Gates of Paradise (a Blue Bloods Novel)

They fought like the equals they had always been, blocking each other’s jabs, ducking each other’s blows. As always, Mimi was amazed at how well matched they were. She didn’t have to think about whether she wanted to win this fight; it was all she could do to maintain her ground.

And then, all of a sudden, she couldn’t maintain it anymore. Kingsley had forced her up against the bookshelves, and though she’d scaled one of the ladders to get away from him, he’d used his sword to slice through the stair on which she stood, which sent her tumbling to the ground.

Kingsley stood over her, his sword pointed at her throat. “I’m going to give you one last chance,” he said. “I don’t want to have to kill you. But I can’t have you jeopardizing everything we stand for. Lucifer cannot return to Heaven. I won’t permit it. Say something, anything, so I don’t have to do this. Please.”

But Mimi remained silent.





FORTYFOUR


Tomasia (Florence, 1452)


omi woke up exhausted in her own bedroom. From the window, she could see the red roofs of the city, the sunlight dappling on the terra-cotta. Why did her body ache so? Last she remembered, she had been up late into the night, working on her sculpture. But when she looked at it, it seemed unfamiliar. Who were these people—the woman on the ground and the two men standing above her?

She was cold and trembling, and her body ached with sorrow. What had happened? Why couldn’t she remember?

Where was Andreas?

The last thing she remembered was chasing a Silver Blood on those same roofs, jumping from house to house until they had caught up with him on the top of Brunelleschi’s unfinished dome. The hooded stranger who had carried Lucifer’s mark.

“Did I fall? Is that why everything hurts so much?” she asked.

“Yes.” Andreas nodded. “The Croatan hit you with a blood spell. Ludivivo and I have worked long and hard to keep you here with us in this cycle.”

“A blood spell! How long have I been asleep?”

He told her, and she could not believe it. So many months. But there was no reason for Andreas to lie to her. He came to sit by her bed and rested his head on her shoulder.

She pulled him to her. “They are growing in strength, our enemies.”

“Yes,” he murmured.

“Do not be troubled, my love. I am whole.” She looked down at his dark head, expecting to feel the usual surge of affection that came over her every time she saw him. But something felt different. She felt…empty. Numb. She pushed the sculpture away from the bed.

“Displeased with your work?” He stood up from her embrace. “Why don’t you lie down, and I’ll fetch you a cool jug of water. You aren’t well. You’re still healing.”

A cool jug of water…why did that sound so familiar?

“Yes, I suppose that would be a good idea.” She had survived a blood spell; she was lucky to be alive. So that was why. There was no other reason she would feel so odd.

Was there?

She looked down at her belly, at her pale white legs, and in a flash saw a river of blood, saw a baby’s head crown, but the memory went as quickly as it came—and she did not understand, did not know what it meant. What baby? What was all that blood?

But something in her soul grieved, something in her soul died that day.…

Tomasia would live the rest of that cycle with Andreas in Florence, never knowing that she’d had a child, or that the child had been stolen from her. And Andreas and Ludivivo would never know that Patrizio had betrayed them, that instead of destroying the babe, Patrizio had raised the girl as his own; had killed his own daughter so that Lucifer’s spirit could remain on earth. The girl was known as Giulia de Medici, child of Duc Patrizio de Medici. When she was sixteen, she tried to kill herself, as she would attempt to do in every cycle of her immortal life.

In the White Darkness, Allegra and Charles sat together at the piano in the Cotton Club. 1923.

“So that is how you hid her from me,” Allegra said. “And that is how I betrayed you. I knew. I always knew. The guilt and the shame at my betrayal has haunted me for centuries. As has my anger toward you for what you did to my daughter.”

“I failed you, Allegra.”

“No, Charles, we failed each other. Because Florence was merely a consequence of a decision you made long ago. This is not where it began, our estrangement. Not here.”

“Yes,” Charles said. “You were never able to forgive me for it. Look at that sculpture you made.”

Allegra stared at the sculpture on the table in Florence so long ago. A sculpture that harkened back even further in their history. A woman on the ground. Two men above her. One with a sword to the other’s throat.

“This all started in Rome.”





FORTYFIVE


Bliss


ow fitting that Caligula had hidden the path in a theater—his entire life had been a charade. Perhaps that was the idea—that Lucifer was laughing at them as he worked toward their destruction. Bliss forged ahead, not quite sure what she would find, or what they would do when they did find the blockage.

“Bliss?” Malcolm said. “I feel kinda weird.”

“Weird how? Like, it’s-dark-and-you’re-freaked-out weird, or like, the-passages-are-closer weird?”