The Damned (7 page)

Montana was very big. And very far away.

Jenn kept hoping she’d text again, or, even better, call. Her grandmother was protecting both of them by maintaining her silence. But Jenn longed to hear from her. Her family was falling apart, and Jenn needed a shoulder, and strong arms around her. Someone who knew her, who loved her.

An image of Antonio blossomed in her mind. She shook her head. That one could not be him.

My father is with Solomon. He’s a traitor to the human race. Did Gramma see him on TV? What’s happening to us? To my family?

Shaking, she went to her room and crawled into bed, ignoring the soft knock on her door. Tensing, she thought—hoped, dreaded—that it might be Antonio, but it was Brother Manuel, the cook.

“Hunter?” he murmured in English. “I have make the breakfast.”

He was sweet to speak English to her whenever he could. She turned her face to the wall and stared into the shadows.

CHAPTER FOUR

Cursed Ones, so we are named
But you’re the ones whose hearts are maimed
Let us now come to your side
As our love burns deep inside
All that we are we bring to task
All that we have is yours, just ask
We love mankind for all you are
And take you each as a guiding star

T
HE
I
MPERIAL
H
UNTING
P
ALACE
O
UTSIDE
M
OSCOW
T
HE
H
UNTERS OF THE
S
TARS OF
D
AVID AND THE
S
ONS OF THE
C
RESCENT

The mission’s failing
, Noah Geller thought, as he fell to his knees in the moonlit snow. His back hunched, he leaned on his hands and panted like a dying animal. Hideous creatures whooped as they dogged him through the forest—human eyes, vampire fangs, and wolf jaws.

Mustering all his strength, he staggered back up to his feet. He was sweating inside his winter jacket. He lurched left, stumbling into a slender, icy tree trunk; he grabbed on to it and then slid down, grimacing as splinters peppered his wound.

He’d run as long and hard as he could, but the injury had won. Dizzy, he crumpled onto his side. More blood bloomed from his white uniform, spreading beneath him like a red parachute deflating against the earth. His chest burned as if someone were dumping hot coals inside his rib cage, and just when he thought he couldn’t bear the pain, he went strangely numb. Despite the five years he had spent in the Mossad, the Israeli special forces, he’d never been shot before, and he didn’t know if this was how it was supposed to feel.

But as he examined the darkened snow in the moonlight, he knew it was bad. And the teams were running out of time. Dantalion, a centuries-old vampire, had commandeered the palace for his experiments, to create a vampire, human, and werewolf hybrid, a supersoldier to unleash on the human race. And those supersoldiers were chasing after Noah and the Stars of David, and Taamir’s Arab team, the Sons of the Crescent. Some of the creatures had been hunters at one time, and their training plus their enhanced prowess gave them a terrible advantage over Noah and his teammates. Dantalion’s minions had dragged off most of them; those they couldn’t catch, they killed.

Before Dantalion, Russian government scientists had used the palace as a laboratory and created dozens of strains of viruses and plagues. People stayed well away from the palace grounds. All the plants in the once-lush gardens had withered and died. No birds flew. No frogs croaked. Babies born within a ten-mile radius came out wrong, and rarely lived. The palace’s evil history served as a deterrent for some freedom fighters, but not all:

It was on this filthy, snowy ground that Noah Geller was about to die.

“Shit,” he murmured. He pulled out his radio.

It no longer worked.

So he thought about Chayna, whose large Star of David pendant he wore around his neck. Chayna, his young wife, his true love, with her red hair and huge green eyes, and the gap between her two front teeth.

Seeing her as she was before he’d killed her.

Listening as heavy footfalls approached.

T
OULOUSE,
F
RANCE
S
KYE AND
H
OLGAR

It was ten in the morning, and the sun was poking through a murky layer of cloud cover. The old bridge was beautiful. The river was clear. Holgar had some old Gackt jammin’ through the speakers, and he was singing along in Danish. Skye was staring at her scrying stone as if it were a GPS.

After Jenn’s father had appeared with Solomon on TV, Father Juan had gone into high gear on the Internet, sending messages, seeking information, trying to form alliances.

The master had sent Eriko and Jamie to Venice to meet up with a resistance cell there in hopes of finding out more. Holgar and Skye had come to Toulouse for the same reason. Holgar was all for adding more numbers to their side of the equation. He was a pack man, after all.

Feeling hopeful, he pulled their white van into a car park near the center of the funky university town. Emblazoned on a pole, the city’s ancient coat of arms featured the Lamb of God standing in front of what looked like a giant lollipop emblazoned with a stylized Crusaders’ cross. Toulouse was located in the Midi-Pyrenees region of France, and the logo for the Midi-Pyrenees was a red banner featuring a gold Crusaders’ cross decorated with twelve dots—for the Twelve Apostles. He liked all the Crusaders-cross synchronicity. It made him feel lucky.

Ja
, lucky to be away from Madrid, where everybody was losing their minds.

Jenn was a mess. Antonio spent most of his time trying to help her sister, and Skye went down there a lot too. But the little witch didn’t hold out much hope for Heather. Skye was tired and irritable, and Holgar knew something else was going on with her. He just didn’t know what it was.

Eriko wanted people to stop arguing. Jamie wanted Heather staked. He said she was a distraction they couldn’t afford. Father Juan countered that if one vampire could be pulled back into the light—meaning Antonio—then perhaps more could be saved. What Jamie had said next was unrepeatable, and Father Juan had made him do penance by working in the kitchen with Brother Manuel. Peeling onions until he wept like a baby. Holgar couldn’t help but enjoy that a bit.

And as for Heather, she just didn’t bother Holgar as much as she upset everyone else. Ravening vampire, full-moon werewolf; wasn’t it all the same?

Beside him Skye was murmuring in Latin. She smelled great; they’d had some French pastries on the road, and she reeked of butter and sugar. Her Rasta braids were coiled in a bun with a few dreads hanging loose over her shoulders. Big shiny tribal earrings with feathers brushed her chin, complementing thick black and turquoise eye makeup drawn to points half across her temples, as if she were an ancient Egyptian princess. Kohl was smeared beneath her eyes, and he thought she looked a bit demented, but far be it from him to ever tell her that. She might turn him into a toad.

Ah, Skye, such an adorable little terrifying person. Holgar couldn’t help but smile as he slid the van into a very tight parking spot.

“Hey, that’d be something,” he said aloud. “If you could turn the vamps into frogs.”

“What are you going on about?” she demanded, glancing from the stone to him to the windshield. She startled. “Blimey, Holgar, you’re going to hit that Mercedes.”

“Never happen.”

“Because I cast a spell of safety,” she informed him.

“You just want to take the credit.”

She huffed, and he chuckled. They got out. It was nippy; the students were bundled in their jackets and boots, listening to music with their earbuds, texting like mad. Kiosks advertised yoga classes, rooms to rent, and protest meetings—even ones to protest the incursion of the Cursed Ones. It was hard to believe that Toulouse was a town under siege, one about to capitulate to vampire rule. The Cursed Ones must be pretty cocky if they permitted so many freedoms. He couldn’t smell any vampires around. Just because it was daylight, though, didn’t mean they might not be lurking inside nearby buildings. He glanced at Skye.

“Do you sense the presence of any Cursers?”

She shook her head and studied her scrying stone with all the rapt attention of a texter or a gamer as they strolled. Holgar gently took hold of her forearm to guide her around a street sign.

“Something wrong?” he asked her. He smelled fear roiling off her in waves. He grabbed the stone from her. It was blank. He knew anyone could see into a scrying stone—if there was anything to see. “Did you just erase this?” he demanded suspiciously.

She shook her head. Her braids flipped against her clavicles. “There was nothing there.” She grabbed it back from him. “It’s very rude to touch a witch’s arcana,” she informed him. “It’s tuned to my vibrations.”

“Forgive me,” he said, but he had the sense that she had blotted something out rather than let him see it.

“It was just family stuff.” Her voice was tight, nervous. “Father Juan said to go past the falafel stand next to the rug shop. Do you see a rug shop?”

Holgar spotted a small pull cart decorated with a dark blue awning. A deep fryer popped with grease as a dusky-skinned girl in vintage embroidered jeans dropped falafel nuggets in to cook. She had purple streaks in her raven-black hair, and she looked supremely bored.

“Is she the one?” Holgar asked.

“Let me check,” Skye said, murmuring an incantation as she held the stone closer to her eyes. She paused, then shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“I didn’t do anything to your stone,” he said, feeling testy.

The falafel girl looked over at them and then inclined her head. She pulled up the mesh section of the fryer, allowing the falafel patties to begin draining.

“I think she
is
the one,” he told Skye. “Let’s introduce ourselves.”

Holgar and Skye approached. “The cherry blossoms are beautiful this time of year,” Holgar said in Spanish, waggling his eyebrows up and down. “The eagle has landed. The spy has come in from the cold.”

The girl frowned. “I beg your pardon?” she asked in French.

“Bonjour,”
Skye said, elbowing Holgar. “He’s trying to be funny. We’re from Salamanca.”

The girl smiled. “Welcome to Toulouse,” she said in English. “We’ve been waiting for you.” She looked questioningly at Holgar. “I didn’t know there was a code.”

He sighed. “I’ve been to too many spy movies. I thought this was my big chance to say something like that. I’m very new to the spy business.”

The girl scratched her nose. “That’s
our
code,” she informed him. “Someone else will watch the cart. I’ll take you to the meeting.”

Holgar mimicked the way she had scratched her nose. “Don’t you want to check our passports, see some ID? What if we’re imposters?”

She slid her glance to the left. Across the street, on the second floor of an old stone building, a window opened and a stern fellow about Holgar’s age stared down at them.

“We’ve already checked you out,” she said. “Let’s go.”

The girl walked across the street. Holgar and Skye trailed after her. Skye murmured in Latin, and Holgar raised an inquisitive brow. She had cast another safety spell, he guessed.

They entered the building and went straight through a dingy foyer crammed with bicycles and with flyers papering the walls, then out the back door. A little greenhouse stood within twenty feet of the rear of the building. The supports were wooden and painted green, and the large plates of glass were cracked. Holgar saw six or seven people milling inside. The piquant smell of French roast coffee filled his nostrils. It was laden with a heavy layer of garlic and someone’s rose-scented perfume. A tinge of fear wafted off someone. He’d have to figure out who that was, and see if they were simply afraid of being caught conspiring against the fangy overlords, or if they were spying for the enemy.

Heads turned as they entered the greenhouse. It was clear that they all knew one another well.

“People of Earth, we send greetings,” Holgar continued.

Skye elbowed him. “Holgar, give it up. You are not funny.”

A couple who had been unfolding chairs flapped two more open and set them down in the circle. The man—tall, smooth shaven, maybe twenty—smiled lopsidedly at Holgar and extended his hand to Skye. He had long, curly blond hair, white eyebrows, and blue eyes. He looked more Danish than Holgar.

“Bienvenue,”
he said. “I’m the leader of this cell.”

“Hello,” Skye replied, shaking his hand. “I’m—”

“No names,” he replied. “We’re glad to see you. Coffee? Tea?”

“Tea would be lovely,” Skye said. “We’d both love it.”

The others began to take their seats too. Holgar counted three women besides Skye and the girl who had led them in. Three guys: Mr. Danish Pastry, Holgar himself, and the guy who’d been unfolding the chairs. The stern fellow at the window had not joined them.

“So,” Holgar said, “you know who we are, even if we aren’t saying our names. And why we’re here.”

“Oui,”
said Mr. Pastry as he poured two cups of tea and brought them to the Salamancans. “We have some information for you. Here in Toulouse there is a local Cursed One named Philippe Gaudet. His brother controls the Vieux Carré in New Orleans. The French Quarter.”

Skye nearly choked. “Blimey, I saw a little fanger get staked for saying that. By Aurora herself.”

“Oh?” Pastry’s eyes widened.

“We’re pretty sure Aurora killed Christian Gaudet,” Holgar confirmed.