Demon Blood (15 page)

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 had 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
.”

She hadn’t been listening to them? My God, she could barely get Vin to
talk
to her.

“Do you think I don’t?”

“I think that you are so good at shouldering burdens, you often do not see the weight carried by others.”

Worry gnawed at her. What weight did Vin and Gemma feel they carried? But she could not press for details. “Do I ask too much of them?”

“No. But remember, now that he will be a husband and father, his world has changed. And his priorities.”

Of course they had. “Yes, Father.”

He moved to the sink to wash the honey and butter from his hands. “I am glad you have come tonight, Rosa.”

Yes, she’d sensed that he was troubled and angry. “Can I do anything to help?”

“No. Unless you can return trust to parishioners from whom it was taken. And if you can make it easier to forgive the one who has abused his position and taken advantage of a child.”

Rage swept through her veins like fire. No, she could not make it easier to forgive such a man. Long before Father Wojcinski had brought a five-year-old Vin to her door, wounded by the loss of his mother, then the “care” of one of his mother’s boyfriends in whose home he’d landed, Rosalia had been unable to forgive anyone—priest or otherwise—who abused a child in such a way.

“Who?”

He turned from the sink, wiping his hands on a towel. He regarded her gravely. “If you find out, Rosa, I will accept that it was God’s will for you to know.”

Because he knew she
would
find out, and put the fear of God into the man. She did not know what to think of Father Wojcinski’s easy acceptance, however. Always before, he had urged her to reconsider her role in the lives of mankind before using her abilities against them.

And despite his acceptance, she felt no easing of the emotional turmoil within him. “Is this all that has kept you awake so late? Was this man a friend?”

“I have never met him.” With a sigh, he sat again at the table. “The first time I heard such an accusation, I thought it could not be true. I believed that a mistake had been made, that a simple rumor had gained teeth, and he would be found innocent of the charges. I believed in his innocence until I could believe it no longer.”

“You heard the evidence against him?” When he nodded, she said, “I have seen too many men and women condemned by mere rumor to fault you for that belief.”

“Yes, Rosa. But this time . . . my first thought was not of his innocence. I assumed his guilt, instead. I felt resigned to it.” Removing his glasses, he rubbed his hand over his eyes. “All men are capable of sin, but only a few are capable of doing that to a child. Yet my first response is condemnation.”

Ah. “So the depth of your cynicism has shaken you.”

“Perhaps given me a good rattle.”

His weary smile aged him, and a feeling akin to panic suddenly roiled through her belly. How long before she lost yet another friend? Fifteen years?

No time at all.

He slipped on his glasses again with another sigh. “But that is my burden, Rosa. I should not lay it on you.”

A burden she recognized, from centuries of conversations in this room. She pulled her thoughts together and expelled the fear. “Nonsense. You haven’t been the only one to bear it—though you held out against it far longer than the others.”