TEN

City of the Dead

ItwasonlyaftertheVenatorshadrelaxedtheirhostilestance that Schuyler noticed their surroundings. They were inside a small stone room, and she wasn’t sure, but it looked as if the shelves were made from grave markers, and that two ornately carved tombstones formed a table. “Are we where I think we are?” she asked.

Sam nodded, apologized for the smell, and explained why they were living in a mausoleum, called the City of the Dead by the locals. They were in the eastern part of the city, in a necropolis that served as a home for people whose ancestors were buried in the basement catacombs, or for those who had been forced out of the crowded areas of Cairo, unable to afford apartments. There were anywhere from thirty thousand to a million people living among the dead, Sam explained. The cemeteries were equipped with a minimal sewage and water system, while electric wires connected to nearby mosques provided light and heat. Since the tombs had been built to ac-commodate the traditional mourning period, when people stayed at the cemetery with their dead for the requisite forty days and nights, living in them was a natural progression when there were no other options.

“We got a lead on a Nephilim hive in Tehran. We shut that down, did the same to one in Tripoli, then came here when we heard rumors that girls have been disappearing from the City of the Dead.” He explained that the disappearances and kidnappings did not conform to typical Red Blood crimes.

There was a systemic, even ritualized aspect to them that piqued the Venators’ interest. “It’s got Hell-born written all over it, so we’ve been bunking here to be close to the target.”

“Last week we raided their nest and got them all—except for one that got away,” Deming told them.

“You thought that was me,” Schuyler said.

Deming nodded. “Yes.” She did not apologize for the mistake. She recounted the events in New York, how she had caught the Nephilim who had been after the vampires.

“So it is as we suspected,” Schuyler said, catching her breath at the news. “This has been going on for some time now.” She told them what they had discovered in Florence, and confirmed what the Venators already knew about bloody work of the Petruvian priests, who hunted and killed the human women who had been taken by Croatan, along with their offspring. “The girl who’d been taken had a mark on her: three intertwining circles that contained Lucifer’s sigil, a sheep, and the Blue Blood symbol for union.”

“Paul—the Nephilim in New York—carried the same symbol on his arm,” Deming said. “It looked like a birthmark instead of a tattoo. All the Nephilim carry it on their bodies.”

“But they aren’t born evil,” Schuyler said. “These women and children are victims of a vicious crime; they’re innocent.”

“I don’t know about innocent,” Deming argued. “Paul Rayburn took two immortal lives. Who knows how many more vampires he’s murdered over the years.”

“So these Petruvians… these killing priests who believe they do God’s work,” Sam said. “I had never heard of them until Deming told us what that bastard said, and I’ll bet no one in any Coven has either, which means they’re not part of the official history. How can that be?” he asked his former commander.

“I don’t know.” Jack frowned. “I was not part of the Order of the Seven and not privy to decisions made at the time.”

“Regardless, the Petruvians’ cleansing goes against everything in the Code of the Vampires, which mandates the protection of human life,” Schuyler maintained.

“The Nephilim are not human,” Deming said. “I have the scars to prove it.” She raised her sleeve to show the white marks she carried from battling their foes.

“Has anyone seen the Venator reports on this area?” Jack asked. “I tried to find the local conclave offices, but no one would tell me where they had relocated.”

Sam shook his head. “The Coven here is barely hanging on. many of their members have been brutally murdered, burned—not just young ones but Elders. There was an attack at the Cairo Tower last month, their headquarters. That’s why you couldn’t find them. They’re ready to go underground. It’s like that everywhere. Our kind is retreating—they went back into the shadows.”

“What’s the latest in New York?” Jack wanted to know.

Deming and Sam exchanged glances. “The Regent’s disappeared and supposedly she took the Repository keys with her, to keep the Coven from disbanding. No one knows where she went. But without your sister, New York is not going to last very long,” Deming said.

So. Mimi was Regent. Oliver had told the truth. Schuyler watched Jack process this information. She thought she knew what he was thinking—that he should have been with Mimi; that without the twins, the Coven had no one.

“We thought Azrael had come after you,” Ted said to Jack. “For the blood trial, when you didn’t return to New York.”

“We haven’t seen Mimi,” Schuyler said. “Not yet, anyway.”

“What are you doing in Cairo?”

Schuyler was careful not to reveal the exact reason for their journey. “We’re looking for someone. Catherine of Siena, a friend of my grandfather’s. Jack heard of a holy woman named zani, who we thought might be her. One of her dis-ciples was supposed to meet us at the market and take us to her. You guys must have scared him off. Do you know where we can find her?”

“The name rings a bell—where have we heard it before?”

Sam asked.

“It’s name of a priestess at the temple of Anubis,” Deming said. “Where the girls have been disappearing.”