and helped Antonio to his feet. They fought their way to the front of the house. The battle had spilled onto the streets outside, combining with the fracas of the enraged New Orleanians.

  They staggered down the stairs and found Jamie, Eriko, and Marc in the street, circling two vampires. In a flash Eriko staked them both.

  The
three turned and saw Jenn, Holgar, and Antonio.

  Police cars screamed toward them. Overhead, the steady whum-whum-whum of a helicopter signaled that the allies of the vampires had taken to the air.

  Skye came running out of the house and then skidded to a stop beside Jenn. She was staring fixedly at the ground. Jenn glanced down and saw a chalk drawing. It was a gargoyle with a heart in its mouth, a twin to Skye’s tattoo, which she’d seen in the showers. In the center of the heart read E+S.

  “Get out of here while you still can!” Marc shouted above the roar, pulling Jenn’s attention back to the danger at hand.

  “Are you sure?” Eriko asked.

  “Yeah, I think we’ve got it covered,” he said. “Thanks to you and your damn vampire.” He flashed her a crazy, bombastic grin. “You people are crazy—fou.”

  Jenn raised her head and looked around. Everywhere people were pouring out of houses, carrying crosses and pieces of wood—broken bits of chair, snapped-off pieces of banisters and table legs. The streets were filling up, not with more terrified victims of mob frenzy, but with fighters.

  We’ve done it; we’ve started a revolution, she thought, tears filling her eyes.

  Then, as she gazed into the slack, undead face of her sister, she thought, Will it matter?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  I was given this journal by my master, Father Juan, the day we came back from New Orleans. He told me to write it down, all of it—to remember each moment so that I could go over it and learn from it. He said that as dark as these times were, darker times were coming.

  He was right.

  And so was I, when I wrote the first line on the first page, which read . . .

  —from the diary of Jenn Leitner

  MADRID

  FATHER JUAN

  As soon as Father Juan stepped outside the airport in Madrid, he knew just how serious the summons home had been. Diego, the bishop in charge of the entire Academia, pulled up to the curb in a tan Mercedes himself.

  Juan slid into the car, and Diego accelerated quickly away from the curb. Looking at the older man, Juan noticed that he was in civilian clothes, no hint of his religious standing about him.