Gates of Paradise (Blue Bloods 7)

“Gabrielle.”

Now!

“Lawson! The portal!” Bliss whispered.

He did not hesitate. He took her hand and Malcolm’s in his.

The passage opened before them, and they jumped through.

FIFTY-TWO

Schuyler

he Prince of Darkness, the King of Hell, the Morningstar, the Lightbringer, Lucifer the Archangel of the Dawn, stood before her. He was so beautiful, just as he had been on that mountaintop in Rio, when Schuyler had first seen him. His beauty was painful to behold. His light was stronger than the sun’s. He was Heaven’s son personified.

Schuyler could not move. Jack no longer had his arms around her, but she was held by a dark enchantment, bound to the stone altar. She was so weak, she had lost too much blood, she could hardly move even without her bonds.

Lucifer smiled and caressed her hair. “As beautiful as your mother, perhaps even more so.”

“Don’t talk about my mother. You don’t know anything about my mother,” Schuyler said, finding it difficult even to speak.

“On the contrary, my dear. Your mother and I…well, let’s just say we are very, very old friends. I know Gabrielle perhaps too intimately. I finally understood this was what she was hiding from me. It was so easy to find after all. So this is what she had been planning. Salvation. Redemption. There will be no redemption today. Only revenge and triumph.”

Lucifer bent down by her neck, and Schuyler cringed away from him and closed her eyes tightly, preparing for his fangs to pierce her skin.

But he suddenly recoiled. “Abbadon! You drank from her!”

“My apologies, my lord, the temptation was too great.” Jack bowed.

“Yes, I see,” Lucifer growled. “No matter.” The Dark Prince took his sword and cut her throat, opening her jugular, and her lifeblood poured out of her, onto the stone tablet, opening the gate. A river of blood…

So this was death. Schuyler had wondered if she had inherited the immortality of her mother’s kin, and now she knew. She had not. She was mortal. She could die, and she would die now. Today.

She could no longer speak, no longer think. But she held on to the one thing that she knew was true. Her love.

Jack…Jack…my love…help me…she sent. Even if he would not answer, she still held on to him. He was all she had at the last.

Only Jack.

She stared at him, at his blank eyes, and she prepared for death, prepared for the end of her life.

I have nothing to regret. I regret nothing. She had tried and failed everyone—her mother, Lawrence, the Coven. She had failed Jack as well. By falling in love with him she had doomed him. But even so, she could not regret their love. She had tried her best and she had lost.

She closed her eyes as her life drained from her.

Then, all at once, through the fog, as if from very very far away, Schuyler heard him. Heard his voice in her head.

Jack’s voice.

Reaching out to her like a lifeline, a light in the dark. Just as she’d hoped. Perhaps the Sacred Kiss had returned him to her somehow.

But when he spoke, his voice was cold and cruel.

Only your father can help you now, Jack sent, as he stood at Lucifer’s side, watching her die.

FIFTY-THREE

Mimi