Lost in Time (Blue Bloods 6)

Forsyth returned, twirling his keys. “All clear. Found a great parking space on Riverside.”

Charles reluctantly disentangled from his embrace with Allegra. “Darling, would you mind leaving us alone for a bit?

Forsyth and I have some business to attend to.”

Allegra shut the door behind her. She felt better after confess-ing to Charles, and what he’d said was true: he had never lied to her. But lies of omission were sins just the same. She couldn’t help but feel that there was more to this story, and that there was something Charles was keeping from her, something important, and she had to find out what it was.

In all their history she had never heard of such a thing as a human disease that could affect vampire physiology. Nothing could affect vampires. Oh, they caught ordinary colds and flus like everyone else. They were made of the same basic material as the Red Bloods, with one crucial difference, of course, but on the whole they were immune to serious disease. When the cycles were over and it was time to rest, “death” was just a deep sleep until the sangre azul was woken again in a new shell. There was no such thing as cancer or heart problems in the Fallen.

Would Charles lie to her? It made her sad that she was even entertaining the possibility. It just showed how estranged they had become. She didn’t trust him anymore, not completely, and it wasn’t even his fault.

Allegra put on her running gear. She liked to run in the park to clear her head. “I’m going out,” she called, so no one would worry.

She jogged down the hill, planning to run down to the loop by the river, which took her all the way to the boat basin.

There were a few other runners on the trail, some Rollerbladers and bicyclists, moms jogging with their fancy strollers. She kept an easy speed, her sneakers pounding the pavement in a staccato rhythm. On the way back to the house, she passed the van, which Forysth had parked on Riverside and 99th. She hesitated for a moment, but her curiosity and skepticism won, and she moved toward it. There was no one else on the street, and it was easy enough to pop the lock. She pulled open the back door and crept inside.

There was a body bag on the floor. It contained a human body, Charles had said. A famili

ar who carried a disease.

She had a flash memory of being a Venator in Florence, when she’d been called Tomasia. With her team she’d spent her nights skipping over rooftops, hunting the renegade Silver Bloods who were trapped on this side of the gates. As Venators they had caught and killed all the remaining Croatan on earth—or so they had believed. Like Charles, she’d been certain that they were finally safe from harm, but then there was that incident at Roanoke. They’d lost an entire colony. Cordelia and Lawrence had always believed that the Silver Bloods had never been defeated, that the Coven had been comprom-ised, corrupted somehow. Charles thought it was ridiculous, of course. He put his faith in the gates. But what if Lawrence and Cordelia were right and Charles was wrong?

Who—or more likely what—was in the body bag?

Allegra unzipped the bag, her heart beating. Not sure what she was looking for, or what she expected to find. She had seen lifeless bodies of vampires who had been taken to Full Consumption before; had listened to Silver Bloods who spoke in the voices of her fallen friends, her dead comrades who had been sucked into becoming part of a monster, their immortal spirit trapped forever, chained to the devil spirit.

But nothing had happened since Roanoke, and Charles had been convinced that perhaps the lost colony had simply decided to go underground, even with that message on the tree that said otherwise. The Silver Bloods were eradicated from their history books. Charles did not want old fears to plague their new lives in the New World.

What was in the bag?

Could it be?

She didn’t even want to voice her fear.

Finally, she pulled apart the opening to see.

There was a girl in the bag. A human girl, her skin already gray. There were two small scars, almost unnoticeable, on her neck, which indicated she had been a vampire’s familiar.

What disease did she carry, Allegra wondered. To die this way, so young and so alone. It was such a pity. The Red Bloods had short enough lives as it was.

Allegra zipped the bag back up. She couldn’t admit it to herself, but part of her had almost expected to find a dead vampire in there, as impossible as that sounded, and she was relieved to discover that Charles had been telling her the truth after all.

NINETEEN

The Last Venator

It was late in the evening when Jack returned from Gezira, and the first thing he did was check on Schuyler’s wound, un-peeling the bandages around her torso and studying Mahrus’s handiwork. The skin was still nubby but no longer red, and while the scar was noticeable, it was not ugly. “A battle wound,” he said. “I am proud of you. You were brave to fight the way you did.”

Schuyler buttoned her blouse and sat cross-legged on their hotel bed. The small room had begun to feel like home even though the clerk at the reception desk still cast suspicious glances their way. “I didn’t have a choice,” she said. “I knew you would have done the same.”

“I should have been there with you,” he said. He had listened to her story without interruption, and had kept a stoic front, but now the full brunt of it—what he could have lost—was slowly hitting him, and Schuyler could see how hard it was for him to keep his emotions in check.

“Don’t worry, my love.” Schuyler smiled and put a hand on his cheek. “I felt your strength was with me. I couldn’t have done it without you. What about you… did you find what you were looking for across the Nile?”

Jack shook his head angrily. “When we arrived at the safe house, the Nephilim were long gone. I think they meant to lead us astray. The Lennox brothers visited the temple, but they say there’s no priestess named zani, that they’d heard wrong.”

“Maybe Mahrus will have some news that can help us in that arena,” Schuyler said.