CHAPTER 50
Schuyler
She felt bad about leaving Bliss like that. But right then she was too wound up to even think about anything other than the fact that the person she had waited her entire life to talk to . . . was now awake. Alive. Allegra Van Alen was alive. She had opened her eyes a half hour ago, and she was asking for her daughter.
As she walked through the glass doors of New York Presbyterian Hospital, toward the back elevator that would take her to the permanent care unit, Schuyler wondered how many days, how many nights, how many birthdays, how many Thanksgivings and Christmases, she had spent walking down the same fluorescent-lit hallways, with the smell of antiseptic and formaldehyde, walking by the sympathetic smiles of the nurses, by the tearful groups huddled near the surgical waiting rooms, their faces drawn and anxious.
How many times?
Too many to count. Too many to mention. This was her entire childhood, right in this medical center. The housekeeper had taught her to walk, to talk, and Cordelia had been there to pay the bills. But she'd never had a mother. There had been no one to sing her songs in the bath, or to kiss her on the forehead to sleep. No one to keep secrets from, no one to fight over her wardrobe with, no one to slam doors on, there had been none of the normal rhythms of softness and disagreements, the infinite ways of mother-daughter kinship.
There was only this.
«You're here so quickly,» the attending nurse said with a smile from the nurses? station. She escorted Schuyler down the hallway to the private wing, where New York's most privileged and most vegetative slumbered.
«She's been waiting for you. It's a miracle. The doctors are beside themselves.» The nurse lowered her voice. «They say she might even be on television?»
Schuyler didn't know what to say. It still did not seem true. «Wait. I need . . . I need to get something from the cafeteria.» And she ducked away from the nurse's side and ran down the entire flight of stairs to the first floor. She burst through the swinging door, surprising a few interns sneaking a coffee break on the hidden landing.
She wasn't sure if she would be able to do this. It seemed too good to be true, and she couldn't bring herself to face it. She wiped the tears from her eyes and walked inside the cafeteria.
She bought a bottled water and a pack of gum, and returned to the right floor. The kind nurse was still waiting for her.
«It's okay,» she told Schuyler. «I know it's a shock. But go on. It'll be okay. She's waiting for you.»
Schuyler nodded. 'thank you,» she whispered.
She walked down the hallway. Everything looked exactly the same as it always did. The window looking over the George Washington Bridge. The whiteboard charts with the patients' names, medications, and attending physicians. Finally she stood in front of the right door. It was open just a crack, so that Schuyler heard it.
A voice, lilting and lovely through the doorway. Calling her name ever so softly.
A voice she had only heard in her dreams.
The voice of her mother.
Schuyler opened the door and walked inside.
CHAPTER 51
Bliss
«What did you say?»
Bliss was paying for her new dress when she was jolted by the Visitor's voice in her head.
«Do you take Amex?» she asked the salesgirl sitting at the desk. She tried to maintain her composure while inside the Visitor's excitement made her head ache.
«Allegra is awake? Allegra is alive?»
«Why does this bring joy to you?» Bliss asked. «Why would you care? She's just a coma patient in a hospital room.»
«Did you say something?» the salesgirl asked, shoving the purple dress into a plain brown bag and stapling the top with the receipt.
«No. Sorry.» Bliss grabbed her bag and headed out of the room. She bumped into a few girls walking in.
«Do they still have good stuff, or is it all picked over?» one of them asked.
«Uh . . . I don't know,» Bliss muttered, pushing through. She knew they would think her incredibly rude, but it was as if her head were going to crack open.
Bliss raised her hand to hail a cab. It was five in the afternoon, and all the taxis had their «Off Duty» signs on, a shift switch, and worse, it was starting to rain. New York weather. For a moment she missed Bobi Anne's Silver Shadow Rolls and the driver who always took her around. Finally Bliss caught a town car that had just dropped off some executive at the corner.
«How much to 168th Street?»
«Twenty.»
She got inside the car, which felt warm and cozy after standing in the suddenly freezing rain.
She could still feel the Visitor's excitement and agitation. Why did he care? What did he care about some stupid woman in a hospital?
«Show some respect, the Visitor said coldly. Do not speak of your mother that way.»
«So it's true. I am her daughter. I am Allegra's daughter», she thought. Her heart was pounding so loudly it hurt her chest a little bit.
«Of course you are,» the Visitor said in a reasonable voice that made Bliss feel even more nervous. «We made you together. Now, I think it's time we said a proper hello to Allegra.»
CHAPTER 52
Schuyler
The hospital bed was empty. Allegra Van Alen sat in a chair beside it. Schuyler's mother was the picture of elegance and restraint in a simple black dress and a string of pearls. She looked as if she had just come from the office or a charity board meeting, and not as if she had just spent the last fifteen years immobile in the same bed.
Schuyler shuffled into the room, hesitating. But once Allegra opened her arms, Schuyler hurled herself into them.
«Mother.» Allegra smelled like roses in the springtime; her skin was as soft as a baby's. Her presence made the room seem brighter, lighter somehow.
Allegra smoothed her daughter's hair.
«Schuyler. You came home.»
«I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,» Schuyler sobbed. «I'm sorry for everything I said to you in Tokyo.» She raised her tear-streaked face. «But how?»
«It was time,» Allegra said.
Schuyler broke away from the embrace. She couldn't believe what Allegra was saying.
«So you're telling me you could have woken at any time?»
«No, darling.» Allegra shook her head. She motioned to Schuyler to pull up a chair next to hers. «I felt the stirring deep in the glom. . . . Something has happened to the world. . . . I felt it. It would have been selfish for me to continue to stop taking the blood. To stay rooted in my isolation.»
Then Schuyler saw what had happened as if she had been there: the comatose woman rising from her bed, tearing into the neck of an orderly who had come to change her sheets. The vampire princess awoken. Sleeping Beauty breaking through the glass.
Schuyler choked back a sob. «Lawrence?»
«Is gone. I know. I spoke to him before he passed to the other side.» Allegra nodded.
«He told me about the Van Alen Legacy.» Schuyler shrugged. «Do you know what I'm supposed to do?»
In answer, her mother pulled her closer and spoke in a voice only Schuyler could hear. «Listen closely, my daughter. For what I am about to tell you can only be told in the shelter of the glom.»
«In the days when we called Paradise our home, the paths between the worlds were open. Angels moved freely between Earth, Heaven, and the underground. But after Lucifer's revolt, when the Dark Prince and his followers were cast out of Heaven, the way to Paradise was shut forever. But the seven Paths of the Dead remained open. In Rome, we still trusted Caligula then, did not know he was Lucifer behind the mask, did not know he had made it his mission to discover their locations on Earth. As emperor, he ordered a maze of tunnels built under the city of Lutetia. It was here that he discovered the first path.
In his arrogance, he shared his secret with Michael. The Morning-star was never one for hiding his glory, which would cost him. Michael insisted they build a gate upon the path, and forge a key that Michael would hold in his trust. Lucifer agreed.
But of course it was all a lie. Lucifer's transformation into a Croatan was complete by then. His betrayal of the Code of the Vampires created the crisis in Rome. He stole the key at the earliest opportunity, unleashing Abomination upon the world. But we would not know this until it was almost too late.
The Blue Bloods hunted down the demons and their Silver Blood brethren. We turned Lutetia into a safe haven. Michael defeated Lucifer, taking him down the dead's path to the underworld and locking the gate behind him. Michael then ordered the Blue Bloods to find the remaining six paths, and to build gates upon them to keep the divisions between the worlds secure. The gatekeepers were called the Order of the Seven and included the seven original families of the Conclave.
The gatekeepers agreed to scatter far and wide across the earth, hidden from one another. The knowledge of the gates would remain in the guardians' family, passed down through the generations.
The Van Alen Legacy is just the latest name for the work that Lawrence and Cordelia began when they arrived in the New World. When young Blue Bloods were disappearing again, they suspected that what they had feared for centuries was true: that the gates were failing, and that somehow Lucifer and his Silver Bloods had survived the war in Rome and were planning their return to power.
Lawrence made it his life's work to find each gate and guardian, to warn them of the danger. But Charles never believed in the Van Alen Legacy. He resented his father's doubt of the work he had forged centuries before. So Lawrence went into exile. And the Van Alen Legacy was forgotten.»