of the bathroom and shut the door to contain the blaze before hurrying after her mate. Max closed the room’s door behind them and followed down the stairs.
The shriek of the fire alarm followed them out of the building.
– – –
Under St. Bartholomew’s high-pitched ceiling, Michael Furness went about his rituals beneath the agonized gazes from the Stations of the Cross as if all the objectives in the life he’d made for himself in New Orleans hadn’t crumbled.
In the absence of Mary Kate Malone, and even mild janitor, Benjamin Spratt, he’d stopped trying to convince himself that he wasn’t living a lie, one begun in another time, in another world, with goals as far apart as the cold purpose of his people and the simple cloth that had begun to chafe his skin and conscience.
As he moved slowly through the empty Nave toward ghostly shrines, beckoning altar and tabernacle, an elemental truth pierced to the heart of him.
He’d forgotten who and what he was.
Was he Father Furness, dedicated priest, healer of sins, crusader for the unfortunate and unforgivable? Or Michael, avenging right hand of the Chosen, in New Orleans to pave the way for conquest of the very people he now protected? His fingertips caressed the gleaming wood of the pew rows on either side of him.
Even knowing the end was almost at hand, he longed to stay within the role that had become his life. When had he begun to love those he’d come to conquer? Was it pride or weakness torturing his will? Safety was embracing that sterile purpose he’d once espoused as gospel, that evil he’d invited back into his life and feared he couldn’t control.
An evil that whispered in his ear.
“Hello, Michael. Friends again?”
He turned to face the lovely creature he’d once admired when having a soul was a deficit and cold cunning his highest objective.
“We’ve never been friends, Genevieve. You use that word as if you know what it means.”
A slow, mocking smile. “I know. I just don’t care. I’ve no use for things that get in the way of what I want. Have you remembered what those things are? Or have you called me here for a different purpose?”
She was so beautiful. It was difficult to believe such evil thrived beneath that glamorous façade. Tall, fashionably garbed, flawlessly pale, dark in hair and soul, that lovely surface covered the blackest heart. Her blasphemous similarity to her sister Marie went only skin-deep. Genevieve craved power the way Marie had sought the love that ultimately destroyed her.
Furness had no illusions about himself. He’d once been a powerful Chosen leader in the North, as greedy and immoral as his onetime partner. He’d ruthlessly supported her plan to hide the genetic truth of their species to retain power and control. Until he’d been charmed by the gentle purity of her younger sister. To have her, he’d have sacrificed anything—riches, power, influence—but those offerings couldn’t rival her love for that scoundrel, Rollo Moytes.
Tired of Genevieve’s jealousy and broken by Maria’s preference for another, the one-time co-leader of that plan for conquest surrendered his responsibilities for the raw outpost of New Orleans, where he’d set up a pseudo-shelter for children to farm their DNA. The turning point in his purpose.
And that discovery of conscience refused to allow Michael Furness to fall in with her again even as she sweetly threatened, “Give me a reason that would allow you to live beyond the moment of this reunion.”
“Rollo’s letters,” he dangled like poisoned bait. “His confessions of conscience.”
Features as still and lovely as those carved into a graveyard statue, Genevieve whispered, “Letters? More than one? To whom? Who has them?” Breaths burst in and out, threatening to fracture that rigid stone.
“Savoie does.”
“Where did he get them?”
“The old woman across from where they hid from you. Marie was already dead, and Max taken by Legere. But the neighbor didn’t know that. She thought they might come back for their belongings. Apparently, Rollo left the letters with her, and she gave them to Max when he returned.”
The marble cracked. Features twisting in rage and dismay, Genevieve began a fierce pacing. “Has he read them?”
For his own benefit rather than hers, he forced calming words. “The first was to your sister, an apology from what I gather. The other was to Max, whose existence he’d just discovered. I don’t know if he’s opened it. Let me see what I can find out.”
She snapped at that, as he knew she would. “I’ll handle it myself, Michael.”