Blue Bloods (24 page)

“She might as well be,” Schuyler said grimly.

She led him down the empty hallways to the corner room. She looked through the glass window and motioned for Jack to do the same.

There was a man there, kneeling at the foot of the bed. The same mysterious visitor who came every Sunday, whom Schuyler had seen more than once in her mother’s room. So that was why Charles Force had looked so familiar to her at Aggie’s funeral. Now she recognized the set of the shoulders. He was the man in the basement of The Bank, and the beast who had just attacked her.

The dark stranger wasn’t her father after all, but a Silver Blood. A monster. She felt a furious rage—what if Charles Force had had something to do with her mother’s condition? What had he done to her?

“Father,” Jack said as he entered the room. He stopped and stared when he saw the face of the woman in the bed. The woman in his dreams. Allegra Van Alen .

Charles looked up and saw Schuyler and Jack standing in front of him. “I thought we had put an end to this,” he said, frowning at the two of them together.

“Where were you half an hour ago?” Schuyler demanded. “Here.”

“Liar,” Schuyler accused. “CROATAN!”

Charles raised his eyebrows. “Should I be insulted? Please lower your voice. Show some respect for your sur roundings. We’re in a hospital, not at a wrestling match.”

“It’s you, Father. We saw you.” Jack said. He still couldn’t believe Allegra was still alive. But what was she doing in a hospital?

“What exactly are you both accusing me of?”

“Where did you get those scratches?” Jack demanded, noticing the cuts on his father’s face.

“Your mother’s confounded Persian,” Charles growled.

“I don’t think so,” Schuyler scoffed.

“What is this all about?” Charles demanded. “Why are the two of you here?”

“You attacked Schuyler. I held you off. It was you, I saw you…. Schuyler said the words, and my foe revealed its face. And it was yours.”

“Is this what you believe?”

“Yes.”

“Your grandmother is right, Schuyler,” Charles said in a bemused tone. “Times have certainly changed if my own son thinks I am Abomination. That is what you’re calling me, isn’t it, Jack?”

he asked, as he pulled down his shirt cuff and showed them a mark on the underhand of his right wrist. It was of a sword, a golden sword piercing a cloud.

“What is it? Why are you showing us this?” Schuyler asked.

“The mark of theArchangel ,” Jack explained, his voice reverent. He forgot about his confusion concerning Allegra Van Alen for a moment, and dropped to his knees, prostrat ing himself in front of his father’s feet.

“Precisely,” Charles said with a thin smile.

“What does it mean?” Schuyler asked.

“It means, my father is no more a Silver Blood than you or I,” Jack explained, his voice rising.

“The mark of theArchangel . It can’t be duplicated and it can’t be falsified. My father is Michael, Pure of Heart, who voluntarily accompa nied the banished onto the earth to guide us in our immor tal journey.” He bowed to his father. “Forgive me. I have been lost, but now I am found.”

“Rise, my son.There is nothing to forgive.”

Schuyler looked from father to son with questioning eyes. “But I used the Sacred Language. The incantation to reveal its true nature.”

“Silver Bloods are agile shape-shifters,” Charles explained. “It would follow your command—

but only after showing you something it knew would throw you off, to shock you. Only afterward would it show its true identity. But only for the briefest moment.”

“So if your father isn’t the Silver Blood, then who is?” Schuyler asked suspiciously. “And where’s Dylan?”

“He’s safe. For now. Hidden. He won’t harm anyone else anymore,” Charles said. “Tomorrow he will be far away.”

“What do you mean, harm anyone?”Schuyler asked.

“He had the bites on his neck. He was being used. Turned.”

“Into what?What are you talking about?”

“Dylan’s a Blue Blood,” Charles said shortly. “At least, he was. I thought you knew that.”

Schuyler shook her head. Dylan was a vampire? But then that meant—that meant he could have killed Aggie—that meant that everything they thought, everything they assumed could no longer be true. Dylan wasn’t human. Which meant there was a chance he wasn’t innocent.

“But he was never at any meetings,” Schuyler said weakly.

Charles smiled. “They are not mandatory. You can learn about your history or choose to ignore it. Dylan chose to ignore it. To his detriment. The Silver Bloods only attack the weak-minded.

They are drawn to those that are broken, damaged somehow. They sensed Dylan’s weakness and preyed on it. Dylan, in turn, preyed on others.”

“So then it was him. He killed Aggie?”

“It is unfortunate what happened with Aggie, yes. We have discovered that Dylan had been drained of almost all his blood in the original attack, but the Silver Blood decided not to consume him totally and turned him into one of them instead. To survive, he had to take a victim of his own,” Charles explained. “I am sorry.”

Schuyler was speechless for a moment. All along, all along they had thought he was their friend.

Dylan, a vampire … worse, a Silver Blood’s pawn. It was horrifying. “So, Silver Bloods do exist.

You admit that they have returned.”

“I admit nothing,” Charles declared haughtily. “There could be other explanations for his actions.

Dylan could still be acting on his own . It does happen once in a while. Dementia. The Sunset Years are volatile ones for our kind. He could have faked the marks on his neck. We must inves tigate through the proper channels. If he has been corrupted, there is still a chance to save his soul. For now we have placed him and his parents in a safe location.”

“But you can’t do this. Cover it up. You must warn every body. You must.”

“Just like your grandmother, you are,” Charles said. “A pity. Your mother was not a hysterical woman.” He looked tenderly down at Allegra and lowered his voice. “The Conclave will take care of it. We will act in time.”

“Yet in Plymouth , you did nothing,” Schuyler accused. ” Roanoke —they were all taken, yet you did nothing.”

“And the deaths stopped,” Charles said coldly. “If we had frightened everyone, if we had continued to run, as your grandparents advised, we would never be where we are now. We would be hiding forever, afraid of a shadow that may not exist.”

“But Aggie—and the girl from Connecticut and the Choate boy,” Schuyler argued. “What about them?”

Charles sighed. “Unfortunate losses, all of them, yes.”

Schuyler couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Talking about people as if their lives were expendable.

“We will clear this all up in time, I assure you,” Charles said. “We won the battle in Rome . The Silver Bloods are all but destroyed.”

“My grandmother said that one of them lived, that one of them was able to hide among us … that the most power ful Silver Blood may still be alive,” Schuyler said, walking around her mother’s bed to face Charles head-on.

” Cordeliahas always said that. She persists in saying that. She is mistaken. I was there. I was there at the battle at the temple. Listen to me closely, both of you, because I do not want to repeat this again—I sent Lucifer himself to the fires of hell,” Charles declared.

Schuyler was subdued and silent.

“Now, let us leave your mother in peace,” Charles ordered. He knelt down again and kissed Allegra’s cold hand.

“But there is one thing,” Schuyler suddenly remem bered. “Dylan.”

“Yes?” Charles asked.

“Where is he?”

“At the Carlyle Hotel.I told you, he is safe.”

“No, he’s not. He’s not at the Carlyle anymore. I was just there. He’s gone.” Schuyler told them what they had found—the television blaring, the half-eaten dinner. “I think he was the one who attacked me.”

For a long moment, nothing was said. Charles looked at Schuyler wrathfully. “If what you are saying is true, we must find him. Immediately.”

FORTY-ONE

She was screaming, screaming so loudly, as if no one would ever hear her. It was the nightmare again—someone taking hold of her squeezing the breath out of her— and nothing she could do to stop it—she was gagging she was drowning and then—fighting against the force that was holding her down, she struggled, trying to wake up, forc ing herself to push herself out of bed—

she had to open her eyes—she had to see—she saw.

She saw the two of them looking at her. Her parents. Her father was wearing his flannel robe over his pajamas, and her stepmother had a peignoir over a nightgown.

“Bliss, darling, are you all right?” her father asked. He was home from D.C. for the week.

“I had a nightmare,” Bliss said, sitting upright and toss ing the covers to the side. She put a hand up to her forehead, feeling the heat emanate from her skin. She was burning and feverish.

“Another one?” her stepmother asked.

“A bad one.”

“It’s all part of it, Bliss. Nothing to worry about,” her father said cheerfully. “I remember when I was your age, I used to have awful ones. Comes with the territory. Blackouts too—when I was fifteen, a lot of times I’d wake up some where and have no idea how I got there, and no idea what happened.” He shrugged. “Part of the transformation.”

Bliss nodded, accepting the cold glass of water her step mother proffered. She gulped greedily.

Her father had men tioned that before, when she’d first told him about the time slips, her blackouts.

“I’m okay,” she told them, although she felt so tired, like every muscle in her body was sore, as if she’d been pum meled and beaten up all over. She groaned.

They hovered over her anxiously.

“I’m all right. Really.” Bliss managed a smile and took another huge gulp of water. “You guys go back to bed. I’m fine.”

Her father kissed her on her forehead, and her mother patted her arm, and the two of them left the room.

She put the glass down on her bedside table. Then she remembered—Dylan.

After saying good-bye to Oliver and Schuyler at the Carlyle, she had met her family for a quick dinner at DB Bistro. Upon returning home, she had opened the door to her room, and Dylan was sitting on her bed, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. He’d used the key she’d lent him to get inside.

“Dylan!”

He was feverish and pale. He’d taken off his jacket and she saw that his T- shirt andjeans were torn. His dark hair was matted against his forehead. He looked spooked. Terrified. His eyes were haunted. He told her what hap pened—being questioned, and held, but not formally charged, how Charles Force had taken him to the hotel suite, and the whole time he was just thinking about how he missed her.

“But the thing is, I think I did do something,” he said. His hands were shaking. “I think they were right. I think I killed Aggie. I’m not sure, but I think there’s something wrong with me.”

“Dylan no.No way. You couldn’t have,” Bliss said.

“You don’t understand,” Dylan cried. “I’m a vampire. Like you, a Blue Blood.”

Bliss just stared at him. It suddenly made sense. Of course he was one of them, she’d known it somehow, that was why she’d been drawn to him all along. Because he was just like her.

“But something’s happening to me … I’m not sure, but I think I just tried to kill Schuyler … I saw her leave the hotel, and I followed her. I don’t know why, it just came over me. I saw her on the street and I … I don’t think it’s the first time either.”

“No,” Bliss said, refusing to hear what he had to say. “Stop. You’re not making sense.” Why would he attack Schuyler? Unless he was … unless he’d become … unless he’d turned into a …

She remembered that night after the photo shoot. Schuyler, staggering on the sidewalk, clutching the side of her neck…

“Listen,” he said, standing up from the bed and putting his jacket back on. “You need to get out of here. They got me, and they’re going to get you too. They want all of us. I only came back to warn you, but I can’t stay. I don’t think it’s safe for you to be around me. But I wanted to tell you to be careful. I don’t want them to get you. You have to protect yourself. You’ve got to believe me. They’re coming. …”

Then everything went blank. That was all she remem bered.

She had blacked out. She was in her skin and not in her skin. She slipped through time and went somewhere else. When she woke up, she was screaming, and her parents were standing above her bed.

Dylan had come to warn her—and now he was gone.

She felt a dull emptiness, an ache, deep in her bones, as if she had survived a beating. She walked to the bathroom and turned on the light. She gasped when she looked at her self in the mirror. There was a mark underneath the collar of her T-shirt. Had her parents not noticed? She pulled on the fabric to see it better. It was an ugly bruise. A dark pur ple swelling, as if someone had tried to strangle her. The skin was tender to her touch. What had happened? Where was Dylan?

She turned on the faucet to wash her face, when she noticed shards of pulverized glass on the bathroom floor. The room was cold. She turned toward the window The curtains billowed from a draft. The top of the windowpane was shattered—and it was bulletproof glass—her father had had it installed when they moved in, even if they were on the highest floor of the building thirty stories high.

Bliss picked her way carefully through the broken glass, when she noticed something strange.

Next to the heater, a dark crumpled thing. She reached for it and pulled out Dylan’s motorcycle jacket. Dylan never went anywhere with out his jacket. It was like his second skin. It smelled like him—a little sour, like cigarettes and aftershave.

There was something different about it, though. She turned the jacket toward the light, and that’s when she saw it. The lining was soaked with blood. Thick and wet. Heavy. There was so much blood. Oh God…

She was still holding the jacket when she noticedJordan standing in front of the bathroom door.

A small, silent form in cotton pajamas.

“You scared me. Ever think of knocking? You know you’re not allowed in my room!” Bliss said.