CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
W hen Selene drew Jules up the stairs to her childhood bedroom, she didn’t look around. Not at the dust coating the banister or the cobweb-draped chandelier. His warm hand grounded her and she stared straight ahead.
Canvas covered the windows, making the bedroom dark. Eyes straining, she turned in place as Jules waited for her in the doorway. The room was much as she’d left it. Her bed was undisturbed, the artefacts of her childhood covered in dust on her dresser.
Once constellations had spilled across the high ceiling. Canis. Aquila. Andromeda. Draco—her favourite. She could no longer see them now.
She took three long steps and yanked the first of the canvas window covers down. Nails broke and dust burst into the room as the canvas billowed to the floor. She dragged at the next, and then the last, turning to search the ceiling with hungry eyes.
The moon had nearly disappeared below the rooftops, but it picked out the glimmering gold and tears pricked her eyes.
In the alcove of her window, Jules wrapped his arms around her from behind and buried his face against her neck. Pain laced his voice as he breathed against her skin, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’ Reluctantly he let her turn to face him. She could see the last of the stars reflected in his eyes as he tipped his head back as though to gather himself. ‘I was afraid to tell you because you’re an exorcist first. You protect Rome above all.’
‘You’re not a threat to Rome.’ She said it like a warning. Or perhaps a furious plea.
He shook his head, No .
The taut muscles in her jaw loosened and she ran her fingers over his collarbone and down his bicep to find the raised kill marks. ‘I have told you once before, Lacroix, I don’t want to kill you. That remains true so long as you’re no threat to Rome.’ She delicately traced his scar, as if memorizing its intricacies.
He slid hands up her spine, curving her body against him. ‘I’ll hold you to that, exorcist. My life is in your hands now.’
How momentous his leap of faith had been, returning to her at all.
She leaned up on her toes, hands wrapped in his collar as she pulled his lips to hers with all the fury she had. It was angry and vicious, her teeth crashing into his lip before she nipped it and deepened the kiss so she could taste him.
Jules circled her waist, lifting her as he kissed her back with near total enthusiasm, after a wince at the split lip.
‘I’m still furious with you, demon.’ She pushed her hands into his hair, tasting his tongue until the need for air dragged her away from his lips. ‘Never leave me like that again.’
‘I swear.’
Then he lifted her, beaded silk trailing across the dusty floor as he carried her to the bed.
Selene lingered in her mother’s dressing room. She’d taken off the evening gown and dressed in some of her mother’s clothes. Tall buttoned boots, fawn suede that hugged her legs, and a leather jacket with the Alleva family crest stitched in silk on the back. This place made her parents feel so close. She tried not to think of Cesare when she pictured her father’s face, but it was impossible.
She plaited her hair loosely and tied it off with a velvet ribbon the colour of Jules’s eyes. He stepped up beside her just then, leaning to press the lightest kiss against her neck. Looking her up and down, he rubbed a hand over his mouth to hide his smirk.
She arched what she hoped was an unamused brow.
He raised both hands in surrender. ‘It’s just a very Vatican-uniform kind of outfit. That’s all.’ He ran his fingers over the lines of stitching, making her shiver beneath the leather. She was still so glad to have him back, too glad to be cross with him for leaving her.
And he was the son of God.
Reaching past her, he snatched up something that glittered like a star. Her grandmother’s engagement ring. Looking at it for a long moment, he bit back a smile and slid it onto her finger.
She grasped his chin so he couldn’t look away. ‘Do you know what this is?’
He smiled slightly. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. That depends.’
‘ On? ’
He pulled their tangled fingers to his lips, kissing her knuckles as his thumb played with the ring. ‘On whether or not you’ll tell Aurelio Sabatino, that paparazzi photographer, that I finally got you a ring. He kinda hurt my feelings.’
She shoved his face, but he laughed, pulling her with him as he stumbled.
‘Idiot. Get dressed or dawn will beat us to the punch.’
Only a few minutes later, Jules returned to find her standing at the window. Her face was a faint reflection in the rain-streaked glass. Beyond, the sky had opened, saturating the city, and a delicate lemon hue on the horizon threatened dawn.
She was a ghost of a girl, only the vaguest impression of an exorcist.
It was better this way. He had things to say, and if she turned, he feared the words would all dry up. Needing to occupy his hands, Jules tied the twin swords at his hip. His belt was the same dashing cognac leather as his boots. ‘I have to tell you something.’
She didn’t react at all and he thought perhaps she hadn’t heard.
‘Do you remember what we talked about last night? What we fought about? About the Vatican and where you get your magic?’
At first Selene only bent her head, then her quiet voice broke the silence.
‘It’s the Vatican’s greatest secret. That we don’t learn this power. We’re not born with it. It isn’t innate, or a gift from God. It’s stolen .’ She spoke the words so softly he had to stand and move closer. Even though he’d already figured much of it out, Jules let her say the words, sensing she needed to speak them aloud. ‘We wield demon power. It … it disgusts me.’
Her vitriol surprised him.
She touched her throat, swallowing as though she could taste it.
‘And your power?’ he asked softly. ‘Does it disgust you?’
‘I didn’t get my power the same way. I was on track to graduate when I turned sixteen. But … it didn’t work out that way.’
Jules could tell she was holding something back.
‘How did you get your power?’ He smoothed her cheeks with his thumbs, turning her face to him. ‘Is the blood in your veins different, Selene?’
She hesitated before whispering, ‘It’s God’s blood in my veins.’
His brows drew together, keenly feeling her pain. He’d suspected she was different from the other exorcists, and perhaps he’d even suspected this, but to hear her say it was different.
Earlier, when he’d told her about his connection to the Deathless God and watched the colour bleach from her cheeks, that same instinctive part of him that knew how to find a killing blow in battle had warned him it wouldn’t take much to kill her faith. Yet even now she still called him God.
A demon.
His father .
He ran a thumb over one pale cheek. She had weathered so many years of guilt for stealing God’s blood.
Selene grazed her nails lightly against the delicate skin of her inner forearm. ‘When I use my magic, it’s like liquid fire. I’m afraid of what I’ll become when the power finally burns me out completely.’
Cesare had embedded the thorns of that fear deep. Balled fists thrust deep in his pockets, Jules paced. ‘I saw you use your power— you have control .’ He emphasized each word.
Her lashes cast crescents on her cheeks. ‘Perhaps. But I mightn’t always.’
A knife of real pain eased between his ribs at the tears that caught on her lashes. He closed the distance between them. ‘Have you ever pushed the limits of your control? Used too much?’ He took her face, his touch slightly rough as he forced her to look at him.
She turned her face away and her breath warmed his wrist.
Not looking at him, she murmured, ‘When your blood burned like His— like mine —I felt a little less alone. Ridiculous, isn’t it?’
He stroked her cheek. ‘I don’t think it is.’
He remembered her words at the Masquerade when he was wearing the Deathless mask. It wasn’t much of a disguise . How long had she suspected the truth?
When they were in the study, Jules had filled Selene in on everything Baliel said. The truth he had bound into the wards around the city— Only a demon can kill him. Only a human can free him —and how, when the final ward fell, Baliel planned to release God himself.
Selene had paled. ‘But then Dio Immortale will be be completely vulnerable.’
Jules sat on the bottom step in Selene’s family’s huge house and looked at the notebooks. Volumes I and II together at last. The new one was indigo blue and utterly indecipherable. Only the one Baliel had handled was in a language he could read; the other was still in Latin. Jules sighed, pressing them between his hands, and felt a frisson of energy.
Barely willing to believe it, he opened the new book, finding Matteo’s words. But instead of the Latin from earlier, his familiar sloped handwriting was now in Italian.
‘Why couldn’t it be French?’ Jules muttered, looking the gift horse square in the mouth.
He turned to the page they’d started translating and continued reading.
Demons gave us the symbols we use to kill them.
And they gave us the wards.
I shall sit down and write this long-form later, but I have learned something that must be remembered. Not remembered like the first exorcists remembered, because they chose to forget. This must be remembered .
Disentangling the truth from dogma first written in the chaotic days after God was pinioned to that great crossbeam in the Cor Cordium has been difficult. In a real sense and an idealogical one. I do not like what I’ve learned about my people. And I’m afraid that we’ve gone too far. I’m afraid for my children.
I was able to reconcile myself with using demon blood. I believed that it was right. That the means were justified by the ends. I was foolish and blind, and I’m ashamed it took me so long to question everything.
I have learned that not only the means comes from the demons but also the method. Our symbols are also theirs. We twisted their magic against them and created the wards to keep them out, and, I’m horrified to admit, to keep the Deathless God trapped and immobile. It makes me sick to commit these words to paper.
Humans have ever been a devastatingly clever and devious race, but this … it makes me question everything.
Using the magic symbols they taught us, we bound God tighter and tighter.
Why? Because this living corpse of a captive God meant power.
His presence. His blood. It became the most valuable substance on earth, used to make the most powerful weapons. Weapons we could use to fend off the demons who’d mistakenly trusted us.
Is it any wonder we could not give him up? Not even when he began to stir.
No, not even then.
Before they left, Jules hid the notebook Eliot had given him in the secret bookshelf, placing it inside a slender wooden box. He’d come back for it later, but he didn’t want to carry it to Sparrow’s door. It was too dangerous. If information like this had gotten Matteo killed, imagine what it could do to demons.
Dawn was no longer an empty threat as they passed through Trastevere in the rain. It crept over Rome, brightening the sky behind dark clouds and not much more than that.
Something shifted on the edges of Jules’s perception. He halted.
Everything was still.
‘What is it?’ Selene asked, hair curling around her face as water dripped from the ends.
‘Nothing.’
But it wasn’t nothing.
The door to Sparrow’s joint was visible at the end of the street.
Selene strode ahead, sword across her back, and hammered the flat of her fist on the door.
He felt it again. Like a torch flaring at the edges of his awareness. ‘Selene!’
‘Time to shut up,’ Ambrose said, slamming his elbow into Jules’s temple.
The world flickered, and by the time Jules hit the ground darkness had swallowed him.
Selene turned in time to see Jules collapse, his face bloody from Ambrose’s metal arm. When she reached for her sword hilt, a hand clamped over hers, twisting it up behind her back. She pivoted and lashed out with her boot knife.
Tommaso . He ducked beneath the wild swing.
Several more exorcists melted out of the shadows. Their skin glinted with magic that they’d used against her —sneaking up on them in the rain and the dark. Or, more likely, lying in wait.
In the moment of her distraction, as she swung to face them, Tommaso locked his arms around her.
Ambrose laid a boot into Jules’s side, kicking him so he rolled over the cobbles. He was unconscious and unable to protect himself.
Fury ignited in her veins. ‘ Stop! ’
Selene had never been sick at the sight of blood, but Jules’s split brow and the streak of blood across wet cobbles made her gag. A scream bubbled up from her chest as she kicked and squirmed against Tommaso’s vice-like grip. She couldn’t reach Jules or Ambrose, or a dagger to trigger her magic.
She wanted to fight them— kill them—but they had their magic and she did not.
She should have risked tapping her own before they left the house. Foolish mistake .
Tommaso’s bare forearms shimmered with loosed magic. It bolstered his unnatural strength, and without hers, breaking his hold would be nigh on impossible. Instead, she slammed her head back against his nose with a satisfying crunch.
Swearing bloody murder, Tommaso swung her around and slammed her face into a crumbling wall. Pressing his whole body weight against her, he crushed the breath from her lungs. Like the bottom feeder he was, Ambrose was drawn by the violence.
Leaning in, Ambrose breathed against her cheek while Tommaso held her pinned. ‘I knew you’d come here, traitor .’
The hairs on her neck prickled. Had Cesare been using Ambrose to spy on her …?
She gritted her teeth, making her jaw ache.
Ambrose snapped at Tommaso. ‘Let up. There’ll be time later.’
She refused to look at Jules. She had one play—to be Selene Alleva , the Butcher of Rome—and that required her voice not to tremble. The moment Tommaso lightened his grip she shoved back against him so that she could stand tall. ‘How dare you? I’ll be speaking to my uncle about you today .’ She shot a glare over her shoulder at Tommaso, who was binding her wrists. ‘And you.’
Ambrose clicked his tongue. ‘Selene—’
‘Captain Alleva,’ she corrected immediately, even now loath to ignore his disrespect.
His fake smile died and an ugly expression twisted the scars on his face. ‘Not for much longer, demon fu—’
‘ Ambrose .’
Cesare.
Her uncle forced Ambrose back until his spine hit stone, then Cesare grasped his throat and slid him up the wall. ‘ Never speak to her like that in front of me.’ His voice was so soft they all leaned forward. Ambrose choked, clawing at Cesare’s hand. ‘Understand?’
A door flew open.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ Sparrow stepped out, walking into the middle of the exorcists as though he had nothing to fear. ‘This is neutral ground.’
Sparrow grasped Jules beneath the arm and pulled him up. Groaning, Jules stumbled to his feet and spat blood on the cobbles. Holding him steady with one arm, Sparrow looked around the exorcists. More than one glanced away to avoid his steely gaze. ‘You have no jurisdiction here.’
Selene had never thought she could love Sparrow—or like him—but right now she wanted to kiss his smug face.
Clearing his throat, Cesare dropped Ambrose. ‘Actually, Sparrow, I think you’ll find we’re just outside neutral ground.’ He touched the lamp post, smoothing his thumb over the Vatican seal stamped into the ironwork. ‘A shame. But we’ll be taking lead here. I’ll have one of my people send a report your way when we’re done.’
‘I can’t allow—’
Jules leaned heavily on Sparrow, and shook his head— don’t —lips forming the words, ‘Protect Selene.’ Sparrow quieted but remained in place.
Ambrose grasped for the sword hilt jutting over her shoulder and tried to draw it. But her magic bound it tight and she was flung to her knees as the leather strap snapped.
Too stupid to notice it was still scabbarded, Ambrose prepared to swing it like an axe.
A feverish light lit Jules’s eyes at seeing Selene on her knees. He snarled, surging out of Sparrow’s grip to meet Ambrose halfway, the D’Alessandro moon blade already in his hand, and with impossible speed thrust it through Ambrose’s gut.
Blood trickled from the corner of Ambrose’s mouth as he collapsed to his knees.
Jules rubbed his thumb against his lower lip. Behind the gesture hid a satisfied smirk. Then Cesare’s exorcists closed in. Jules dropped the blade and backed away with his hands up.
They descended on him like crows on a carcass.
Sparrow watched, his expression raw with grief as they beat Jules bloody. Jules let out a hoarse scream as one bent his arm back, dislocating his shoulder. He only stopped screaming when Tommaso punched him so hard he couldn’t breathe.
Selene hissed and spat and swore. The sounds of her own words never reached her, swallowed by the horrific cracking of bones as her traitor uncle snatched her off her feet and tossed her over his shoulder. His strength was undeniable.
Meanwhile, unobserved by anyone but Selene, Sparrow retrieved her familial blade and held it in a white-knuckle grip. Catching her gaze, he gave her a very slight nod before retreating inside.