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Chapter One

 

  On early and bitterly cold morning in late March, Schuyler Van Alen let herself inside the glass doors of the Duchesne School, feeling relieved as she walked into the soaring barrel-ceiling entryway dominated by an imposing John Singer Sargent portrait of the school's founders. She kept the hood of her fur-trimmed parka over her thick dark hair, preferring anonymity rather than the casual greetings exchanged by other students.

  It was odd to think of the school as a haven, an escape, a place she looked forward to going. For so long, Duchesne, with its shiny marble floors and sweeping vistas of Central Park, had been nothing less than a torture chamber. She had dreaded walking up the grand staircase, felt miserable in its inadequately heated classrooms, and even managed to despise the gorgeous terrazzo tiles in the refectory.

  At school Schuyler often felt ugly and invisible, although her deep-set blue eyes and delicate Dresden-doll features belied this. All her life, her well-heeled classmates had treated her like a freak, an outcast - unwanted and untouchable. Even if her family was one of the oldest and most illustrious names in the city's history, times had changed. The Van Alens, once a proud and prestigious clan, had shrunk and withered over the centuries, so that they were now practically extinct. Schuyler was one of the last.

  For a while, Schuyler had hoped her grandfather's return from exile would change that - that Lawrence's presence in her life would mean she was no longer alone. But those hopes were dashed when Charles Force took her away from the shabby brownstone on Riverside Drive, the only home

  she had ever known.

  "Are you going to move or do I have to do something

  about it?"

  Schuyler started. She hadn't noticed that she'd been standing in a daze in front of her locker and the one above it. The bells signaling the start of the day were clanging wildly. Behind her stood Mimi Force, her new housemate.

  No matter how out of place Schuyler felt at school, it was no comparison to the arctic freeze she weathered on a daily basis at the Forces' grand town house across from the Metropolitan Museum. At Duchesne, she didn't have to overhear Mimi grumbling about her every second of the day. Or at least it only happened every few hours. No wonder Duchesne felt so welcoming lately.

  Even though Lawrence Van Alen was now Regis, head of the Blue Bloods, he had been powerless to stop the adoption process. The Code of the Vampires stipulated a strict adherence to human laws, to keep the Blue Bloods safe from unwanted scrutiny. In her last will and testament, Schuyler's grandmother had declared her an emancipated minor, but in a wily move, Charles Force's lawyers had contested its tenets in the Red Blood courts. The courts found in their favor, and Charles had been named the executor of the estate, winning Schuyler as part of the package.

  "Well?" Mimi was still waiting.

  "Oh. Uh. Sorry," Schuyler said, grabbing a textbook and moving aside.

  "Sorry is right," Mimi narrowed her emerald green eyes and gave Schuyler a contemptuous look. The same look she'd given Schuyler across the dinner table last night, and the same look she'd given Schuyler when they'd bumped into each other in the hallway that morning. The look said: What are you doing here? You have no right to exist.

  "What did I ever do to you?" Schuyler whispered, tucking a book into her worn canvas bag.

  "You saved her life!"

  Mimi glared at the striking redhead who had spoken.

  Bliss Llewellyn, Texan transplant and former Mimi acolyte, glared back. Bliss's cheeks were as red as her hair. "She saved your skin in Venice, and you don't even have the decency to be grateful!" Once upon a time Bliss had been Mimi's shadow, happy to follow her every directive, but a trust had broken between the two former friends since the last Silver Blood attack, when Mimi had been revealed as a willing, if ineffective, conspirator. Mimi had been condemned to burn, until Schuyler had come to her aid at the blood trial.

  "She didn't save my life. She merely told the truth. My life was never in danger," Mimi replied as she ran a silver hairbrush through her fine hair.

  "Ignore her," Bliss told Schuyler.

  Schuyler smiled, feeling braver now that she had backup. "It's hard to do. It's like pretending global warming doesn't exist. " She would pay for that comment later, she knew. There would be pebbles in her breakfast cereal. Black tar on her sheets. Or the newest inconvenience - the disappearance of yet another of her swiftly dwindling possessions. Already she was missing her mother's locket, her leather gloves, and a beloved dog-eared copy of Kafka's The Trial, inscribed on the first page with the initials "J. F. "

  Schuyler would be the first to admit that the second guest bedroom in the Forces' mansion (the first remained reserved for visiting dignitaries) was hardly the cupboard under the stairs. Her room was beautifully decorated and sumptuously appointed with everything a girl could want: a four-poster queen-size bed with a pillowy duvet, closets full of designer clothes, a high-end entertainment center, dozens of toys for Beauty, her bloodhound, and a new featherlight MacBook Air. But if her new home was rich in material gifts, it lacked the charm of the old one.

  She missed her old room, with its Mountain Dew-yellow walls and rickety desk. She missed the dusty shrouded living room. She missed Hattie and Julius, who had been with the family since she was an infant. She missed her grandfather, of course. But most of all, she missed her freedom.

  "You okay?" Bliss asked, nudging her. Schuyler had returned from Venice with a new address and an unexpected ally. While she and Bliss had always been friendly, now they were almost inseparable.

  "Yeah. I'm used to it. I could take her in a cage fight. " Schuyler smiled. Seeing Bliss at school was one of the small reprieves of happiness that Duchesne afforded.

  She took the winding back stairs, following the stream of people heading in the same direction, when out of the corner of her eye she saw the barest flicker and knew. It was him. She didn't have to look to know he was among the crowd of students walking the opposite way. She could always sense him, as if her nerves were fine-tuned antennae receptors that picked up whenever he was near. Maybe it was the vampire in her, giving her the ability to tell when another was close by, or maybe it had nothing to do with her otherworldly powers at all.

  Jack.

  His eyes were focused straight ahead, as if he never even saw her, never registered her presence. His sleek blond hair, the same translucent shade as his sister's, was slicked back from his proud forehead; and unlike the other boys around him, dressed in varying degrees of sloppiness, he looked regal in a blazer and tie. He was so handsome it was hard for Schuyler to breathe. But just as at the town house - Schuyler refused to call it home - Jack ignored her.

  She snuck one more glance his way and then hurried up the stairs. Glass had already started when she arrived. Schuyler tried to be as unobtrusive as possible as she walked, out of habit, toward the back seats by the window. Oliver Hazard-Perry was seated there, bent over his notebook.

  But she caught herself just in time and moved across the room to sit next to the clanging radiator, without saying hello to her best friend.

  Charles Force had made it clear: now that she was under his roof, she would have to follow his rules. The first rule was that Schuyler was forbidden to see her grandfather. The animosity between Charles and Lawrence ran deep, and not only because Lawrence had displaced Charles's position in the Conclave.

  "I don't want him filling your head with lies," Charles had told her. "He may rule the Coven, but he has no power in my house. If you disobey me, I promise you will regret it. "

  The second rule of living at the Forces' was that she was forbidden to associate with Oliver. Charles had been apoplectic when he'd discovered that Schuyler had made Oliver (her designated Condui
t) her human familiar. "First of all, you are much too young. Secondly, it is anathema. Distasteful. Conduits are servants. They are not - they do not fulfill the services of familiars. You must take a new human immediately and sever all relations with this boy. "

  If pressed, she would grudgingly admit that Charles was probably right. Oliver was her best friend, and she had marked him as her own, had taken his blood into hers, and there had been consequences to her actions. Sometimes she wished they could go back to the way they were before everything became so complicated.

  Schuyler had no idea why Charles would care whom she made her familiar anyway, since the Forces had done away with the old-fashioned practice of keeping human Conduits. But she followed the rules to the letter. As far as anyone could see, she had absolutely no contact with Lawrence, and had refrained from performing the Sacred Kiss with Oliver.

  There were so many things in her new life that she could and couldn't do.

  But there were some places where the rules did not apply. Somewhere that Charles had no power. Somewhere Schuyler could be free.

  That's what secret hiding places were for.

  Chapter Two

 

  Mimi Force liked the sound of stilettos on marble. Her patent-leather Jimmy Choos made a satisfying click, click, clack that echoed across the entire lobby of the Force Tower. The shiny new headquarters of her father's media empire comprised several buildings in the middle of midtown Manhattan. The gleaming elevator banks regularly disgorged a crew of "Forcies" - the beautiful employees of the Force media organization - design editors, fashion editors, lifestyle editors, heading off to lunch meetings at Michael's or into town cars that would escort them to various appointments around the city. They were a well-dressed group, with similarly pinched faces, as if their perpetually busy schedules didn't leave them time to smile. Mimi blended right in.

  She was only sixteen, but as she walked through the crowd, past the lobby and into the dark alcove that concealed an elevator that could only be accessed through a secret and irreproducible key, she felt incredibly old. She remembered when the Force Tower had originally been christened the Van Alen Building. For years it had stood as a mere three-story foundation, since its planned tower had never been built after the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression. Only last year did her father's company finally complete construction according to the old plans and christened the building with a new name.

  Mimi looked around and discreetly sent a strong ignore-suggestion to anyone who might come near. She found the doorknob and pressed her finger against the lock, pricking it so that it drew blood. The blood analysis in the key lock was not the latest in security technology, but an antediluvian one. Her blood was being analyzed and compared to DNA files in the repository; a match would confirm that only a true Blue Blood stood at the gate. The blood could not be duplicated nor extracted. Vampire blood disappeared within minutes once exposed to the air.

  The doors whooshed open silently, and Mimi took the lift down. What Red Bloods did not know was that in 1929, the building had been built to completion - except it extended downward instead of up.

  The tower was actually a "corescraper" - a structure built underneath the ground, tunneling down to the planet's core, rather than up toward the sky. Mimi watched as the floors descended. She went fifty, then a hundred, then two hundred, then a thousand feet under the surface. In the past, the Blue Bloods had lived underground to hide from their Silver Blood attackers. Now Mimi understood what Charles Force had meant when he sneered that Lawrence and Cordelia would have the vampires "cringing in caves once again. "

  Finally the elevator stopped and the door opened. Mimi nodded to the Conduit at the desk. The Red Blood resembled a blind mole rat, looking as if he had not seen the sun in a long time. Rather like the false legends perpetuated about vampires, Mimi thought with amusement.

  She could feel the wards, the heavy protections placed around the area. This was supposed to be the Blue Bloods' most secret and secure haven. Lawrence took great pleasure in the shiny, conspicuous new tower that had been built on top of it. "We're hiding in plain sight!" he'd chuckled. The Repository of History had recently been moved to several of the lower floors. Since the attack, the lair underneath the club had been abandoned. Mimi still felt guilty at what had happened there. But it wasn't her fault! She hadn't meant to bring any real harm. She'd just wanted Schuyler out of the way. Perhaps she had been na??ve. No need to linger on that thought now.

  "Evening, Madeleine," an elegantly dressed woman in a chic Chanel suit greeted her politely.

  "Dorothea. " Mimi nodded, following the old crone to the conference room. She knew that several members of the Conclave had not been keen on her admittance to the inner circle. They were worried she was still too young and not in command of her full memories, the entirety of the wisdom of all her past lives. The process toward a Blue Blood's complete self-actualization began during the transformation at fifteen, and continued until the end of one's Sunset Years (or approximately twenty-one years of age), when the human shell fully gave away, finally revealing the vampire underneath. Mimi didn't care what they thought. She was there to fulfill a duty, and if she didn't remember everything, she remembered enough.

  She was there because Lawrence had come to the Force mansion late one night, soon after they'd returned from Venice, to speak to Charles. Mimi had overhead the entire conversation. When Lawrence had taken over as Regis, Charles had voluntarily resigned his seat on the Conclave, but Lawrence was urging him to reconsider.

  "We need all our strength now. We need you, Charles. Don't turn your back on us. " Lawrence's voice was low and gravelly. He coughed several times, and the smell of sweet tobacco from his pipe had filled the hallway outside her father's office.

  Charles was adamant. He had been humiliated and rejected. If the Conclave would not have him, he would not have the Conclave. "Why do they need me when they have you, Regis," Charles spat, as if even saying it were distasteful.

  "I will go. "

  Lawrence had merely raised an eyebrow upon discovering Mimi standing in front of them. Charles hadn't looked too surprised either. Finding a way through locked doors had always been one of Mimi's talents, even as a young child.

  "Azrael," Lawrence murmured. "Do you remember?"

  "Not everything. Not yet. But I do remember you. . . Grandfather," Mimi said with a smirk.

  "That's enough for me. " Lawrence smiled in a way that was not too unlike Charles's own. "Charles, it's decided. Mimi shall have your seat on the Conclave. She will report to you, as your representative. Azrael, you are dismissed. "

  Mimi had been about to protest, until she realized she had been glommed into leaving the den without her noticing. The old coot was clever. But nothing was stopping her from pressing an ear against the doors.

  "She is dangerous," Lawrence was saying softly. "I was surprised to find that you had called up the twins to this cycle. Was it really necessary?"

  "Like you said, she is strong. " Charles sighed. "If there is battle ahead, as you want us all to believe, Lawrence, you will need her on your side. "

  Lawrence snorted. "If she stays true. "

  "She always has," Charles said sharply. "And she was not the only one among us who once loved the Morningstar. "

  "A grave mistake we all made. " Lawrence nodded.

  Charles said softly, "No, not all of us. "

  Mimi floated away from the door. She had heard all she needed to hear.

  Azrael. He'd called her by her real name. A name that was etched deep into her consciousness, deep into her bones, her very blood. What was she except her name? When you were alive for thousands of years, taking a new moniker after another, names became like gift wrapping. Something decorative that you answered to. Take her name in this cycle, for example: Mimi. It was the name of a socialite, a flighty woman who spent her days maxing out credit cards and who cared only for spa treatments and dinner part
ies.

  It hid her true identity.

  For she was Azrael. Angel of Death. She brought darkness to the light. It was her gift and her curse.

  She was a Blue Blood. As Charles had said, one of the strongest. Charles and Lawrence had been talking about the end of days. The Fall. During the war with Lucifer, it had been Azrael and her twin, Abbadon, who had turned the tide, who had changed the course of the last battle. They had betrayed their prince and joined Michael, kneeling to the golden sword. They had stayed true to the light, even though they were made of the dark.

  Theirs had been a crucial desertion. If it were not for her and Jack, who could say who would have won? Would Lucifer be the king of all kings on a heavenly throne if they had not abandoned him? And what did they win anyway, but this endless life on earth. This endless cycle of reparation and absolution. For whom and for what did they make amends? Did God even know they existed anymore? Would they ever regain the paradise they had lost?

  Had it been worth it? Mimi wondered as she took her seat at the Conclave, only now noticing the grumblings among her peers.

  She looked to where Dorothea Rockefeller was staring. The shock almost sent her reeling. Inside the most protected, most secure haven of the Blue Bloods, and seated next to Lawrence in a place of honor, was none other than the disgraced former Venator, the Silver Blood traitor, Kingsley Martin.

  He caught her eye and pointed two fingers in the shape of a gun in her direction. And Kingsley being Kingsley, he smiled as he pretended to pull the trigger.

  Chapter Three

 

  Unlike most designers' showrooms, which were decorated in minimal, almost clinical style with hardly a floral arrangement to break up the dazzlingly empty white rooms, the showcase interiors that housed the Rolf Morgan collection resembled the cozy quarters of an old-fashioned gentlemen's club: leather-bound books lined the shelves, while squat club chairs and comfortable shag rugs were arranged around a crackling fire. Rolf Morgan had come to fame by selling preppie, old-boy style to the masses, his most ubiquitous creation a plain-collared shirt discreetly embroidered with his logo: a pair of crisscrossed croquet wickets.