Revelations (19 page)

Good-bye, Jack.

As hard as it would be, as much as it would destroy her very will to even live, Schuyler knew what she had to do.

She had to tell another lie.

A lie that would release him.

AUDIO RECORDINGS ARCHIVE:

Repository of History

CLASSIFIED DOCUMENT:

Altithronus Clearance Only

Cordelia Van Alen Personal File

Transcript, of conversation dated 12/25/98.

Cordelia Van Alen: Come here, child. Do you know me?

Jordan Llewellyn: Seraphiel.

CVA: Good.

CVA: Do you know why I have brought you?

JL: (child’s voice changes) I am Pistis Sophia. The Watcher. A spirit born with its eyes wide open, born into full consciousness. Why have you woken me?

CVA: Because I am afraid.

JL: What are you afraid of?

CVA: I am afraid that we have failed. That the battle in Rome was a farce. That our greatest enemy still walks this earth, but I do not know how. You are Jordan Llewellyn. For this cycle you are the daughter of Forsyth Llewellyn. If my suspicions are correct, then you will be our first line of defense.

JL: What must I do?

CVA: You shall watch and listen and observe.

JL: And then?

CVA: If what I fear is true, you must complete what we failed to do in Rome. But I cannot help you. I am bound by the Code. This is the last time we shall speak.

JL: I understand, Godmother.

CVA: Be well, child. Take my blessing on your journey May it keep you safe. Facio Valiturus Fortis. Be strong and brave. Till we meet again.

JL: See you in the next life.

Thirty-six

Pain.

Searing pain.

As if someone were holding a hot poker to her heart. It was scalding, burning. She could feel her skin turn red, then black, could smell the smoke rising from her frying flesh.

This was nothing like the attack at the Repository. She would not survive this.

Bliss tore through the miasma of sleep, forced herself to wake up.
Wake up! Wake
up!
It was like being suffocated and torn apart at the same time. But she salvaged what power she had, and gathered all of her effort, all of her strength, and successfully pushed the pain away.

There was a crash and a scream.

She blinked awake and sat up on the couch. She had taken a nap in their suite after coming back from the beach. She was still trying to make sense of what had happened when the door flew open and her parents appeared in the doorway.

In the dark she saw Jordan lying in a crumpled heap on the floor, holding something bright and glittering in her hand.

Her parents assessed the situation quickly, almost professionally, as if they had been expecting something like this to happen.

“Quick, BobiAnne, she’s still stunned. Set the spell,” Forsyth said as he began to bundle up his younger daughter with the hotel’s comforter and blankets.

“What’s going on? What are you guys doing?” Bliss asked groggily. Things were happening much too fast for her understanding.

“Look,” Forsyth said, removing a small blade from Jordan’s hand and tossing it to his wife. “She picked the vault.”

Bliss tried to make sense of everything, but logical thinking eluded her in her dizzy and disoriented state.
Was she going insane, or did Jordan just try to kill her?

She flinched as her stepmother put a hand on her brow. “She’s warm,” she told her husband. Then she lifted Bliss’s shirt and examined her chest. “But I think she’s okay.”

Forsyth nodded, kneeling to rip Bliss’s sheets into strips so that he could tie the comforter holding Jordan closed.

Thinking the pain had come from the emerald stone, Bliss looked down at her chest. It felt as if the stone had burned itself on her skin, branding her. But when she touched it, it was as cool as ever. Her skin underneath was smooth and unharmed. Then she understood. The emerald had saved her from whatever weapon had just tried to pierce her heart.

“She’s fine,” BobiAnne announced after checking Bliss’s pupils and pulse. “Good girl.

You gave us quite a scare,” she said, tapping her pockets for her Marlboro Lights.

BobiAnne lit a cigarette and sucked on it deeply until it formed a long column of ash.

Bliss noticed that her stepmother’s face was perfectly made up for a party, and both her parents were dressed in formal dinner clothes.

“What’s going on? Why did Jordan attack me?” Bliss asked, finally finding her voice and turning to face her father.

It took a few minutes for him to answer. Forsyth Llwellyn’s reputation in the Senate was as of a moderate facilitator, someone who was willing to negotiate with the other side, to bring consensus to warring parties. His smooth Texan charm came in handy during partisan battles in the legislature.

Bliss could see he was turning this charm on her now. “Sweetie, you have to realize that Jordan is different from us,” Forsyth said, securing the bundle that held his younger daughter. “She’s not one of us.”

“One of us? What do you mean?”

“You’ll understand in time,” he assured her.

“We were forced to take her. We had no choice!” BobiAnne burst out, a bitterness creeping into her voice. “Cordelia Van Alen made us. That meddlesome old witch.”

“Jordan is not of this family,” Bliss’s father added.

“What are you talking about?” she cried. It was getting to be too much. All these secrets and lies, she was sick of it. She was sick of being kept in the dark about everything. “I know all about Allegra!” she declared suddenly, with a look of defiance.

BobiAnne gave her husband a look that said, “I told you so.”

“Know what about Allegra?” Forsyth inquired, a look of innocence on his face.

“I found this …” Bliss reached into her pocket and showed them the photograph with the inscription, which she kept close by at all times. “You lied to me. You told me my mother’s name was Charlotte Potter. But there never was a Charlotte Potter, was there?”

Forsyth hesitated. “No—but it’s not what you think.”

“Then tell me.”

“It’s complicated,” he sighed. His eyes wandered over to the panoramic view of the beach, not wanting to meet her gaze. “One day when you’re ready, I will tell you. But not yet.”

It was maddening. Her father was doing it again: sidestepping her questions, stonewalling her. Shielding her from the truth.

“What about Jordan?” she asked.

“Don’t worry. She won’t hurt you again,” Forsyth said soothingly. “We’re going to send her someplace safe.”

“You’re sending her to Transitions?”

“Something like that,” her father said.

“But why?”

“Bliss, honey, she’ll be better off,” BobiAnne said.

“But …” Bliss was completely confused. Her parents were talking about Jordan as if she were a dog being sent off to the country. They talked about her like she didn’t matter.

But Bliss had to admit to herself that the strange family dynamics weren’t entirely new. She thought about how BobiAnne never spoke lovingly of Jordan, had always made it clear that she preferred Bliss, who wasn’t even her real child. How her father had always kept an arm’s-length distance from his odd younger daughter.

When Bliss was younger she’d relished her parents’ indifference to her younger sister.

Now she realized it was pathological.

Her parents
hated
Jordan.

They always had.

Thirty-seven

“That was the hotel,” Oliver explained, returning to the table. “Someone’s checked out, and a room’s opened up. They asked me if I wanted to take it. So you’ve got a room,” he told Schuyler, his face neutral.

“Thanks,” she said, trying to make her voice sound as normal as possible, even if there was a hole where her heart should be. But she forced all thoughts of Jack out of her head; later…she would mourn later.

“So why is the Conclave here, Lawrence?” Oliver asked. “Is it because of Leviathan?”

“The Conclave is here?” Lawrence asked sharply.

“Oh! I forgot to mention it—yeah. They’re here. All of them,” Schuyler said. “I think they arrived last night.”

Lawrence mulled over this latest piece of information while draining his drink. As if she had vampire ability of her own, the waitress reappeared with another cocktail at his elbow. “More virgin coladas?” she asked, motioning to the half-empty glasses filled with melting yellow goo.

“Make mine a whiskey,” Oliver coughed.

“Make that two,” Schuyler quickly added, thinking she would risk her grandfather’s censure later. “Who’s Leviathan?” she asked, turning to Oliver. Around them the bar was starting to fill up with sunburned tourists coming in for happy hour, and a samba band began to play a rousing set.

“If you’d done your reading, Granddaughter, you would know the answer to that question,” Lawrence replied.

“Leviathan’s a demon.” Oliver explained.

“One of the mightiest Silver Bloods of all time,” Lawrence said. “The brother of the Dark Prince himself. His second-in-command.”

Schuyler shuddered. “But what’s he got to do with anything?” She wished the music weren’t so loud. The bright, happy sound was in stark contrast to the dark subject of their conversation.

“Corcovado is Leviathan’s prison,” Lawrence replied. “It is the only place on earth that could hold him. He was too strong to be slain, and was too rooted in the earth to be sent back to hell. When he was captured he was imprisoned in rock underneath the Statue of the Redeemer. Your own mother took him down.”

So that’s what Lawrence was keeping from her the night he left. Protecting her from the truth and not telling her everything about Corcovado. Leviathan. That visceral hatred she’d felt the day of the fashion show. If she’d paid more attention to her books she could have figured it out sooner. But she’d been too distracted…

“Yes. That was him that evening of the earthquake,” Lawrence confirmed. “He is the reason Corcovado is guarded by the Venator elite. We have always kept a strong presence here.”

“Now I get it,” Schuyler said. “Why you came down here, I mean.”

Lawrence nodded. “When Kingsley first brought news of the strange disappearances in Rio, I was a bit unnerved. After the earthquake, I realized I would have to take matters into my own hands and make certain Corcovado remained fortified. I vowed I would not leave the city until I was sure that the threat—if there was one—was completely disarmed.

“Then a few weeks ago, the Venators confirmed that Yana, the young vampire who’d been missing, had simply run off for a beach vacation with her boyfriend, just as her mother had thought. Meanwhile Kingsley’s team brought in Alfonso Almeida, the missing patriarch of the South American clan, after an extensive search in the Andes. Aside from frostbite and an inability to read a map, he was fine.

“So as I told you in my messages, everything was secure. There was no breaking.”

“Leviathan?” Oliver asked.

“Trapped for eternity as far as I could see,” Lawrence said dismissively.

“But the sending…the earthquake,” Schuyler argued, trying to talk over the deafening sound of the crowd and the relentless samba drums.

“Mere symptoms in his struggle to break free of his chains. Nothing Leviathan has tried before. But it is of no use. Corcovado will hold forever.” He rapped the table with his glass, as if to stress his point.

“So why does the Conclave think Corcovado is a danger then?” she asked.

“Is that why they are here?”

Schuyler nodded.

“I don’t know. But Nan must have her reasons; the Regent would never act without just cause.” Lawrence finished his drink. “Then again, maybe Kingsley is right,” he said softly to himself.

“Kingsley!” Schuyler exploded. “How can you trust
him?
You said yourself, never to trust shiny surfaces. Kingsley’s as slick as they come.”

“Actually Kingsley has proven his loyalty to the Coven above and beyond the call of duty. Do not speak of him so disrespectfully, Granddaughter,” Lawrence said sternly.

“That stunt he pulled at the Repository? That was how he proved his loyalty?”

“Kingsley was only doing what was asked of him. He was following the orders of his Regis.”

“You mean Charles
told
him to call up the Silver Blood?” Schuyler half laughed in indignation. Michael was an Archangel. He would never be capable of such treachery.

“There is a reason for everything. Perhaps even for this sudden influx of Elders into this city,” Lawrence surmised.

“You know, the Almeidas are giving a dinner tonight,” Oliver interrupted. “For the whole Conclave.” He checked his watch. “I think it’s already started.”

Lawrence signaled for the bill. “Very good. Perhaps we will find our answers there.

At the very least, the Almeidas throw a wonderful party.”

Thirty-eight

There was a sharp rap on the door, and Bliss noticed how both her parents jumped at the sound. Forsyth took a quick step and looked through the keyhole. “It’s all right,” he declared, unlocking the door. A stern, elegant woman with a white streak in her raven hair strode into the room, followed by two servants.

Bliss had always been a little afraid of Warden Cutler. The Elder had been the one who had probed her mind for Silver Blood corruption. She still remembered the disquieting feeling of being judged.

“Where is the Watcher?” Nan Cutler asked.

BobiAnne indicated the bundle at the far end of the room.

“You’ve put her in stasis?”

Forsyth nodded. “Yes. It’s going to be a long time until she wakes up.”

“We found her with this,” BobiAnne said, handing Jordan’s weapon to the Warden.

“We need to find a way to destroy it; it’s too dangerous for us to use,” Forsyth said. “I thought that spell was enough to hold it in the vault, but obviously she was able to disarm it.

She’s too clever by half.”

“If there
is
a way to destroy it,” Nan said. “It’s not susceptible to the Black Fire.”

“You will be able to manage?” Forsyth asked.

“You won’t be followed?” BobiAnne wanted to know.