The Van Alen Legacy

There’s nothing to fear. Please don’t run from me again.” Jack’s breath was hot in her ear, and Schuyler felt each word as a caress. But his hands did not release their hold, his fingers gripped tightly around her arms.

“Let me go!” she said. “You’re hurting me.” She gasped, even though, to her surprise, her tremors had lessened the moment he’d touched her.

She felt his grip loosen, and part of her sagged a little that he had given in so quickly. That damnable, hateful part of her that missed his touch the moment it was withdrawn. She hugged herself, trying not to feel so abandoned. Why did she feel this way? She was the one who had spurned him. She was the one who had left. Jack was nothing to her now. Nothing.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” He looked at her carefully. “You’re trembling.”

“It’s just this thing . . . I get shaky sometimes . . . it’s nothing,” she said. She turned to face him directly. “Anyway, I’m not going back. I’m not going back to New York.”

To her surprise, Jack suddenly looked relieved, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “Is that why you’ve been running? Because you thought I was taking you back to New York? That’s not why I’m here at all.”

Now it was her turn to be confused. “Then why?”

“You really don’t know?” Jack asked.

She shook her head.

“You’re in danger here, Schuyler,” he said, looking around warily. “There are Silver Bloods all around. Can’t you feel them? Their hunger?”

The minute he said it, she could feel exactly what he was talking about—that deep and consuming voraciousness, an unabated wanting. So that’s what she’d felt at the party, a bottomless appetite of greed and sex and desire, that spellbinding siren call to depravity. It hummed in the background, like a noise you couldn’t make out but knew was there. Croatan. So she did have reason to be afraid. She had felt it.

Jack had backed her into a corner of the prison cell, and Schuyler was starting to feel claustrophobic in the small space. She knew instinctively that many souls had suffered and died in the same place she was standing now. She could feel the primal pain, an unmistakable sense of injustice. Back then prisoners were sent to the dungeons to die—rotting underground, never to see the sun.

How funny that the Conspiracy made humans believe vampires feared the sun, when the opposite was true. They had loved it so much they had been exiled from heaven because of their love of Lucifer’s light.

Schuyler shivered as Jack continued to explain. “The party has been compromised. They’re here for you.”

“But why do the Silver Bloods even care about me? What’s so important about me?” Schuyler asked, trying not to sound petulant and self-pitying. Why her? She hadn’t chosen this. All she’d ever wanted was to be left in peace, but it was as if she had been born already a target.

When Jack answered, it was with the assurance and gravity of a much older presence, revealing a small glimpse into the very ancient creature behind the young vampire mask. What had Lawrence called him? Abbadon. The Angel of Destruction. The Angel of the Apocalypse. One of the most fearsome of Lucifer’s former generals.

“The cycles are the key to our existence; they guarantee our continued invisibility in the human world. According to the Code, the expression of each spirit is closely monitored and recorded. There are lists and rules that govern who is called up, and by whom and when. There was no record of Allegra being allowed to bear a daughter in this cycle. So the mere fact that you were born was already a violation.”

From birth she had been a mistake, Schuyler thought. Her mother . . . that still, silent figure in the hospital bed . . . why did she choose to have me? Schuyler wondered.

“But so what? That still doesn’t explain it. Why would they even care about that? What’s it to them? It doesn’t make sense.”

“I know,” Jack sighed.

“You’re not telling me everything,” Schuyler realized. He was protecting her. “Tell me the truth. There has to be a reason why they’ve been trying to kill me.”

Jack hung his head. Finally he spoke. “A long time ago, during the crisis in Rome, the Pistis Sophia saw the future. She said that one day, the irrevocable bond among the Uncorrupted would break. That Gabrielle would spurn Michael and bear a daughter with a Red Blood. And that daughter would be the death of the Silver Bloods. Sophia has never been wrong.”

“So I’m their death?” Schuyler found it absurdly funny. “Me? They’re scared . . . of me?” A half-hysterical yelp escaped before she could stop herself. It was so absolutely ridiculous. What could she do to harm them? As the Inquisitor had pointed out, she had used her mother’s sword and missed. She might be fast and strong and light, but she was not a fighter, not a warrior, not a soldier.