Damali hugged herself for a moment and closed her eyes. Carlos yelling her name up the steps in a harsh tone jerked her attention to the door.
"The limo is here!" he yelled up the steps. "We gotta go, D."
She walked out of the room quickly and stopped at the top of the landing. Guardians were filtering out of the door, but she held Carlos's gaze as she descended the stairs. Silvery tears glittered in his eyes, wetting his lashes, but they wouldn't fall. His Adam's apple bobbed in his throat like a man drowning, but his mouth was tightly sealed against the urge to gasp and set hard like his knit brows.
"I'm coming," she said softly, allowing her tears to fall for Father Patrick, to fall instead of Carlos's for him. "I'm sorry."
He wiped her face with his thumbs and gave her a salty kiss when she reached the bottom of the steps. "Me, too-I didn't mean to yell at you." He then gave her a quick hug, lifting his chin high above her head. "It'll be all right," he said, giving her back a quick pat. "We gotta go."
She just nodded and swallowed hard, letting him pretend to himself that he was comforting her, was being the rock . . . she would be his shock absorber, would channel his pain, would wail and cry for him so that he didn't have to, so that he could pull her away from the grave site, could be the one to remain stoic-whatever it took to release the burden from his heart while protecting his dignity as head of household, because as neighbors came out on porches and Guardians climbed into the long, black vehicles that was the greatest gift she could give her husband right now.
"Ashes to ashes . . . dust to dust . . ."
Damali heard the final words of the service being spoken in a very remote part of her mind as she stared out over the rolling green hills of Westminster Cemetery that overlooked Belmont Avenue and the peaceful valley beyond where the Schuylkill River flowed. Members of the seminary stepped forward and handed Carlos a silver urn. She wanted to tell them so badly that the angels had come to collect his father-seer at the moment of impact and that his body was just a shell that had housed a bright, shining spirit that the darkside never got to claim. The man had been consecrated by the Light and what had been burned to ash and bits of bone was the least of who Father Patrick had been.
But bagpipes interrupted those thoughts.
Her hand went to Carlos's back. He glanced at Rabbi Zeitloff, who was shaking with grief and had begun to wail. Imam Asula, Monk Lin, and Dan went to the elderly cleric's aid as he beat his chest yelling, "Why!" She felt Carlos take a deep, laboring breath and she knew what was next.
Carlos simply opened the urn as he stared out at the horizon. His voice was quiet and gravelly, but contained inner strength. "Thank you for being my father for as long as you did. Enjoy going home."
Ashes funneled out of the urn in a furious spiral away from the small assembly. The cardinal seemed like he was about to pass out, but no one challenged Carlos for disposing of the ashes on hallowed ground without a permit. He then dropped the urn without even looking at it, and it bounced and rolled near the small grave marker that gave Father Patrick's birth and death dates. Damali stooped and placed a single red rose on the marker, but left the urn where it lay as Carlos walked off. Guardian eyes sought hers with a silent question in them, but she shook her head. The man still needed his space.
He couldn't breathe. Rabbi Zeitloff's wails rang in his ears. No matter what Adam had told him, the loss still burned like a hot poker through his chest. But he'd done all the mourning he was gonna do, had shed tears. Now it was time to redress this bullshit, even if it had purpose-even if it had duped the dark-side.
A quiet presence that stepped out from behind a mausoleum vault made him start and take a fighter's stance to face it.
"I come with a message," a slightly built, now very pale priest said. His dark eyes held fear as he made the sign of the cross over his chest. "Please, in the name of God, don't hurt me."
Carlos studied the man hard and then realized he'd accidentally dropped fang on a civilian. Running his tongue over his incisors, he also willed his eyes to normalize. Only fangs and a silver glare could have stricken the baby-faced priest so badly.
"Are you a . . . the demon assassin we seek?"
"Depends on which side is seeking, but yeah, I'm definitely an assassin."
The cleric nervously raked his fingers through his mussed brunet hair. "The Templars told me to give you this on consecrated ground and nowhere else. I didn't know how to find you again-not even the cardinal did. But we prayed you'd come to the service."
Carlos waited as the cleric extracted a piece of folded-up paper from his vestment pocket and offered it to him with a shaking hand. The moment Carlos touchedit, the man snatched his hand back and crossed himself again.
"Your eyes . . . your teeth . . . I saw your size change right before my eyes."
Carlos rubbed his palm over his jaw and glanced up at the priest as he opened the paper. "I'm not the undead-anymore."
"Anymore," the young cleric whispered in a strangled squeak.
"I got a reprieve from the Light, so I'm definitely the man for this job."
The cleric stepped back and crossedhimself again when Carlos looked up with a frown from the paper he held.
"What the hell is this?" Carlos said, brandishing the paper. "What side do you workfor! "
"The church, of course," the priest said, backing away.
"Then what's the church doing handing me a map of Washington, D.C., with a pentagram on it? You know who uses this symbol-and in the end of days that rat bastard is able to walk on befouled sacred ground! You better talk to me and talk to me fast, priest. Today is the last day you want to get on my bad side, playing games."
"I'm not playing games. This came from the Templar who left it under my door. I'm an empath . . . he sent a mental dart that pierced my mind and then I got a vision of Father Patrick." The young cleric backed up until his thighs collided with a headstone, and he covered his face and throat with his forearms as he began to weep. "Save me, Christ, from this abomination!"
"Oh, put your arms down," Carlos muttered. "I'm not about to rip your throat out. I just needed to know you weren't an agent for the darkside." He studied the map as the hysterical cleric slowly lowered his arms, panting. "What message did Father Patrick bring from the other side?"