Chapter 1
Cain stepped up beside me as I stared down from the expansive marble balcony of the fabled Solomon’s Temple to the spread of green gardens below. From this vantage, they resembled a patchwork quilt of new life—in a vast array of green shades. Plants, flowers, and fruits that shouldn’t have been able to grow beside each other were thriving in perfect harmony, despite all odds. New buds of color peppered the green quilt—flowers being born in a kaleidoscope of beauty that made any words obsolete. This scene demanded silence. Respectful admiration. Awe—
“It stinks here,” Cain grumbled, pinching his nose.
I elbowed him in the ribs, smiling in spite of myself. It smelled beautiful and earthy, the humid, warm air pregnant with life.
“You ready?” Cain asked.
My heart fluttered slightly at the question. Phix had only just told us about how long I had actually been gone during my trip through the Doors—a quest I had undertaken in order to gain access to Solomon’s Temple. My ancestral home.
It still felt surreal to be standing here, like I was standing in the heart of the Renaissance—back when all the now-famous art was first being painted or architecture being erected. Like I was the first person to see it all and know what it would one day become.
I had, quite literally, only seen the balcony where we now stood—a massive structure overlooking the gardens. The balcony stretched for over a hundred yards and was filled with all manner of furniture, art, sculptures, and plants; the roof soared high above our heads, supported by gargantuan marble columns.
And this was only one side of the outside of the vast Temple.
I considered Cain’s question pensively, thinking back on my city. Before I had left on my quest, Roland had warned Fabrizio—the First Shepherd—that if anything happened to me, he would drown Kansas City in rivers of blood. He had also sworn that he would hunt Fabrizio down like a dog, turn him into a vampire, and only then kill him—just to be sure Fabrizio’s eternal soul was damned and blacklisted from Heaven. He had warned Fabrizio that only the entire might of the Vatican Conclave and its Shepherds would be able to save Kansas City from his wrath.
Even though Fabrizio was entirely innocent of any guilt—I had just learned that my trip through the Doors had lasted for one year and that most everyone thought me dead.
If one thing could be said about Roland, it was that he was a man of his word. There was a chance that he was still waiting for me, but the more I thought about it, remembering the look I’d seen in those eyes, and his promise to Fabrizio…I didn’t have high hopes.
I let out a breath, rolling my shoulders. “We will handle it,” I said, more confidently than I felt. I almost didn’t want to go back myself. Not because I was scared of what Roland had done.
No.
It was because I was terrified to see what his actions had done to him—a man of the cloth resorting to violence of the sort that he had previously only reserved for monsters. Except…now he was one of those monsters. And the only thing he still seemed to care about was my safety. So I feared that, if he had given up on my return and thought me dead, his actions may have broken something inside him—something he might never be able to recover. In that case, I was the only one who stood a chance of providing any possibility of his redemption—or saving Kansas City.
He needed to see me alive and well, unharmed and whole.
* * *
In my journey through the Doors, I had seen a stained-glass window on a church. In fact, that window had been what let me escape the Doors to earn the right to enter Solomon’s Temple.
And in that window had been a depiction of Roland and a childlike version of me, holding hands before a burning cross, with Heaven above, Hell below, and four haunting figures at the darkened corners of the glass. One of those figures had resembled Nate, I was sure of it, but the others had been only vague silhouettes. Terrifying, frightening silhouettes astride wicked winged beasts of nightmares.
Nate Temple’s new gang of Horsemen to balance the Biblical Four Horsemen.
But that was a problem for another day.
Roland, figuratively speaking, had rescued me from the Doors. Now, it was my turn to rescue him—from himself.
Solomon cleared his throat behind us and I turned to face him. He was a roguishly handsome older man with shoulder-length white hair and a well-groomed white beard. His tan skin was a sharp contrast to his white linen pants and shirt, and his green eyes held all the colors of his gardens below the balcony—brimming with life just as vibrant. The one majorly noticeable aspect of Solomon was that a good portion of his veins were black—looking like a root system beneath his skin. Everyone’s veins looked that way—you just couldn’t normally see them. He didn’t seem particularly affected by the veins, so I was assuming they didn’t bother him much. Or he had a high pain tolerance.
Richard—or Last Breath when in his lion form—stood in his human form at Solomon’s side, hands clasped behind his back. He currently looked like a tall Asian man, heavily corded with muscle and sporting short, black, spiked hair in a messy look. He had the ability to shapeshift entirely into any look he wanted but seemed to prefer this look so far as I had seen.
“Richard will go with you,” Solomon said.
I opened my mouth to argue, knowing that having any new faces at my side when I returned to Kansas City might only make matters worse—let alone if Richard shifted into his lion form and was recognized as Last Breath—the creature that everyone had heard so much about when I was last in town. The one everyone had thought to be hunting me.
Richard must have read the uncertainty on my face because he suddenly stepped forward in an almost aggressive manner, causing Cain to growl in warning as he set his feet and his hand shot to his hip where his bone dagger was tucked into his belt.
The dagger he’d used to kill his brother, Abel, so long ago. I placed a hand on his forearm.
Richard lowered his eyes in a submissive gesture, but his voice was anything but as he raised his eyes to meet mine. “I will simply stalk you from the shadows if you deny my aid. My purpose is to keep the Solomon bloodline safe, and thanks to your mother’s schemes—hiding your very existence from me since your birth—I have so far failed you in that capacity. I will not let my honor be discarded so easily now that I have finally found you.”
My mouth clicked shut, seeing the raw pain dancing in his eyes. He had a point. My parents had concealed my identity with a powerful ward so that those hunting me couldn’t find me when they left me on the steps of Abundant Angel Catholic Church as a baby. My mother had fled Solomon’s Temple, taking the ancient Seal of Solomon with her, before anyone even discovered she was pregnant, and hadn’t been seen since that fateful day at the church where they said their final goodbyes to me.
By coincidence or design—I wasn’t entirely sure which—I had discovered the Seal of Solomon in an underground vault in Kansas City. Using it had essentially turned my GPS signal back on, and Solomon and Last Breath had wasted no time in answering the call—in sending me on the traditional quest of searching out the infamous Solomon’s Temple, my apparent birthright as his only surviving heir.
A birthright that I had just earned, only to discover Kansas City was tearing itself apart in my absence, and that I didn’t have time to explore these halls, get answers to questions about my parents and possibly learn why they had seen the need to hide me from Solomon and Richard, giving me up to be raised by strangers rather than these two.
My mother’s actions led a very loud part of me to hold a certain amount of caution when dealing with Richard and Solomon. She must have had a reason to keep me from them. If a magical fortress on a different plane of existence wasn’t safe enough to raise me, how could an orphanage or adopted family be any safer?
So…
Part of me wanted answers from these two. Part of me wanted to keep my distance.
“You are our family, Callie,” Richard added, in a much gentler tone this time, reading the hesitation on my face.
“She already has a guardian,” Cain said, pointing at Phix. The legendary Sphinx—who had been lounging on a nearby fur carpet, cleaning her wickedly long claws with her teeth—paused to look up at us, blinking lazily…lethally.
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