The Graves of Saints (8 page)

‘I’d invite you all to have a seat,’ Octavian said, nodding toward the beds, ‘but I can see that you’re not in the mood to get comfortable.’

Metzger took a long breath and let it out, calming himself. He glanced at Allison only once, otherwise choosing to pretend – at least for the moment – that she was not in the
room.

‘Peter, listen, I’m sorry for your loss, but –’

‘But
what
?’ Octavian asked, feeling the sneer coming but unable to prevent it. His skin crackled with angry magic, and he could feel it bristling all over his body,
purple-black light sizzling around his hands and in front of his eyes.

Galleti put her hand on her gun, but Omondi stopped her from taking it further.

Metzger flinched, Allison’s presence entirely forgotten as he recognized the more immediate threat in the room.

‘You can’t possibly blame us for what happened to her,’ Metzger said.

‘I don’t blame you,’ Octavian said, his anger still crackling in the air around him. ‘A vampire who calls himself Cortez did this. I assume Charlotte’s told you
something about him, or maybe not. Maybe she hasn’t had the chance yet. Cortez, you see, is flying under your radar. He’s not just a rogue vampire, he’s a new leader for them,
building something that might be just a coven, or that could be an army. And he’s an arrogant son of a bitch, too. You see, he considers me the only real threat to whatever he’s got
planned, so he decided to . . . hurt me.’

Octavian ground his teeth together, trying to contain his rage and his grief and the hatred he now aimed at himself.

‘Nikki died because she loved me,’ he said, jaw tight. He looked up at Metzger. ‘I have to live with that. This Cortez wants me off balance. He figures it’ll make me more
vulnerable. And for that, he killed her.’

Octavian stood, barely feeling the ripple of magical energy that flowed from him, a silent assault on everything around him. The floor lamp rocked but didn’t fall. The glass in the sliding
door cracked, as did the television screen. The three ordinary humans in the room were all knocked back a step, but none of them made any move to defend themselves. Octavian saw the realization in
their eyes, the cold fear at the knowledge that if he wanted to kill them, there would be nothing they could do to stop them.

‘Cortez did this,’ Octavian said, walking toward Metzger. ‘But there is plenty of blame to go around. Part of it’s on me, because I couldn’t protect her. And part
of it is on Task Force Victor.’

‘But you said—’ Metzger began.

‘I said I didn’t blame you, personally, Leon.’ Octavian glanced over his shoulder at Allison for a moment. ‘But Task Force Victor? The UN? Part of the blame is on all of
you. See, the guy who had the job before you, Ray Henning, was a good soldier who snapped. He couldn’t see that human beings and Shadows aren’t very different from one another, that
there are angels and devils in all of us. He wanted to exterminate all Shadows, even though he had one of the finest people I’ve ever known, human or otherwise, working for him. Henning
snapped, stopped caring how many innocents were killed in collateral damage from his war. Allison Vigeant did what had to be done in that moment. She took him out of the fight.’

Octavian poked Metzger in the chest. Where his fingertip had touched, the commander’s shirt smoked and blackened.

‘You bastards should have pinned a medal on her. Instead she had a target painted on her back. Task Force Victor took their best vampire hunter and made her their primary target. They
diverted their attention – and consequently, Allison Vigeant’s attention – from their main objective, which was to stop rogues like Cortez from building up a coven, so the kinds
of wars we’ve seen between Shadows and vampires or between humans and Shadows, would never happen again.’

Octavian leaned in so that he was eye to eye with Metzger, their noses only inches away.

‘And now Nikki’s dead.’

To his credit, Metzger didn’t flinch this time. ‘I didn’t witness Henning’s death with my own eyes. If what you’re saying about Vigeant is true, then I agree with
the rest. Let’s proceed from that assumption, at least for the moment. What do you propose we do about it? You called us, remember? Why are we here?’

Octavian nodded, stepping back from him. He glanced at Charlotte and Allison and then at the soldiers.

‘I called because that’s the protocol, Commander. A vampire did this. Task Force Victor is supposed to be my first phone call. I called because your people are partly to blame for
this, and I expect you – and them – to step up and do whatever it takes to help me find Cortez and his nest and put them all down.’

‘Of course—’ Metzger said.

‘And,’ Octavian interrupted, ‘I called because there’s a crisis looming that’s going to require your attention. The UN’s attention. The world’s
attention. It would have been my number one priority, but now . . . now I have something to do that’s more important to me than saving this godforsaken world.’

As swiftly as he could, he laid out what had happened in Hawthorne, Massachusetts, ending with the death of Keomany Shaw and the defeat of the chaos queen, Navalica. He explained that before
they were able to take her down, Navalica had unleashed such a wave of chaos magic that it must have been like sending up a flare to let other supernatural entities know that the path to Earth lay
open.

‘Open,’ Allison interrupted, speaking up for the first time. ‘But not undefended.’

Octavian gave her a nod. ‘No. Never that.’

When he was done, even stoic Sergeant Omondi looked frightened. Galleti’s gaze was far away, as if she were thinking about all of the people she loved and needed to see before demons tore
the world apart.

‘How quickly is this going to happen? This . . . invasion?’ Metzger asked.

Octavian batted the question away. ‘It isn’t like that. We’re talking about potentially infinite parallel dimensions. Some of them are nothing but scorched ground and dead
civilizations, while others are just . . . stillness, never having had a spark of life. Yes, there are all sorts of horrors out there, but it isn’t as if they’re organized.
They’re not plotting against us. And the barriers have deteriorated dramatically, but they’re not gone entirely. That will slow things down a little. There won’t be any
coordinated invasion, but there might be a hundred small ones. You’re going to need to be able to react at a moment’s notice and shut these incursions down as quickly as possible. You
may need to respond to more than one at a time, and that’s going to require Task Force Victor being able to mobilize regular UN troops, as well as those of allied nations if
necessary.’

Commander Metzger lowered his gaze. ‘Christ.’

‘Yeah, he’s not going to show up like the cavalry,’ Allison said.

‘That’s not helping,’ Charlotte said.

Allison arched an eyebrow, clearly amused that the younger Shadow had thought to correct her, but she didn’t argue.

‘Peter,’ Metzger said, his tone wary. ‘I understand that you want to go after this Cortez yourself, but you know that our mandate means that we’re going to be hunting
him, too.’

‘I’m counting on it,’ Octavian said, locking eyes with Metzger. ‘That’s why you’re here, Leon. You and I, we’re going to sit down with Charlotte
together and she’s going to tell us every detail she remembers. You’ll go after him your way and I’ll go after him mine. Anything you learn, you’ll pass on to me
–’

‘You know I can’t do that.’

‘You
will
,’ Octavian said. ‘You will. I’ll speak to the Secretary General myself, and it will all be okay. We’re all on the same side. Some people wish
that wasn’t true, but it is. That includes Allison, and you, Commander, are going to square that with the Secretary General yourself. That’s your end of this.

‘You’ll pass along any information you find about Cortez. If you locate him, you will not go after him. You will tell me where he is, and you will stay the hell out of my
way.’

Metzger looked like he wanted to argue, but he held his tongue. Octavian glanced at Sergeant Omondi and Galleti, but they were both too overwhelmed to do anything now except watch their CO for a
cue.

‘Once upon a time,’ Octavian said, ‘I had a coven of my own. Not a vampire coven, but one made up of both Shadows and humans . . . people I trusted. When a supernatural crisis
occurred, we did whatever we had to do to resolve it. A lot of my friends died along the way, but it worked.

‘That’s the way it’s going to be again, Leon, starting with Allison and Charlotte, if she’s willing. As soon as we’re done here, I’m going to make some calls.
I have a funeral to plan. My old friends are going to want to be there, but it’s going to have to happen fast. Once Nikki is laid to rest, my friends and I will be going after Cortez,
starting with whatever intelligence you can gather in the meantime.

‘When Cortez is dead, I’ll worry about the rest of the world.’

* * *

September 22

Saint-Denis, France

Hannah Barclay leaned back in the passenger seat of the battered blue Renault, relishing the view as they wended their way out of Paris and north to the small commune of
Saint-Denis. It was a picturesque suburb famous for the presence of the country’s national stadium, and for the Cathedral Basilica of Saint-Denis. Hannah loved soccer – or football, as
Europeans called it, always with enough emphasis so Americans knew they were being corrected – and she wished she were on the way to the stadium for a game. Spending the day doing research at
the Basilica was not her idea of a good time, but she only had one semester to study at the Sorbonne and if she wanted to make the best of it, screwing up a research paper before September had even
ended would be a terrible idea. Already she had spent too much time drinking wine in cafés along the Seine. She needed focus.

‘. . . you even awake, yet?’ Charlie was saying from behind the wheel.

Hannah frowned and turned to look at him. Twenty-one, perpetual two-day stubble, hipster glasses, not bad in bed. They were both students at Columbia University in New York and had spent much of
the fall semester of their sophomore year fucking each other’s brains out. It had been gloriously uncomplicated, or so she had told herself. When Charlie had found himself interested in
someone else and drifted off in that direction, Hannah had responded with the same combination of aloofness and sarcasm that she brought to everything she did. She was just self-deprecating enough
that her friends didn’t complain about her snark. Not much, anyway.

But she missed him. Maybe it wasn’t love, but she liked Charlie a lot more than she had ever let on. Now here they were, both juniors doing a semester abroad at the Sorbonne. His
girlfriend, Brittany, was back in New York. But instead of taking the opportunity to get closer to Charlie, maybe tell him how she really felt about him or at the very least seduce him, all she had
to offer was snark. Sarcasm was the only arrow in her quiver, and that sucked.

You’re such a coward
, she thought.

And accepted it.

‘What are you saying?’ she asked.

Charlie said to her, ‘You didn’t look like you were sleeping, but your brain certainly isn’t awake.’

‘Must be the oh-so-stimulating company,’ Hannah replied. ‘I was ruminating. It’s something intelligent people do when trapped in the car with drooling morons.’

He laughed and shook his head. ‘Isn’t it too early for you to be such a bitch?’

‘I don’t have to be awake to be a bitch.’

Charlie smirked. ‘I remember.’

‘Oh, please, my friend the scintillating conversationalist. What was it you wished to discuss this fine French morning?’

‘I was just bitching about having to get up so early to come out here. I wish I hadn’t put my research off so long.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ Hannah said, more warmly. ‘You do better under pressure and you know it. That’s why you wait until the last minute. I have no idea what my excuse
is—’

‘Too much wine and too many cute Parisian guys.’

Hannah smiled. ‘And one girl.’

‘You’re such a tease. I know you did not make out with that girl. You’re just toying with my helpless male brain.’

‘Maybe. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We’ll both be fine. Me more than you, of course, because I picked something easy and you decided to get all philosophical.’

‘Picking a dead king and doing research with no room for conjecture about the future would have bored the shit out of me. Besides, this way I get to spin theories that will eat up some of
the assignment’s word length. Trust me, fifteen pages on Marie Antoinette losing her head would have ended with me throwing myself from the top of Notre Dame.’

Hannah laughed.

‘My suicide is funny to you?’

‘No. But I’m calling you Quasimodo for the rest of the day.’

They both smiled, but then lapsed into the silence of old friends, long-ago lovers, and other people who no longer have anything to prove to one another. Charlie drove around for a while trying
to figure out where he was supposed to park in order for them to explore the Basilica. When he finally had it sorted out, they found themselves right in front of a café and couldn’t
resist going in for a coffee. A few minutes later, coffee in hand, they strode down the street and paused to gaze up at the building’s façade.

The Basilica of Saint-Denis was a huge, sprawling, Gothic cathedral that had served as the prototype for an entire wave of architecture. It had been founded in the seventh century by Dagobert,
one of the Merovingian kings, who had chosen the site because it held the tomb of Saint Denis. Hannah couldn’t deny that all of the stories that had their endings at the basilica were
interesting. The place became an abbey, the center of a Roman Catholic monastic society, and over the course of many centuries, myths and stories had sprung up about its various architectural
advancements. More importantly to her and to pretty much the whole world, the Basilica of Saint-Denis was known as the necropolis of France – eight hundred years’ worth of kings and
queens and other royals were buried there. What had started as a tomb for Saint Denis had become the crypt for Charles Martel, Pepin the Younger, and a whole host of kings called Henry and
Louis.