HAPTER 29

Mimi

Mimi felt someone come up behind her, but when she turned around, it was not the handsome Venator she saw, but a wraith. A blackened, burned figure. A walking corpse with sockets for eyes and a slash for a mouth, and a bandaged torso. Burned, disfigured, but somehow stomachchurningly... alive.

"You..." The wraith pointed a bony finger at Mimi, and spoke in a whistling, raspy whisper reminiscent of rustling dead leaves. "You dare..."

That voice. Even in its present, eerie iteration, Mimi recognized that voice. It had once made speeches in front of podiums, had once welcomed elite groups of guests to a particularly spectacular Park Avenue co-op.

"Warden Cutler?" Mimi whispered. "But I... I killed you."

It sounded absurd even as she said it. But she had cut Nan Cutler in two, had left her to burn in the black fire in the Almeida villa. How could the warden have survived? It was ridiculous. And it was equally absurd of Mimi to parry or banter with a walking and talking death wraith.

"One more step and I'll have your blood," the faceless horror croaked. What was not charred or blistered on her body was bone, a sickening sight.

Mimi's hand twitched a little. She should not have put her blade away. Did she have time? Where the hell was the rest of the team? Had Kingsley heard her? Where were the boys when she needed them? Why had she strayed from the group; Venator training taught that you always stayed in twos. How stupid of her to have followed those footprints.... It had trap written all over it.

Would she have enough time to arm up before Nan made a move on her? No time to think'she unsheathed it?but even as she did, in that same moment, Mimi found herself locked in a death grip with the half-dead Silver Blood.

The monster who had once been the most sought-after hostess in New York was ferociously strong, and as much as Mimi kicked and clawed, the demon would not release her hold. Mimi could feel its foul breath on her neck, knew it would not be long before its fangs would puncture skin and draw her blood....

No!

She slammed the warden backward against the wall with all her might. But Nan had gotten the upper hand and knocked Mimi against the concrete floor. It would have felled many a vampire, but Azrael was made of a tougher substance. Still, it made her dizzy, and she could feel a crack in her skull and the wound bleeding out.... She was losing consciousness....

At that moment Kingsley appeared. Mimi thought she had never been so happy to see anyone in her life.

"Croatan?" he ordered. "Absed! Absed abysso!" Go back to Hell! With a mighty thrust of his sword, he stabbed it straight through the heart.

There was a hissing sound, like the wheel of a tire deflating, somewhat anticlimactic until the figure suddenly burst into a bright silver flame, a momentarily dazzling, blinding light, and the temperature in the room rose to solar levels, as the spirit collapsed into itself in a supernova. Mimi shielded her eyes until it was safe to open them. She thought the warden would have disappeared, but the corpse was still there.

Only now there was nothing menacing about it. Just a mere heap of bones. Kingsley wrenched out his sword from the pile, and it transformed back into the short jackknife he carried in his pocket. "Are you all right?" he asked, kneeling beside Mimi. He took a look at her head wound, his hands gentle as he held his thumbs against her temples and slowly massaged them. "Cracked like an egg, but you'll be okay. It's already starting to heal."

"How did she live? I cut her in two," Mimi choked.

"You didn't stab her through the heart. It's the only way. It was my fault. I should have made sure. I thought you knew," Kingsley sighed. "Lawrence was right. The Conclave doesn't bother to teach anything anymore, and the new crop of vampires has forgotten too many things."

"I thought that was just a myth... you know, like in the movies, when humans think they can kill us with a stake through the heart," she said.

"There is always some truth to a myth," Kingsley said kindly. 'the Conspiracy saw to that. So that the Red Bloods feel no need to look for the actual truth."

"Well, someone should have told me. I owe you one," Mimi said. "What took you so long anyway?"

"We found two dead Silver Bloods out back," he said. "But those had been taken care of properly. What did you find?"

In answer, Mimi stood up. "I found something. Someone. In the bathtub." She led him to the room and showed him the body.

When Kingsley saw the small figure in the flannel pajamas, he crossed himself. They exchanged a look of anguish and sorrow.

"Do it," he said. Mimi nodded.

Slowly she turned the body over.

It was Jordan Llewellyn. Mimi recognized the girl's gray eyes. They were open and staring at the ceiling. In death she looked even younger than her eleven years. She was wearing a grubby pair of pajamas, the same ones she had been wearing the night she was abducted. From the girl's sallow complexion, Mimi knew without having to be told: every drop of Jordan's blood had been drained. Full consumption.

Mimi felt as if she was going to throw up. Nothing had prepared her for this. This was so much worse than almost being taken by the half-dead warden. She had joined the Venators to find adventure, to get out of New York.... She had never once thought they would fail in their search. Never. And to know they had come so close, only to be so very far.... She was not prepared to see the dead body of a child. It was an image that she would carry with her forever.

Mimi was a confident person. She had an unshakable belief in herself and in her abilities, and she had believed in Kingsley's power to find Jordan. She had believed he would not let them down. She looked at him now, with the deepest sense of betrayal.

But Kingsley was doing something odd. He had taken out a magnifying glass from his Venator kit and was looking into the dead girl's eyes. "Lennox, what do you think? Can you see it?" he asked Ted, who was hunkered by the doorway.

Ted peered through the glass. After a few minutes he handed it to his brother, who did the same. "No. I don't see it."

"I didn't think so," Kingsley said, and there was a note of triumph in his voice. "Force, take a look? Closely, do you see it? Or more correctly, do you not see it?"

She took the magnifying glass and looked into Jordan's eyes. What was she looking at? What was she supposed to not see? This was morbid. Jordan's expression was a blank, remonstrative gaze. Finally she noticed it. Jordan's eyes were missing their pupils. In the space in the middle, where they should have been, there was nothing, her eyes were one simple surface. She looked like a doll.

"What happened to her? What does it mean?" Mimi asked.

Kingsley's drawn face broke into a grin. "It means, Force, that we haven't failed just yet. The Watcher is alive.

CHAPTER 30

Schuyler

Waiting was the hardest part. Schuyler remembered how she used to sit in the apartment on Perry Street waiting, just like this, for Jack to arrive for their secret rendezvous. It always seemed like such a miracle every time he walked through the door. So unbelievable that he was hers, and that he had been looking forward to seeing her as much as she had been longing to see him.

It was as if she had left him only yesterday, the emotions he stirred up in her were so dizzying, the memories he brought back to the surface so strong. She had loved watching him walk inside the apartment. She remembered how his face wore a look of anxiety as he appeared in the doorway, as he too had always readied himself for disappointment. The question lingering on his features... Would she be there waiting for him? She had loved him so much for that. To know that he was just as vulnerable, just as nervous, as she had been. He had never once taken her for granted.

Now she waited for him again. He would return for her, she believed that. Believed it so much more, as she waited, sitting on the cavern floor in an underground catacomb in Paris, than she ever had sitting on a couch in an apartment in New York.

She believed he would return for her, because if he did not, it meant - no. No. There was no way he could have been killed. But what if, what if he had been harmed? What if he was somewhere down one of those dark tunnels, the tunnels she had not chosen? what if he was somewhere down there, bleeding and unconscious? What then?

She couldn't even begin to think about what had happened to Oliver. She hoped Jack had been right, that the Silver Bloods had left him alone.... The Croatan weren't interested in humans... were they? How could she have left him? She would never forgive herself for deserting him. And now, Jack too... Jack was gone as well. Was she fated to lose both of them in one night?

She should go. She had waited long enough. Jack needed her. She had to go looking for him; she couldn't just wait around doing nothing. She took the torch off the floor. But just as she stepped toward the first tunnel, she heard a noise from behind her.

Footsteps. She turned around, brandishing the flame.

"Stay back!" she called.

"It's me'don't worry, it's just me." Jack stood in front of her. He looked untouched, unharmed. Not a single hair out of place. No cut on his cheek. His clothes were clean, and looked freshly pressed. He looked perfect, the way he always did, and not as if he had just battled a pack of monstrous Silver Bloods.

She did not put down the flame. Was it Jack? She remembered the baron's crimson eyes. She had not seen the Silver Blood underneath the human disguise at first. Was this Jack Force or was it something else? Another shape-shifting enemy?

"How do I know you're you?" she asked, holding her torch as if it would save her from whatever creature stood before her.

"Schuyler, I've just narrowly escaped with my life. You've got to be joking," Jack said.

"Stay away from me?"

A thought occurred to her: What if this was all part of the Silver Blood scheme? A deadly ploy? A masquerade? What if they had planned for Jack to 'rescue' her so he could gain her trust? A year had gone by, loyalties changed. How did she know he had not been turned? They had been so far away from all the news in the coven, what if... what if...

"Schuyler, I am not a Silver Blood?" Jack looked angry now, and a vein on his forehead was throbbing. His voice was hoarse from shouting. "Stop this. You need to trust me! We don't have much time, my father can only hold them back for so long. We've got to get out of here!"

"Prove it!" she hissed. "Prove you are who you say!"

"We don't have time for this! You really want me to prove who I am?" he asked.

"Yes!" she challenged.

In answer, he took her in his arms, lifting her up and against the wall. He pressed his lips against hers, and with each kiss she could see into his mind, into his soul. She saw a year of hate... saw him alone, alienated, hurt. She had lied to him and had left him. With every kiss he made her see, made her feel... every emotion, every dream he had of her... every ounce of his wanting and his need... and his love... his all-consuming, life-affirming love for her.

In the darkness they found each other again... and she kissed him back, so greedily and hungrily, she never wanted to stop kissing him... to feel his heart against hers, the two of them intertwined together, his hands in her hair, then down the small of her back. She wanted to cry from the overwhelming emotion that engulfed the two of them....

"Now do you believe me?" Jack asked huskily, pulling away for a moment so they could look into each other's eyes.

Schuyler nodded, breathless. Jack. Every fiber of her being tingled with love and desire and remorse and forgiveness. Oh, Jack... the love of her life, her sweet, her soul...

But how?

How could he still feel this way about her? He was already bonded to his vampire twin, wasn't he? Wasn't he? She had seen the invitations. Mimi in her white bonding dress.

"The bonding..." she croaked.

"It never happened. I am not bonded to my twin."

He was still free. He was still himself, still the boy she had fallen so deeply and irrevocably in love with that even a year apart could not quench her love for him. And he loved her still, she knew that now. They looked at each other, suddenly understanding everything between them that had gone unsaid.

Jack let go first. He looked at the rubble with a frown. The Silver Bloods had destroyed the stone steps that led to the exit ten stories up. Schuyler could see a small pinpoint of light from the hole above.

"That's the intersection. If we get past it, they cannot follow. Hold on," he said, unspooling a coil of rope that was attached to his Venator pack. He swung the hook over the edge and took her by the waist. "Don't look down," he said as he zoomed them up through the air like a couple of superheros.

"Wait! Someone's down there! I think, I think it might be your father, Yes! It's Charles! Wait, Jack!"

The rope slipped, caught; there was a struggle as they were suddenly pulled downward again, back down to the depths... and Schuyler could see, far in the distance, Charles Force battling Leviathan himself, the demon taking the form of a basilisk, a dragon, and a chimera, changing shape and taunting its attacker with mirthless glee.

"GET OUT OF HERE!" Charles Force bellowed when he saw them dangling on the wire above him. "SAVE YOURSELVES!" And she felt it, felt his ferocious might push them out of the hole, send them flying through the air and sprawling out onto the sidewalk. They made it to the surface just in time.

Just behind or underneath, she wasn't sure, she felt a huge wave, as if a lightning bolt had just missed her by a centimeter. Then the universe wobbled.

A ripple.

A tear.

A wound.

For a moment the world was not in focus. Schuyler could see into the vastness of space and infinity. Alternate universes. Alternate endings. Alternate outcomes.

She felt a trembling deep inside herself as well as out, as if every atom in the known universe were shaking, as if time itself were being unhinged, as if the very earth, the very world they lived in, were in danger of being destroyed.

But then, just as suddenly, everything snapped back into place. Time fixed itself. The universe stopped trembling. The world was the same as it ever was.

Schuyler was sprawled on the sidewalk. She couldn't feel anything: her legs, her arms, everything was numb. Jack lay on the ground beside her. With the last of her remaining strength, she reached for him, brushing her fingertips against his cold ones, and then she felt his hand grasp hers in his strong, firm grip. He was alive. Her heart rejoiced. He was alive. They had survived.

But there was no sign of Charles Force anywhere.