Gates of Paradise (a Blue Bloods Novel)

“What did your grandmother say? What did Cordelia say about him?”


“She always made it clear he was dead, and that’s why Allegra was in a coma, because my mother wouldn’t take another familiar after he passed. I got the feeling Cordelia hated my father’s family. She never spoke of them, especially him. She couldn’t stand it that Allegra had married a Red Blood. I never knew much about him.” Schuyler fiddled with the latch on her bag. “I mean, I don’t even carry his name,” she said softly. She remembered all those lonely afternoons by Allegra’s bedside, and the time she had come upon a stranger kneeling by her mother’s bed, and how her heart had raced at the possibility that her father had returned. But the stranger had turned out to be Charles Force. The vampire Allegra had spurned to bond with her human familiar.

Oliver squeezed her hand in sympathy. “That was your grandmother’s fault, not yours.”

“Do you really think my dad is still alive?” she asked. “But there’s no way that’s true. My mom was in a coma out of grief, remember?” But then again, Allegra had so many secrets, it was hard to know what was true and what wasn’t, and Schuyler told that to Oliver as well.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out. What do you know of your father’s family?”

“They owned some big company a long time ago; my father was named after it. Bendix Corporations, I think. But they sold it.”

Oliver tapped the information into his phone. “Says here Bendix is now headquartered in Los Angeles, but that the family still retains a percentage of ownership, and sits on the board. I can get us on a flight tonight if you want.”

“Let’s do it,” Schuyler said. Her father was alive? No. It was impossible. She didn’t know much about her father, but she knew he was gone. If he was alive, why hadn’t he ever tried to come see her? How could someone just let their child grow up without ever once trying to contact them? She had grown up missing both her parents, a mother and father she never knew. She was a product of their great love for each other, and yet their legacy to their only child was a deep and abiding loneliness. She had been alone for so many years.

Not alone: she always had Oliver, she realized. Her human Conduit, her faithful companion. He was with her now.

Mother, where are you sending me? she wondered.





SEVENTEEN


Mimi


t was dim inside the enchanted chapel, the windows black, as if the world extended no further than the space inside it. Mimi was trapped in an insulated world, in Limbo, in the nothingness of the abyss.

“I knew it was you at the station,” Kingsley said. “Don’t tell me you’re with that jerk. What happened to that brother of yours?”

Mimi tossed her hair back haughtily. “We work for Lucifer now.”

“Yeah, right.” Kingsley laughed.

“He wants the grail to make godsfire, and we mean to give it to him.”

“The Mimi I knew—”

“The Mimi you knew is gone,” she said. “I told you to forget about me, and it looks like you took my advice to heart.”

“Jealous, were you?” he asked. “Now I know you’re lying about your feelings for me.”

In reply, she drew out her sword and faced him.

He did the same, brandishing his weapon. “Do you really mean to fight me for it?” He tipped his sword against hers, and a dull ring echoed around the room. He took two steps backward, the grail in one hand, his blade in the other. “All right, then, who am I to stand in your way. You always were a good sparring partner.”

Make it look real, she thought. I’ve got to make him believe I have gone to the Dark, to keep him safe. Otherwise…

She swung first, and he met her thrust with the edge of his sword, bashing her blade against a stone pillar. The shock reverberated through the steel, rattling her grip. She nearly lost the weapon, but quickly recovered. Kingsley took a step back.

Mimi advanced, crossing her blade against his, then quickly recovering to jab at his chest. Rather than meet her second blow with his sword, he swung with the grail, and she nearly dropped her weapon once more.

“Careful now, you might destroy what you want to take from me.”

Mimi smiled. “No chance of that.” She held her sword low, scraping it against the hard stone pillar as she brought it up fast toward his left hand. She turned the blade sideways, as he had first done, and struck at the back side of his hand. The blow sent the cup flailing from his grip, and it fell to the ground with a clang.

Kingsley took a leap forward, but rather than striking Mimi, he kicked the grail with the back side of his foot, sending the old cup rolling behind him.

For a moment he was defenseless, and Mimi drew her sword across his chest. Her steel met flesh, drawing a bloody line across his midsection. Kingsley grunted in pain, and she felt the ache in her chest as well, at the thought of hurting him. But her face remained impassive.