“I’ll manage,” I almost growled, the two words squeezing between my clenched teeth. “Holster?”

He returned to the opposite bench and pulled a leather double shoulder holster out of his bag. He tossed it across the jet and I caught it with my empty hand. It was made of a supple, dark brown leather and was adjustable so I didn’t have to worry about it being too bulky. Unfortunately I wasn’t wearing a belt so I wouldn’t be able to use the belt-securing ties. While I was strapping on the shoulder holster, Danaus brought over a second gun.

“It’s a Glock 17 with 9mm rounds,” he said as I accepted the gun and placed it in the right holster. The Browning went in the left. I looked down at myself and frowned. A nightwalker carrying guns. It seemed almost sacrilegious, if that was possible. We were graceful creatures from the Old World. When we killed, it was either with our bare hands or a blade.

“Is it wrong that the refrain from ‘Janie’s Got a Gun’ keeps running through my head?” I moaned. Danaus made a noise in the back of his throat as he quickly looked away, but not before I saw his lips quirk in a half smile. “What? You don’t like Aerosmith?” I asked.

“No! I—” He halted and shook his head, no longer fighting the smile. “Aerosmith is fine. I was thinking of another song.”

“Which one?”

When he looked up at me, his smile was gone, but laughter danced in his eyes. “‘Sympathy for the Devil,’” he answered.

“Ha ha. Real funny, hunter,” I said snidely. “At least it’s the Stones.”

“Nope. Guns N’ Roses,” he corrected, one corner of his mouth quirked in a grin. I snorted in disgust but couldn’t stop the smile that settled on my lips. However, when I looked back down at the guns hugging my frame, a sigh escaped my lips and the smile disintegrated.

“It’s not that bad,” Danaus said, interrupting my thoughts.

I just glared at him. He had no idea how bad it was.

His weary sigh seemed more show than exasperation as he returned to his bag one last time and quickly withdrew a long sword and scabbard. With a deep chuckle, I snatched the weapon from his hand and clutched it against my chest. The hilt and grip were of simple design, with an onion pommel and slightly curved cross guard with a flat ricasso. I pulled it out of the scabbard a little and discovered that it was a double-edged broadsword in exquisite condition. Actually, it was a sort of hybrid, with an elongated hilt common to a hand-and-a-half sword. The strap on the scabbard was designed so I could secure it across my chest and draw the sword from over my shoulder. I looked up to find him shaking his head, a smiling haunting his lips.

“I’m not the only one who prefers the old ways.” A smirk twisted my mouth and I raised both eyebrows at him. Danaus rarely used a gun, and the way he held a sword made me think he’d been born with one in his hand.

“But to survive, you learn to adapt,” he said grimly.

“True,” I whispered, looking back down at the pistols resting on either side of my chest. I didn’t like them, but they would stop a member of the naturi faster than I could cut them into pieces with my sword. “Thanks.”

Danaus grunted and returned to the white leather bench. I carefully removed the shoulder holster and laid it on one of the empty seats with the sword. I stretched out on the leather sofa again, grateful to be rid of the guns.

A deep silence settled in the jet. Only the sound of the screaming wind could be heard. I relaxed against the upholstery with my eyes closed, both of us lost in our own worlds. I blotted out thoughts of my wounded Gabriel, reassuring myself that he was safe with Ryan and James. I tried not to think about the Coven, Jabari, or the naturi. I tried not to think about the fact that I had lived with Jabari in Egypt for nearly a century. For almost one hundred years he ran his little experiments, letting other nightwalkers try to control me, and I couldn’t remember a moment of it. The years were a blur, but they weren’t a gaping black hole in my past. I remembered nights in Jabari’s home near Karnak where we would sit talking about the things we had seen. We discussed what it meant to be a nightwalker and others who had come before both of us. The Ancient nightwalker had given me a sense of history and a philosophy. He’d been a mentor and guide in the night.

I pushed those thoughts away, plunging deeper into the blackness of my mind, only to have images of Michael swim to the surface. His soft, golden locks rose up before me, and I ached to touch the smoothness of his skin as it stretched over miles of thick muscle. I remembered his wonderful smile and how it was always unsure and crooked when he struggled to read my moods. Yet tainting those good memories was the feel of his body in my arms as he died, a lead weight pressing down on my legs and awkward in my arms. The brush of his soul still chilled my skin. It beat against his chest, battling for freedom when I desperately wanted him to stay. I left him when consciousness abandoned him at last, unable to bear the final moments when his soul broke free and left me forever.

Leaning my head back, I rested one elbow on the back of the bench and threaded my fingers through my hair. A lump rose in my throat and my eyes burned with tears fighting to slip down my cool cheeks. I had killed Michael as surely as if I plunged the blade in his back myself. I had seen him slowly sliding deeper into my world, slipping further away from his own kind. The descent was slow and I had convinced myself that he could handle it. Gabriel had, after all. My remaining angel had served me as a bodyguard for more than a decade with no ill effects.

But Gabriel was always careful to maintain a normal life away from me. I had dipped into his mind on numerous occasions and saw the things he enjoyed. Gabriel looked forward to watching football on Sunday and drinking with friends at a local bar. He dated and kept lovers. I never saw such things in Michael’s mind. There had been only me.

Humans did not last when they became involved with my kind. For a while it was fun, but after a time there were only two paths for their fragile minds and bodies: death or rebirth. I could have saved my guardian angel at any time from his fate, but I could not bring myself to release him. A naturi may have wielded the blade that freed Michael’s soul, but I had set the trap and baited it with myself.

FOUR

Venice. Europe’s ultimate tourist trap, with its clichéd gondola drivers and pigeon-filled piazzas. Venice was like watching a grand dame of society slowly wither and die. She was filled with chatty, boisterous tour groups and their little clicking cameras as they crowded San Marco Piazza and oohed at the basilica. Then it was down to the Rialto and the open air market. Did any of them bother to cross the Guidecca Canal or wander through the quiet beauty of Campo Santa Margherita? Or even venture into some of the finest restaurants in San Polo?

When I’d traveled with Jabari, I spent many nights wandering the narrow streets of La Serenissima. I loved the vibrant nightlife in Dorsoduro, populated with its college students from the nearby universities. I loved the thickly populated island of Burano with its vibrantly painted little buildings. But my favorite was taking a water taxi to Torcello in the northern part of the Lagoon. This was where Venice had been born centuries ago, but now it was little more than a ghost town, its inhabitants shrinking from twenty thousand to fewer than thirty. Torcello’s streets were only dirt and broken cobblestone, while most of her buildings had been torn down so the materials could be used elsewhere. However, those fragmented shells and the desolate, overgrown land offered up a quiet respite from my world. I had even lingered on this nearly forgotten island during the daylight hours, sleeping in a dark, quiet corner of an empty building.