NINETEEN
The Last Venator
It was late in the evening when Jack returned from Gezira, and the first thing he did was check on Schuyler’s wound, un-peeling the bandages around her torso and studying Mahrus’s handiwork. The skin was still nubby but no longer red, and while the scar was noticeable, it was not ugly. “A battle wound,” he said. “I am proud of you. You were brave to fight the way you did.”
Schuyler buttoned her blouse and sat cross-legged on their hotel bed. The small room had begun to feel like home even though the clerk at the reception desk still cast suspicious glances their way. “I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “I knew you would have done the same.”
“I should have been there with you,” he said. He had listened to her story without interruption, and had kept a stoic front, but now the full brunt of it—what he could have lost—was slowly hitting him, and Schuyler could see how hard it was for him to keep his emotions in check.
“Don’t worry, my love.” Schuyler smiled and put a hand on his cheek. “I felt your strength was with me. I couldn’t have done it without you. What about you… did you find what you were looking for across the Nile?”
Jack shook his head angrily. “When we arrived at the safe house, the Nephilim were long gone. I think they meant to lead us astray. The Lennox brothers visited the temple, but they say there’s no priestess named zani, that they’d heard wrong.”
“Maybe Mahrus will have some news that can help us in that arena,” Schuyler said.
“If he’s been working this area for as long as he has, I’m hoping he does.” Jack nodded. They planned to meet with the Venator after Jack had returned, so they could trade information and discuss their future strategy. The Lennox twins had gone after Deming and Dehua, who were still trying to track down the remaining members of the Eygptian Coven, to hand over the blood spirits.
The coffee shop was crowded with students, old men trading war stories, families having their late dinner, as Franco-Arabic music tinkled over the speakers. Jack and Schuyler took a table in the back, where they could see all the entrances. So far, the Nephilim did not strike in Red Blood areas—they seemed to confine their attacks and violence on the vampire strongholds—but it was better to be prepared and on guard.
Mahrus arrived promptly at the designated hour. He was so beautiful that many in the shop turned to stare at him.
Jack rose from his seat to greet him, and pumped his hand. “I owe you her life. Thank you, healer. I know I can never repay you, but my sword is yours whenever you need it, you have my word.”
Mahrus bowed. “The honor is mine, Abbadon.”
The waitress arrived with cups of steaming Turkish coffee, and for a few minutes the three sat and enjoyed the early evening air, drinking the strong dark blend. Schuyler felt better with some caffeine in her system. The coffee made her senses feel more alert. Since she did not take the blood anymore, she had to rely on other sources for a spike of energy.
“I have not heard of priestess named zani,” Mahrus said.
“If she is a famous holy woman, then the Wardens would know. I will ask.”
“We think she might be Catherine,” Schuyler said.
“Interesting,” he said. “Could be. I thought I would find my sister at the Cairo museum. She was fond of Egyptian history, and an art lover. But she was not there.” Mahrus told them about his life in Jordan. After leaving Rome during Caligula’s reign, he had traveled to the eastern front, finding a home in an outpost of the former Ottoman Empire.
“We were a peaceful Coven,” he said. “For centuries we lived in harmony, until…”
“Go on.”
Mahrus’s eyes clouded. “It happened so slowly and insidiously that we did not even notice at first. We were blind to the threat—the Coven did not warn us. There was nothing from New York; no one informed us of what happened in Rio or Paris. If only we had known, we might have been able to prepare,” he said bitterly. “As it was, we were sitting ducks.”
Schuyler gripped Jack’s hand under the table as they listened to Mahrus’s story.
“It started with the humans first, the missing girls. It was a Red Blood problem, we thought, but we kept an eye on it.
Then we discovered a nest of Nephilim, but as my Venators were fighting them, the hidden Croatan in our conclave took the opportunity to strike as well.”
He looked at them with great sorrow. “Everyone from my Coven is dead.” He closed his eyes. “I am the only one left. The last Venator standing.” He sighed. “It is only thanks to my fellow Venators that I am alive.”
“Deming and Dehua, you mean? And Sam and Ted?”
“Yes. They were fighting the Nephilim—they were the only help we received from outside. They were headed to Cairo, on the trail of a new hive of demon-born. I came with them as well, since I knew that Catherine was here, and I had to warn her about what was happening. There is something more important here than even the Coven.”
“You knew she was part of the Order of the Seven.”
“Yes.” He nodded. “I was there when we built the gate in Lutetia. I knew what she had been called to do.”
“You think the Nephilim are here for the gate?” Schuyler asked.
“I am sure of it. In every city, the pattern is the same.
They strike first at the young, then the Elders, then the unborn. The Nephilim knew exactly where to hit the cycle house.
They are vicious and strong, but they do not know our hidden workings. They need a hand to guide their evil. This was the work of a Croatan. One of Lucifer’s mightiest allies, who harbored the Dark Prince and kept his spirit alive on earth. my guess is it is the same one who has systematically destroyed all the Covens, beginning in New York.”
TWENTY
Nightclub at the End of the
Universe
Oliver was wrong. As they walked around the crowded streets, he changed his mind. Tartarus was not like New York City at all, not at all like the city he called his home. New York was dynamic, alive: it breathed with ambition and fire, its energy infectious. It was elegantly structured, laid out on a grid from river to river, aside from the one charming exception of the former cows’ footpaths that made up the West Village.
New York had an order and a logic to its existence. You always knew where you were. At least, Oliver did. Growing up, he had explored its many corners and hideaways. He knew manhattan like the back of his hand, and he was proud of that. He loved New York. Like many residents, he couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
Tartarus, in comparison, was dead, rotting from the inside and filled with maggots. It was not just the capital of the dead, but a corpse of a city laid out on a mortuary slab. There was no sun, but it was hot and sticky, and everyone crowded together. The bodies on the sidewalks moved listlessly; everyone looked exhausted, beaten. There were no children. Oliver thought he had never been anywhere so devoid of hope. It was a terrible place, ugly and overwhelming. It smelled like garbage, and there were flies everywhere—the largest flies he’d ever seen: they moved quickly, little carriers of disease.
Looking down at the twisted streets, he thought that one could easily get lost forever in its serpentine alleyways. As Mimi had said, in Hell there is no past, no future; only now.
And so Tartarus was a jumble, a hodgepodge, an ugly patch-work of buildings that had no rhyme or reason to be standing next to each other. Everything clashed, colors, styles, zon-ing—there was no order, there was no aesthetic design. Parts of it looked like a strip mall on steroids: all blinking lights and tiny little shop fronts with peeling paint and antiquated video posters. Otherwise, there were dozens of abandoned empty lots, and almost everything—the walls, the sidewalks, the streets—were covered in grime and soot.
“Come on, this is only the outer ring. We need to get downtown,” Mimi said, leading him toward what looked like a subway station.
The train that roared into the station was covered with graffiti inside and out. E
very seat had been vandalized—windows scratched. When the announcement crackled, it was all static; no one could understand what had been said. They hopped on. Mimi seemed to know where she was going, and Oliver trusted her to lead the way. She drew some stares with her platinum hair—the brightest thing in the dark city—but other than that they were left alone. No one threatened Oliver.
The only palatable emotion he could sense was massive indifference. No one cared. Their indifference was a physical entity. Oliver could almost feel them not caring; not at all interested or curious about their presence. It was an active, hostile disinterest, the likes of which he had never experienced. It gave him the creeps.
The subway lurched forward, and they rode it for a few stops.
Finally they reached their destination. “This is it, let’s get out,” Mimi said.
Oliver noticed a sign right above the exit from the subway: ABANDON HOPE, ALL YE ENTER HERE.
Not for the first time did he wonder what he was doing down here. This was no place for a human being, let alone one who was alive.
Back outside, downtown was even uglier than midtown, or wherever they had been. The streets were even more tightly packed, the air smelled like ash and cinder, and it was becoming more and more difficult to breathe. Oliver saw the trolls chained with their painful silver collars. They worked as cab drivers and waiters and swept the streets, which looked impossible to clean. He recognized the demons with their slightly red faces and small protruding horns above their foreheads; their ugly scowls. But the very worst were the creatures with faces that were so beautiful they were hard to look at. Their eyes were flat and cold; their indifference was the strongest of all.
“Croatan,” Mimi whispered.
Oliver shivered. The demons were rough-looking and beastly, but the Silver Bloods, who had been angels once, had a corrupted beauty, like paintings that were smeared in excrement.
“They won’t bother us down here,” Mimi said. “Even if we saw the Dark Prince himself, he wouldn’t care.”
“Is this why they want earth?” Oliver asked.
“Yes. Hell is dead. Nothing grows here,” Mimi told him.
“It wasn’t always this way, but that was how the world was divided in the beginning. All the light at the top, and darkness below.”
“Where is Lucifer?” Oliver asked.
“Probably past the ninth.”
“What’s that?”
“The core,” Mimi said. “The center of the underworld.
Where the Dark Angels were made. No one is allowed there.
We barely got permission to get here, in the seventh.” She explained the hierarchy of Hell. On top were the Croatan, Lucifer, and his Silver Bloods. And right below them were the demons of ice and fire, who lived in the underworld. Then there were the lost souls, humans who’d been judged upon entering the Kingdom of the Dead and were consigned to the un-derlayer for all eternity. Then there were the shackled trolls, who were neither angel nor demon nor human, but another creature entirely—no one knew for sure, except that they carried out the demons’ wishes. They were the lowest of the low, the underclass, the lowest caste, the untouchables. “There are Hellhounds too, of course,” she told him. “But they’re very rare—probably down in the ninth with Lucifer. After they rebelled and stood with us in Rome, he brought them to heel.
Gabrielle held out hope that she could bring them back to our side one day, but who knows if that will ever happen.”
Oliver regained his bearings. If Tartarus were New York, it looked as if they were now on the Lower East Side, before the hipsters and trendy wine bars and fancy hotels had moved in, but without the cozy Italian delis with the made men in ve-lour sweats playing cards by the front doors.
In the middle of the neighborhood was a dark building with a large crowd standing in front of it. music—droning, tuneless music, but music nonetheless—boomed from the doors. Oliver noticed that the crowd waited anxiously, and that a beautiful demon, her horns filed into sharp sexy little points, was sitting on a lifeguard’s chair, looking down dis-dainfully at the crowd. Once in a while she would motion with her tail, and the burly trolls—bouncers—would push through to help the chosen few make their way to the front of the velvet rope.
Oliver was all too familiar with the practice. They called it
“face control” or “working the door,” and it trafficked in rejection and humiliation, doling out both in spades, along with low self-esteem. It was Hell, and Oliver thought he should really stop thinking that. It was getting a bit clichéd. Next thing he knew he would be trapped in an elevator with strangers.
Mimi was making her way toward the teeming, anxious crowd. “Well, are you coming?” she asked, turning around when she noticed he was dawdling behind, hesitant.
“Yeah,” he said, resigned. maybe with Mimi he wouldn’t have to stand in the crowd forever.
“This looks like as good a place to start as any. God knows Kingsley loved a nightclub,” she said. “Just need to get that devil bitch to notice me.” Mimi stuck two fingers into her mouth and let out a huge, piercing whistle.
Everyone turned to look at them, including the stuck-up demon, who looked them both up and down for what seemed like an eternity. For a moment, Oliver felt small and unworthy and fourteen years old again, trying to sneak into moomba and failing. But in the end, the she-demon flicked her tail in their direction.
Mimi preened. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, the bouncers collected them, and just like that, they were delivered inside.
TWENTY-ONE
Dream House
In the spring of the next year, Charles bought a media company and planned his takeover of the airwaves, which would include a competitor to the current twenty-four hour cable news channel, a fifth network, and multiple radio and newspaper holdings. He aimed to direct the global conversation, and influence Red Blood culture through its most insidious mech-anism for communications. He was buying himself a pulpit.
The Fifth Avenue town house was almost ready, and Allegra spent most of her time with decorators, debating wall colors, window treatments, and furniture. They planned to keep a few of their things from the mansion on Riverside. Cordelia had promised them the chesterfield and the silver as bonding gifts, but Allegra was looking forward to a fresh start. There were those who believed that buying furniture was a bourgeois practice. In certain circles, only inherited furniture was deemed appropriate, but Allegra disagreed. While tradition was well and good, she wanted everything in the new house to be light and new, with nothing that hinted of the heavy bag-gage, or held too many memories of the past.
There were some traditions she did keep, however. Since Egypt, when they had ruled as menes and meni, their union was sealed by the bride moving her possessions to her new home. The movers would take care of the heavy stuff, but Allegra planned to bring a few items on her own: her jewelry box, the little crystal vase of oil, a cup of rice, and a flagon of water, to bring luck to their new home.
That afternoon, Allegra stood in the soon-to-be finished living room.
Charles walked in. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“I just wanted to check on the wallpaper. I was worried it might be too bright for the room, but I think it’s fine.”
“It looks lovely,” he said.
“You like it?”
“Very much.” He nodded.
“Good,” she said.
Charles smiled at her. “I’m glad to see you happy.”
“I am happy,” Allegra said.
If she said it enough, maybe she would believe it.
TWENTY-TWO
Blood Sick
“You’ve been quiet all evening,” Jack said, when they returned to their room after their lengthy Schuyler nodded and sat at the edge of the bed, kicking off her shoes and taking off her earrings. She was still digesting everything Mahrus had told them about the systemic extinction of the Covens. Rio, Paris, Kiev, Shanghai, Amman, and Cairo were no more, or had gone undergro
und. New York was barely hanging on—one of the few remaining safe havens left—and who knew how long it would continue to survive. They had to find Catherine and secure the gate before the rest of the Silver Bloods were able to burst through from the other side.
Jack saw her distress and put a hand on her shoulder.
“Don’t give up hope. It is a bleak time in our history, but I have faith that we will find a way to stop this evil and that we will survive.”
Schuyler nodded. She had to think of a way to reach Catherine. Where was she hiding? She was in the city, Schuyler knew; even Mahrus had agreed that her theory was solid. The Nephilim activity was strongest here. This was the place.
Schuyler had to find a way to draw her out.
“Don’t you think it’s strange?” she asked Jack suddenly.
“If it’s easier to keep the demons out of this world by obliterating the paths entirely, like Kingsley did when he released the subvertio, why did Michael create the gates instead?”
“He must have had a good reason. The law of Creation mandates that that which was made by the Almighty should not be unmade. The Gates of Hell have kept this world safe for centuries. Michael put his strength into their foundation. They have been weakened because he has been weakened,” Jack said thoughtfully.
“Do you think Mahrus is right? About the Silver Blood who’s behind this being from New York?” Schuyler asked. It was where the killings had begun, after all, where the first deaths from Full Consumption had occurred. In Italy, Oliver had told them about how Forsyth Llewellyn had disappeared, and how Mimi and the Venators had fingered him as the traitor. Bliss had confirmed as much—that her cycle father, Forsyth, the most trusted of Charles’s associates, was actually the hidden Croatan in their midst, who had been keeping the spirit of Lucifer alive in his daughter. “Do you think Forsyth is here?” she asked, shuddering. “That he’s the one who’s planned all this?”