The Damned (6 page)

She watched as he turned and left the room to join Father Juan.

“This is a pretty dead horse they’re beatin’,” Jamie remarked. “This happened, what, a month ago? Nearly?”

“They’re using it as a symbol,” Holgar said. “Symbols are very powerful.”

“Solomon has stated that the vandalism serves as a grim reminder that despite the peaceful coexistence of vampire and human, ignorance and hate still exist. And it is in the interest of that peace and an attitude of genuine forgiveness that Solomon has invited Ms. Leitner to meet with him.”

“What?”
Jenn cried.

Then there he was on the screen: Solomon, the vampire who had orchestrated the war against humanity. Redheaded, with a turned-up nose and startling blue eyes, he was dressed in a black suit and a white, high-necked shirt. His face was somber.

Then the camera pulled back, revealing a second figure on the screen. Jenn blinked in astonishment as she recognized her father. Solomon’s hand was on his shoulder.

“This is Paul Leitner, Jennifer’s father. He has asked if he might say a few words to his dear daughter.”

The hunters all stared at Jenn, then at the screen.

“What’s he doing with Solomon?” Skye said. “Wasn’t Aurora the one who attacked you?”

Jenn leaned forward, dizzy and sick at the sight of the man who had tried to trade her life for his, and Mom’s, and Heather’s.

“Is he a fanger?” Jamie asked. “Skye, you getting vibes?”

“I’d only be able to tell if he were physically present,” the witch answered.

“Me too,” Holgar said. “By the smell.”

“If he was physically present, he’d be dead,” Jamie said, holding up two fingers in the Irish version of the one-finger salute.

“Shh, please,” Eriko murmured.

Jenn’s father’s face was drawn. Jenn could barely stand to look at him. His eyes were twitching, and he licked his lips once before beginning to speak.

“My daughter is a very sick young woman. I don’t know what caused her irrational fear and hatred of the Cursed Ones, but I know that she needs help. Please, Jenn, if you’re listening, come home. Everything will be okay. The authorities have promised me that we will get you the help you need, and if you come in, no charges will be pressed. Please, baby, come home. It will be better for everyone.”

“What the
hell
?” Jamie cried.

“Oh, Goddess, why does Solomon want you?” Skye blurted in dismay.

“Maybe Aurora and Solomon are working together,” Holgar ventured. “We know Aurora was trying to get to Antonio. So maybe Solomon wants Antonio too.”

“Hate to say it, but he’s just not that important,” Jamie said, reaching for the wine bottle at the exact same time as Holgar. Jamie made a show of letting him take it.

Holgar handed it to Jenn. “Drink,” he ordered her.

Staring at the screen, which now featured a commercial for a department store, Jenn got to her feet and left the room.

The familiar heaviness of the sun pulled on Antonio as he followed Father Juan down into one of the underground sections of the university. He wasn’t sure what the space had originally been for, but they had been able to modify it to create a cell that even an insane vampire couldn’t break out of. And newly converted, torn away from everything she knew, and denied the ability to hunt, Heather was one insane vampire.

After passing through a series of locked doors, each one more impressive than the last, they arrived at the room that contained the prisoner. Heather had wadded herself into the farthest corner of her cage. They had hosed her off, but her blond hair was matted, and dried blood was crusted under her ripped fingernails.

As soon as he felt she could endure being touched, Antonio was going to make sure she got a bath and clean clothes. He had no idea how he was going to accomplish it, but it would be an important step toward making her look, and hopefully feel, human.

Antonio sighed in frustration at her living conditions. When she had been captured by Aurora, Heather had also been kept in a cage. Two cages, two prisons—that made it hard for them to distinguish themselves as the good guys now that her circumstances had changed.

Heather stared at them, eyes filled with bloodlust, fangs clacking together. The scent of blood hung thick in the air even as he watched the evidence of a wound on Heather’s arm slowly fade.

Antonio shared a quick glance with Father Juan. Heather was drinking from herself. That was not good. Father Juan looked worried too, as he produced a goblet from beneath his robes, along with a packet of blood that looked like it had come from a hospital.

“Gracias, Padre,”
Antonio murmured as he took the items. Father Juan and one of the other priests at the
universidad
took turns supplying Antonio with the blood he needed to survive. Cursed Ones could only drink human blood. That was one more lie they had told the human race. Those who claimed to be able to drink from animals said so only to deceive mankind.

Antonio had been a vampire for decades, and he had trained himself to survive on very little. For Heather, newly converted, the need for a continuous supply of blood was too great for two or even four priests to provide. So Father Juan had needed to go elsewhere to secure a supply. Antonio suspected it had cost him greatly to do so, especially since the
universidad
didn’t enjoy the same privileges it once had.

Antonio opened the pouch and poured the blood into the goblet. It wouldn’t really quench her thirst. Living blood would nourish her far more satisfactorily. But drinking from a cup was just one more way they were trying to get Heather to reconnect with the humanity that had been ripped away from her. By forcing her to take her blood in a glass, he was trying to get her to remember all the other times, all the other liquids, she had drunk that way, and associate
that
with the proper way of getting her nutrition, not drinking from someone’s throat.

Heather whimpered and moved to the front of the cage, stretching out a hand toward him as the smell of the blood hit the air. He walked toward her carefully, trying not to frighten her.

“How are you today, Heather?” he asked. The daylight would sap her strength as well, make her a little quieter.

She blinked at him. The conversion process was so violent that it often left the victim in shock, unable to speak or even reason, sometimes for as long as two or three months. Antonio prayed fervently that she’d adjust soon. It would be easier to reach her when she had passed through this phase. At the moment it was like trying to converse with a rabid lion and hoping it understood you.

“Jenn is eager to see you. She misses you,” he said.

Squinting her crimson eyes and showing her fangs, Heather whined as she stretched her hand toward the goblet. He consented, handing it to her. She snatched it with a victorious scream, then splashed the contents over her face.

“Ay,” Father Juan said, as he moved his hands and began to chant in Latin. It was not a prayer to God but a magick spell to calm and soothe her. Antonio prayed that this time it worked. He always prayed, every time.

As Father Juan performed his incantation, Antonio crouched in front of the cell. Heather retreated back into her corner, busily trying to lap up the blood on her face and hands as she plopped down on the blanket and pillow they had given her. Her gray teddy bear was oozing stuffing from two puncture marks in its neck. Beside the bear lay the inhaler that she had needed in life for her asthma. She would never need it again, but Antonio was hopeful that, like the bear, it would serve to remind her of the girl she had been.

“Heather, we can give you more blood, if you’ll only speak to us,” Antonio said. “Please,
bonita.
We all miss you so much.”

He heard steps behind him. There were few who came down here. Antonio turned and saw Jenn approaching in near panic.

“Father Juan,” she managed. “My father was on TV with Solomon.”

“What?” Father Juan and Antonio said in unison. They stared in horror at each other. Jenn tried to push past him to Heather, but Antonio blocked her. He didn’t want Jenn to see her sister with the blood smeared all over her face. His mind raced. Could Solomon have killed their nemesis? Had Jenn’s father escaped Aurora and sought sanctuary with Solomon? They needed to find out more immediately.

“What did they say?” Father Juan asked Jenn.

“They said there’s evidence linking me to Brooke and Simon’s murder. And that I vandalized their monument last night.” She held back tears and tried to move around Antonio, but he stood firm.

“First one sister, then the other,” Father Juan said. “It must be a ploy to get to you, my son. This settles it. I’ll contact those other resistance groups and see if anyone knows anything.”

Oh, Jenn, Jenn
, Antonio thought, feeling the net tightening around them but caring nothing for his own safety. Only for hers.

“Antonio, please, stand aside,” Jenn said, face white. “I need my family.”

Antonio looked into her eyes and saw only pain there. She had had a terrible shock, and he feared seeing Heather would only make it all worse. He started to shake his head, but she put her hand on his arm. He could feel her warmth, and he closed his eyes briefly, savoring the sensation.

From behind them there was a sudden high-pitched shriek from Heather. She was throwing herself at the bars.

“Heather, it’s me,” Jenn called.

Jenn and Antonio turned around, facing Heather. Heather’s eyes were glowing, her arms were flailing wildly, and she slammed herself against the bars in her attempt to get out.

“She knows me!” Jenn cried.

“Stay away, Jenn,” Father Juan ordered her.

As Jenn darted toward Heather, Antonio wrapped his arms around her waist to stop her. Heather shrieked, thrusting her arms toward Jenn. Blood flowed from Heather’s scalp where she had split it against the bars. She clawed at the air.

In her attempt to get to Jenn.

Not because she loves her.

Because she knows she’s prey.

“Heather!” Jenn yelled again.

Far from calming the creature in the cage, Jenn’s voice infuriated her further, and she began pounding on the bars and floor, screaming louder and louder, foam beginning to fleck on the corners of her mouth.

“Jenn, let me take you out of here,” Antonio said.

“Let go of me,” she shouted at him, raising her hand as if to strike him. “You . . .
monster.”

“Jenn,” Father Juan said. “You must leave.”

The priest took Jenn’s arm and firmly pulled her toward the door. As she screamed and wept, Antonio understood her pain, but her words cut deeply. She was right. He
was
a monster. He had learned to control the urges to subdue her and drink her blood, mostly, but they were still there. Only prayer and God’s mercy had allowed him to push temptation down deep in his psyche.

Staring at Heather, he stared at himself. He had not seen his reflection in seventy years.

Until now.

“Father, it’s not going to work,” Jenn said, as she balled her fists and pressed them against her mouth to dam up the screams that were about to burst out of her. “Antonio won’t be able to change her back.”

“We don’t know that,” he told her, as he put her hand on the banister of the staircase that led to the main floor of the building. “You’re in distress, I know, but you must have faith.” He made the sign of the cross over her. “I’m going back to her now. To pray and work magicks.”

She nodded, and he left.

Nausea ground her stomach. She lurched like a blind woman up the dim stairway, then along the corridors of the university building, sucking in the dusty mix of brick and old wood as she fought for control. She didn’t know what was worse, seeing her father on TV, seeing her sister sneering like a demon, or realizing that Antonio had once been like that.

That he can be like that again.

Stumbling to a stop, she lowered her head against her knuckles. None of the vampires she had ever staked had seemed like people to her. They were so evil they were almost targets in some surreal video game. Stake a vamp, get a thousand points. Her mind had never really connected Antonio with those monsters. Or maybe it was her heart that had refused to admit that Antonio was a full-fledged vampire, a Cursed One, and not a “special” kind of human.

Maybe he wasn’t even a special kind of vampire. He had savagely killed people. When he had first been changed, he hadn’t been able to stop himself. Looking at Heather, how out of control she was, made Jenn doubt everything Antonio had told her about his past. She knew there was a lot he had kept from her, that he was weighed down by burdens he refused to share. She’d interpreted his reserve as a misplaced attempt to protect her. But now he couldn’t. Heather was his mirror, and his secret was out.

“Oh, God,” Jenn whispered. It wasn’t a prayer. She couldn’t imagine anyone on the receiving end, listening, fixing it.

Her knees buckled, and she sank to the floor. If she hadn’t gone with her father on the day Aurora attacked; if she had never gone to Spain to become a hunter; if only, if only, if only.

But then there would have been another day, a different betrayal. Her father had planned his meeting with Aurora. The vampires had won the war.

“Heather,” she whispered, “come back.”

She felt as if she were disintegrating, like foam on the waves. Below, the sharks swam deep. She was really losing it, and she didn’t know if she could put herself back together again.

Then she pictured Gramma Esther at Papa Che’s funeral—sad but composed, stoic, the family matriarch holding her dysfunctional family to account. And then, after Jenn had outrun Aurora, coming for Jenn and keeping her calm, giving her strength and support. It must have been so hard for Gramma to learn what a cowardly bastard her son was, knowing Heather was in mortal danger because of him, then letting Jenn handle it on her own.

We need her
, Jenn thought.
I need her.
Gramma had texted her once since they had parted at the Oakland Airport.
Montana.
Gramma had promised to get her mom and take her someplace safe.