Page 10 (1/2)

September 23

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Octavian sat in a chair beside Nikki&039;s open coffin, holding her hand He kneas absurd, clutching the cold, stiff fingers of a corpse as if he were offering coht draw solance at her face, perfectly painted and still as a wax figure, should have driven all such sentimentality from his heart He had lived centuries in this world and many more in Hell, had seen death and sorrow in catastrophic proportions and watched loved ones die screa itat all for him to sit here and bid farewell to a woo?

And yet

&039;I&039; his thu the lips he had once kissed and which had been sewn together by unloving hands &039;All that ti inside ain Alive And I had you by ht we could live in the world the way ordinary people do That we could justbreathe&039;

He hung his head, angry with hi to nobody but himself and it made him a fool

Only, he didn&039;t feel like a fool

&039;Now I feel like I can&039;t breathe at all&039;

He released her hand and placed it carefully the way he had found it, over her heart with the other Her heart did not beat and her lungs did not draw air There would be no rief - the yin and yang of tragedy&039;s afterether within him ever since he had walked into her hotel roorief had coer had come to him before dawn to tell him about the explosion at Bannerman&039;s Arsenal, his numbness had only deepened Local police river patrol boats had been the first to respond, followed quickly by the state police and Arators Five soldiers had survived the explosion, three of then of Charlotte The lack of any trace at all suggested that she had either shifted or been totally incinerated, and he chose to believe the former The fact that she hadn&039;t yet reported in ht between the two, in which case it would take significant strength of will for her to reintegrate herself Charlotte had been one of Cortez&039;s creatures at first, which Octavian found worrisome If she didn&039;t believe in her own survival, then her consciousness would have scattered along with her being

Metzger had a different interpretation of Charlotte&039;s absence He also figured her absence s, and that one of those was incineration But to Metzger, the other option was treachery; he thought it very likely that Charlotte had set the the tea them all killed Octavian didn&039;t buy it He didn&039;t trust easily, but he had given Charlotte his trust She had earned it in the fight against Navalica And he believed it would require an actress of extraordinary skill to have perpetuated the sort of deception that would have been involved

No, Charlotte was just a girl A kid who&039;d been a victim and decided she wanted to take control of her future He hoped that she hadn&039;t died for that aer ht do then was a concern for another day Even Charlotte&039;s life or death was a worry for later

Octavian took a deep breath and let it out, steadying hiain, thinking the mortician&039;s as a pale iuilt and recriathered in front of the hotel where she had been n, because itto be buried There would be no wake, only a burial service It would be a quiet, loving farewell of which he was certain Nikki would have approved No hours ofwith an open casket for people she barely knew No church service Just words spoken at the graveside, and a body laid gently to rest

He told himself she would have understood the speed hich all of this had to be done The federal government had stepped in to expedite the burial at the request of the UN They wanted Octavian&039;s attention refocused on what they considered rief The swift burial would help to guarantee a private service, but that was only one reason he had agreed Whatever Cortez had set inkilled Nikki - he was closer to achieving his goals with every passing moment Octavian meant to find him and kill him

Nikki would have approved of that too

When they lowered her coffin into the ground it would not be the end of his er feel the need to be at her side Then there would be a reckoning

A quick rap on the door, and it swung open The thin, gray-haired funeral home director ducked his head in

&039;Mr Octavian? I&039;m afraid it&039;s time, sir May we come in?&039;

Octavian stood &039;Of course&039;

He wiped the daic prickling his skin He glanced down at his hands and saw the dark, purplish energy e aware of it

The funeral director and two of his broad-shouldered sons stood just inside the roo hiht,&039; Octavian assured the around his hands but only ed to diminish it &039;As you say, it&039;s time&039;

He bent and kissed Nikki&039;s forehead, as he had so often done when they embraced Then he kissed her lips, so softly And then he turned away, striding past the funeral director and his sons, and out the door He thought the old ht call him back, ask him if he was certain that he did not want to stay while the casket was sealed, but none of the funeral men said a word

All that was left was to bury her

Nikki&039;s fans were cleverer and more tenacious than Octavian had believed Soates of the ceuarded by state and local police Octavian had thought it unnecessary, but noas glad the cops were there As he rode in the back of the black sedan the funeral ho the hearse that carried Nikki&039;s body, he stared out theat the hundreds of fans who lined the last quarter ates He hoped the presence of arh to keep the burial private

As the funeral procession turned into the ceate, Octavian saw a pair of teenagers holding each other and crying as they watched the hearse go by A part of hiht have liked that as well But the gathering that was about to take place was not only a funeral

It was a war council

Through the tinted glass, the graveyard looked like another world, a dusky stone garden of tombs and markers The stillness of the place made him catch his breath, as if time had frozen outside the confines of the car Then he noticed the way the wind shook the branches on the trees and the illusion was broken

The procession turned left along a narrow, rutted road that led over a rise The hearse pulled up onto the grass on the right, nearest the gravesite that had been prepared for Nikki&039;s inter further along on the left The rest of the procession - fewer than a dozen cars - followed suit The mourners had been asked to meet at the funeral home in order to form the procession to the cemetery, but Octavian had barely paid attention to them when he had come out and clilass and waited while funeral home employees carried Nikki&039;s casket out and loaded it into the hearse

Now, as he exited the sedan, blinking back the brightness of the autuood look at those who had coht before and the er had coht other faces, other friends and allies, and as he crossed the broken road and started across the lawn to the place where the priest stood waiting, he saw the coat, nearly knee-length His face ht as well have been carved froht of hiray dress was nearly as solasses revealed as little as Kuromaku&039;s mask of stoicism They had wanted to be with hi his last farewell to be private, even from his closest friends

Amber Morrissey seemed to have come alone, but Octavian knew that was as much an illusion as her huic in her holamour that made others see her the way she wished the woun to transforla that Amber had become He had used sorcery to slow her transformation, but the combination of his power and Navalica&039;s had turned her into soundy skin and long hair like purple spines, she re, vicious talons did not erase her loveliness Neither human nor Reaper, she nevertheless had a Reaper&039;s abilitiesto becoible as a ghost, to reach into hus and tear out their souls

Octavian couldn&039;t see hiland with Aed by the chaos ht of hihost, a man turned into a vaic Now he haunted his old hohost of his mother, but he could drink souls and dark spirits the way a flesh and bone vampire drank blood

&039;Chaos,&039; Miles had once said, &039;is where new things are born&039;

He and A exaht of so ht even call friends Santiago had ht beside Octavian and Kuromaku in the years when they had taken part in wars just to have a chance to fight for soyptian who had been dragged froht hundred years earlier and made a vampire She had often said that her parents must have been able to see the future, for they had naeance The other warrior stood nearly seven feet tall, a mountain sculpted of equal parts h in time he had learned that he could have altered it - he had chosen to iant, and the Shadoarrior had eo, Taweret and Kazihteousness, but in the blinding light of the iances Thanks to Octavian, they had each signed the Covenant and been none too happy about it In truth, Octavian had not been certain they would come, but he was very pleased to see theicians in attendance, including the Ger back fro to find a way to return the risen Afghani war dead to their graves That had seemed a serious crisis in those days, but the definition of &039;serious&039; continued to change

Octavian saw Nikki&039;s er and her lawyer, as well as two irlfriends, and who looked very wary of the strange uely recognized and assumed were old friends who had learned of the burial and persuaded Allison to approve their attendance Octavian had invited those he felt ought to be here and those he needed and had left others to Allison&039;s discretion

As he walked toward the grave the group of mourners parted to create a path, so that he arrived at the casket room at the altar But he had come to bid her farewell, not to promise her forever

The priest, a friend of Allison&039;s who had come down from the New York headquarters of the American Catholic Church as a favor to her, raised his arentle to this coan

Octavian exhaled, relieved that he had not used her given name She would not have wanted that In her heart she had never been Nicole

&039;The passing of a loved one is always painful, always sad, and it can create a profound emptiness within us We must fill that ee that Nikki would want us to find new joy and kindness and contentone on to find new joy and kindness, and the ultimate contentment, in the life beyond this one&039;

Octavian sreen veil drawn across the grave As if he had opened a previously locked ht of Charlotte and of the crises still raging in France and Italy, and of Cortez laughing so and he vowed silently to Nikki that he would listen, that he would breathe, that he would be with her until she had been laid to rest, give her all of his attention

The priest began to read fro it in one hand, even as he shook holy water fro the casket A drop landed on Octavian&039;s hand and he exhaled again, a large weight seeone on ahead of him, but they were still connected Once upon a time, no one could knoith real certainty - no s as Heaven and Hell, or spirits or deels But he knew firsthand, and since the Venice Jihad, years ago now, the whole world had known the truth It a to accept it, but it was the truth nevertheless

The spirit did linger on after the flesh had gone to rot

He could not know for certain if he would ain in the next life, but he knew that if he could, he would seek her out For now, that would have to be enough

The priest gave his final blessing, inviting those ere so inclined to pray with him As low voices joined in prayer, Octavian slipped his hand froht to have waited for the priest to finish, but the desire for sonore protocol He stepped up and laid his hands on the smooth metal surface No oneto the last words of the prayer

A low grinding noise caainst stone