he moved toward the present day, but Matthew knew he was not free of it yet.
One image was missing.
To help nudge Jack along, Matthew turned to one of his favorite pieces of music: Fauré’s inspiring, hopeful Requiem. Long before he’d met Diana, one of his great joys had been to go to New College and listen to the choir perform the piece. It was not until the strains of the last section, In Paradisum, that the image Matthew had been waiting for took shape under Jack’s hand. By that point Jack was sketching in time to the stately music, his body swaying to the cello’s peaceful song.
“May the ranks of angels receive you, and with Lazarus,
Once a poor man, may you have eternal rest.”
Matthew knew these verses by heart, for they accompanied the corpse from church to grave—a place of peace that was too often denied to a creature like him. Matthew had sung these same words over Philippe’s body, wept through them when Hugh had died, punished himself with them when Eleanor and Cecilia had perished, and repeated them for fifteen centuries as he mourned Blanca and Lucas, his warmblooded wife and child.
Tonight, however, the familiar words led Jack—and Matthew with him—to a place of second chances. Matthew watched, riveted, as Jack brought Diana’s familiar, lovely face to life against the wall’s creamy surface. Her eyes were wide and full of joy, her lips parted in astonishment and lifting into the beginning of a smile. Matthew had missed the precious moments when Diana first recognized Jack. He witnessed them now.
Seeing her portrait confirmed what Matthew already suspected: that it was Diana who had the power to bring Jack’s life full circle. Matthew might make Jack feel safe the way a father should, but it was Diana who made him feel loved.
Matthew continued to move the bow against the strings, his fingers pressing and plucking to draw the music out. At last Jack stopped, the pencil dropping from his nerveless hands and clattering to the floor.
“You are one hell of an artist, Jack,” Chris said, leaning forward in his seat to better view Diana’s image.
Jack’s shoulders slumped in exhaustion, and he looked around for Chris. Though they were hazy with exhaustion, there was no sign of blood rage in his eyes. They were once again brown and green.
“Matthew.” Jack jumped off the top of the scaffold, soaring through the air and landing with the silence of a cat. “Good morning, Jack.” Matthew put the cello aside.
“The music—was it you?” Jack asked with a confused frown.
“I thought you might benefit from something less Baroque,” Matthew said, rising to his feet. “The seventeenth century can be a bit florid for vampires. It’s best taken in small doses.” His glance flickered to the wall, and Jack drew a shaking hand across his forehead as he realized what he’d done.
“I’m sorry,” he said, stricken. “I’ll paint over it, Gallowglass. Today. I promise.”
“No!” Matthew, Gallowglass, Hubbard, and Chris said in unison.
“But the walls,” Jack protested. “I’ve ruined them.”
“No more so than da Vinci or Michelangelo did,” Gallowglass said mildly. “Or Matthew, come to think of it, with his doodles on the emperor’s palace in Prague.” Humor illuminated Jack’s eyes for a moment before the light dimmed once more.
“A running deer is one thing. But nobody could possibly want to see these pictures—not even me,”
Jack said, staring at a particularly gruesome drawing of a decaying corpse floating faceup in the river.
“Art and music must come from the heart,” Matthew said, gripping his great-grandson by the shoulder. “Even the darkest places need to be brought into the light of day, or else they’ll grow until they swallow a man whole.”
Jack’s expression was bleak. “What if they already have?”
“You wouldn’t have tried to save that woman if you were dark through and through.” Matthew pointed to a desolate figure looking up at an outstretched hand. The hand matched Jack’s, right down to the scar at the base of the thumb.
“But I didn’t save her. She was too frightened to let me help her. Afraid of me!” Jack tried to jerk away, his elbow cracking with the strain, but Matthew refused to let him go.
“It was her darkness that stopped her—her fear—not yours,” Matthew insisted.
“I don’t believe you,” Jack said, stubbornly holding on to the notion that his blood rage made him guilty, no matter what. Matthew got a small taste of what Philippe and Ysabeau had endured with his own steadfast refusals to accept absolution.