Demon Blood

leapt to the second-floor gallery leading to Gemma’s bedroom.
    She flung open the door. Gemma was sitting up in bed, screaming. Her eyes were open, but unfocused. Seeing horrors that wouldn’t let her go.
    Rosalia vanished her crossbow and ran to the bedside. “Baby girl, it’s okay; you’re safe—”
    Gemma shrieked and jumped into an attack, barreling into her and toppling them over. Rosalia took the brunt of the fall against the slate floor, her wings trapped beneath her. Gemma’s fist smashed into her cheek, and Rosalia actually saw stars. Hallelujah, she’d taught this young woman to hit hard.
    “Gemma, baby, you’re safe! Wake up and see that—” She broke off as Deacon rushed into the room, sword drawn. “Get back! She’s fine. I’m fine. Just . . . wait. Out there.”
    Deacon hesitated when she took another blow from the screaming woman. Then Gemma’s fist froze midair.
    She glanced down, her eyes losing their terrifying emptiness. “Oh, God. Rosa.”
    “Ciao.” Rosalia breathed out a laugh. “You’re okay. Yes? We’re both okay.”
    “Yes.” As Gemma scrambled to her feet, Rosalia glanced at the doorway. Deacon had gone. She looked back as Gemma put her hands to her face. “Oh, God.”
    The young woman broke into wretched sobs. Rosalia drew her into her arms, down to the bed, and vanished her wings. Curling up behind the taller woman, she stroked her blond hair, straightening the sweat-tangled strands.
    After a while, Gemma quieted. “It’s the same. Always the same. Giacomo and Svetlana coming in to protect me. Then the nephilim.” A shudder wracked her body. “God, they were so big. Those black wings. Their skin so red . . . and their eyes glowing red. Their swords were already bloody. I yelled at Svetlana to get behind me, because a demon couldn’t hurt me. Couldn’t go through me. But then she and Giacomo were just . . . gone. And everything was covered in red.”
    Almost every room in the abbey, and Gemma had cleaned it all long before Rosalia had been freed from the catacombs. The young woman had been left on her own for months, until she’d run across Vincente.
    Gemma drew a deep, shuddering breath that seemed to rinse her out. “I’m sorry I hit you.”
    “It’s okay. You were asleep.”
    “Yes. Okay.” She tensed. “No, it’s not. Let me be sorry.”
    “Okay.”
    Gemma growled in the back of her throat. “You always do that. You let people beat up on you, and you never hit back.”
    Shock held Rosalia silent for a moment. “Gemma, I can’t—”
    “Hit me, because I’m a human. If you do, you Fall. I get it. I don’t mean me , and I don’t mean hitting.” She made a motion in the air with her fist. “I mean that when you love someone, you let them walk all over you.”
    Realization slipped through her. “Vincente.”
    “Yes. But not just Vin. You put everyone ahead of yourself, Rosa.”
    Not everyone, but a few. And she could not be sorry for that. “It gives me pleasure to know that the ones I love are happy. And safe.”
    “And that’s the only thing that gives you pleasure. What other pleasures do you have?”
    Rosalia almost laughed. How absurd this was. “Gardening, swimming, slaying demons—”
    “Those are solace. Those aren’t pleasures.”
    “My greatest pleasure is you and Vincente.” She rested her hand on Gemma’s belly. “You will see.”
    “But we have each other, too. You don’t have anyone.” She took a deep breath. “Oh, God. I’m sorry, Rosa.”
    “I do not want to anger you by saying it’s okay.”
    Gemma’s short laugh ended on a sigh. “It’s just been building up for a while.”
    “Then I will think on what you’ve said.” She paused. “Would you like me to stay here while you fall asleep again?”
    “Yes.” But she didn’t immediately close her eyes. “I used to be so jealous of Vin for this.”
    “For what?”
    “I remember, even after days when he wouldn’t talk to you, when you’d spent an evening arguing, that I would walk by his room and see you on the bed, holding him like this. I always wanted that.”
    Rosalia’s throat tightened. “Your grandmother was—”
    “Wonderful, yes. But I was still so jealous of Vin and his sweet, beautiful princess mama, who would always come and cuddle with him, even when he was awful.”
    It had been all that she could do. “I heard you outside the room . . . but I never knew. I would have asked you to join us.”
    “And Vin and I would have begun