He took my hands in his. “I know,” he said softly. “It scared me, too. But losing you scared me more. And it wasn’t like I could ask your permission. You weren’t conscious. You were dying. And I would have sold my soul to save you.” He drew in a breath. “I didn’t have to, though. The price was only blood.”
“You and I both know it’s neveronlyblood.”
He shrugged. “You were dying. Even my life wouldn’t have been too great a price.”
I pulled my hands back, firm but still gentle. Because, yeah, I got that.
“You should have told me when we found Antonio,” I said, but there was no bite left in my voice. “You should have told me you recognized the mark when we were in the cemetery.”
“I didn’t. I swear. I knew it was aSignum Fidelis. But I didn’t know whose. Not until today when Marcus told me he’d identified the mark.”
“But you suspected.”
He shook his head. “No. I didn’t. Honestly, Kate, why would I? That was two decades ago. With everything that’s happened since then, why would seeing Antonio with a mark make me think of that horrible night and my goddamn deal with the devil to keep you alive? Katie, please. Believe me.”
“I do,” I said truthfully. “But Eric—Allie. You say it didn’t impact you, but what if it did her? What if now she’s connected to Samarek in some horrible way? Not just the essence of a demon, but some actual bit of that one inside her because you put its blood in me?”
A flicker of my own horror crashed over his face. “No. No. I just told you. The blood burned away with the healing. No traces left in you at all.
I studied his face, saw the certainty there. “You’re sure?”
“Father Corletti would have told me if that was a risk. And he would have said something when you were pregnant. We both know that. He’s not like Father Donnelly.”
I hugged myself. Father Donnelly was the priest behind the whole demon-in-Eric plan to make an uber-Hunter. But he hadn’t bothered to inform anyone in, oh, the Vatican until very late in the game. He’s also on a branch of my family tree, a little factoid I am always trying hard to forget.
Eric reached out and tentatively took my hands. “She’s fine,” he said gently.
I looked down at our twined fingers. “You have to stop hiding things from me.”
“No,” he said, “I don’t.”
“Dammit, Eric,” I began, but he stopped me with a finger to my lips.
“I have to tell you what affects you and Allie, but you’re not my wife. Not anymore. I know because you keep reminding me.”
He stroked my cheek, and despite everything, I melted a little. “I didn’t perform the ritual,” he said. “I was freaked outof my mind. You had maybe minutes to live. Gregory performed the rites. I was just...the ingredient.”
“The ingredient?”
“The blood source. The connection.” He crossed to the bench against the wall and sank down onto it as if exhaustion had overcome him. “Mathes knew things most hunters never learn—rituals and texts the Vatican kept locked away. You remember, right?”
At my nod, he continued. “I thought I could trust him with anything, and I was beyond glad that he’d come hunting with us that night.”
“What did happen that night?” I asked. “I don’t remember any of it.”
He hesitated, as if he didn’t want to go back. I was beginning to think I’d have to push when he began, his voice low and flat. “The three of us were hunting in Trastevere,” he began, referring to a historic neighborhood in Rome with a lively nightlife. “You took a hit meant for me. The demon’s claws were poisoned—something ancient, something we’d never seen, and it was spreading fast. There was nothing I could do, so I picked you up and was going to try to race back to Forza.”
I remembered. Fragments of it, anyway. The pain that had felt like fire spreading through my veins. The cold that had come after, numbing and final. Eric’s face above me, terrified, his voice breaking as he begged me to hold on.
“Gregory said he knew a way,” Eric continued. “A ritual that could channel enough power to purge the poison and heal the wounds. He said he’d read about it years ago.” His voice cracked slightly as he continued. “I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t care about the cost. I just wanted you to live.”
“What did he do?”
“He punched out the window of a closed shop, and we went inside, then down to the basement. He cut my palm, thendrew symbols on the floor in my blood. Spoke words I didn’t understand—old words, in a language I’d never heard.”
I shuddered. Eric’s a genius with languages, ancient and modern. Even back then, if he hadn’t been familiar with the language, it must have been truly rare.
Eric’s hands had curled into fists on his knees. “There was a moment—just a moment—when I felt something reach through. Something vast and dark and hungry twisting inside.”
