Demon Blood (51 page)

“You ask a lot.”

“Yeah, well, you kill them, the Guardians find out, and they’ll be after our asses. They’ll frown at vampires who push the Rules a little. But if we’re connected to people dying, then they’ll start hunting us down. We just want to be left alone, not always looking over our shoulders. And you being demons, I think you can come up with ways to have your fun.”

“I think we can.” If his smile hadn’t reminded Deacon that demons were pure evil, then the glee in Malkvial’s voice would have. “You have your bargain, Mr. Deacon.”

Two hours later, Taylor teleported him out of the catacombs, as arranged. If anyone had been watching the church, they’d assume they had just lost him.

He went straight to the kitchen, found the blood he needed in the refrigerator, pushed back behind a shitload of food. He took the glass out to the courtyard, and that was where Rosalia found him a few minutes later. She sat next to him, holding a rolled-up crêpe that smelled of cinnamon and sweet cream.

“You were brilliant,” she said softly.

“I made a bargain with a demon. If I don’t bring the vampires together and pull this off, I’ll be freezing in Hell with Michael.” He took a swig, feeling the electric flavor over his tongue, but no sound with it. “The irony is, if I’d had made a bargain with Caym, I could have said my people weren’t to be touched. But I didn’t think of it. Everything I knew about demons could be summed up with: If you enter into a bargain, you’re totally fucked. But it would have saved my people. Even at the cost of my soul, it’d have been worth it.”

She studied his face, silent, looking through him.

He took another drink, then said, “I wish you’d been there at the beginning, Rosie. I have no doubt you’d have seen a way out.”

Her eyes glistened, her face crumpling, and she looked away. “I wish it, too.”

“Better than being there at the end, anyway.” By that time it had all gone to hell, and nothing could have pulled him out.

“I watched you slay Caym,” she said. “It was a thousand times more satisfying than watching Michael slay my father.”

He had to laugh. “So bloodthirsty, yet you look so sweet.”

She smiled at him, then bit into her crêpe. Filling oozed out the end, and she caught it with her fingers. He couldn’t look away from her mouth as she licked it off.

“Apostle’s fingers,” she told him, her cheeks coloring. “I made
so
many. I’ve already given half away to the neighbors and to Father Wojcinski’s church, but I’ll still be eating them for days.”

He laughed. Overcompensating for something, no doubt. “You can’t save them for the wedding?”

“They won’t keep.” She grimaced a little. “And they aren’t very good. I’ve never had a talent for cooking.”

“But you keep trying?” he guessed.

“To the neighborhood’s dismay, yes.” She seemed to hesitate, then said, “I want you to know—I realize that you think the only reason I needed you to help me is that you’re ruined. And it’s true, that’s why Malkvial believes you. But I have a hard time letting others do what I want done.”

“No kidding.”

She didn’t smile. “I almost destroyed everything we’d accomplished so far. Even though I prepared myself, even though I knew he’d attack you, I almost went into the church.”

He hadn’t expected her to say that. “What stopped you?”

“Believing that you could pull it off. And I don’t think that I could have sent anyone else in without believing I’d sent them to their death. I couldn’t risk someone’s life like that—and I’d have destroyed it all tonight. But I knew you’d convince him. And you did.”

He couldn’t respond. Her trust and her belief in him were humbling.

Now she smiled, a sad little curve of her mouth. “I know you don’t see yourself as I do—but you risked everything, including your life, to save people you loved from a demon. The only difference in what you tried to do and the sacrifice I made to become a Guardian is that I was lucky enough to succeed.”

That was a nice thought. But the line between a Guardian and Deacon wasn’t so thin. “That ‘only difference’ was a whole lot of lives.”

“Intentions have to count, don’t they?” She looked out into the garden. “I’m about to ask you and other vampires to break the Rules. That’s what demons do. They use others to break the Rules, so they don’t have to. In this, it doesn’t matter if I succeed or fail, because either way the humans will suffer for it. And so my intentions are the only thing that differentiates me from a demon.”

He shook his head. “What else can you do, Rosie?”

He didn’t expect a reply, but he should have known she’d already considered it—and had an answer.

“I could Fall, and be the human that the demons torment. I could Fall, and be the one who rounds up the other humans. I should punish myself afterward, and Fall for my part in it.” She tilted her head back, looked up at the dark sky. “But I know I won’t. Because as sorry as I am, I’d do it again if I thought I could save all of the humans and vampires that the nephilim intend to crush. And because I’m more useful to everyone as a Guardian.”

“And
I
should have walked into the sun after my community was destroyed. I know I won’t.” As sorry as he was for everything that had happened, Deacon would have done it again if he thought he’d save his people. He smiled at her. “We’re a pair of sorry bastards, aren’t we?”

She laughed through her tears, and he wanted to crush her against him. Her hand found his. “Thank you, Deacon. For being here.”

“I have good reasons to be here.”

Her wistful smile tugged at his heart. “Tell me one.”

Yes. He owed her that. But instead of saying it, he pulled her closer and kissed her. She kissed him back so sweetly, so fiercely, he could almost believe she needed him, that she loved him.

He called himself a fool. But realizing that within three days’ time she
wouldn’t
need him anymore, he carried her up to her room.

And he let himself believe, for a night.

He didn’t leave her bed until sunset. Taylor teleported him to Nice, where he boarded a chartered flight to Paris. He arrived at Yves and Camille’s apartment shortly after midnight—and found that she had already done most of his work for him.

Rosalia had obviously fed her the lines. Camille spouted the same bullshit that Deacon had handed to Malkvial the night before, and although Camille must have wondered what the real game plan was, Deacon couldn’t have detected it from the conviction of her arguments: The Guardians couldn’t save them, Belial’s demons had the best chance of destroying the nephilim, and Deacon’s bargain with Malkvial would guarantee the vampires’ safety afterward. She’d only needed to stress once that Deacon had risked his soul to make the bargain.

But Camille hadn’t stopped there. She’d flown a dozen vampires in from London, and only the most heartless among the elders were able to declare to those twelve vampires that they didn’t give a shit whether the nephilim massacred their city. And of the three that could say it, each deferred to Deacon when he reminded them that he’d saved their asses and destroyed the demons in their cities that week—and that it would take no effort at all to kill them, and make the decision himself.

He hadn’t wanted to pull that crap, but he had no time for assholes who didn’t give a fuck.

The loudest objection came when they learned of their obligation to procure a human—until Deacon passed around the files Rosalia had given him. One by one, the objections faded . . . and Deacon noted that some of the vampires suddenly looked eager, every trace of reluctance gone.

Rosalia had chosen their targets well.

By the time the vampires left, each taking a file and a list of instructions with them, Deacon was ready to return to Rome. Camille walked with him to the door, flipping through her human’s profile.

“Everyone else was given the name of a human from their city,” she said. “But I have a priest from Rome. Isn’t that interesting?”

“He’s included as a favor.”

She arched her delicate brows. “To a friend of a friend?”

He had no idea if Camille knew John Wojcinski, but he wasn’t naming names, anyway. “Something like that.”

Camille nodded. “And it
would
be these kind of men,” she murmured. “Murder is so often called the worst crime, but there can always be extenuating circumstances—and let us be truthful, and admit that some of those who are murdered deserve it. But to hunt a child, to abuse them in this manner . . . it’s deliberate, predatory, and there’s no question of its immorality or the child’s innocence. There can never be an excuse.”

He recognized those words. He’d said them to her once.

Glancing up, she interpreted his expression perfectly. “Yes, you’ve said that to me. But you were not the first I’d heard it from; that distinction belongs to the woman I called Mother. But is this something we can
all
live with?”

She was wondering whether Rosalia could, Deacon realized. Camille knew that this went against the moral fiber of every Guardian who’d ever earned her wings.

But so did letting demons and nephilim slaughter her friends.

“Yes,” he told her. “We can all live with it.”

She hoped that she could live with herself for this.

As a cop, never in a million years would Taylor have considered bringing even someone as blind and as dangerous as Anaria into a scenario like Rosalia had described. But the rules were different here. And she wasn’t a cop anymore.

From the tallest tower in the city, she looked out over Caelum. God, it was beautiful here—a shining marble disk on an endless sea. She’d never imagined anything like this realm, with its towers and domes and temples. Every stone seemed to sing to her, to recognize her presence. When she rested her palm at the edge of the tower’s peak, the marble fit her hand, as if reshaping itself to her touch.

She didn’t know if it sought her, or Michael.

But she could feel his touch now, rising up almost gently. She didn’t trust that. Gentle . . . because he wanted something from her? Up until Rosalia talking to him, he hadn’t had a problem taking it.

Her teeth clenched. Her eyes closed. “What the hell do you want from me?”

The memory came on her quickly, not a flash but deep inside, the cold morning air against her bronze skin—and more death. So much more death. But not of demons or nosferatu. The strong scent of human blood saturated the air. Warriors wearing breastplates of bronze and greaves protecting their shins lay near shields cleaved in half.

It had been a one-sided slaughter. All wearing the same colors, no opponents lay next to the fallen. It had been precise and methodic, each man killed with a single blow. It had been terrifying—many had run, but they hadn’t been spared. The scattering of the bodies and their positions told her they’d been cut down as they’d fled . . . and so, so many had fled.

And there was Anaria, her sword bloodied, gazing up at Taylor with a soft, slightly disappointed smile, as if speaking to a child who continually failed to understand. Behind Anaria stood the Guardians who’d helped her massacre the human army.

When Anaria spoke, Taylor couldn’t understand the words but their meaning was painfully clear.

“These wars they wage upon each other, it makes them like demons! They choose to throw away love and kindness in return for power and fear—and I will stop them before they destroy all of humanity, Michael. I vow to you.”

She swore—and Michael knew what he would have to do. The agony of it crushed his heart, stole his speech; he was certain he would never breathe again. Certain he would never be able to bear it, or live with himself for the decision he had to make.

But if he did not, it wouldn’t end. Anaria would save everyone from themselves until they were all dead.

“And she always needs an army to stand with her,” Taylor said hoarsely. Her throat ached. Her heart ached, as it had been crushed along with Michael’s when he’d ordered his sister’s execution. “I suppose if you can bear that, then I bear this.”