Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

be locked shut.”
    Around her wrist, his fingers curled, holding her. “Even if it won’t open, I’m not letting you go. We’ll have to wait until it unlocks.”
    “We could stand here forever,” she said. “Caught in another stalemate until we’re both exhausted. Or we could do things the easy way and you could just let me go.”
    His fingers tightened. “I will never give up on you. On us.”
    “Get this through that head of yours—I am never going to change. There’s no place for the two of us together, not in this world. Maybe in the distant future. But not now. You have to let me go. You know that. I won’t let you give up everything that you have and everything that you are. Not for me,” she told him. “Close your eyes.”
    “Forget it,” he growled.
    “Just close them. I promise I won’t do anything stupid.”
    The image she sent into his head was of the two of them.
    Enclosed in each other’s arms beneath a canopy of stars. The first man and the first woman. The last man and the last woman. Both. One. Always.
    “Let me go,” she said. “I will come back to you. I promise.”
    He opened his eyes. Looked deep into her mist-green gaze.
    Just for an instant, he relaxed his fingers.
    And in that instant, she was gone.
    * * *
     
    It took only a moment for Brandon to scale the gate, to leap over it in pursuit of her.
    Where she had vanished, he had no idea.
    Here in Venice, he would never catch her. She would evade him forever, slipping through his fingers as she always had. He would search, but already he knew it would be futile. Like trying to grab a handful of moonlight from the surface of the canal.
    Inside, on the grass of the garden, she had dropped a shining silver object. He picked it up, felt its familiar weight in his hand. Turned it over and ran his thumb over the engraving of the Archangel Michael there, slaying the dragon.
    “Where were you tonight while this was all going down?” he said aloud.
    Behind him, he heard Michael’s voice say, “I knew you could take care of it, Brandon. You don’t need a babysitter.”
    But when he turned around, Michael was not there.
    Tucking the watch into his pocket, Brandon knew why Luciana had dropped it.
    He wondered if she ever truly intended to keep her promise to come back to him.
    He was left standing the middle of that empty garden, with a cluster of fireflies flitting among the wild, fragrant foliage. And the statue of St. George, frozen with his spear poised above his head, yet another warrior preserved in the moment of conquering evil.

Epilogue
     
    One year later
     
    I n the burned-out remains of Ca’ Rossetti, Luciana sifted through the ashes of her ruined palace.
    The fire-eaten remnants of furniture and household goods—the charred edge of a table here, a pile of broken dishes there—lay in a jumble amid blackened timber and chunks of fallen concrete. The outer walls, once three-stories high, were badly cracked and crumbling. The roof, torn away completely, gave way to the night sky. The skeleton of the palazzo threatened to tumble down around her.
    Luciana turned to look out over the water.
    The canal, at least, was unchanged and shimmering in the moonlight.
    No wind. No melancholy singing. Only peace.
    Through the empty opening where a wooden door had stood, Massimo appeared. As she knew he would.
    He bowed. She nodded in acknowledgment.
    They stood for a long moment without speaking, in the ruin of the grand palazzo they had both worked so hard to maintain, gazing at the brittle old bones of the home they had loved.
    “Come, walk with me,” she said, pulling him out of the wreckage to stroll in the quiet streets. “Let us leave this place, and I will explain what you have waited so long to hear. I will tell you about your mother. What I know of her last days as a human I found out from my parents, your grandparents, when I returned to Venice, shortly after Carlotta’s death.”
    His face betrayed nothing. He asked no questions, made no comments.
    He simply listened.
    And she began. “It was not customary for a Venetian woman to return to her parents’ home to give birth. But Carlotta arrived nonetheless, soaking wet in the middle of the night, swollen with child. During that long night, after the agony of childbirth, she died. The son she bore was washed and swaddled in the only silk left in the house. Then the baby was taken to the Arsenale and given to a boatbuilder in return for a handful of ducats, just