Blue Bloods

CHAPTER 39

It came upon her without warning. Schuyler cursed her pride. It was all her fault. Oliver had offered to put her in a cab, but since she already owed him so much money, she had declined. Conduit or not, she didn't want to keep taking advantage of his generosity. He and Bliss lived a few blocks away from the Carlyle and she told them she was fine with taking the crosstown bus. The M72 dropped her off at 72nd and Broadway, and she decided to walk the rest of the way home. It was more than twenty blocks, but she looked forward to the exercise.

At the corner of Ninety-fifth Street, she turned from the well-lit avenue to a dark street, hoping to walk up Riverside, and that's when she felt it.

Within seconds, it had her in her grasp. She felt the sharp fangs puncture her skin and begin to slowly draw her life's blood from her. She swooned, gasping. She was going to die.

She was fifteen years old and had hardly even lived, and already she was going to die. She struggled against its iron grip. Worse, knowing what her grandmother had told her, she would live. She would live in this foul beast's memory, a trapped prisoner to its insane consciousness forever.

Beauty. Where was Beauty? The bloodhound would be too late to save her now.

The pain was deep; she was feeling dizzy from the blood loss. But just before she succumbed, there was a shout.

A struggle.

Someone was fighting the beast. The Silver Blood was releasing her. She turned, holding her neck to stop the blood flow, to see who had saved her.

Jack Force was trapped in a power struggle with the fell creature, locked in a tremendous fight. It was hulking and large, with shining silver hair and a man's form. But Jack was fighting it.

He matched the Silver Blood blow for blow, but at last, the Silver Blood threw him off, slamming Jack's body against the concrete.

"Jack!" Schuyler screamed. She looked up, and as the monster lunged for her throat, Schuyler remembered her grandmother's words. The laws of heaven meant that any creature was a slave to the Sacred Language.

She held it back with a powerful command: "Aperio Oris!" Reveal yourself!

The Silver Blood cackled in laughter, and hissed in a terrible voice that rasped with the agony of a thousand screaming souls, "You cannot command me, earthspawn!"

The creature continued its menacing march toward her.

"Aperio Oris!" Schuyler shouted again, more forcefully this time.

Jack staggered backward, for in the moment that Schuyler had summoned the incantation, the sacred words that she had learned, the monster had shown them his real face.

It was a face that Jack would never forget.

The beast howled in dismay, screeching a wretched, terrible scream, then disappeared into the night.

“Are you all right?" Schuyler asked, rushing to his side. "You're bleeding."

"It's just a cut," he said, wiping the blood, which had run red, but was blue in the light. "I'm okay. Are you?"

She felt the side of her neck. The bleeding had stopped. "How did you know?" she asked.

"That it would attack you? Because it had once before, so I knew it would do it again. Killers tend to go back and finish what they started."

"But why—"

"I didn't want to see you get hurt because of me," Jack explained brusquely.

Is that all? Schuyler wondered.

"Thank you," she said softly.

"Did you see it?" Jack asked. "Did you?"

"Yes." She nodded. "I did."

"It can't be right," Jack said. "It's a trick." He shook his head. "I don't believe it."

"It's not. It has to follow the laws." Schuyler said gently.

"I know about the Sacred Language," Jack snapped. "But it has to be a mistake."

"No mistake. Those are the rules of creation."

Jack glowered. "No."

The monster had shown itself for one brief moment, when it had no choice but to obey Schuyler's words. The monster had shown its true form. And it was the face of the authority behind New York, the face of the man who single-handedly changed the city to bend to his will.

The face of Charles Force.

His own father.