As far as cops and Collectors would know, Kate Preston was dead.

Gone for good.

In reality, Gina Lazarescu was still alive and kicking. It’d worked, actually worked. She wore a goofy grin, thinking how she and Cal Nichols had ascended through the roof of her car in that moment before impact. She’d put half-immortal lineage to use, bridging seen and unseen, uniting physical and spiritual elements in a dance of molecules that harkened to those first moments of creation.

Beside her, droplets played in and around Cal’s form as he too regained substance beneath the concealing foliage, and it made her happy. For this transitory moment he was a mist unfazed by the rain, a soul freed from mortality by the Nazarene Himself.

Plus, he was her father. Nickel, he liked to be called.

“Agggh,” he said. “What’s that?”

“What’s wrong?” Gina scanned the road for signs of more trouble, while her hand reached for the dagger strapped to her shin.

“Arachnids!”

“What?”

Nickel flailed at his shirt collar, where a battalion of tiny spiders seemed to have paraglided upon him from the evergreens. Gina was tempted to laugh, but knew his motions might draw attention and threaten this entire charade.

“Just babies,” she said. “Keep still. We’re trying to stay hidden here.”

“Hate ‘em.”

“Seems kind of wimpy for a man with immortal blood.”

“Bears? Werewolves? No problem. Spiders? They’re just . . . creepy.”

“If you say so, Mr. Scaredy-pants. So, where am I supposed to go from here? And what about him?” She pointed at the white Dodge pickup on the roadside, at the man climbing into the cab. He looked familiar, although it was hard to tell in this weather. “You think he’s noticed us at all?”

“Nah,” Nickel said. “He’s got his own issues to deal with, but I’ll be seeing him again soon.”

“You know him?”

“Name Clay Ryker ring any bells?”

“Ryker? Wait, he’s one of those you said was keeping watch over Kenny last month, guarding him while I worked at the hardware store.”

“You got it,” Nickel said. “And he knows your husband’s uncle, Sgt. Turney. Clay has a son of his own, and I’ve asked him to take a personal interest in Kenny’s well-being once he’s heard that you’re dead.”

“Dead. That sounds so . . .”

“Freeing?”

“Morbid.”

“Least you’ll be off the Collectors’ radar. That’s a good thing.”

“You think it’s worked this time.”

“I’d bet my life on it.”

Through sheets of rain, Gina watched Clay back the pickup onto Highway 126 and speed away with someone else beside him in the cab. Cars crawled past the strewn bits of wreckage, and it was only a matter of time before emergency vehicles arrived.

“What now, Dad?”

Down in the chasm, white water had swallowed Gina’s Nissan from view, a reminder that her old life was gone.

His smile shimmered through the rain. “Time to lay low and get ready.”

“Ready for what? ‘Queen of the Resurrected,’ that’s what my name means, right? But you’re telling me I’m not allowed to watch after Kenny any longer or even know where Dov Amit’s hiding. What can I do? What’s the point?”

“Your mothering isn’t done.”

“Sure seems like it to me.”

“For now, you’ll have to supervise from a distance.”

“Supervise? That’s not the same thing.”

“And remain anonymous.”

“What? Please don’t mess with my head, not on this subject.”

Nearly seven years ago, she’d lost newborn Jacob to a Collector’s attack, and minutes ago she’d left behind her role as Kenny Preston’s guardian. She was dead to the world now. Also dead to her own desires. By drinking Nazarene Blood, she had chosen to serve with Those Who Resist.

“How,” she asked, “am I supposed to resist if I can’t show my face?”

“The postcard,” Nickel said.

“Say what?”

“In your pocket. The one I told you to bring along.”

“This?” She pulled the item from her jacket. The front showed the Campo Santo, a cemetery near the Leaning Tower of Pisa. In the corner, an old smudge of her father’s blood pulsed with details of his past—and, by proxy, some of her own.

“You’ll find your purpose in there, Gina.”

“You’re scaring me.”

“Trust me.”

“The last time you told me to trust you, I lost my--”

“You lost Jacob. I know you blame me for what happened at that clinic, but even then I meant what I said. Go on.” He gestured at the postcard. “Find out what really happened.”

She dug her feet into good old terra firma. The downpour pasted long chestnut hair to her bronze skin.

Nickel moved closer. “What’re you waiting for?”

She touched her tongue to the postcard, felt the bloodstain turn moist. Suddenly, she was careening through her father’s recollections, week by week, month by month. What was she looking for? He’d told her earlier she couldn’t miss it, yet even now she was missing so much--bits of Romania, of bears and blackbirds, Israeli wastelands and Jerusalem alleyways, and a baby with a knitted cap lying in his incubator.

No!

She gasped. Her eyes snapped open.

“Don’t pull back,” Nickel said, taking her hand.

“Dad, I can’t do this. Please don’t make me--”

“Don’t look away.”

“Why am I watching this?”

“Because you need to know everything.”

She knew she had lost her son and also knew her husband, Jed Turney, had split with her a couple years later as a result of their shared yet inconsolable grief. Was that any big shocker? Statistics showed that many parents separated after the death of a child.

“Keep going, Gina,” Nickel insisted.

With heart ready to burst, she pressed on. The scene opened again in her mind, a tableau of broken glass and splintered wood and spattered blood and . . . and little Jacob pierced by the nails of a pipe bomb.

A sob lodged in her throat. She couldn’t breathe.

“Jump ahead just a little bit.” Nickel squeezed her hand. “Go to the night right after his memorial.”

Nearly three days had passed and the news crews had backed off, giving Gina and Jed space to mourn, even as authorities continued sifting through the bomb’s aftermath. Above the Chattanooga graveyard, black storm clouds churned. Her baby’s tombstone lay humble and undisturbed.

Jacob Lazarescu Turney

Our precious son

Sept. 8, 1997

One day of pain, an eternity of peace

Amidst the gravestones, Gina’s father appeared with Gina’s mother alongside, Nikki Lazarescu in all her middle-aged, raven-haired glory.

Nickel and Nikki . . .

They were shoveling dirt, rubbing sweat from their eyes, wrapping blisters on their hands, shining a hooded flashlight into the ground, pausing to check the graveyard’s perimeter, and digging, digging, digging.

And then--

What’re they doing? No, no, this can’t be possible.

--Nickel was cracking open the casket, parting those thin baby lips, dribbling Nazarene Blood from the vial around his neck. Jacob’s skin changed from chalky gray to rosy pink. His eyelids fluttered and he let out a life-affirming wail. Alive? Her son was alive? Wrapped in a blanket and that light-blue birthing cap, Jacob pawed at the air, tried to suckle at his Grandma Nikki’s bosom. Nikki drew him close and wept into his wisps of hair.

“Is this real?” Gina whispered.

“To save his life, he had to lose it,” Nickel said.

“You . . . you never told me.” Torn between celebration and a long-time deceit, she swiveled her eyes toward him as anger coiled in her chest. “You let me believe the worst.”

“It was the only way.”

“He’s my son.”

“And we were thinking of you. If we had told you, it would’ve endangered both you and Jacob, not to mention the future of mankind.”

“Mankind?” Gina threw her hands up. “C’mon.”

Her father was resolute. “You’ve seen what these vampires will do. You’ve felt their fury firsthand. Don’t tell me you still doubt the stakes that we’re fighting for. Imagine what would’ve happened if--”

“Stop!” She shoved at his chest. “Don’t go making excuses for this. I deserved to know, and you had no right to keep me in the dark.” Tears rolled from her chin. “I’m not a girl anymore, you know.”

“I know that.”

“You have any idea what you put me through, Dad?”

“I’m sorry. Believe it or not, I’ve had my own griefs in all this, starting as far back as my first wife in the days of Ezekiel.”

Overwhelmed, Gina could hardly fathom that concept at the moment. “Listen,” she said. “Don’t you ever deceive me again, you understand?”

He nodded.

“Now . . .” She filled her lungs with oxygen. “Where is he?”