The Graves of Saints (16 page)

The thought made her twist around and vomit onto the stone steps.

Shaking, sobbing, she unleashed a wordless scream for mercy, for help, for an ending. Down below her, just outside the iron gate that led into the subterranean crypt, the demon shifted. Its body
made a crunch and clack on the stone floor and the debris shaken loose from the ceiling by the chaos going on outside. The basilica shook with each explosion and echoed with the screams of
nightmare things that had no place in this world.

It’s wrong
, she thought, catching her breath to scream again.
This is a holy place. A house of saints.

The demon could have slithered up the stairs after her, could have gutted her with those dagger fingers or burrowed its shark teeth into her chest and eaten her heart. She had tried to rise,
tried to run after Father Laurent – had that been today or yesterday? How many hours had passed? – but before she managed two steps she would be wracked with contractions again, another
monster forcing its way out of her, chittering and gnashing its jaws. But Hannah understood now that the demon did not climb up to her because it had no desire to kill her.

It wanted her alive, and breeding.

She didn’t look down at the demon anymore. The last time, she had nearly stopped breathing when she caught a glimpse of its eyes – so many eyes – looking right back at her, and
a feeling of approval had washed over her. The thing had chosen her to bring its spawn into the world, and it was proud of her sorrow and her screams. Hannah could sense it, somehow, as if the long
hours of agony and desperate humiliation had created a link between them.

Or maybe
they
can sense it, and I can feel what they feel.

In the near darkness, with only the flickering orange emergency lights casting their wan illumination in the stairwell, she felt another contraction coming and let out a terrible sob. Closing
her eyes, she prayed for an attack that would bring the ceiling crashing down on top of her, putting an end to this.

A gush came from between her legs and she felt the wriggling begin again, the pressure and the pain as a new monster twisted and slipped and slithered its way out, stretching her vagina to
obscene extent. Her breath came in hitching gasps and she grunted, fighting the pain, until a wail of despair erupted from her lips, wrenched from some hopeless place inside of her.

Please
, she thought, praying again for the church to fall down upon her.

Then she was beyond conscious thought, her scream so loud that it drowned out the chittering of the newborn and the thunder of combat outside.

Her mind shut down and for a time she would be lost in saving darkness.

Until the next one came.

New York, New York

Charlotte felt breathless and off-balance, like the earth was shifting underfoot. Her life had been nothing but upheaval since the night that Cortez’s lackeys had dragged
her from that California parking lot. Cortez had killed her and brought her back, and then tried to mold her into his own monster, as he had done with so many others. She had escaped his influence
and tried to start life over, persuading herself that her dreams were still possible. And then the dark influence of Navalica had lured her to Massachusetts and she’d met Octavian. The
changes she’d undergone since then had been just as drastic as those thrust upon her by Cortez, but this time, nobody was forcing her to do anything.

Her life had become a tornado, but even though it twisted her around and threw her about so quickly that her thoughts blurred, Charlotte embraced it all. She had been fooling herself into
thinking she could live an ordinary life after all that had happened to her. The things that had been done to her were haunting. They had taken root inside of her and would never let her be at
ease. She understood, now, that her only path to peace of mind . . . was war.

When Cortez had been destroyed, perhaps then she would no longer feel so haunted. And if it didn’t work – if her ghosts remained – at least the son of a bitch would be
dead.

A static-fuzzed voice crackled in her ear. ‘Charlotte, are you all right?’

She blinked and glanced around the alley, wondering where the TFV soldiers were hidden. Not that she expected to see them. This sort of thing might seem surreal to her, but to them it was just
another day’s work. If her heart still beat like a human’s, it would have quickened. Still, ordinary heartbeat or no, she felt something inside her tighten in anticipation.

It was just after nine p.m. People milled in the alley, most just arriving but some already departing, turned away from the metal security door in the side of the building that housed the dance
club. Once upon a time it had been a bank. According to a TFV background search, it had metamorphosed over the years first into a bookstore and then a restaurant, both called The Vault, after which
– for six years – it had been nothing but a crumbling vacancy. Now it was a dance club with no sign either at the front of the building or in the side alley, but the barely legal crowd
of aloof well-financed club kids knew just where to find it.

The place was called Faux, and as far as Charlotte knew it had earned the name without irony. One online writeup of the club called it the place ‘where nobody is who they seem’. To
Charlotte it sounded like the perfect cover for a vampire bar, or some other kind of occult operation, but apparently the people who ran the club were just that – people.

With or without the owners’ knowledge, though, Faux was the perfect hunting ground. Bored, disaffected, rich kids with plenty of money and nobody looking out for them . . . when they
vanished, it took days for people to start looking for them, and if they showed up dead in a bathtub with drugs in their system, bled out from slashes on their wrists, vampires were far from the
first suspected cause of death. It wouldn’t be hard to find an inhuman predator at Faux, but she was looking for one in particular.

‘Charlotte?’ Omondi prodded.

She flinched and looked around again, checking out the corners of building roofs and the sleek yellow sports car gliding down the alley. All she knew was that she had backup, but they might have
been in dumpsters or darkened windows or already inside the club, for all she knew.

‘Going in,’ she muttered.

A trio of girls looked up from their chattering and their cell phones to shoot her a wary glance, then gave identical lazy sneers before looking back down to their phones. She suspected they
were texting friends, trying to figure out who they knew who could get them in the door. They clustered like birds on a wire, together but hardly aware of one another, tugging down the hems of
their dresses but failing to avoid giving the peeks of ass and crotch that they hoped would get them in if none of their friends came through.

This was Faux.

Charlotte crossed the alley, aware of eyes on her. Some were the hidden gazes of TFV soldiers, while others belonged to club kids who stood in line, wondering who the hell she thought she was,
walking right up to the door as if there weren’t two dozen people behind an invisible velvet rope, waiting for a chance to be judged. Charlotte knew she looked good, knew the red dress and
her red hair and her intricate, ornate tattoos would earn her a second look. But that was only to get her to the door, to make sure nobody noticed anything out of the ordinary.

The tall, powerfully built black man who stood beside the metal door watched her approach with an impassive gaze. His head was shaved bald and he had a golden ring in each ear; Charlotte found
him deliciously handsome, and it surprised her as she drew nearer to see that he had kind, intelligent eyes. This wasn’t just some bruiser. Doorman at Faux couldn’t be his only
occupation, but tonight it was the only one that mattered – the one that could cost him his life.

He stood at attention, giving away his military background. Several people bitched loudly as she strode up to him. The doorman didn’t speak, but regarded her curiously enough that it
amounted to a question: who are you? Or, more accurately, who do you think you are? It was, after all, Faux.

‘Hi,’ she said brightly, cocking her head. Wetting her lips. Lifting one corner of her mouth in a suggestive smile. ‘I’m Charlotte.’

Despite himself, the doorman smiled. ‘And?’

‘I’m looking for Danny Rouge.’

The delicious, kind-eyed doorman gave her a disappointed look. ‘Huh. Didn’t figure you for one of them.’

‘Donors?’ she asked. Men and women who willfully offered themselves to vampires, some out of some bizarre sense of noble generosity and others out of fetishistic sexual interest, had
earned a dozen nicknames in the years since the Venice Jihad, the battle during which the Vatican sorcerers had attempted – and failed – to exterminate all Shadows, only to be destroyed
themselves.

‘That’s one word,’ the doorman said, studying her.

‘Send the bitch packin’,’ someone called from the line.

‘Back of the line!’ shouted another.

The huge, handsome man ignored them. His enormous hands were still crossed in front of him; he remained at attention. But despite what he thought Charlotte was there for, he remained curious
about her, apparently sensing something was different about her. She liked him.

‘What’s your name?’ she asked, dropping the coquettish act.

‘Marcus.’

Charlotte licked her lips, letting her fangs slide out. She smiled sweetly to give him a good look.

‘I don’t want to kill you, Marcus. I just need Danny Rouge.’

Marcus nodded appreciatively. Fearlessly. ‘We’re on the same page, honey. I don’t want to die. You want Rouge, check the vault.’

He stood aside to let her pass, provoking a flurry of angry and envious shouts. One guy broke away from the line, rushing toward the metal door even as Charlotte opened it.

‘You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me!’ the guy sneered, reaching for Charlotte, trying to snatch the back of her dress to pull her back. ‘This bitch waits in line like
every—’

Marcus grabbed him by the throat, lifted him and hurled him backward, where he sprawled at the feet of the three peekaboo girls with their cell phones. Charlotte had paused to watch, but she
hadn’t come here for the entertainment. She let the door slam behind her and ventured into the wall of sound inside Faux.

Music thumped so loud it felt like a physical assault, felt like she had waded into a rushing stream of drums and guitars and vocals, all fed through a computer to be smoothed into synthetic,
soulless music. Charlotte hadn’t known Nikki Wydra, but she had heard her music, and she had a feeling this was the sort of thing that would have made Nikki want to throw up. Though she was
only nineteen, Charlotte didn’t much care for this synth-pop dance crap either.

People swarmed around her, some dancing, some texting, some drinking and some even trying to hold a conversation, which was next to impossible here. She slid through the crowd, avoiding arrogant
and desperate men who tried to touch her or draw her onto the dance floor. She saw two waitresses but they weren’t what she wanted. Searching the crowd, she focused on a woman near the bar
who had a pale, hungry, hopeful expression – one she had seen before.

Human, but wanting so desperately to feel fangs in her throat.

Riding the wave of sound and flashing lights, Charlotte glided toward the woman. A hand touched her arm and she turned to see a too-handsome, spike-haired guy wearing a hyena’s grin. He
started to speak but faltered and backed up a step. Perhaps he’d seen the brutality in her eyes, her familiarity with blood and shadows. Either way, he glanced away, head hung like an
admonished child, and she left him there. No one else tried to touch her.

The woman at the bar saw her coming and searched Charlotte’s eyes, maybe trying to figure out if her prayers had been answered. Maybe twenty-four, she had a killer body and a lovely face,
with high cheekbones and full lips, but even with the gold eyeshadow, the desperation in her eyes would have driven most people away. Anyone could have seen there was something off about her.

‘Hi!’ Charlotte said brightly. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Velvet,’ the woman replied, wary but hopeful.

Charlotte wasn’t sure if it was a stripper stage name or the product of cruel parents, but either way she had to fight not to roll her eyes.

‘You know where the vault is, Velvet?’ she asked. ‘This is my first time and it’s a friggin’ madhouse in here.’

‘I know where it is,’ Velvet replied. ‘They don’t just let anyone in, though. It’s like a club inside the club, y’know?’

‘They’ll let me in. Maybe you want to come with?’

Velvet lit up, color flushing her cheeks so much it was detectable even with the lights and the makeup. She wetted her lips with her tongue as she nodded and led the way, mumbling something that
was lost in the crashing dance beat. When they reached the thick of the crowd, Velvet reached back and took her hand. Many eyes tracked their progress toward the rear of the club, past grinding
dancers and bar counters packed six deep. Two pretty girls wearing an air of urgency, hand in hand – the men were going to watch and the women were going to watch the men watching, to monitor
just how much attention was being diverted.

The vault still had a door, a huge, heavy thing that Charlotte figured was mostly for ornamentation, and she had to admit that it looked cool. It hung open, and it made her think of the rock
that had been rolled away from Christ’s tomb. A buzzcut, tattooed bouncer sat on a stool, half-blocking the entrance into the vault. He wore a paisley vest over a cream colored shirt with the
cuffs rolled up. Though not the handsomest man she had ever seen, his features were pleasing enough, but his huge hands were knobby and ugly. Undamaged face, damaged hands; the combination
suggested a life of violence delivered but very little received. A dangerous man.

‘Hey!’ Charlotte said, tossing her hair and cocking her hip as she looked at him.

Velvet hung back. The bouncer gave her a disapproving look, but that came as no surprise. Charlotte figured the blood-slut had been turned away from the vault before. As a Shadow, Charlotte had
no fear of the sun, but Cortez’s vampires shunned the daylight. They believed in the old ways enough to burn, so they hid from the sun. It might be dark outside now, but rogue vampires liked
caves and hidden places. The vault was perfect.