The Damned (43 page)

“Very well,” Father Juan said. “Your grandmother still has a lot of those prepaid cell phones,
sí
? We’ll set up a call with one of those.”

“Okay.” She took a deep breath. “How is Antonio?”

“Hmm. It’s hard to say, Jenn. He asked me to put him in a cell next to Heather. He says he has bad times and good times. I used Skye’s arcana to cast a strong protection spell. Please thank her for allowing me to use them. And the Circuit has agreed to help. A witch is going to come to the university to work with me.”

“Oh, that’s great.” She smiled hopefully.
“Gracias.”

“De nada
, Jenn. Ah. Father Giovanni is signaling me. We have a new security system, very fancy. He’s teaching me how to use it.”

“Then I’ll let you go,” she said, not wanting to. She wanted to hear more about Antonio. “I’ll tell everybody about the meeting, and I’ll get you a number for the prepaid phone.”

“Bueno.
Go with God, Jenn.”

“The same to you,” she replied a bit awkwardly.

Then he stayed on the line a moment. She could hear him breathing.

“Father?” she asked.

“It’s nothing,” he replied. “Just . . . be careful.”

He hung up. Spooked, she did the same. Noah raised a brow. “How is Antonio?”

She flushed. “Better, I think.”

“Some of us are trying to sleep,” Jamie said loudly.

“We should sleep too,” Noah said to Jenn. He handed her a pillow. She lay down facing away from him, hyperaware as he lay down too. His breath was warm against the back of her head.

Jenn began to doze, imagining the sun shining on Antonio’s face. They would save her father, and Heather would be human again . . . so many dreams . . .

Holgar yipped. Jamie was snoring.

Behind Jenn, Noah moaned in his sleep. “Chayna,” he muttered. He turned his head, and she saw the large silver Star of David pendant around his neck.

Suddenly the van stopped, throwing Jenn against Noah, who grabbed her. Pushing her hair out of her eyes, Jenn sat up. Noah thrust a submachine gun into her arms.

“What the bloody hell?” Jamie shouted.

Shouts and gunfire erupted, and the panel door slid open.

A dozen soldiers in flak jackets and helmets held submachine guns on them. Jenn kept her weapon up. Noah did the same, and by the sounds of clacking, the rest of Salamanca had as well. Jenn’s heart was thundering.

“Who are you?” she shouted.

The soldiers parted, and Greg stood before her. Black suit, no sunglasses.

“It’s all right, Jenn. Lower your weapons.”

“Bloody hell,” Jamie said. “That’s the voice, Jenn. The man with Dantalion. White cammies.”

“What?”
Holgar and Skye said in unison.

Jenn stared at Greg, who looked puzzled. “Excuse me?” he asked.

“It
is
,” Jamie insisted. “Shoot him!”

As if on cue, Greg’s soldiers took a step forward. Noah grunted. Jenn sighted down her weapon directly at Greg’s face.

“Woof,” Holgar said.

“I can assure you, I have not been to Russia, and I have never met Dantalion,” Greg said.

“Liar!” Jamie bellowed.

“Jamie, easy, please,” Skye said. “We don’t want to start anything.”

“Uh,
yeah
, we do,” Jamie shot back.

“Jenn, listen. We got wind of your operation, and we’re shutting you down. We need the tape,” Greg said. “The one you want to play at the conference.”

“Tape? What century are you living in?” Jamie said, snorting. “We’re digital. We got backups from here to County Cork. We got people all over the place. That convo’s going to be played at that press conference, you feckin’ traitor.”

“Jamie-
kun
, please stay calm,” Eriko murmured. “Please.”

“Recording, then. That was a misstatement by an old man,” Greg said. “You’re going to waste it, Jenn.” Greg was speaking directly to her. “No one’s going to believe you. It’ll cause a minor stir, and then Solomon and the president will smooth it over. They’ll say it was a fake. And you’ll have died for nothing.”

“We iain’t planning on dying, thank you very much,” Jamie said.

“He’s right,” Noah interjected. “This man.” He gestured at Greg with his chin.

“But isn’t this what you want?” Jenn asked Greg. “For us to distract everyone while you do whatever it is you’re doing?”

“Jenn, think,” Greg said. “We took Dr. Sherman. He was working on the virus. Dantalion sent Solomon his data on supervampires.”

“How do you know that?” Jamie demanded.

Greg just smiled at him sadly. “Son,” he said, “we’re on the same side.”

“Go on,” Jenn said.

“We’re in the process of stealing the files from Solomon,” Greg said. “But we don’t need any flags on our play.”

“I
heard
you,” Jamie cut in. “He
was
in that lab, Jenn. We can’t trust him.”

“It doesn’t matter if we trust him or not,” Noah countered. “They have more guns than we do.”

Greg ticked a glance at Noah. Appraised him. Nodded.

“This one’s a keeper,” he said to Jenn. Despite everything she blushed.

She couldn’t decide if she should tell him that the Voice of the Resistance was going to help them. What if Jamie was right? What if Greg was one of the bad guys? For all she knew, Greg might use them as bait for Kent.

What should I do?

Just then, Gramma Esther approached the van. Her face was grim, and she was unarmed. Her gray hair was tousled around her shoulders. Greg saw her. She raised a hand and moved past Greg to Jenn. Jenn lowered her weapon. Noah did not.

Gramma Esther gave Jenn’s shoulder a pat.

“Greg and I talked,” Gramma Esther said, “I’ve discussed the situation with the other Defenders. We’re going to do it his way.”

“But you didn’t discuss it with me,” Jenn argued.

“With
us
,” Jamie corrected her.

Noah cleared his throat. He shrugged his shoulders and made a face as if to indicate that Jenn should listen to her grandmother.

Gramma Esther turned to Greg. “Did you tell her?”

Greg shook his head. Esther exhaled and gave Jenn’s shoulder another squeeze.

“Honey, Greg’s people have gotten word about your academy. While you’ve been here, the Catholic Church ordered Father Juan to disband it. He’s refused. He and a bunch of students are occupying the buildings, but something’s going to happen one way or the other. I don’t know when, but I think you’re needed.”

“No,” Jenn said. “I just talked to him a little while ago. Just now.”

“Then he was keeping it from you,” Gramma Esther said.

“There’s been a lot of movement around the university,” Greg cut in. “We’re thinking they might try to forcibly evict them.”

“Oh, God, no,” Jenn breathed.
What will happen to Antonio, then? And Heather?

“This is all a lie,” Jamie said. “They’re setting us up to abandon the mission.”

There was a long silence. Another. Then Jenn said, “That’s because this isn’t our mission. We’re going home.”

S
ALAMANCA
F
ATHER
J
UAN AND
A
NTONIO

“Find peace, my son,” Father Juan told Antonio, who was praying inside his fortified cell. He had given Antonio a rosary and a missal. The arcana of the Church.

In the cell over, Heather had pulled her blanket over herself again.

“Gracias, Padre,”
Antonio replied.

Buoyed, Father Juan climbed the stairs to the ground floor of the building. Antonio seemed much better. Jenn had called him back, given him some grief for having hidden the dire situation at the university, and told him that the mission to Washington had been canceled. Jenn and the team—plus the two men from the Middle East—were already on a flight home.

Thank you, God, for all these blessings.

Juan walked outside, the night air cool on his face. Antonio
was
better. Had he and Skye done something permanent to him with their magicks?
Something we can do to other vampires? When
Skye returned, they could attempt the same rituals and magicks on Heather. He was certain the Circuit would prove to be a big help.

Statues of saints gazed down on him as he pulled a set of stones covered with ancient runes from his pocket and showed them to the moon. It was three-quarters full, large, and yellow. When he had aided Skye in Drawing Down the Moon, he had been filled with the love of the Goddess.

As a gesture to the Lady in addition to the Lord, he went into the chapel and took the lilies meant for the Holy Virgin and spread them on the chapel steps, beneath the moonlight. Who was She but the Goddess, in another form? Then he lit a white candle and set it among the lilies.

“Are you with me?” he asked the Lady.

A wind blew up, and the flame of the white candle flared.

“Blessed be,” he said.

He prayed over the runes in Latin and tossed them. His heart seized as he read the signs. Everything pointed to something dark on the horizon—
this
horizon, Salamanca. More than that he couldn’t discern. He couldn’t even tell from which direction danger was coming, or whom it was targeting. Perhaps it was the trouble they were already in—the closing of the school, the war.

“Jenn,” he murmured aloud, as if calling to her. “Be careful, my child.”

He gathered the stones and put them in his pocket.

E
N
R
OUTE TO
S
ALAMANCA
T
EAM
S
ALAMANCA
M
INUS
A
NTONIO

As was their habit while flying, Jenn’s team scattered through the cabin of the plane. Skye cast glamours on each of them to make them less interesting, but when it came to Noah, the glamour was not working for Jenn. He was sitting beside her, reading a book in Hebrew, and she kept staring at his hands without meaning to. What Antonio had said had cut her to the quick. Rededicating himself to the priesthood?

Breaking up with me
, she translated. As if they had ever really been together. That was just some crazy dream she’d been having all by herself.
But he said he loves me.

But he’s a vampire.

She became aware that Noah was looking at her, and ticked her glance up at him.

“Reading over my shoulder?” he asked her, chuckling.

“Yeah, sorry.” She started to pull away. He made a show of moving the book closer.

“This is one of the good parts,” he said.

“I know. I’ve read it before.” Of course she was kidding.

He chuckled again.

“Where did you even get a book in Hebrew?” she asked him.

“Your grandmother, oddly enough. She said she found it ‘during her travels.’ It’s a bestseller, too.”

“My grandmother gets around.”

“She does,” he agreed. Then he cocked his head. “Are you okay?”

“Define your terms.”

He nodded. “Crazy world. I’m looking forward to seeing your home.”

“It’s not—,” she began, then realized that of course it was. She grimaced. “My room’s a mess.”

“I’m sure I’ll like it.” His smile made that place at her lower back grow warm and tingly. Noah went back to reading. “One more hour till we land,” he added. “Don’t get eyestrain looking over my shoulder.”

“I’ll just wait until you’re done, then read it myself.”

“It’s a long book,” he warned her.

“I’m a patient person.”

“So am I, Jenn,” he replied, grinning as he resumed his reading.

S
ALAMANCA
F
ATHER
J
UAN AND THE
S
TUDENTS

Father Juan passed from the chapel to the building that had become the dormitory. In his absence they had completed the move so that everyone on the campus grounds was housed in the same area. It had built an even stronger bond of respect and camaraderie among the students and the teachers. It also made it difficult to have private conversations. And it made for close living quarters. Tempers were flaring. Students were complaining. Some of them had cause: Apparently, there was a young student named Sade, from Africa, who bathed in garlic salve to protect herself from the Cursed Ones. Literally coated herself with it. Once it dawned on the rest of the students that if they applied the salve as well, no one would be able to smell the garlic anymore, they slathered it on as liberally as sunscreen.

When the troops garrisoned at the university had been ordered to leave, a few who were loyal to the cause had set up an academy-wide security system complete with motion sensors. Father Giovanni, who had once studied to be an electrical engineer, was in heaven. Father Juan told himself that the alarms would give them fair warning, but he still had the sense that he would be blindsided at any moment.

The runes had been tossed. Father Juan had put the lilies back on the chapel altar and set his votive candle in front of the statue of St. John of the Cross. Now his hand was on the door to the dorm building when the hair on the back of his neck rose. Something was wrong. Before he could open the door, it was flung wide by Father Giovanni. The young priest’s face was ghostly pale.

“What is it?” Father Juan asked.

“Father, the alarms are going crazy. We’ve got dozens of signals from the sensors.”

“Dozens?” Juan asked. That couldn’t be his hunters, then. They should still be in the air.

Juan pushed past Giovanni and entered the hallway. He began pounding on the doors on the left-hand side. “Get up! Intruders!”

Giovanni raced along the right side of the hall doing the same thing. By the time the two priests reached the end of the corridor, the students there were already up and preparing for battle. The hallway was filled. Everyone stood in front of their door, more or less dressed, strapping on stakes and vials of holy water and wielding crosses. So young. So fierce.