“Stay back,” I whispered to the others, though I doubted I could defend them if whatever scratched at our door proved hostile.My strength, superhuman though it had once been, had waned with the hunger.
Desiderius moved with more grace than I could manage, positioning himself between the door and where Ruth and Rebecca huddled.Even starving, he maintained the bearing of a soldier, ready to place himself between danger and those under his protection.
Then he tilted his head.Something like familiarity flashed across his face; relief softened his posture.
Then, cutting through the percussion, came a voice, raw and ragged:
“Sire!Sire, please!I know you’re there!I can feel you!”
The door exploded inward, splintering free from its rusted hinges.Through the cloud of debris stumbled a man—a vampire—who looked as though he’d been in a war.His clothes hung in tatters, dark stains that could only be blood painting the fabric.One arm dangled at an unnatural angle, and deep gouges ran from his temple to his jaw, as though something with terrible claws had tried to peel the face from his skull.
Yet despite these wounds that would have killed any mortal man thrice over, he moved with the desperate energy of the hunted.His wild eyes found Desiderius immediately, and he collapsed to his knees in the dirt.
“Matthias.”Desiderius spoke the name like an epitaph.His rigid posture didn’t soften, but something shifted in his expression—recognition warring with an emotion I couldn’t quite identify.Disappointment?Resignation?
“Sire.”The wounded vampire—Matthias—reached out with his good arm, fingers grasping at the air between them.“I had to find you.Had to warn—“
“You’re one of them.”Ruth’s accusation cut through the moment like a blade.“One of the Order’s pet vampires.”
Matthias’s gaze flickered to her, then to Rebecca and finally to me.Even through his obvious pain, I saw the moment of recognition—not of our faces, but of what we were.
“Yes,” he admitted without shame.“I serve the Order of the Morning Dawn in New York.Have done for seven years now, since my sire...”He looked back at Desiderius.“Since you sent me to them.”
The revelation hung between them, weighted with a history I didn’t fully understand.Desiderius had created this creature, then delivered him to the very organization that hunted our kind?The contradiction made my head spin, though perhaps no more than the hunger already did.
“Why are you here?”Desiderius pressed.“You know the terms of our arrangement.You were not to seek me out.”
“Everything’s changed.”Matthias struggled to his feet.“They have a weapon now.Something new.”
“The Order always has weapons,” I interjected, finding my voice despite the effort it required.“Stakes, silver, holy water—“
“No.”Matthias shook his head so violently that fresh blood spattered from his wounds.“This is different.This is...divine.”
He fumbled inside what remained of his coat, producing a piece of parchment that looked as though it had been folded and refolded countless times.His hands shook as he smoothed it out, revealing a detailed sketch of what appeared to be a cross, but unlike any I’d seen before.The artist had tried to capture something luminous about it, rays of light emanating from its center in carefully drawn lines.
“A celestial relic,” Matthias breathed the words with the reverence of a believer at prayer.“They call it the Light of Judgment.I do not know if the history is legitimate, but they claim it came from the catacombs beneath Rome.”
“How did you find us?”I asked.“New York is hundreds of miles away.”
Matthias glanced at Desiderius, something almost like longing in his eyes.“The bond between sire and progeny doesn’t fade with distance.I can feel him always—a pull, like magnetism.Growing stronger the closer I get.”
Desiderius’s jaw tightened.“A connection I’ve told you to ignore.”
I glanced at Ruth and Rebecca who were also pleasantly distracted from their hunger by this strange interruption.“I feel nothing like that with them.”
“You are new, yes?”Matthias must’ve put the pieces together to realize I’d sired the other girls.
Desiderius cleared his throat.“It’s not common for young vampires like you, Alice, to take on a progeny.Their influence over them, the connection, is stronger when older vampires sire younglings.It’s not to say you have no influence at all, but for a new vampire who can barely control herself to exert influence on another is difficult.In time, the bond will strengthen.”
“You mentioned a weapon, like a cross?”I asked.“Silas had something like that.”
Matthias nodded.“The Order has wielded celestially powered crosses and relics in the past.It’s believed they can channel the power of the angels.”
I shook my head.“I doubt that’s it.I think it’s a kind of witchcraft they’ve tried to baptize for their agenda.”
Matthias narrowed his eyes in suspicion.Desiderius spoke before his progeny could.“Matthias remains loyal to the Order.As you were before someone murdered Silas.”
I gulped.Desiderius knew how Silas had died.Someonedidn’t kill Silas.We did.If Matthias was loyal to the Order, it made sense.He was trying to protect us from ourselves, from exposing our agenda to a nightwalker still working for a different chapter of the Order.
