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  Deacon struck, fast and hard. His blade cut cleanly through the demon’s neck. Shock ripped through the vampires’ psychic scents, holding them silent.

  Until Farkas’s head fell over the back of the sofa, thudding to the floor. Blood spurted. The female sitting next to him shrieked, scrambling back.

  With an enraged roar, Tomás charged. Deacon stepped back from the spreading pool of blood. He’d expected this attack. The vampire had remained near the wall when his own life was threatened, but Tomás wouldn’t stand for anyone killing his people.

  “Listen, Tom—!” Deacon’s shout was cut short by the swing of Tomás’s sword.

  All right. Stop Tomás now. Explain later.

  Deacon dodged Tomás’s blade and led with a right hook to the vampire’s bearded jaw. Blood and spit flew. Tomás staggered. A hammering blow to his chin laid him out. Not unconscious, just stunned. Shaking out the pain in his hand, Deacon placed his boot on the vampire’s neck and held him down.

  He looked back at Rosalia. Her fingers of her left hand were clenched on the table’s edge, her knuckles white. Beneath the table, he saw the glint of steel clutched in her right hand. “Rosie, get over here.”

  She vanished her weapon and hurried forward, threading through vampires who bared their fangs at her passing. Several abruptly stopped, glancing at Deacon, as if they’d just realized that they might have a new community leader in about ten seconds.

  They could rest easy there. Even if he’d killed Tomás, Deacon wouldn’t have taken that on.

  “Pick his head up,” he said as Rosalia passed the demon’s sofa.

  Gingerly, she grabbed Farkas’s severed head by the hair.

  “Put it on the floor in front of Tomás’s face.” He waited until she did, then took her hand and drew her behind him. “Now breathe deep. And tell me what you smell.”

  He heard the vampire’s inhalation and felt the uneasy realization in Tomás’s psychic scent. Murmurs of “demon” hummed through the crowd. The others smelled it, too. The scent of Farkas’s blood saturated the air.

  “He was sent to kill you and to take over your community. I’ve got no plans to do the same. I’m done here.”

  Deacon eased his foot off and waited a second, just to make sure Tomás wouldn’t leap up. Holding Rosalia’s hand, he began backing toward the exit. The vampires moved out of their path.

  Tomás rose to his knees and picked up the demon’s head. Not much time had passed; Farkas’s skin would still be hotter than a human’s. As he pressed his thumbs against the demon’s fangs, disbelief worked through Tomás’s expression. Yeah, the vampire sure hadn’t seen that one coming.

  Deacon turned for the door. Rosalia slipped her hand into his elbow, and that soft grip felt a little too good for his liking. He shrugged her off.

  Outside, the air surrounded him like a heated blanket. His shirt front and jacket sleeves were splattered with blood. He’d planned to ditch Rosalia the second they were done, but now he had to return to the hotel and clean off before going anywhere. No train or plane would take him back to Paris in this state.

  He didn’t realize how fast he was walking until he noticed Rosalia was running to keep up with him.

  He slowed to a human’s pace. Not for her sake. Drawing attention never boded well. People weren’t blind or stupid.

  Vampires weren’t supposed to be blind and stupid, either.

  It was one thing for a demon to impersonate a human. But although a demon could form fangs and look like a vampire, the fuckers had hot skin. And Farkas might have shared blood, but his bite wouldn’t have felt anything like the pleasure of a vampire’s. Did no one in that community notice that? And if Farkas had tried to explain it away, what idiot would believe him?

  “How could Tomás not know? How could he not see?”

  Rosalia didn’t have to ask what he meant. Perhaps she’d been wondering the same, but she came up with a kinder answer than he would have.

  “He didn’t have the benefit of the friends that you did.”

  That was true enough. From the very first, Camille had warned him about demons and taught him about vampires. She’d taught him about fighting in ways that didn’t use his fists. Then Irena had taught him more.

  Rosalia caught him off guard by adding, “Thank you, Deacon.”

  For what? The demon had made slaying him too easy to get much satisfaction out of it. “Yeah. Now you can show your thanks by buying me a ticket back to Paris.”

  His gruff response didn’t put her off. She smiled up at him, instead. He couldn’t figure out why she seemed to like him despite the shit he threw at her. It bothered him. Like she knew something he didn’t, because he couldn’t imagine why she wasn’t slugging him into next week.

  “No need to buy one.” She glanced at his shirt, and he felt the sticky wet blood vanish into her cache. Nice trick. “I already have a flight scheduled.”

  Of course she did. A pair of big, white wings. “You?”

  “Yes.” She laughed and skipped ahead for a few steps before twirling around to face him. “And you should stay in my hotel room.” Before he could say anything, she added, “You can watch Theriault, you can listen to the surveillance tapes, and it’s air-conditioned.”

  He stopped. So she thought it would be that easy? Just fall in with her once, and he was her puppet? No chance.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  Her smile wavered. “Failing miserably?”

  “Yeah.” He started walking again. “So haul off, sister. I’ll find my own way back.”

  He didn’t want to owe her a goddamn thing. Not that he would have anyway, since she’d forced him into a position where he had to find his way back.

  He passed her still form. She’d wrapped her arms tight around herself again. A few moments later, she called after him, “What you did here matters, Deacon. It will make a difference to this community, to everyone.”

  Maybe so. He didn’t care. How many ways could he tell her before she accepted that? He didn’t know, and he didn’t have much left.

  And when he was down to nothing, he only had one response. “Fuck off, Rosie.”

  Damn him, though, if he didn’t look back when he reached the end of the street. Yet she wasn’t standing there looking forlorn, looking sad. The sidewalk lay empty. So she’d finally taken the hint and gone.

  It didn’t feel like he’d won.

  CHAPTER 7

  Rosalia hadn’t witnessed the battle that had made Deacon the leader of the Prague community. She’d only heard the story later that night, coaxing it from a vampire who’d still been shivering in the corner of the club where the fight had been waged.

  Much of the city still lay in rubble after the American bombing earlier that year. The war had devastated both human and vampire communities; Deacon and Camille—friendly, but already distant—had traveled from city to city, helping rebuild. Taking over a community of vampires hadn’t been on his agenda, and he might have been surprised to find himself in that position. Once she’d heard how it had come about, however, Rosalia hadn’t been surprised at all.

  A vampire female had come to beg help from Marco, the community head. New to the city, her husband had been killed in the bombings, leaving her without a partner to feed from . . . and the infant that she and her husband had transformed twenty years before.

  The vampire recounting the story had wept as he’d described the baby boy the female had brought with her: curly-haired, fanged, blue eyes shining with the intelligence of a young man. Rosalia had listened, sick to her heart.

  The bloodlust created a powerful sexual drive, even in children—and the reality of feeding them was too horrifying for almost any vampire to contemplate. Every community had rules forbidding their transformation, but Rosalia still knew of a few children who’d been changed. Almost all had been sickly as humans, whose parents couldn’t bear to lose them. And although their minds eventually matured, their forms never did—and anyone who desired that form
could never be an admirable life partner. Rosalia had pitied both parents and children, and had done what she could to help them . . . but there wasn’t much that could be done.

  Marco hadn’t agreed. Something could be done. And when she held the infant out to him, imploring him to help, his solution had been to strike the boy’s head from his shoulders.

  The woman had still been screaming when Deacon had challenged the older vampire. She’d screamed while their swords had clashed, as their blood fell slick on the floor, Deacon the weaker of the two but driven by fury. She’d been screaming when Deacon had stood over Marco, the vampire’s heart in his hand.

  Deacon could have chosen to leave the community to someone else. Camille had asked him to; when she finally led a city of vampires, she hadn’t wanted that city to be Prague. But he’d chosen the community over her, and his decision had finalized the break between them—a decision that had ended up being better for the both of them.

  But Rosalia didn’t think he’d planned it that way. No, if she had learned anything about him in those years between the wars, it was that Deacon acted in the moment. Not thoughtlessly, and usually with full understanding of the consequences, he decisively handled each problem as it came his way. If his people were threatened, he’d faced the threat and neutralized it. And if his people—or any other vampire— stepped over the community rules, he enforced them. But he didn’t manipulate his people or maneuver them; he didn’t sweeten them up or cajole them. Always straightforward, he told them how something should be, and then he backed up his words.

  His approach was so different from Rosalia’s. She spent so many hours planning ahead, examining her every move from several angles, trying to anticipate each outcome, and utilizing other people’s strengths and weaknesses to achieve the result she wanted. When faced with an immediate threat, she acted quickly, but she preferred a more considered method.

  Now she thought it was no surprise that Deacon both fascinated and frustrated her. He simply reacted, sometimes with hardness or anger, at other times with compassion and gentleness. And although Rosalia had suffered through upheavals in her life, her considered approach had helped her weather the bumps and keep everything around her under control. But Deacon’s volatility didn’t allow her that smooth ride, and she found herself reacting strongly in return.

  She’d always been drawn to him. But she hadn’t known that once she was close to him, the swing of her emotions would be so violent and wonderful and frightening. And she hadn’t known that even when she could predict his reaction, she couldn’t control her response to it.

  Perhaps she should have seen it, but she’d always been better at anticipating other people’s reactions than anticipating her own.

  And Deacon . . . She knew he’d keep resisting her.

  She could put him in front of more demons who were a threat to vampires, and he’d slay them. She could put him in front of demons who weren’t an immediate threat, and he’d slay those, too. She could use his need for revenge to slay every demon that she needed slain.

  But she didn’t want to use him. Rosalia wanted him to see the danger that she saw, and take a stand against it, just as he did against every evil and injustice he’d ever faced. Unfortunately, ninety years had taught her that Deacon didn’t take decisive action against hypothetical threats.

  Rosalia couldn’t let go of this, however. She did deal in hypotheticals. And those said that in a few weeks, hundreds of vampires in London would die. Eventually, either Belial’s demons would come together to destroy the Guardians—or Anaria and her nephilim would. The nephilim had to be stopped, but they were stronger and outnumbered the Guardians. And Anaria . . .

  Above all, the Guardians and the vampire communities needed to be safe from Anaria. She was too strong, and too convinced that she was right.

  And so although Deacon would prefer never to see her face again, Rosalia planned to return to him shortly after dawn—and she had even more reason now. Taylor had said she arrived in Deacon’s room every day. Though Taylor hadn’t noticed any regularity to her arrivals, several hours passed between each one. Once the new Doyen regained control over Michael’s impulses, she kept it for a little while—and so Rosalia had a little time before she had to find Deacon.

  Time that she needed, so that she could see clearly again. Destroying the nephilim, protecting the vampires—both felt so right, but Rosalia couldn’t shake the feeling that, with Deacon, she’d been going about it all wrong. She just couldn’t see why . . . but she suspected that her emotions clouded her vision.

  She needed to talk. She needed advice. And she needed to take her heart out of the equation.

  Yet another thing that was easier said than done.

  Rosalia descended out of the cool, high-altitude air into a hot, sticky Rome night where everything seemed to drip and droop. Humans slept restlessly, sweating. Trees stood with branches outspread and no breeze to stir their leaves. The air smelled both stagnant and full of life—unmoving and stale, yet the fragrance of food and flowers and exhaust wafted through pockets of still air, filling every humid breath she drew.

  For a long time, she’d resented this city almost as much as she’d loved it. She’d always thought that once Lorenzo was gone, she’d leave Rome. But in the six months since she’d returned from the catacombs, she couldn’t imagine making a home anywhere else. Her resentment had fled, the scales had tipped toward love, and she suspected that humanity’s Eternal City would also be hers.

  It felt more like home than even Caelum had.

  She flew over her abbey to check that nothing was amiss before continuing on to the parish church. For more than two hundred years, the church had been a foundation of the neighborhood—and the priests acted as Rosalia’s liaison to the Vatican. Twelve different men had she outlived, and most of them she’d mourned their passing. A few of the priests she’d had to work around rather than with, others merely passed on messages, but others had become her close friends.

  The latest, Father John Wojcinski, she counted as a friend and confidant. The priest had been her liaison when the Church had not just quit of her services, but quit of her. She had not even been excommunicated—the Church simply no longer acknowledged her existence.

  That rejection hadn’t been as hurtful as their first. After Rosalia’s transformation to Guardian, the Church had not heard her confessions or allowed her to participate in any other sacraments—and so when they had turned away from her six months ago, the loss had not been so deep. She could not repay them to her satisfaction, but she no longer needed the physical and spiritual support that she’d relied upon so heavily as a human. Nor was it so terrible to say farewell to the faceless priests who’d once directed her activities.

  And they could not sever her connection to Father Wojcinski. For almost thirty years, she’d watched the gray thread through his hair, then flourish. She’d watched his laugh lines appear and had helped them deepen. She and the priest no longer worked together, but he was still a dear friend.

  Folding her wings, Rosalia landed on the church’s peaked roof, facing the rectory. The soft glow in his rooms indicated he didn’t yet sleep. Quiet contemplation lay over his psychic scent, but she couldn’t mistake an undercurrent of sorrow and anger.

  She threw a pebble. It pinged against his windowpane before dropping to the garden below.

  Soft footsteps sounded from inside his rooms. When he peered through the window, Rosalia spread her wings. After he lifted his hand, indicating he’d seen her signal, she leapt from the roof and glided to the rectory door.

  With drying herbs, strings of garlic and onions hanging from the ceiling, an enormous fireplace built into the wall opposite the large window, bowls heaped with tomatoes and peppers, and the ever-present scent of coffee, the rectory’s kitchen reminded Rosalia of the same room at the abbey before Gemma’s grandmother, Sofia, had passed away three years before. Sofia had become the abbey’s housekeeper shortly after Gemma’s mother had been born, and h
ad been as much a part of the family as were any of the vampires. And when Vin had come into Rosalia’s life, shortly followed by Gemma and her brother, Pasquale, Rosalia had found Sofia’s advice and friendship invaluable.

  Rosalia liked to think that she’d picked up good habits from Sofia. One had been that a chat over coffee in a warm kitchen could help ease the worst pain in a heart.

  As this kitchen bordered on hot, Rosalia had brought the coffee iced.

  Father Wojcinski entered the room wearing his eyeglasses, his clericals, and a pair of slippers. His pleasure upon seeing her deepened when he spied the bakery box on the preparation table.

  “Oh, Rosa. Where have you been?”

  “Greece.” A small detour on her flight here.

  He opened the box and smiled. “Baklava? Bless you.”

  She sipped her coffee and waited for him to choose a towering piece before taking her own. Sticky, sweet, salty. Perfect. The priest settled into a chair at the large wooden table. “Vincente and Gemma came to see me today.”

  Her heart leapt. “About the wedding?”

  “Yes.” He carefully took a bite of baklava. Flakes of phyllo dough drifted down to his plate. Precise in everything, he savored the bite slowly. By the time he swallowed, Rosalia was ready to beg him to continue. “You know I cannot condone their cohabitation without the sacrament of marriage, but I also cannot regret where it has led them. Particularly if it has led them earlier than they might have.”

  Her chest full, Rosalia rose from the table and walked to the window. Father Wojcinski would never speak so warmly of her son’s marriage if he wasn’t convinced of the pair’s love and fidelity. Yes, her son and his chosen bride shared both. And soon, a child.

  Happiness was a poor word for the emotion filling her now.

  “I cannot tell you of anything they spoke about, Rosa.”

  “Of course not.” Yet something must be wrong. A softening of his tone alerted her that all was not perfect.

  “It would not be amiss, however, if you could clear some time to speak with them. And to listen.”