Company of Angels 02 - The Demoness of Waking Dreams

enough to feed the rest of the family.
    “As soon as I was in a position to do so, I searched endlessly for you. It took me until after your human death to finally find you. By that time, you had already been claimed by the devil as one of his own,” she said.
    She remembered her sadness at discovering he had taken to fighting in his early twenties. That after killing a few other young men in fights, he had been killed in a knife fight in a local bar brawl.
    “I negotiated the release of your soul from hell. As far as you knew, you were simply another minion, a Gatekeeper who kept order in one of the great houses in Venice.”
    “I always considered myself lucky to have such a post,” he said.
    Lucky. She had not anticipated that reaction. In the past two centuries, she had not been able to bring herself to reveal his true origins. In her mind, she imagined what her own reaction might be if she were told such a thing.
    Pure fury followed by certain retaliation.
    She had considered it from every angle.
    Better to believe you had died the poor son of a boatbuilder than the abandoned child of a bankrupt noble house, sold to the lower classes to get money for bread. Better to believe your parents were long dead than to know your mother had ignored you completely while existing in excess and debauchery a few miles away…for centuries.
    “My mother is long gone,” he said softly. “She died the day I was born.”
    “How long have you known?” she asked aloud. “That she…that Carlotta…”
    He shrugged. “How could I not know she was my mother? It’s something to do with instinct, I’m sure. I never asked, because I already knew.”
    Luciana groped for words, but they fell so short of what she wanted to express. “Your mother loved you dearly. When she was alive, she was something different. Death changed her. As it changes all of us.”
    Massimo nodded, and she saw in his eyes that he understood.
    “I don’t know where she has gone now,” said Luciana. “There are a thousand possibilities, a thousand places souls go. Places of which even we have no knowledge. But I am certain that wherever Carlotta is now, she is finally free. She has gone beyond both hell and earth.”
    Massimo nodded, head bowed. “And you? What have you been doing this past year?”
    “Searching for a way to exist on my own terms, not the devil’s. I simply cannot do that anymore, Massimo,” she told him. “However, you have to make your own choices. Ca’ Rossetti is yours to rebuild if you so wish, along with the necessary funds. Our old enemies still exist, though, as they have for centuries. They will try to stop you, I’m sure. But you are a survivor. You have the strength to endure.”
    “What will you do, baronessa? Where will you go?”
    She smiled, looking up at the moonlit sky. She would go on searching.
    And she knew in that moment that every prayer to the divine she had ever whispered or even simply thought in the most vague and wishful sense…every desperate plea for mercy she had uttered in her basest moments of hopelessness…all the good she had ever wanted had finally been answered in the best way possible.
    With one glaring flaw.
    One monumental, heartbreaking flaw: she would have to live without Brandon.
    Yet, it was still the best way possible.
    Because an existence with Brandon was impossible.
    A strange sensation tingled at Luciana’s inner wrist. She turned her arm to inspect it. There, on her translucent skin, was a tattoo of a feather. An ordinary pigeon feather exactly like the one she’d picked up from the edge of her worktable when she’d first sensed Brandon’s approach to Venice.
    Gray at the tip, fading to colorless at the base.
    The tattoo had appeared the night she had fled Venice a year ago.
    She touched it and closed her eyes, flooded by the same sense of peace that Brandon’s nearness had brought her during their brief time together. The sense of peace that still came to her whenever she thought of him.
    He is near, she knew. I must leave before he arrives.
    One day, she would find a way to atone for her wrongdoings.
    Only then would she deserve to be with him, she knew.
    I know that day will come. As surely as I know that one day every creature on earth will find peace.
    Heading away from him, she walked quickly along the streets of Venice. Wandering with no particular direction, she walked until the sensation of tingling faded. She walked until she found herself standing on the