The Damned (34 page)

“We can help with that,” said a rangy voice at the door.

There at the entrance stood Greg, the man from her grandfather’s funeral, flanked by two other men sporting the same suits and identical black Jerusalem crosses. Greg stepped over half a dozen bodies as he walked toward her, but he didn’t glance down at a single one. He bent over and took a good look at Jamie, then motioned at the other two men. Wordlessly, they gently picked up Jamie.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Jenn said, going after them.

Greg regarded her steadily. “We can save his life. We will.”

“Where will you take him?” she demanded.

His black sunglasses reflected her careworn, blood-streaked face. She couldn’t see his eyes, couldn’t read his neutral expression. She ticked a glance past him to the door.

“Not just him—you, too,” Greg replied. “He still needs a donor.”

Jenn stood and turned to look at Skye, who was holding her hands in front of herself, fingers spread, concentrating hard. She gave Skye a quick, sharp nod.

“Go,” Skye said. “I’m feeling vibes. I think they’re friends.”

“Well, we’re certainly not enemies,” Greg replied.

And Jamie didn’t have time for them to discuss it.

“Skye, coming?” Jenn asked, making up her mind.

Skye shook her head. “I’ll wait for the others. They might return here.”

“We’ll meet up tomorrow. Nine a.m., one mile from the northern border checkpoint, understood?” Greg asked Skye. “You know where it is?”

Skye nodded, biting her lip as more tears streamed down her cheeks. She looked so young. Just sixteen. What a world she had grown up in. Jenn knew she desperately wanted to go with Jamie; maybe that would be better, so she could continue to work her magicks on him.

“Do you want to switch places?” Jenn offered.

Skye shook her head. “I’m
not
a universal donor.”

“Besides,” Greg said, “it’s you, Miss Leitner, whom we need to speak with.”

Jenn nodded and, turning, walked out of the church with Greg. And as she stepped over them, she didn’t look at the bodies either.

S
ALAMANCA
F
ATHER
J
UAN

It was time to say good-bye. Father Juan embraced Diego tightly, praying silently for his safety. The bishop pulled away at last, wiping at his eyes. His bags were next to him. He held out a piece of paper to Juan with a list of names on it.

“Ninety students have elected to stay. Those who chose to leave have gone already.”

“And the instructors?”

“Master Molina alone of the Spanish military officers is remaining.”

Juan nodded. “It’s too much to expect them to go against both their government and their church.”

Diego nodded. “The three civilian instructors are staying.”

“All of them?” Juan asked, amazed.

“Yes.”

“That is an unlooked-for blessing.”

“One you’re in dire need of, I’m afraid,” Diego said grimly.

Juan didn’t want to ask the final question. “The priests?”

“Leaving.”

“All of them?”

Diego nodded grimly. “I can stay,” he ventured.

“No, I still need you out there looking out for us.”

“I’ll do everything in my power.”

“Do everything in God’s power, and then we’re fine,” Juan said, trying to smile.

“I know some people don’t see it, but you are doing God’s work. He will take care of you. He always has. He won’t let you die until you are finished with your work here.”

Juan laughed bitterly. Diego spoke words truer than he knew.

Diego continued. “I don’t believe the Pope knows what is happening here. I can’t believe he is condoning all of this. I think the alliance, the shutting down of the academy, all are being orchestrated by others. As has happened before, in other wars.”

“If that’s true, then it’s even more important that you go. Maybe you can get to His Holiness and tell him what’s happening,” Juan said. “Make him see that we need his support.”

“I will try. Until then, good-bye, my old friend.”

Juan watched Diego’s car drive out of sight and then turned and went into the chapel, needing to pray and be by himself.

But a lone figure knelt in front of the altar, apparently having the same need. Juan approached slowly, not wanting to interrupt, but drawn to see who it was and whether they needed him to pray with them.

He was surprised when he saw that it was one of the younger priests, a young Italian with dark hair not unlike Antonio’s. His shoulders were hunched, and he held his clerical collar in his hands.

“Father Giovanni,” Father Juan said, “I thought you would have been gone by now.”

Father Giovanni looked up at him. “I was gone.”

“And?”

The priest tried to smile. “I came back.”

“I’m glad,” Juan said, kneeling next to him. “I’m just not sure why you did.”

Father Giovanni gazed at Father Juan with an odd, faraway look on his face. “I—I had a vision. God told me I was needed here. That I had a purpose.” He took a breath. “I think I’m going to die here.”

Juan stared at the priest in alarm. “Are you sure?”

“As sure as one can be when one is having a vision,” Father Giovanni replied, “for the first time in his life.”

“Then why did you come back?”

Father Giovanni looked next at the crucifix on the wall. “God told me He needed me, but that it was my choice.”

“To die in the service of God is the finest death anyone can have,” Juan assured him, not sure what else he could say. “And we all die.”

Father Giovanni nodded and then offered his collar to Juan. “I’m excommunicated, then, Father.”

Juan shook his head. “Rome has made an error. You wear that with pride. You are serving God. You are His priest. The students who believe need to see you wearing your collar, to know that you still have faith. It will give them courage.”

Father Giovanni nodded. Anger again rose in Juan. God’s people were dying for what was right, and they were being threatened for it by the very people who should be supporting and canonizing them. Why did it always have to be this way?

He heard a footstep at the back of the chapel, and soon Master Molina was kneeling beside them, bending his head in prayer. Then the other three instructors came in and joined them. So few of them left to care for ninety students.

He heard the shuffling of many feet as those students came and joined them, gathering around the teachers instead of sitting in the pews as they ordinarily would.

Juan closed his eyes.
I am not alone.

We are not alone.

BOOK THREE

SEKER

Upon my flowery breast,
Kept wholly for himself alone,
There he stayed sleeping, and I caressed him,
And the fanning of the cedars made a breeze.

—St. John of the Cross,
sixteenth-century mystic of Salamanca

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Did you think that we weren’t there?
Did you think we didn’t care?
We’ve seen every tear you’ve cried
Hung on every breath you’ve sighed
We want to dwell in your heart
Together always, ne’er to part
And when you taste our undying thirst
You will feel how we are cursed

L
AS
V
EGAS
T
EAM
S
ALAMANCA
M
INUS
A
NTONIO
;
T
AAMIR AND
N
OAH

Jenn sat in the back of a black, windowless van with her arms folded across her chest, dividing her attention between Greg, who sat across from her, and Jamie, who lay unconscious on the vehicle’s floor. “Who are you?” she asked at last.

Greg gave her the ghost of a smile. “We’re the good guys.”

A minute later the van pulled to a stop, and Greg swung open the door. They were in a parking garage. Where, she wasn’t sure, but it couldn’t have been too far from the church. The two black-cross men who had been with Greg carried Jamie out of the van and into a waiting elevator. Jenn followed with Greg.

They exited into a penthouse suite, and Jenn marveled at the views of the city with all its blinking lights. A man in a black turtleneck, who was also wearing a Jerusalem cross on a chain around his neck, waved the men carrying Jamie over to a dining table, and they placed him on it.

“Don’t worry, he’s a doctor,” Greg said.

As the man began to set up IVs for the transfusion, Jenn realized that she had been so tired and so stressed for so long that she had passed beyond worried. Sinking down into the chair, she gave serious consideration to what it would be like if Jamie’s and her positions were reversed.

Death would be a blessing, a release from the fear and the fighting. There were moments when Jenn struggled just to remember why she was fighting instead of giving up, accepting the world the way that it was, and trying to get by in it until someone recognized her as a former hunter and killed her.

She shook her head. It was the exhaustion and the horror over Antonio that was doing her thinking for her. She needed to put those thoughts from her mind.

She didn’t want to watch the doctor work, so she turned back to Greg and cleared her throat. “Now, tell me exactly who you are and what’s been going on,” she said.

He pulled up a chair and sat down. “We’re part of a shadow organization working inside the United States government. We’ve never given up on winning this war. We’ve been working to create a weapon that will change the balance of power.”

“Like the disease that scientist was working on in Madrid?” Jenn had been in America when her team had been sent to help safeguard Dr. Sherman and had failed. She had been told, though, that after the scientist was turned into a vampire, commandos wearing the black Jerusalem cross had snatched him from under the noses of both the Cursed Ones and Team Salamanca.

“Exactly like that,” Greg said.

“And . . . you were in Russia?”

He grimaced. “Afraid we didn’t quite pull that one off. We didn’t get Dantalion or his data. Everything went up.”

“We were going in,” she said. “We could have done it. You got in our way.”

He shook his head. “Then it would have been your people getting blown to smithereens instead of ours.”

She closed her eyes. “Jamie heard someone talking to Dantalion in English. An American, he said. From Solomon. Filling Dantalion in.”

“What?”

“Telling him about Aurora. And us. He said that Eriko had been killed.”

Greg leaned forward. “Did Jamie describe him?” He glanced at the fallen hunter as if he wanted to jostle him awake.

“The man was wearing a gas mask and white camouflage,” she said.

“That doesn’t narrow it down much. But it should come as no surprise to us that he and Solomon were working together. Solomon’s got half the world working for him.”

“You should have told us you were there. And what you were doing.”

“Sorry. We can’t move quite as freely as you can. This meet-up’s not exactly sanctioned,” he said, “and that’s telling you more than I should.”

She sighed. “Just our luck to have wimpy allies.”

“We will win this war,” Greg said. “We just need time.”

“We’re fresh out.”

A cushy chair was brought in. Jenn sat down gingerly, never taking her eyes off Greg as the doctor wrapped a tourniquet around her upper arm and tapped a vein in her forearm. Greg’s face was grave.

“I’m afraid that’s true,” Greg said.

“Here we go,” the doctor said. Jenn winced as the needle went in.

“Why don’t we team up? Why do you only help us in the ways that you do?” she asked him.

He shook his head. “We’re not ready to be exposed like that. The best thing you’re doing for this war is acting as an inspiration for those mustering the courage to rise. And keeping the Cursed Ones distracted, so they look your way instead of ours.”

“We’re bait?” she asked angrily. Their lives were worth more than that.

His expression never wavered. “Yes, and no. You’re a mighty force to be reckoned with, and in time I think all of you will figure that out. But word about you is getting around. You could also become a public face to this conflict.”

“You’re doing great,” the doctor told her.

Jenn had never thought of it that way before, but as her lids flickered, she could remember the excitement back at Salamanca when she would walk by the students. They looked up to her and the others, needed them, and aspired to be them. And soon those students would likely replace the Salamanca hunters.

She turned her head so she could look at Jamie. At the rate they had been sustaining injuries, it was only a matter of time before they all got killed.

“We should at least have a way of contacting you,” she insisted.

“It’s too dangerous. Tonight’s events have done nothing but underscore that. Don’t worry, though. We’re always keeping close tabs on Team Salamanca. And we’re not the only ones.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, beginning to feel a little woozy.

His face stretched and blurred in front of her. “You’ll find the answer to that yourself, in time.”

Greg wouldn’t tell Jenn anything else, and she slept fitfully on a couch, worrying about Jamie and Antonio, fighting to reconcile the monster she had seen in that church with the guy who had kissed her so tenderly. Who had kept watch over her during their two years of training. She thought of something her grandfather used to say:
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Had Antonio fooled her all this time? Father Juan had given Eriko the elixir, then “demoted” her from leader of the team. Had he given the elixir to the wrong person? And had he been equally mistaken about giving Antonio a position on the team?