Cash felt various shades of bad. There was still some guilt, but then he remembered the horror stories that Shanko had told him about… Shanko, it turned out… as a kid. He wondered how much the cursed Hunter had enjoyed that fear.
“Well, we’ve all got regrets,” he said dryly. “Is that why you’re being so nice to me? So the moment when you slide the knife home is more satisfying?”
Donna laughed. The genial, practiced murmur from the other wedding guests stopped for a heartbeat and then carefully, politely picked up again.
“Oh, the moment you feel that last beat is always satisfying,” she said. “Never trust anyone who loses track of the simple joys in life, Caspari. No, letting you live was the right decision. Shanko might be a traitor, but he was never a fool.”
She sounded fond. Proud, even. Cash wondered if Shanko understood that, in her way, her weird, gross, definitely bloody way, Donna had loved him. But monsters loved like children picked off scabs—there was pleasure in the rip.
“Are you going to tell me why you’re being nice to me?” he asked.
“Can’t I just be glad to see you?” she asked. “Happy that you’re here, because you make my son happy?”
Cash snorted out a laugh. “It doesn’t sound like you, madam.”
She smiled, sly and cool. “No. It doesn’t, does it?”
Speakers mounted high in the arched glass roof scratched to life as they started to play the wedding march. The sound dripped down through the high, misty windows until the whole place seemed ready to vibrate. It made Donna glance around at the doors and move her hand. Cash followed suit to watch Arkady walk Yana through the door. She was slim and pretty in gold, the bruises from last night hidden under thickly applied powder, and he looked elegant and cold in shades of gray that didn’t suit him.
Everyone stood up. Cash offered Donna his arm, but she looked daggers at him and stood up under her own steam, giving her dress a disdainful swipe of her palms to straighten out the wrinkles.
It was a much more subdued wedding than the last one Cash had gone to. Not that Jerome, at the front of the crowd, seemed to care. From the dazzled look on his face, he might as well have been at the most elaborate wedding in the world. It wouldn’t last. No one could live with monsters and hang on to that odd, bloody-handed innocence, but Cash could see why Yana wanted to keep it close for a while.
Cash tried to keep his eyes trained on Yana as she paced down the aisle, but his gaze flicked back to the door every few steps. If it was him, with a camera and one chance to get the best shot, he’d wait for the music to hit the last few bars.
Da da daDAAAAda da da,da…and now…dadah
A beat after Cash would have done it—with Jerome and Yana already hand in hand—the doors flung open and Harry burst in.
“Stop!” he said, his voice loud as it bounced back and forth off the windows. People gasped on cue, and a few leaped to their feet with indignant rumblings. “I’m here to stop this wedding, on the authority granted to me by the Catholic Church and the Washington See.”
Someone fainted.
That was not scripted. Cash jumped to his feet and ran down to block Harry’s path forward, his arms out.
“Damn it,” he hissed. “Didn’t you get my email? You’ve been played.”
Something made Harry give Cash a look with a lot more suspicion than Cash expected. He clenched his teeth and didn’t flinch, even as his monster cringed down nervously into his gut.
“My apologies, but I don’t think I’ll take your word for that,” Harry said. He turned his camera around in his hand to face him and narrated his decision as he walked forward. “No one’s wedding ceremony should ever be disrupted, but this was an unholy union.”
Yana laughed and nudged Jerome in the ribs. “Told you,” she said. He looked uncomfortable. Apparently, Jerome wasn’t much of an actor.
Back at the doors, Abigail slid in, still in her uniform, and filmed the audience as they reacted to Harry’s presence.Perfect.
“We don’t know yet whether Ilyana Abascal was seduced or deceived,” Harry said as he reached the end of the aisle and reached into his pocket. “But we know her bridegroom is a… monster.”
He pulled out a bottle and dashed holy water, seasoned with salt and blessings, in Jerome’s face. It would never have had much effect on him—still human in all but his ambitions—but the spray that caught Yana would have pocked and stained her skin.
If Cash hadn’t swapped it out last night with plain tap water, that was.
Yana still squealed in a facsimile of girlie surprise and clung closer to Jerome.
“That’s a lie!”
Arkady wiped water off his sleeve and glared at Abigail. “You,” he said, his voice tight with anger. “Are you behind this, Amy? You’ve gone too far now. This was my sister’s wedding.”
“W… what?” Abigail spluttered as she nearly dropped her camera. “This isn’t… I’m… I don’t know what you’re talking about. I… I don’t know you.”
