She closed her eyes tightly and nodded. "I just... I love you so much."

He cried out as he entered her, and Mimi gasped and held him even tighter. They rocked against each other, and his tears fell on her face. When they kissed, it tasted like salt and sacrifice, and she lost herself to the exquisite pleasure of his body and his love - carried aloft to an ecstasy that was beyond anything she had felt before.

Lying together in bed, her head resting in the crook of his shoulder, Mimi felt at peace. Kingsley was soundly asleep next to her. Boys. She nuzzled his neck and he gave her a sleepy kiss. Lucky rabbit's foot, Mimi thought.

Mimi could not remember ever feeling so happy. The happiness was deep and sustaining, and she realized now that after innumerable years on earth, she had never felt this way.

That no one had ever loved her this way, so completely and so thoroughly. She had never shared a moment like this with anyone, and the love she felt for Kingsley was a precious gift - a delicate, wonderful bubble that covered the two of them but grew to expand to the whole world and the entire universe, past the Kingdom of the Dead and the Garden of Eden, encompassing everything and everybody around it.

She loved and she was loved, and that was all that mattered. How simple, really. But wasn't that the reason she had traveled to the underworld in the first place? Her soul was at peace. She was happy and satisfied with life. Everything would work out. She had gotten what she wanted. Ask and ye shall receive. She had received it in spades.

There was something else, something unexpected: that darkness in her soul, that corrosive hate and anger, bitterness and humiliation that she had been living with for the better part of a year - it was gone. It had disappeared.

Mimi had another thought: one so new and surprising that she could not believe she was thinking it. But it was there all the same.

She would let Jack live.

She loved Kingsley so much that she had enough love in her heart for her wayward twin as well. There was no need to spend her energy looking for Jack and plotting to kill him. She would release him from his bond. There would be no blood trial. There was no need.

"What are you thinking about, Force?" Kingsley asked.

"You look so serious."

She turned to him and gave him another kiss - one of many they would share in an immortal lifetime. "I was thinking we should do that again."

So they did.

Chapter Thirty-nine

Twilight in the Garden

LeavingtheCovenwasnosmallmatter,andevenifAllegra had no doubts that she was doing the right thing, there would be moments when she would catch herself wondering how Charles was doing. She hoped that somehow he would find a way to recover and find some peace. She'd thought being free of the bond would lighten her load, but instead her heart was heavy. While she would have her love, she had lost everything else that was precious to her, including a storied, celebrated history that was an indelible part of her identity.

Ben loved her and thought he knew her, but there was so much that he could never know, never understand, which was why she loved him in the first place. She loved him for seeing the part of her that no one ever noticed - the human part, the vulnerable girl behind the vampire shell.

One morning, not too long after her imprisonment, a telegram arrived at the vineyard. It was a summons. I am at the Fairmont. I will wait for you in the tea room at four o'clock.

"Who sends telegrams these days?" Ben asked, watching Allegra read the small typewritten note.

"My mother," Allegra said, tearing the note in half and tossing it into the garbage. She had not spoken to her mother since leaving New York, and Cordelia had never attempted to contact her before now.

"When am I going to meet her?" Ben asked.

"Not anytime soon," she said. "I'm sorry, it's just... she's not really the best person for you to meet right now."

Ben nodded, but he looked hurt, and they did not talk about it for the rest of the day.

When Allegra arrived at the hotel's grand lobby, her mother was seated on a pan, rigid, correct, and implacable as always. Allegra bent down to kiss Cordelia's cheek, and found it papery and thin, smelling of talcum powder and Chanel No. 5.

But other than a few fine lines around her bird-blue eyes, Cordelia looked exactly the same. Allegra had a flash for a moment of Cordelia looking a little older and speaking to a girl who was just a few years younger than Allegra was. The girl regarded Cordelia in the same manner that Allegra had, with a little bit of fear and love. Who was that girl? Allegra wondered.

Was it the daughter she would bear to Ben? The baby she had seen in that vision? Why was the girl with Cordelia? But of course - Allegra remembered now - because she would not be able to raise the child herself, remembering the image of herself lying comatose on that hospital bed. Was there anything she could do to change it? To change the future? Ben had told her not to fear - but he had no idea what they were up against.

"Scone?" Cordelia asked, breaking Allegra's reverie.

"No thanks."

"Pity. They're quite good."

Allegra watched her mother eat with precise, small move-ments, and, as if in retaliation, took a big noisy gulp from her water glass. "I know why you're here," she said finally.

"Oh?" Cordelia put down her teacup. "I suppose I'm not surprised."

Allegra nodded. "You're not going to convince me to change my mind. Charles and I have... ended it. He let me go,"

she said, even though she herself did not quite believe it.

"Yes. I know. The whole Coven knows, Allegra." Cordelia's tone became cold. "You know I have not always agreed with Charles on his decisions over the centuries, and so I will grant you the same courtesy. I will not talk about the choice you have made. You of all people know what you have given up for this... relationship you continue to pursue with your human familiar. And I suppose since you already know why I am here, but you have not acted, then perhaps this is a waste of both our afternoons."

"Yes," Allegra said. "I'm sorry to waste your time, mother."

Cordelia sighed. "I thought more of you. I thought you would care. I did not expect you to be so heartless, Allegra.

That was never like you."

"I care for Charles - I always will," Allegra pleaded. "But I can't do it anymore. He understands that. I love someone else.

I don't know how it happened, but I do."

"Charles is dying," Cordelia snapped.

Allegra reared her head back. "What?"

"I thought you said you knew why I was here."

"Because I thought you were here to bring me back to New York."

"I am."

"I meant... to renew my bond...." Allegra said. This was a trick, a way to get her to return. Cordelia was lying. "We're immortal. He'll come back in another cycle."

"You don't understand. If you don't renew your bond, he will weaken. He becomes half a person. The immortal blood - the sangre azul - will fade from him. I thought you knew that."

"But if the bond breaks, then why am I not sick as well?"

"Not yet," Cordelia said.

Allegra felt a piercing fear hold her. The bond would take them both. The blood would thin, and the immortal spirit she carried within her would be extinguished. No wonder Cordelia had come today. Allegra hadn't known - or she did not want to know. She knew enough already and still she was going through with it. Her own blood had shown her visions of the future. Comatose on the bed. Her child growing up without a mother. And Ben... who knew what would happen to Ben....

"I did not come all the way to San Francisco to judge you, Allegra, or berate you for your poor choices. But I do ask that you see him before the end. You owe him that much."

Allegra told Ben there was an emergency back home, and that she would return as soon as she could. She left for New York that evening, and the next morning paid a visit to Charles in his grand new home on Fifth Avenue.

She had no memories of the past that did not have him in it. She had no life, no identity apart from the lonely figure sitting in the dark, in that palatial bedroom. This was the room she had picked out, had decorated, had lovingly imagined they would make their home. It saddened her to see him in it, so alone. She had done this. She was the one who had left him.

Charles Van Alen heard her enter, the soft tread of her feet on the felt carpet. "Cordelia sent you," he said, closing the book on his lap.

"Yes. But I came on my own. I didn't know," she said. "I didn't know what would happen if I didn't renew the bond. I didn't know it would hurt you like this."

"Why are you here?" Charles coughed.

Allegra sat by his bed. "I did not want you to suffer," she said, taking his hand, which had withered since the last time they had seen each other. "I did not want you to suffer because of me."

Her heart ached. Charles had given her the freedom she had asked for, and in return he had sacrificed himself. She had assumed she was free; but she would never be free; not with a Heavenly Bond at stake. The Code of the Vampires had been written for a reason - to keep not only humans but also vampires safe from harm. "There has to be another way," she said.

Charles shook his head. "There is only one way."

Allegra nodded. She thought as much and despaired. She could not love two men at the same time, and so she had chosen the one who made her happiest. But now, seeing the consequence of her actions, she did not know what to think, what to do. She hadn't expected Charles to suffer. She had thought the risk was all her own. "You can stop this," she said, putting her other hand on top of his. "You are stronger than any of us. You are Michael of the Angels.... You are stronger than the bond."

"Return to me," he whispered. It was a request, not an order. He was begging for her love.

"Then tell me what I want to know," she said. "Tell me what happened in our past that we became so estranged. Help me to find my way back to you."

She caught a flash of the blood memory, and for a moment she saw him as he had been: as Michael, Protector of the Garden, the one who had claimed her for his own, back when the world was new. She remembered his strength and his power, but most of all she remembered how she had been drawn to his innate sense of justice, his goodness, the pure light that emanated from his soul. He was the chief archangel of the Lord. He had triumphed over the dragon, had thrown Lucifer and the rebel angels out of Paradise. The Hand of God.

He had chosen earth over Elysium to be with her.

For the length of her immortal life she had felt worthy of his love, had returned and reflected it. But something had changed between them ever since Florence in the fifteenth century. And since then, in every cycle, she had grown distant from him. She did not know sometimes what she loved anymore: the man or the myth. The angel who had led the armies of Eden or the boy who was lying in this bed, looking sickly and pale, and yet so dear to her heart still.

So dear to her still.

But she was tired of living in the past, tired of being in the dark. She wanted him to be the light that he was, to be the angel whom she had loved with all of her heart, when nothing had ever come between them.

"Tell me what happened, my love," she begged. "Help me to come back to you."

"Yes, yes. I will tell you everything."

Allegra bent down and kissed him on the lips. It was the first time she had kissed him this way in this lifetime. They had been saving this for their bonding - for their return to each other.

Charles circled Allegra's waist, and she let him pull her down to the bed.

Chapter Forty

The Key of the Twins

Schuyler came back with a second pot of tea to find Jack contemplative and Catherine continuing to eat her biscuits.

She poured them each another cup, trying to think of what to say to Catherine that wouldn't be rude or offensive. How was it that she had been sent to warn the gatekeepers - when perhaps she should have been warned about them. Aside from Lawrence, the Order of the Seven was a motley crew: Kingsley, the Silver Blood; Catherine, the baby killer.... Schuyler's mind whirred. There was more. "There's a healer here... a Venator from Amman. He says he is your brother."

Catherine frowned. "My brother?"

"Yes."

"What else did this Venator say?"

"He said the Coven in Amman is destroyed, and that a Silver Blood was behind its destruction, as well as the destruction of all the Covens. And he told us he knew what you guarded. Forgive me - that's why I thought he was your brother, because he knew your secret."

"I would not trust this Venator. He is no brother of mine.

my brother died in the War of Heaven."

Schuyler thought hard. She had accepted that Mahrus was telling the truth, and even went so far as to think that he might be Onbasius, the healer from Rome, who had been part of the Order of the Seven and a gatekeeper himself. But of course that wasn't right, because of what Allegra had told her from the beginning: one gate per family. No. Mahrus was not Onbasius and no keeper; and according to Catherine of Siena, he was a liar.