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“But you, my dear... you were a different story. You were very receptive to learning the dark magic. I had to hide it from your father. Charles would have protected you if he had known. Would have told me I was jumping to conclusions again.” Kingsley looked apologetic. “Old allegiances and all...”
“You don’t have to remind me,” Mimi said, her face turning red. “I know what they say about Jack and me. That one day we’ll be Benedict Arnold vampires.”
He nodded. She knew as well as he did that Azrael and Abbadon would forever carry the stain of once being Lucifer’s proudest generals.
“The Incantation Demonata,” Mimi said. “Why did you do it?”
“I was ordered to by the Regis himself. It was a test, he said.” Kingsley gripped his drink so tightly his knuckles turned white. “I thought he was playing me. Testing my loyalty maybe. But whatever. We just take orders, Venators. That’s the way it is. If he wanted me to call up the Silver Blood, I was going to call up the Silver Blood.”
“But why would Charles have you do such a thing....” Mimi asked, horrified.
Kingsley gripped her arm across the small table. “Do you remember anything about Rome?”
“Some of it,” she said. “It comes in bits and pieces— flashes—images—I remember the crisis, demons walking in daylight, hunting them down... and that last night in Lutetia...” She closed her eyes. “I remember telling Valerius that Sophia was wrong—there was no way Caligula had turned—that Cassius was just jealous as usual—but then... we saw it.”
Kingsley nodded. Caligula and his crimson eyes with the silver pupils. The unmistakable sign of Corruption. Agrippina Azrael and Valerius Abbadon had led the emperor down to the path, down to the newly forged gate, where Cassius—Michael—was waiting. The battle had not been easily won. But they had done it. Sent the Devil down to Hell.
“But what does Rome have to do with what happened in the Repository?” Mimi asked.
“Well, for starters, since the incantation worked, it proved that Silver Bloods still existed, and that they had a way into our world. Because Charles didn’t believe it—not at first, not even with all the killings. I don’t think he truly accepts it now. And he wanted to keep it from the Committee. But he had to do something if he was wrong—so he sent me to Corcovado. Because if they were back, that’s the first place they would go—to free Leviathan.”
Mimi nodded, taking it all in.
“Do you know anything about the gates? About the Order of the Seven?” Kingsley asked.
Mimi shrugged. “I don’t think I was privy to that meeting. I was surprised as anyone to find that Michael had chosen to father us for this cycle. He knows we weren’t huge fans of the so-called Uncorrupted. At least, I never was.”
Kingsley filled her in on what he knew about the Gates of Hell and the guardians ordered to protect them, as well as his part in it. “The gates keep the paths secure and the demons in the underworld. The gates should have stopped the incantation from working. But they didn’t. That was the test. The Silver Blood was able to break through the barrier. Charles suspects that Lucifer has been able to find a way into our world that we did not expect, did not foresee.”
“But how?”
“How indeed... especially since the Conclave took care of the biggest threat.”
“Oh god. I had totally forgotten about that.” Mimi said, her palms at her cheeks, as if to hide from the truth. “It was you, wasn’t it? You were the one who took Gabrielle after I wasn’t brave enough to do it myself.”
Kingsley nodded. The twins had been given the task, but had balked at the very wrongness of it—and so he and Forsyth had kidnapped Gabrielle from her room. He remembered everything. The silent birth, the frightened midwives, then Charles and Lawrence taking the baby... the burned swaddling clothes, the ghastly smell of death all around. Then Gabrielle waking up with no memory of her ordeal or even that she’d borne a child.
“I don’t think any of us have ever forgiven ourselves for what we did that night. Not me, not Lawrence, not Charles, not Forsyth. War is a terrible thing. There is no room for mercy.” Kingsley’s face was drawn, hollow. He didn’t feel much like talking anymore. Poor Lawrence, his friend and mentor. And now Charles, lost as well. “Well. That’s everything.”
“Oh, Kingsley,” Mimi said gently.
Kingsley looked up, surprised to find Mimi with tears in her eyes. She put a soft hand to his cheek.
She looked at him in silence, and in her eyes he found forgiveness and understanding, the two things he hoped for the most and expected the least. In Rio, Kingsley felt he had taken advantage of the situation a little bit—they had been so tired after their trek through he jungle, she couldn’t have been in her right mind when she’d knocked on his door that night, when she had sought comfort in his kisses. That was why he had kept her at arm’s length ever since.
But she was here now. And she was the one leaning toward him. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry, baby,” Mimi was saying.
They were words he had waited a lifetime—many lifetimes—to hear, and that they came from Azrael, she who had spurned him for centuries (Abbadon wasn’t the only one who had pined for one he could not have). She had mocked him in Rome—haughty, beautiful Agrippina, who had no time for Gemellus, no time at all for a weakling such as himself—a rare, solitary soul, never bound. Gemellus, who had loved and worshipped her from afar, she who was in his arms now....
Victory was sweet. Who knew that the path to a woman’s heart was through the soul of an honest man?
Kingsley Martin would never understand women. But that was all right. He didn’t need to understand Mimi. All he had to do was love her, and he could do that.
THE VAN ALEN LEGACY
AND THE PATHS OF THE DEAD
With his dying breath, Lawrence Van Alen revealed a secret to Schuyler: she was the heir not just of the Van Alen name but to a very important legacy. He instructed her to find out more from Charles, but during the Silver Blood ambush at the Bal des Vampires in Paris, Charles became trapped in the subvertio, the White Darkness, and was unable to disclose what he knew.
