The Graves of Saints (12 page)

Father Laurent. She had entirely forgotten about the priest.

Hannah opened her mouth to speak but could only sob again, throwing a hand across her face to hide her shame.

‘Ssshh,’ he said. ‘You are in shock. But we must get you out of here. There is another upstairs. It just passed me, but who can say how many more there might be?’

No
, she thought, wanting to explain to him. This new demon, this thing with its chitinous armor, had not come from the tomb of Saint Denis like the other. It had come from—

Hannah cried out, contorting with the pain of fresh cramps in her belly. Her first thought was to wonder what damage the thing had done, growing inside of her. And then she felt the swelling and
the squirming and the hideous pressure from within, and her legs widened instinctively, preparing once again for birth.

Eyes wide, breath catching in her throat, she began to shake her head furiously, even as Father Laurent’s words echoed in her mind.
Who can say how many more there might be?

And oh, how she screamed.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The morning passed in slow motion. Octavian had made the necessary phone calls the night before and then slept for several hours, plagued by dark dreams he could not recall
upon waking, but which nevertheless seemed to haunt him from the corners of the room. He’d risen before five a.m., showered and dressed, and then spent hours sitting in a chair by the window,
looking out at the gray skies and the rain that pattered the glass. Allison had brought him a bouquet of yellow roses, though he had no idea where she had gotten them in the middle of the night.
From time to time he stared at the flowers, reaching out to feel the softness of their petals and to marvel at the fragility of the world.

Nikki had grown up in Philadelphia. Most of their friends didn’t know that, or had learned it once and promptly forgotten. His love had been a troubadour from the moment her mother, Etta,
had died. Etta had taught her daughter to love the blues and to sing from her soul, as if she had known that Nikki would need an outlet for her grief. Nikki had been sixteen when her mother died.
She had never met her father and though her mother had a sister in Baltimore, the women were estranged. When Etta had passed away, Nikki had been on her own, and she had hit the road with her
guitar and a few changes of clothes.

When Nikki left Philadelphia behind, she had truly left it behind. There were a few childhood friends she still heard from now and again, but with Keomany dead, the only people she had been
close to had been friends she and Octavian shared and those who came from her life as a musician. Word of her death had already hit the media, and this troubled him. Nikki hadn’t been a huge
celebrity, but she had achieved a modicum of fame – certainly enough that strangers and past acquaintances and photographers would show up at any public funeral service, and he didn’t
want that.

He’d called her manager and asked him to spread the word to Nikki’s old bandmates, and he suspected some of them would show up for the funeral. The details of the service were being
kept secret, but anyone willing to do a little digging would be able to figure out that Nikki would be laid to rest with her mother. She would have wanted that, Octavian knew – to share
eternity with the woman who had taught her about love and compassion and music.

Eternity
, he thought, staring out at the rain. He didn’t know how long he would live. Once he had evolved beyond vampirism and become human again, he ought to have lived out the
balance of an ordinary lifespan, but with the magic that coursed through him, he had suspected for some time that he was not aging. Nikki had broached the subject more than once, wondering whether
they would be able to grow old together, and Octavian had insisted that he didn’t know.

Now he had the answer.

Numb and hollow except for the hot ember of fury in his gut that helped to burn away the grief, he sat in the chair and let hours tick past. Metzger and his team were doing their jobs, hunting
down leads and trying to locate Cortez, mostly thanks to information they’d gleaned from the interview with Charlotte last night.

Sergeant Omondi had taken Charlotte back to New York with him this morning to trace one of her contacts. Octavian wanted to join them, wanted the cathartic passion of the hunt to ease his
sorrow. In the time he’d spent working as a private detective, trying to get to know the modern human mind better and to help where he could, he had taught himself to be perceptive and to
make leaps of deductive logic. He wanted to put those skills to use tracking down Nikki’s killer, but not until after the funeral. He wouldn’t leave her until she was finally at
rest.

Afterward, there’d be hell to pay.

A knock at the door interrupted his ruminations. Octavian frowned, this visitation unwelcome. Reluctantly, he raised a hand, contorted his fingers – which crackled momentarily with an icy
blue light – and the door unlocked and swung inward.

‘Hello?’ Commander Metzger said, with as close to uncertainty in his voice as there might ever be. He was not a man prone to self-doubt or uneasiness.

‘Come in, Commander,’ Octavian said, not rising from the chair.

Metzger stepped into the room, frowning and wary as he glanced around to figure out who had opened the door. But the mystery didn’t hold the man’s attention for long. Octavian could
see by the set of his shoulders and the grim steel in his eyes that this was no mere condolence call.

‘The press is looking for you,’ Metzger said. ‘The hotel is under strict orders not to reveal that you’ve taken a room here, but don’t be surprised if one of them
finds you sooner or later.’

‘They’ll find me only if I want to be found. But you didn’t come here to warn me about the media, Commander. Tell me you’ve located Cortez.’

‘Not yet, but we’ve identified the San Diego safe house that Charlotte described and the FBI have the building under surveillance right now. They’re cooperating fully,
searching for emergency exits that might not be on the architect’s original plans. I’ve got a squad on the way there. We’re searching Los Angeles for the home base Charlotte
claims Cortez and his coven were using, but no luck so far.’

‘All right,’ Octavian said, already moving beyond the conversation, drifting back into the darkness of his ruminations, thinking about eternity and vengeance. ‘Keep me
posted.’

‘That’s what I’m doing,’ Metzger said. Then, instead of retreating, the commander came further into the room, taking up a position five feet from Octavian, standing over
him expectantly. ‘But we have other problems, now. Trouble that requires your attention.’

Octavian tore his focus away from the rain on the windowpane to study Metzger’s features.

‘Whatever it is can wait.’

‘Tell that to the people who are dying,’ Metzger said.

Octavian shot Metzger a withering look.

‘I’ve been fighting to keep the wolves from the door for years,’ he said. ‘And I’ll do it again. But this is my time – mine and Nikki’s – and
I’m not letting anything tear me away from that. If I’d known my days with her were numbered, there are a lot of things I’d have done differently, but I can’t get those days
back.’

Metzger regarded him carefully. He seemed about to leave, but then came nearer instead and sat on the end of the bed, barely out of arm’s reach. Not that Octavian needed to touch the man
to hurt him; they both knew that.

‘All our days are numbered,’ Metzger said, with a combination of steel and sympathy. ‘But these people who are dying in France . . . they’re down to minutes, or maybe
seconds. They’re dying right now, and every single one of them has people who are going to wish they could have back the days they squandered on less important things.’

Octavian tried to ignore the words, but he could not prevent them from echoing in his head. Nikki was dead and no amount of mourning would bring her back, so what good could he do here in
Philadelphia? If a crisis had broken out in Europe, could he simply ignore it?

He ran his hands over his face, chin stubble rough on his palms.

‘Tell me,’ he said, without looking up.

‘There was a localized earthquake just north of Paris. The Cathedral of Saint-Denis was damaged and there are—’

‘That’s for the Red Cross to—’

‘—
things
coming out of it. Demons. No one’s seen anything like them since the thing with the Tatterdemalion years ago. They’re not wraiths, though. Serpentine
bodies covered in some kind of exoskeleton, arms on an upper torso, and lots of teeth. We should have images shortly, but I’m told they’re not clear. Power is disrupted, along with all
satellite and broadcast signals. Not gone, but rife with interference.’

Metzger leaned forward, making sure Octavian met his gaze.

‘The French are marshalling a military response, but you and I both know that when an incursion like this takes place, it’s usually more than conventional weapons can
handle.’

Octavian looked out the window again. The rain seemed to be coming down harder, battering the window so hard that the glass vibrated with its punishment. He thought of Keomany, who had felt the
chaos growing in Massachusetts early enough to warn him, to make sure he was there to help set things right. Without Keomany to sense it, he had not seen this coming at all, and he couldn’t
help but wonder what other horrors were even now stirring beyond the barriers between worlds.

He studied the vase of yellow roses, brow knitting. Rather than wilting, they had blossomed further, growing and blooming with remarkable health, though they had surely been cut many hours
before. And had the thorns been so prominent before? He wasn’t certain, but the vigor of cut flowers seemed a poor thing to focus on at the moment, a way for him to distract himself from the
truth. Every death in France left a little more blood on his hands. He had acted from pure motives, but he shared responsibility for the dreadful state of the world’s magical defenses. With
the fall of the Roman church and the loss of the Gospel of Shadows – the spellbook that contained all of the magic accumulated by Vatican sorcerers since the founding of the church –
the safeguards had vanished. Whatever happened now would be partly his fault, and he couldn’t live with himself if he pretended to ignore that. Still . . .

Exhaling sharply, he glanced at Metzger.

‘I’ll advise you,’ he said. ‘There are mystics and occultists who can help, at least temporarily, to try to contain the demons. But until the funeral tomorrow morning,
I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Octavian,’ Metzger prodded.

‘She loved me. I’m staying with her until the last shovelful of dirt is thrown over her coffin. By then, we’ll have more than enough help on hand to deal with whatever these
demons are.’

Metzger sighed, but he nodded. ‘All right. I’ll be back with an update in an hour or two.’

‘If you confirm Cortez’s location—’

‘You’ll be the first to know, as agreed,’ Metzger said. ‘You get the kill.’

Octavian nodded and turned again to study the uncannily healthy roses. With a gesture, he caused the hotel room door to unlock and swing inward. If Metzger felt intimidated by this display of
magic, he left the room without commenting.

‘I know I should go,’ he said, whispering to the rain against the glass. ‘But I can’t leave you. Not yet.’

I’d never forgive myself
, he thought.

A ripple of nausea went through him as he realized that he had already passed that point. On the night when Nikki had needed him most, he had not been here for her. He hadn’t been able to
protect her.

Some things could simply never be forgiven.

Brattleboro, Vermont

‘It’s so wonderful to see you.’

Cat smiled. ‘You too, Heather.’

The pretty young earthwitch, who had driven all the way from South Carolina, gave her a firm hug, smiling warmly. With her big blue eyes and fairy-smile, Heather had an almost ethereal presence
that Cat had always found very soothing. Of all their friends, Heather was the only one Tori ever seemed to be jealous of, which was funny because the younger witch hadn’t the slightest
interest in women. Not that Tori would have had anything to worry about, regardless. Cat adored Heather, but she loved Tori with all her heart.

Heather sighed, her expression turning sad.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t make it here in time for Keomany’s memorial.’

‘I know you’d have been here if you could,’ Cat assured her. ‘And we’ll say goodbye to her again tonight, say a prayer, and raise a glass.’

Heather smiled, satisfied with this reply.

‘You heard about Nikki Wydra, I assume?’ she asked.

Cat nodded, a dark weight settling on her heart. ‘How could I not? With all the media coverage, she’s going to be more famous for having died than she ever was for her music.
It’s a sin.’

‘Did you hear from Octavian? You guys are close, right? Are you going to the funeral?’

Cat frowned. ‘Keomany was close to them. We haven’t heard from him. I feel for the guy, but I also can’t help thinking he’s to blame.’

Heather’s big blue eyes grew even bigger. ‘You think he killed her?’

‘No, no,’ Cat said quickly. ‘But look at what happened to Keomany. Octavian’s reckless. So many of his friends have been killed as collateral damage in these battles
he’s had. I know he’s doing the right thing, saving lives, all of that . . . but I can’t help thinking that he isn’t careful enough, that people like Keomany and Nikki die
because they love him.’

Heather nodded gravely. ‘I never thought about it that way.’

‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Tonight, we celebrate,’ Cat said. ‘Go on into the house. You’re sharing the attic room on the left with Jaleesa. She’s down at the
barn getting cider and donuts, I think. You can head on down there or just rest a bit. I know it’s been a long journey for you. I have to check on some things in the orchard and then
I’ll be back and we can catch up.’

‘Excellent,’ Heather said. ‘I
am
tired, but . . . donuts!’