The Damned (5 page)

“I’m sorry,” Jenn concluded.

“Time for tears later,” Father Juan replied.

Skye performed round after round of healing spells on the team, concentrating on Jamie, who began criticizing “the mission” as soon as the van doors were shut. He didn’t have any specific criticism; he was just angry, and Jenn’s “ineptitude” was fair game, at least in Jamie’s mind. Skye made a few attempts to defend her, reminding Jamie that Jenn was in charge, not him, which made him even angrier.

“Yeah, about that,” he began.

Finally Holgar growled pointedly, and Jamie fell to swearing under his breath about things being all arseways.

It was still safely dark when they reached the gates of the University of Salamanca, but Jenn could hear the trilling of birds singing to the dawn. Father Juan shepherded them straight into the chapel, where he put on a white chasuble—a priestly overgarment, the color choice to honor the dead—and conducted a brief Mass for the repose of the murdered innocents, and to give thanks that the Salamancan hunters were spared. Jenn was not a Catholic, but she was respectful, and she knelt beside Antonio on the prayer bench. Cold emanated from him—he had no body heat—and he moved slightly away, as if he thought that was bothering her. Things were very different between them now, strained, since . . . Heather.

Grief flooded through Jenn, and she rested her face on the backs of her hands. She was exhausted. She’d been wounded in the chest in New Orleans, and while she’d been put back together and returned to the battlefield, there were times when her injury pained her. Or maybe her heart was simply broken.

Beside her, Antonio murmured in Latin and crossed himself. His rosary beads were wound around his hand like a bandage. No other vampire they had ever come across could touch a cross or any of a myriad of religious symbols without being severely burned. That meant he wasn’t like the others. He was different. But it was hard for her to believe that anymore, now that her little sister had been converted. Heather had been the sweetest person Jenn had ever met, and that sweetness was gone. If someone like Heather became so completely different, why hadn’t Antonio? Maybe he was just a great faker, pretending to be good so that he could one day turn on them. Magicks might be protecting him from crosses and holy water.

No. I don’t believe that. I can’t believe that.

But doubt poked at her like the tip of a blade.

“Go in peace. The Mass is ended,” Father Juan said in English. Jenn jerked slightly; she’d drifted during the service, as she often did. Maybe some of the others found comfort in the ritual. She tended to tune it out in favor of worrying about the dozens of things on her long, long list.

She gazed at Antonio, whose head was still lowered in prayer. Flickering candlelight caught the blue-black highlights in his hair. She wanted to run her fingers through it. Before she had known that he was a vampire, she had spent hours staring at Antonio, wishing he would look back. Practically every girl in their class had swooned over him like he was some rock star, chatting and flirting with him every chance they got. Everyone had been told that he was a seminary student—studying to become a priest—which made him even sweeter forbidden fruit.

And then, on the night of their final exam, Antonio had been paired with Jenn in this very chapel. And he had confessed his feelings for her. And why he could never act on them.

“It was you, Jenn. You who captured my heart.” His voice echoed in her mind even now.

But I didn’t know then what I know now
, she thought.
I didn’t know what it really means to become a vampire.

An image of her sister rose in her mind.

“Jenn?” Antonio murmured, looking at her.

Everyone else was leaving the chapel. Jerking, she got to her feet and sidestepped out of the pew. Antonio bent his knee like a noble courtier, lowered his head in the direction of the large cross hanging over the altar, and crossed himself.

“Come to my sitting room. We’ll talk,” Father Juan invited them, leading the way. The private sitting room was very spare, dominated by a large olive-wood crucifix that hung behind a brown leather sofa. The priest went through another door to fetch a bottle and some glasses, and everyone sat down wearily.

So now we lick our wounds
, Jenn thought. Literally, in the case of Holgar. Jenn turned away, unable to watch the werewolf as he surreptitiously cleaned a small wound on his wrist the way his wild brethren did. She focused instead on a calendar above a small table holding an electric teakettle, a sugar bowl, and some cups and saucers. The calendar featured the gardens and statuary of El Retiro Park.

Antonio hesitated, then sat in a leather chair facing the TV, away from Jenn. Skye plopped down beside her.

Then Jenn asked the question that had been plaguing her.

“How come Moncho never showed? He asked for help. We went. On the very night the vampires attacked, and we were caught off guard.”

“Yeah, funny thing,” Jamie said, grunting from his place slumped in a recliner.

“We keep going on missions like we did before New Orleans,” Jenn persisted. “Someone asks for help, and we go. But it’s not working.”

“Yeah, funny thing,” Jamie said again.

“But what about the worldwide resistance?” she asked. “How many groups are there like those in New Orleans, who are trying to fight back with the only skills and tools they have?”

“Why, you want to get them killed too?” Jamie drawled as he pulled a cigarette out of a pack in the breast pocket of the shirt one of the male witches had given him.

“Shut up,” Skye said, an uncharacteristic outburst from the group’s peacemaker. “We’d only just started going out as a team for two months before Jenn had to go to California. People around here found out about us and started asking for help.”

“Your point?” Jamie said.

Skye’s cheeks were pink. Jenn knew Skye had a crush on Jamie. Skye’s lousy taste in men amazed her.

“So it makes sense the Cursed Ones heard about us too, yeah? So more of them are showing up at each mission. They’re gunning for us. We’re outnumbered,” Skye said.

“Well said,” Holgar told her, flashing her a smile. He was lounging on some decorative pillows on the floor.

Eriko didn’t join the conversation. She was rubbing her shoulder and looking tired and wan.

Father Juan reappeared with a lacquer tray containing a water bottle, a dark green bottle of wine, and seven glasses. Jamie tapped his unlit cigarette against the cardboard container. Skye glared at the Irishman, who sighed and put the cigarette away.

“What are you all arguing about?” Father Juan asked.

“Jenn’s wondering about other groups like ours,” Antonio told him. “During the war there were resistance cells everywhere, struggling to survive, to fight.”

When Antonio talked about the war, he meant World War II. Adolf Hitler had begun his campaign of terror, and Antonio had brazenly walked away from the seminary in 1941 to join the Free French Forces. He had been called a Maquis, after the thready brush by the same name, where they hid in the French forests
.
On one of his first missions he had stayed behind to offer a dying compatriot the last rites of the Church, and he had been attacked and “converted” on the battlefield. More than that Jenn didn’t really know. He didn’t like to talk about it.

“So it stands to reason that there may be lots of resistance cells today,” Jenn put in.

Father Juan nodded as he set down the tray. “Perhaps it’s time to reach out to these groups. Help them, and maybe get their help in return. At the very least we can try to coordinate our efforts. This is not a local problem. And if one day we could all rise up as one body and take on the enemy perhaps we could win.”

“Amen,” Antonio murmured, crossing himself.

Father Juan’s eyes gleamed with the hope that Jenn had lost. He decanted the bottle and arranged the glasses in a semicircle, but he didn’t fill them. He was waiting for the wine to breathe. Jenn’s chest was so tight that she couldn’t breathe.

“Rise up?” Jamie scoffed. “We can’t even trust the allies we do have.”

“Maybe we need better allies,” Eriko ventured.

“And more of them,” Holgar added, in his singsong Danish accent. He quirked a half smile. “Preferably less cranky ones.”

“Zip it, wolf,” Jamie said, glaring. “There is nothing funny here.” He gave Antonio a pointed look.
“Someone
told the Pamplona vampires to push up the date.”

Antonio’s answering stare was icy. “It’s common in wartime to spread misinformation. They may have been planning all along to ‘run the humans’ last night. But I agree. Too often the vampires seem to know about our plans.”

“Fancy that,” Jamie bit off. “And now we’ve got
two
vampires livin’ under our roof.”

“Enough,”
Father Juan chastised them as he began to fill the glasses. He added a healthy measure of water into one of them, and handed it to Jenn. She still wasn’t a wine drinker.

“Let’s seek out these resistance cells,” Jenn said.

“We’re not diplomats,” Jamie argued. “I came here to kill vampires, not start a club.”

Father Juan ignored him. “Jenn is your leader, and this is a wise move. Skye and I will work magicks and try to discern who is safe to approach.”

“We can’t even trust each other, Father.” Jamie’s voice rose. “And meanin’ no disrespect, but you and Skye ain’t found the traitor who keeps telling the suckers our plans.”

“Jamie-
kun
,” Eriko murmured. “Please, don’t argue with Father Juan.”

Jamie clamped his jaw shut, the vein in his forehead bulging. He was barely keeping his fury under control.

Father Juan stood. “I’ll ask Brother Manuel to make you all something to eat. You must be hungry.”

“I’m sure
Antonio
is,” Jamie said. “All that blood splatterin’ about. Like starters for a big dinner.”

“Jamie,” Father Juan reproved.

The priest left, and the team sat for a moment, staring at one another, sipping their wine. After a minute Jamie picked up the remote control for the small television in the corner and clicked it on. A little television would help them unwind. And if they were watching something, they wouldn’t have to talk about what had happened.

A news program came on.
“Bienvenidos, España,”
said the beautiful blond anchorwoman. Her coanchor, a man with salt-and-pepper hair, sat beside her and smiled at the camera.

“Today the Ministry of Economy and Finance unveiled a new benefits program for our senior citizens. All pensions will be increased by ten percent, effective November fourteenth. This will be accomplished without an increase in taxes, due to reductions in spending on national defense.”

“Yeah, us,” Jamie said. But the Spanish government had never footed the bill for the academy or the hunters it graduated. The Catholic Church had, and as far as Jenn knew, it was still paying.

“In other news,”
the male broadcaster said,
“there is a new art exposition at the Alhambra called Brothers. It features oils and watercolors by some of the world’s leading vampiric artists. The queen will attend the grand opening, and political heads of state and cebzbrities from stage and screen are flying in to admire the beautiful canvases celebrating the special relationship between humanity and those who walk the night.”

The group groaned in unison.

A segment followed about a drop in violent crime in Madrid. So much of the news was propaganda, lies about the Cursed Ones or banalities in context of all of the fighting and dying.

“This is shite,” Jamie grumbled, and Jenn had to agree. She looked over at Antonio, who was watching, stone-faced. He’d seen it all before—in other times, during other wars. After all this time was he still the idealistic man he had been more than seventy years before, giving his soul to God and his life to the people?

That’s why I fell in love with him
, she thought wonderingly.
He’s like my grandparents, putting it all on the line to fight for justice. Like Papa Che. God, I miss Papa Che so much.

She had left home and joined the academy because of Papa Che. She realized with a start that Antonio had been born about the same time as her beloved grandfather.

“Antonio, I need to see you,” Father Juan called.

“Ya vengo,”
Antonio said in Spanish. I’m coming.

He got up and started to leave the room.

The anchorwoman looked mournfully into the camera, and a logo of a bat carrying a heart appeared behind her.
“In news from the United States, you may remember the tragic tale of Brooke Thompson and Simon Morton, the young lovers who were brutally murdered in Brooke’s home in Berkeley, California.”

“Oh, God,” Jenn said, feeling ill.

“Moved by their plight, Solomon erected a beautiful monument in their honor, which, sadly, was defaced last night.”

A photograph flashed on the screen behind the anchor-woman. It showed a round Grecian temple with two white marble statues standing within.

“Fingerprints and other forensic evidence have pointed to the perpetrator of their murders, as well as last night’s desecration, as a young human woman named Jennifer Leitner, a former schoolmate of Señorita Thompson.”

An image of Jenn flashed behind the anchorwoman. It was her freshman-year high school picture.

Jenn felt her stomach plummet. After her father had betrayed her to the vampires, Jenn had sought refuge in the home of her childhood friend Brooke, not realizing that Brooke’s fiance was a vampire. It hadn’t taken long for the Cursed One to turn on them both, tearing out Brooke’s throat before Jenn was able to stake him.

Hot tears welled at the memory of seeing Brooke lying lifeless on the floor.
I got her killed by going to her for help. He killed her. That’s not love. Simon never loved her. If he had, he couldn’t have done that.

Her gaze ticked to Antonio, who stood by the door, watching intently, a muscle working in his jaw. For a moment doubt stirred her. There were many times that Antonio had had to restrain himself from hurting her even though he loved her. His vampiric nature was so powerful it was nearly impossible to fight, even for him.