The Van Alen Legacy (12 page)

So basically she was in danger
from the
baddest
demon around.
Wonderful.
She was running from the
Venators when she probably should have been running toward them, now that she knew what was truly
after her.

“So you believe me? You
believe that I didn’t kill Lawrence like the Conclave thinks?” Schuyler asked.

He looked down. “I can’t speak
for the Conclave. But I have always believed you. I’ve always believed in you,” he said
softly.

“Right.”
She
nodded, trying to appear businesslike, to hide the fact that she had been moved by his faith.
Jack believed her. He was on her side. He didn’t hate her, at least. He didn’t hate her for
breaking his heart.
“So what now?”

“First things first,” he said
briskly. “Let’s get out of this dungeon. I was worried you would choose this place to hide. And I
think you’ve noticed it smells pretty awful down here.”

Muffie Astor Carter (real name
Muriel) was a Blue Blood in every sense of the word. She was educated at Miss Porter’s and
Vassar, and had worked in the publicity department of Harry Winston before marrying Dr. Sheldon
Carter, who had found fame as the plastic surgeon to the Park Avenue set. Their bonding was one
of the more controversial ones in recent memory, as it had taken each quite a few attempts to
find the other. He was her second husband and she his third wife.

She was also one of New York’s
most popular socialites. Jealous rivals sniped that the public just took a liking to her name. It
was so outrageously preppie it sounded like a joke. But it was not; it was the real thing, like
Muffie herself, who embodied a horsey, Bedford, WASP authenticity in an age of brash
nouveau-riche hordes adding “von?
or
‘de?
to
their names and who didn’t
know a Verdura from a Van Cleef.

Every year Muffie opened up
her sprawling
Hamptons
estate, “Ocean’s End”, for a fashion show to benefit the New
York Blood Bank. It was the highlight of the August social calendar. Located at the end
of

, the property sprawled over six acres and included a manor house with a separate and equally
lavish guesthouse, a twelve-car garage, and staff quarters.

The sweeping grounds featured
two pools (saline and freshwater), tennis courts, a lily pond, and professionally maintained
gardens. The Bermuda grass was cut by hand, with scissors, every other day, to keep it at just
the right length.

Balthazar shook Bliss’s hand
with a limp handshake and passed her on to Muffie with a wan smile.

“I’m so glad to see you
looking so well, my dear,” Muffie said, giving Bliss the most insubstantial of embraces. Muffie
had a broad, recessed forehead with nary a wrinkle (her plastic-surgeon husband’s most effective
advertising) and the perfect blond coif pervasive on the Upper East Side. She was the epitome of
the breed: tanned, slender, graceful, and appropriate. She was everything Bobi Anne had wanted to
be but could never match.

“Thank you,” Bliss said,
trying not to feel too awkward. “It’s good to be here.”

“You’ll find the rest of the
models in the back. I think we’re running late as usual,” Muffie said cheerfully.

Bliss walked toward the
backstage area of the tent, swiping a
canape
from a tray and a glass of champagne
from one of the buffet tables. Henri was right: this was an easy gig. It wasn’t a real fashion
show, merely a presentation to wealthy clients in the name of charity. Whereas a real fashion
show was a chaotic commotion of energy and anxiety, attended by hundreds of editors, retailers,
celebrities, and covered by hundreds of media outlets around the world, the Balthazar
Verdugo
show on Muffie Carter’s estate was more like a glorified trunk show, with
models. It was so odd to be back in the real world, to be walking on damp grass (sinking in her
heels, really), munching on appetizers, and looking out at the Carters’ amazing ocean view, an
unbroken line of blue stretching over the horizon, and to find out that in some parts of the
world, even their world, the world of the Committee and the Coven, there were some who remained
indifferent and downright disinterested in what had happened in Rio.

Muffie and the other women on
the Committee whom Bliss bumped into at the party did not bring up Bobi Anne’s death or the
massacre of the Conclave. Bliss understood that they simply went on about their lives: planning
parties, hosting benefits, doing the rounds of couture shows, horse shows, and charity causes,
which filled their days. They did not seem too worried or distressed. Cordelia Van Alen had been
right: they were in the deepest denial. They didn’t want to accept the return of the Silver
Bloods. They didn’t want to accept the reality of what the Silver Bloods had done and were
planning to do. They were satisfied with their lives and they didn’t want anything to
change.

It had been so long since any
of them had been warriors, soldiers, arm-in-arm and side-by-side in battle against the Dark
Prince and his legions. It was hard to imagine this group of underfed overly
Botoxed
socialites and their slacker children as hardened warriors in a war for heaven and earth. It was
as Cordelia had said to Schuyler: the vampires were getting lazy and indulgent, more and more
like humans every day, and less inclined to fulfill their heavenly destiny.

It dawned on Bliss that this
was what had set Cordelia and Lawrence apart, they cared. They had kept their vigilance against
the forces of hell and had sounded an alarm.
An alarm that no one was too keen on
hearing.
The Van Alens were the exception to the norm. It only made sense that Schuyler
would be just like them. Her friend had never felt comfortable in the world of the leisured rich,
even though she had been born into it. But Schuyler wasn’t the only one. Even Mimi and Jack Force
were different. They had not forgotten their gloried past. Just one look at the way Mimi flaunted
her extraordinary vampire abilities was enough to convince anyone that there was more to that
skinny bitch than just the capacity to shop.

But these people, this
self-satisfied group of elites who had barely even blinked at the news of the massacre, these
people called themselves vampires?

“Exactly.
Just like the members of the Conclave, they will
be easy enough to overcome when the time comes.”

Bliss shivered. She had gotten
used to being alone, and had forgotten that the Visitor could pop in at any time.

El Sol de
Ajuste
was located in
Cidada
de Deus, The City of God, the notorious slums in the western
part of the city that had inspired a major Hollywood movie and a subsequent television show, City
of Men. Of course, the real city was nothing like the cleaned-up Hollywood version, which was the
equivalent of a ‘slum tour’ arranged by hotel concierges: showcasing fashionable grittiness. The
reality of poverty was much harsher and much uglier, the towering mountains of trash, the stench
of sewer and garbage, the bare-bottomed children languishing on the streets, smoking cigarettes;
the way no one batted the flies away, they were way past caring about something so simple as
flies.

The bar was nothing more than
a tin shack, a lean-to with a roof and a wooden counter pocked with holes. When Mimi and the boys
arrived, a group of rowdy toughs were harassing the
barback
, the boy who cleaned the
counters and sopped up the spilled beer with ragged towels. Mimi recognized the fierce-looking
tattoos branded on the gang members’ cheeks: they were members of Commando
Prata
,
Silver Command, a notorious street gang, and responsible for most of the criminal activity in
this part of the ghetto. This was going to be interesting.

“Voc?
deve
tr’s
pesos?” the
barback
insisted. You owe me three
pesos.
“
Caralho
!
Vai-te
foder
?”
The fat one laughed and cursed at the boy, pushing him against the wall.

The elderly proprietor stood
behind the table, looking frightened and annoyed to find his employee being harassed, as well as
finding his small establishment suddenly crawling with strange, black-clad foreigners.

“Can I help you?” he huffed in
Portuguese, keeping an eye on the kid.
“You!
Leave him alone?” he cried as one of
the gangsters tripped the boy, sending him falling facedown on the floor.

In answer, the fat bully gave
the cowering boy a sharp kick in the head. There was a sickening crunch of a steel-toe boot
against bone, and in a quick movement, one of the gang had a knife to the bartender’s throat.
“You got something to say to us, old man?”

“Put down the blade,” Kingsley
ordered in a quiet voice.

“Piss off,” the leader said.
He was a skinny kid with a pockmarked face sitting in the back. He held up his automatic weapon
as casually as a soda can. The local drug lords acted as an unofficial police presence in the
shantytowns, playing judge and executioner at their whim. But the only law they upheld was their
own.

“Happy to, as soon as you let
these good people go,” Kingsley said smoothly. There were twenty gang members and only four
Venators, hardly a fair fight for the sorry group of Red Bloods. If the vampires wanted to, they
could destroy everyone in the room without warning. Mimi could see it already: a pile of corpses
on the floor.

She felt her blood rise to the
challenge, but it was a superficial rise, the kind of shallow excitement one felt upon watching a
boxing match when you already knew the outcome. These thugs thought they were so tough, but they
were nothing: fleas on the backs of buffalo, hyenas before lions. Mimi wished for better sport, a
bigger challenge.

The street gangs were not
afraid of the foreigners, however, and were faster than the Venators gave them credit for. Before
Kingsley could turn around he was cut with a blade, a tear on his sleeve revealing an ugly
wound.

That was enough. Mimi spun
around, kicking two of them to the ground and forcing another to his knees. She was about to draw
Eversor
Lumen, Light-Destroyer, when she heard Kingsley’s voice in her head.
“No weapons! No deaths!”

As much as it pained her, she
kept her blade sheathed. Two burly gangsters tried to bum-rush her, but she ducked from their
assault, sending them crashing against the rickety tables. Another drew his gun, but before he
could shoot, Mimi had kicked it away with her heel.
Cake.
She could tell even the
Lennox brothers were enjoying themselves as they knocked heads and vanquished their attackers.
Watching dreams and validating memories didn’t compare to a good old-fashioned fistfight. One of
the thugs picked up a chair leg and pointed it straight at Kingsley’s chest, but Mimi slashed it
into pieces before it could meet its target.

“Thanks,” Kingsley said.
“Didn’t know you cared so much.”
He grinned as he made quick work of a boy holding
an Uzi.

Mimi laughed. She’d hardly
broken a sweat, although she was breathing heavily. As Kingsley ordered, their combatants would
live to see another day. She stepped over the heap of bodies, Ted helping her over to join them
by the bar.

The bartender came out from
underneath a table, bowing in gratitude. “What can I get you?”

“What’s the specialty of this
place?” Kingsley asked.

“Ah?” The bartender shot them
a toothless grin. “Get the
Leblon
,” he told the
barback
, whose cut had
stopped bleeding. The boy disappeared into the back closet and came out bearing a bottle of
cachana
: sugarcane rum. The bartender poured it into four shot glasses.

“Breakfast.”
Kingsley nodded and picked up his glass.

“
Saude
,” Mimi
said, downing her drink in one go.
To your health.
“We’re looking for this girl.
Have you seen her?” Kingsley asked, showing their new friends Jordan’s photograph.
“
tell
us,” he said, using a small compulsion.

The boy shook his head, while
the bartender looked at the picture for a long time. Then he too shook his head slowly. “I have
never seen her in my life. But this is not a place where people bring children.” Mimi and
Kingsley exchanged glances, and the twins?
shoulders
slumped slightly. They left the
bar after finishing the bottle. It was midday. The sun was high and the weather was at a broil. A
few curious onlookers had crowded around the bar entrance, drawn by the fight, but they kept a
fair distance from the foursome. The stares were respectful. No one had ever lived to defeat the
Silver Command.

“For you,” an elderly lady
said, handing Mimi a water bottle.
“Obrigado.”

The woman crossed herself, and
Mimi understood it as a gesture of gratitude for bringing a small measure of justice to a lawless
place.

“Thank you,” Mimi said,
accepting the water with a nod. Once again she was struck by how helpless she felt.