The Demoness of Waking Dreams (34 page)

Backing away from the windows, the two angels retreated to the rest of the group and described the scene to them.

Infusino said quietly, “We knew something like this was coming.”

Arielle nodded in agreement. “We knew the demon ranks were massing, but we didn’t quite know how. This is only the beginning. There will be other groups. More preparations.”

Brandon felt queasy, wondering whether his recent suspicions about Arielle were right.

Whether what his gut told him was true.

Whether she really was
evil.

Or whether Arielle was simply dedicated to her mission on earth—protecting humankind and fighting demons—and doing what she thought needed to be done.

“Is this why you’re building the Redemption Center?” Brandon asked.

She nodded. “Yes, and you must help me. We members of the Company all need to trust each other if we have any hope of winning. I don’t know how we’re going to defeat these demons. We’ll have to find a way. But we can’t stay here now. We’ve got to leave, formulate a plan and return later.”

Later will be too late,
he knew.

“The rest of you can do what you need to,” he said. “I’m going in. Now.”

“Wait,” said Arielle, reaching toward him. “You can’t just walk into a swarm of demons unprotected. They will rip you limb from limb and then burn you alive, just like they’re going to do to that human. Besides, he doesn’t even deserve to be saved.”

“We can’t just leave him here,” Brandon said. He looked at her pointedly. “Torture is never justified.”

He turned, steeling himself for what he must do. Or perish trying.

Infusino grabbed his arm, holding him back.

He broke free, tearing toward the factory doorway, toward certain destruction.

* * *

A lone feather drifted into Luciana’s view. The moment she saw it floating in the middle of the factory, a wisp of melancholy grazed over her. Because she knew that if the angel arrived now, Corbin would take him. And that would be the end.

How can he have found me here?

The iron doors groaned open once again. This time, every Gatekeeper in the factory turned toward the sound, the nearness of his energy pulling every gaze upward.

Brandon stepped into the factory. As he walked onto the platform, she saw how stunning he was, the ink-etched muscles of his arms glistening in the heat. Light poured from him, illuminating every surface. The fires in the ovens seemed to dim in contrast. As Luciana looked up at him amid the dull gray of the factory, his gray eyes radiated. Lucent. Fierce. Powerful.

But he had come alone.

And she knew all was lost.

As powerful as he was, a single angel against a horde of demons could not possibly win. Could not possibly even escape. Yet Brandon himself did not seem to realize that. His broad shoulders were set in a stance of absolute confidence, much like the first time she’d ever seen him.

“Stop!” the Guardian thundered.

All activity in the factory ceased.

Silence fell over the building. The muted rumble of fire inside the ovens crackled, waiting.

Then Jude’s screaming commenced again.

Brandon descended the metal staircase, each footstep ringing in the large room.

The demons stood transfixed for another moment, watching him. Then they began to converge toward the stairway, gathering in a ring around it. Brandishing weapons glowing with the heat of hellfire, they circled slowly. But none dared touch him.

With bold strides, the Guardian headed toward Jude. Untied him.

Hauled his own murderer over his shoulder.

And strode back toward the staircase.

It was Corbin who stepped forward, blocking his way. “You think you can walk in here and take what belongs to us? Massimo, take care of this intruder.”

The Archdemon snapped his fingers. Very quietly, Massimo stepped forward.

With a syringe in his hand and a quick flash of vengeance in his eyes.

A syringe she recognized. Which she had handed Massimo herself, along with the words,
I trust you with this.

“If this is the end, so be it,” Brandon said. “I have no regrets. I will not run from evil.”

But Massimo did not move toward the angel.

Instead, he raised his hand and inserted the syringe into the side of Corbin’s neck. In a smooth, deliberate motion, he pressed his thumb down and injected the contents of that syringe into the Archdemon’s carotid.

Corbin stood, stunned for a moment.

“Why?” he managed to gasp out.

“For my mother,” Massimo whispered.

“That bitch Luciana is not your mother,” Corbin choked.

“I know,” said the Gatekeeper. “Her name was Carlotta Rossetti.”

Corbin swallowed, a simple movement of his Adam’s apple. He touched the center of his neck, then coughed. A scarlet gleam of blood spattered on the ground. And then the death rattle began, moving up his windpipe. The sound of dying Luciana had heard so many times before. The Archdemon fell, splayed on the bare concrete floor, twitching out the last moments of his existence.

As he lay in his final convulsions, there was a momentary pause.

The Gatekeepers stood peering down at him, astounded, many of them expecting him to get up.

So it works,
was what Luciana thought.
The poison works after all.

And then one of the ovens exploded. Whether by some divine intervention or set off by some earthbound thing or creature, she could not say for sure. All she knew was that the oven flared apart with a burst of flame that shot out in every direction, blowing out the nearest windows and cracking the floor beneath it.

The blast of heat rocked them all: demons, angel, human, Luciana, Brandon, Jude.

But it was not fire that began to engulf the building.

The building shook beneath them as the cracked floor split open, a vein tearing open to become an abyss. Water gushed in. Faster than any surge Luciana had witnessed, even after centuries of living in flood-famed Venice. Water engulfed the factory floor, rising around the ankles and up the shins of the shocked demons standing inside.

The horde scattered, running through the now-knee-deep water, pushing and shoving toward whatever exit was nearest. Brandon grabbed Luciana, hauling her out the back door with Jude over his shoulder. Bolting down the
fondamenta
away from the
fornace,
so fast she wondered for a moment if they were actually flying.

Behind them, the water washed into the ovens inside, hitting the fires with a great hiss of steam that rose to the top of the building. Pressure built. And then it ruptured. The roof blew open and the air was filled with shattering glass. The walls shook, old brick crumbling like unfired clay.

Fifty feet away from the disaster, she turned to look back.

And like a carrion crow arriving at a scene of carnage, the devil’s black funerary gondola came floating down the canal. Into the
fornace,
the dark vessel sailed on a river of flame. Death’s ferryman extended his withered arm from within his black cloak, steering into the heart of the boiling inferno. Moments later, the boat emerged, and as it floated past them, Luciana looked down and saw the body of the Archdemon stretched along its floor. With a nod of his head in her direction, the demon gondolier gave a single push on his pole and drifted away.

Luciana almost collapsed on the
fondamenta.

The stone walkway was solid beneath her feet, although it did not feel real.

And yet, there was one more thing to take care of.

Brandon set the miserable human down. Jude stumbled away, zigzagging a few steps. Where he was going, Luciana didn’t care. She only knew that she wanted to stop him. She picked up a piece of pipe lying nearby and went after him. He fell, looking up at her with terrorized eyes as she held the pipe at his throat.

“Let him go. I have forgiven him,” Brandon said, catching her arm.

“Why do you still care what happens to him?” she said, still gripping the pipe so hard her hand hurt. She ached to plunge it into the human’s throat, to put an end to the injustice and suffering Brandon had endured. “He
killed
you. Don’t you get it?”

“He’s human,” said the angel. “It’s my job to protect them.”

“Why do you defend them?” she said fiercely. “Humans are vile. Not even two hundred years ago, people were torturing each other in the streets. Public executions were a form of entertainment. Severed heads hung outside city gates, on bridges, in marketplaces. Don’t think for an instant that this human would hesitate to parade your severed head as a trophy if he thought he could get away with it.”

“You and I were both human once.”

“We’re not human anymore,” she said quietly. “This man does not deserve to live.”

“There’s no justice here on earth that can judge what he’s done. We were not sent here to judge. We can’t presume to know the full reasons behind what occurs on this earth. Come with me now. Come. Walk away with me. And let him go.”

Brandon held out his hand.

The pipe trembled in her fingers, poised at Jude’s throat.

“Leave him,” the angel coaxed. “He’s not worth it. Not when he is all that stands between you and I. Come away with me now. We can be together.”

An eternity seemed to pass outside the still-flooding factory as they stood amid the chaos of fleeing demons and panicking, newly woken humans running in all directions.

Almost imperceptibly, she nodded.

But she did not believe what he said.

We can never be together,
she knew.

“Leave him,” Brandon said. “It’s not up to us to decide what happens to him.”

“If that’s what you want,” she said finally.

She let the pipe fall, heard its clatter as it dropped to the ground and rolled into stillness.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her away, leaving Jude to stumble through the dark streets of Murano, relinquishing him to fate.

In the boat she had taken from the airport, Luciana and Brandon drove back to Venice. Hand in hand they walked among streets still quiet and dark as the humans lay sleeping safe inside their homes.

She wanted to collapse from relief, from the shock that Corbin was finally gone.

The reality of it had not yet sunk in, but she knew it would soon.

Along with the reality of leaving Brandon.

“I want to take you home, my love,” he said. “To Chicago. To start fresh.”

She smiled. There was no home for her but Ca’ Rossetti, and that no longer existed. No life but the one she had known for hundreds of years. He did not seem to understand that now, but he would come to accept it sooner or later.

He would have an eternity to accept it.

How strange,
she thought,
that although we cannot be together, I feel oddly at peace.

He paused at an archway with an ornate, old gate curling with vines.

“I came here the night we first made love,” he said, pausing for a moment to peer into the dark garden that lay within.

In the moment of his pause, Luciana slipped inside, slamming the gate shut behind her. The old latch fell shut with a
snick
that sounded eerily final. A fraction of a second later, Brandon reached through the wrought iron and grabbed her wrist.

With his free hand, he grasped the handle. Tried to open it. It would not budge.

“This is Venice, where things are very old,” she said. “It seems to be locked shut.”

Around her wrist, his fingers curled, holding her. “Even if it won’t open, I’m not letting you go. We’ll have to wait until it unlocks.”

“We could stand here forever,” she said. “Caught in another stalemate until we’re both exhausted. Or we could do things the easy way and you could just let me go.”

His fingers tightened. “I will never give up on you. On us.”

“Get this through that head of yours—I am never going to change. There’s no place for the two of us together, not in this world. Maybe in the distant future. But not now. You have to let me go. You know that. I won’t let you give up everything that you have and everything that you are. Not for me,” she told him. “Close your eyes.”

“Forget it,” he growled.

“Just close them. I promise I won’t do anything stupid.”

The image she sent into his head was of the two of them.

Enclosed in each other’s arms beneath a canopy of stars. The first man and the first woman. The last man and the last woman. Both. One. Always.

“Let me go,” she said. “I will come back to you. I promise.”

He opened his eyes. Looked deep into her mist-green gaze.