“Do you know the story of Gabrielle?” Schuyler asked.
“A little,” Dylan admitted. “Gabrielle, the Uncorrupted, who was bonded to Michael, Pure of Heart. The only vampires who didn’t sin against the almighty. In this cycle, Michael’s name is Charles Force. So what?”
“Gabrielle is my mother,” she told him.
“Show him,” Bliss urged.
Schuyler pushed the large man’s watch she wore on her right wrist. Pushed it up the same way she’d seen Charles do it the night she had accused him of being the Silver Blood.
How funny that now she had to resort to clearing her name in exactly the same way.
Etched in her skin, just like on Charles’s, was the mark. It was raised, as if burned there, a sigil. A sword piercing clouds.
“What is it?” Dylan asked.
“The mark of the Archangel,” Oliver explained. “She’s a Daughter of the Light. There is no way she’s a Silver Blood. She’s the opposite. She’s what they fear.”
Schuyler touched the mark. It had always been there, since she was born. She’d thought it simply an odd birthmark, until Lawrence had pointed it out.
Dylan stared at the mark. It shone. He crossed himself. He looked down at his plate of steak frites. “Then who were they—the Venators who helped me?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
Oliver smiled thinly. He tapped the table in front of his friend. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“No.”
“I know exactly who they were. They were the Silver Bloods.”
AUDIO RECORDINGS ARCHIVE:
Repository of History
CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT:
Altithronus Clearance Only
Transcript of Venator report filed 2/15
DYLAN WARD UPDATE:
Subject has been interrogated and released.
Transcript of interrogation destroyed in accordance with Regis Mandate 1011.
TEN
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Bliss looked around the dirty hotel room. She’d never been inside. Dylan had always insisted they meet in the lobby of the Chelsea Hotel. The hotel itself had seen better days. It was dilapidated and falling apart, one of the old New York landmarks with a literary and scandalous past. The Chelsea was where a heroin-mad Sid Vicious allegedly stabbed Nancy Spungen, where Dylan Thomas died an alcoholic. It was also the place that inspired Bob Dylan’s “Sara” (“Stayin’ up for days at the Chelsea Hotel . . .”) and where Allen Ginsberg penned some of his poems. She walked around the room, peering out at the rainy street through the blinds. The first night he had returned to her, she’d been shocked and happy to see him. She’d never truly believed he was gone, but it was still mind-blowing to find out he was alive.
That night she’d begged him to stay nearby, but he had insisted on this hotel. He felt safer downtown he said, and had shuddered at the thought of spending another night in one of those five-star plush hotel suites the Conclave had trapped him in while he was being investigated for Aggie Carondolet’s death.
The night he’d returned, she’d wanted to be close to him, to feel his body next to hers. She’d felt a closer kinship to him knowing he was like her, a vampire, than a mere Red Blood she could suck dry. Before he’d left, they’d had . . . not quite a relationship, but more than a flirtation. They’d been about to start something. . . . She still remembered the taste of his skin, the feel of his hands underneath her shirt.
But Dylan hadn’t shown any interest in picking up where they’d left off. While he’d never rejected her outright, she still felt rebuffed romantically. That first night, she had tried to put her arms around him, and he’d hugged her impatiently, quickly letting go as if touching her repulsed him. He’d demanded they go seek Schuyler and confront her, and Bliss had spent hours talking him out of his plan. They had argued, and she had marched him to this hotel, where he had been holed up since. . . .
In this dirty, smelly suite. Didn’t they have housekeeping? Why was this allowed? Newspapers stacked waist-high, empty cans littered about, ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts.
“Sorry for the mess.”
She took a seat on the corner of a plaid sofa that was covered with the remains of the Sunday Times. She suddenly felt so tired. She’d been waiting for him to come back, dreaming about it for so long—and now he was here, but it was nothing at all like she’d imagined. Everything was wrong, wrong, wrong. He had tried to hurt Schuyler; he had tried to hurt her.
As if he knew what she was thinking, Dylan spoke. “Bliss, I don’t know what came over me back there. You know I would never . . . never . . .”
Bliss nodded curtly. She wanted to believe him, but the strength of his force of will on her mind still throbbed. He had done this to her, cut her with a knife—a mental one, but that did not diminish the sharpness of its blade.