He wanted to say to her, This is all he is to you: a vessel for blood. Nothing more.

"Do it!" Nan said. She pushed Allegra onto the boy, who had fallen to the floor.

Dear god, she wanted it so much; she wanted to taste him - maybe just a little? Was that so wrong?

What was she thinking - no. No. She did not want this.

This was pure torture. She straddled the boy's chest and bent down, putting her mouth on his neck, her fangs out and saliv-ating. She was so very hungry.

But finally she pushed herself away and staggered against the opposite wall, half delirious and her face white as a sheet.

Charles wanted to turn her into a monster. Wanted to show her that her love was false. That it was a mistake and an illusion. He wanted to show her what they were: fallen angels, cursed by the Lord, feeding on blood to survive. How far they had fallen. How low she had become.

She would not do this.

"NO!" she said, more clearly now, as she stood up and crossed her arms. "Take him away from me."

"Fine," Nan said, shrugging. "If you don't want it, I'll have him." The vampire dragged the boy to a far corner and kissed him with her fangs. Soon the loud slurping noise filled the room.

Allegra felt sick. She'd been in the room for what felt like forty days and forty nights. She had no idea what had happened to Ben, or what Charles was planning, but for now she was certain that Ben was still alive. She knew she would feel it if he were dead.

He was alive for now, but she did not know how long. Did she trust Charles enough to keep him alive? Or would the pain of her love for Ben be too much for Charles to bear? After all, it was only too easy to break Ben's neck or drain him to death, or even make it seem like an accident so that she would never know for sure.

She thought of everything she and Charles had been through together, and wondered how it was that they had come to this. She had left him at the altar, she had humiliated him in front of the Coven - and even now she refused to return to him, as he held all the cards and she had no choices left.

Why did she resist anyway? What part of her heart believed that she would be able to make her own destiny? She was not meant to be with Ben, she could see that now.

She was only hurting everyone - her twin, her love, herself, her Coven - by refusing to acknowledge the truth: that she could not have this. There was no escape from an immortal destiny, and this, whatever this was, those golden months in the green valley living as a vintner as if she were nothing but an ordinary girl, was just as false as pretending she did not feel any vestigial love for her immortal mate. She loved Charles, but she could not deny that the love she felt for Ben was much stronger, and deeper to the core of who she was. It was as simple as that.

But alas, Allegra Van Alen was not an ordinary girl. She had to accept that, or Ben would die. She was sure of it now.

There was nothing that mattered to Charles as much as keeping the Coven whole. He would sacrifice anything for it, including the Code of the Vampires. There was no way he would let Ben live; for as long as he was alive, Charles knew Allegra would pine for him and she would never give herself to him fully.

She made her decision.

"I want to speak to my brother," she told the guard.

Kingsley martin saluted. "I'll get him right away." Allegra felt grateful that it was Kingsley who guarded her prison and not any of the others. They had been friends once. In Rome she had helped him with the Corruption in his soul. Few trusted the reformed Silver Blood, but Allegra had always been fond of him. She remembered him as a young boy, Gemellus, the weakling.

When Charles entered the room, Allegra threw herself at his feet and bowed her forehead so low it touched the edge of his wingtips, and her tears drenched his shoelaces.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," she sobbed.

"Allegra, don't do this, you don't need to. Get up, please. I can't bear to see you this way," Charles said, kneeling down to her level and trying to remove her arms from his legs. "Please don't." His face was full of anguish, and she did not know who found this harder to bear - him or her. They shared this pain together, as they had shared everything else. He felt everything she did - of course he did. He was her twin, and her anguish was his own.

He was hurting to see her demean herself this way. But it was her love that was on the line, and she had no shame or pride anymore. "Don't kill him. Don't kill him, Charlie. Please.

I'll go with you. I'll say the words and we'll be bonded. Just.

Don't hurt him. Please."

Chapter Thirty-four

A Righteous War

Jack noticed that something had gone wrong right away when he saw the lights go out at the temple. "Something's happening. Let's move," he told the group. But the temple was empty when they got there, and there was no trace of the girls - or of any kind of scuffle. Even the candles were lit, and the place was quiet and peaceful. There was only the forebod-ing stare of the jackal god, looking down, as if mocking them.

"Where'd they go?" Sam said, raking his hair. "I can't feel them in the glom." The telepathic connections had been severed the moment the lights went out. Not a good sign.

"There's got to be a hidden path somewhere in the temple. If we didn't see them leave, then they had to go under," Jack said. He knelt on the floor and began tapping it, but there was only a dull sound that meant it was solid rock. If there was a passageway underground, it must only open to a certain incantation or spell. He tried several, unsuccessfully.

Ted had walked the perimeter, but reported that there was nothing out there either - there was no sign in the cemetery that anyone had even come to the temple. They'd been watching the place for hours, and still the girls had slipped through, disappearing into thin air. No. They knew exactly where they had been taken: to the underworld, to become demons' brides.

Jack steadied his breathing. He consoled himself with the knowledge that the three girls were dangerous as well: two were trained Venators, the deadliest of their kind, and armed.

Schuyler would fight, he knew, and he tried not to feel angry and helpless. He had to think. If the passage went underground, then it meant the gate couldn't be too far away, which meant Schuyler was right: it was in the city somewhere. Probably just under his feet.

Not a minute had passed when he suddenly saw it: the spark went live, and in his mind's eye he saw Schuyler bursting through a wall, into a room inside a pyramid, followed by Dehua and an older woman.

"They're in Giza," he told the team.

When Jack and the Lennox brothers arrived at the tomb, Schuyler and Catherine were talking in hushed voices. Jack did not remark on the way they were dressed - they all knew the reason why the Nephilim were taking girls - but to see the grotesque parodies of white wedding dresses was too much.

Jack didn't think there had been enough time for this elabor-ate preparation, but he remembered that time moved differently in the underworld. The girls had probably been down there for hours. He would kill every demon in Hell if one of them had as much as touched a hair on Schuyler's head.

"Where's Deming?" Sam asked immediately.

"We had to leave her," Schuyler explained. "It was my fault. The demons disarmed us before we could move. I'm sorry. I didn't think we would lose you guys."

"We'll get her back," Dehua said, her voice raspy and her eyes red and dry. "Don't worry, Sam. Deming can take care of herself."

"I trusted you," Sam said, his voice tight, looking directly at Schuyler. "From now on, we do things my way."

"I'm sorry," Schuyler said. "I'm so sorry. I didn't think this was going to happen."

"I don't need an apology. I need to find a way back down to the underworld. The gate is here, right? Let's go." He nodded to his twin and to Dehua. "Show us the way," he said, noticing the gatekeeper for the first time. "This is your gig, isn't it?"

Catherine said, "If you go now, you will only bring harm to yourselves, and will have little chance of getting her back, as every demon in Limbo is looking for these two right now." She motioned to Schuyler and Dehua. "The Castle Styx is in the borderland. If she's been taken there, it means she's been selected as the bride for the Harvest Bonding, and we have some time, as that's not until Lammas. She'll be left alone until then. No one will touch her, and you can rescue her during the Virgin Night right before, when the castle will be empty, as the demons will be feasting in Tartarus."

They watched Sam process this information. Finally he exhaled. "Fine. We'll wait till then. But I'm going to run this mission. No more mistakes."

Jack put his coat around Schuyler's shoulders to help her cover up, and the Venators left to confer on their own. The group seemed to have split, and once again the Lennox twins were wary of Jack and Schuyler, making it clear they preferred to keep their own counsel. Dehua refused to look at them as they left.

"You all right?" Jack asked. He had refrained from showing any emotion until now.

"Thanks to Catherine." Schuyler squeezed his hand, silently thanking him for the jacket. "I just need to get out of this wretched costume."

"So you're Halcyon," Jack said, turning to the gatekeeper.

"I don't know if you remember me."

"It would be difficult to forget Abbadon of the underworld." Catherine smiled as she shook Jack's hand. "I'm sorry we are meeting under such circumstances, but I suppose it can't be helped. Come, let's find a better place to talk."

* * *

Catherine lived in an apartment in the Giza suburbs. The building was one that had been built in the nineteenth century, and pided into living spaces to house professors at the university and young families. It was small but comfortable, and it looked as if the gatekeeper had lived there for a long time. There were Life magazines from the 1930s on the coffee table, and an eight-track tape player and rotary telephone.

Catherine put on a kettle of water to boil. "As you can see, the gate is in terrible danger now that the Silver Bloods have found its location on earth," she said. "It's a pity we never found the Croatan who had infiltrated our Covens until it was too late."

"But Michael said all the Croatan were destroyed during the crisis in Rome," Jack said, knowing how weak that sounded.

"Michael said a lot of things," Catherine said with a wry smile. "Not all of them were true. He did not want the Coven to fear the enemy. Which is why he created the Order of the Seven. When the gates were created, there were Silver Bloods who were trapped on our side, and Michael and Gabrielle formed a team to hunt them down. It was our first duty as gatekeepers."

Schuyler watched Jack's face fall as he learned this information - to know that he had been kept in the dark for centuries. "It is true, then, what Mimi always said. The Uncorrupted never trusted us - which is why we were never told of any of this," Jack said. "They still see us as traitors. Lucifer's generals, even though we tried to change the course of the war."

"Your sister always was observant," Catherine agreed. She brought out napkins and plates. "It's only a matter of time before they will be able to bring it down. The hounds slip through with regularity; now even a demon or two can manage it," she said. "They were never able to do that before. I did what I could through the years to throw them off the scent."

"The decoy in Florence," Schuyler said.

"Yes. It kept our enemies off balance for a while."

"And the Petruvians - was that part of it? Part of the plan?" Schuyler asked, feeling a little frantic. "Are you aware that they kill innocent women and their children in the name of the Blessed?"

"Like I said, I did what I could. I trained the Petruvians myself." Catherine poured steaming water into a fat porcelain teapot. "And here I do the same. I try to break out the girls before they're bonded to the Croatan."

"But what if they've already been seduced?" Schuyler wanted to know. If they are already pregnant with the Nephilim child? What do you do then, gatekeeper?

Catherine set the table, removing biscuits from a tin and arranging them on plates with the fleur-de-lis design. "I slit their throats," she said, without a trace of guilt or shame.

"Come, eat," she said, taking a seat at the table and motioning for them to do the same.

"And the babies?" Schuyler's voice shook.

"The same," Catherine replied.

Schuyler went pale and could not breathe. She saw in a flash the long and bloody history of Catherine and the Petruvian priests: the babies spiked on bayonets, the girls with their bellies slashed from hip to hip, the blood and the burnings, the bitter war waged in secret.