Мелисса де ла Круз - Keys to the Repository

“Sorry about your car, by the way; although you didn’t need to overreact so much. Anyway, we’ll get you another one. Or

Gorg could fix it. Whatever you’d like. But we need to talk about what happened in there. How do you know our language?

Nothing like that has ever happened to us before. We thought we knew every Praetorian in the district.” He studied her face closely and then plucked a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed her cheek with it. “Best we get you inside and clean up this mess before the police arrive. We don’t like to attract attention. This town might look dead, but I assure you, the smallminded sheriff is very much alive.”

He hopped off the car and easily lifted open the damaged driver’s side door. The metal was bent and twisted, but he hadn’t even broken a sweat. He wasn’t as frail as he had looked earlier, nor as skinny. Bliss wondered if he had been able to adjust his presence somehow. He was quite tall and muscular. Whatever he was—or any of his friends, for that matter—he was not quite human. But neither did he resemble the exquisite monsters from Lucifer’s memory. In any event, he was as much a mystery to her as she was to him.

“Coming?” he asked, waiting for her to step out of the car.

Bliss winced. In the heat of the moment, she hadn’t felt the pain. But now it was unbearable. “I think both my legs are broken.”

“Oh god, now I’m really sorry Malcolm talked me into such a stupid stunt. Here,” he said, bending down so that she could put her arms around his neck.

Her legs dangled uselessly as he carried her back to the butcher shop, and she took the opportunity to study him in more detail. He must have wiped the gunk from his hair, because under the glow of the streetlight, Bliss could see that it was actually a lovely deep chestnut color. He had sharp, fine features, wide blue eyes and an Irish nose, a square jaw and a strong forehead. He wasn’t frail and sickly at all, but young, virile, and very handsome.

After months of searching, Bliss felt oddly safe in his strong arms, and wondered exactly who or what she had found in

Hunting Valley.

Behind them, his team was already clearing away every trace of the accident.

FAMILY RECORDS:

OFF-COVEN

While most, if not all, Blue Bloods families are registered with the Coven, there are a few who choose to live outside of

Committee jurisdiction. These families and individuals are not affiliated with the Silver Blood threat, but neither do they help advance the Blue Bloods’ core mission. They do not attend

Committee meetings, are not active in Coven leadership, and for reasons of their own, prefer to live outside and apart form the community.

DYLAN WARD

Xathaneal, the Hidden One

Birth Name: Dylan Elliot Ward

Origin: May 5, 1992, Greenwich, Connecticut

Known Past Lives: Alfred, Lord Burlington, Earl of Devonshire

(Newport), William Bradford (Plymouth), Paolo Ghiberti

(Florence)

Bondmate: None

Assigned Human Conduit: None

List of Human Familiars: Unknown

Physical Characteristics:

Hair: Black

Eyes: Black

Height: 5’9”

Very little is known of the Ward family since they chose to live off-Coven at the beginning of the twentieth century. The only member that has come to the Committee’s attention is Dylan, for his role in unmasking the Silver Blood conspiracy.

Dylan enrolled at the Duchesne School his sophomore year, and the intern reports state that rumors began circulating from the very beginning that he had been kicked out of every prep school on the Northeastern Seaboard, fueled perhaps by his attitude (sullen, aloof, a perpetual scowl) and his purposefully grungy attire (beat-up leather jacket, dirty jeans).

However, the truth is much more mundane. Dylan attended

Greenwich elementary and middle schools, where he was an average student.

He found friendship with fellow misfits Schuyler Van Alen and Oliver Hazard-Perry, and a budding romance with Bliss

Llewellyn, who was overheard saying, “Dylan’s the kind of boy who broke the rules and let anything happen, and I like that about him.”

The prime suspect of the murder of Aggie Carondolet, Dylan was being held by the Committee for questioning when he escaped and was believed to have attacked again, this time targeting Cordelia Van Alen. However, we now believe that far from being the perpetrator and suffering from Corruption, he was in fact yet another Silver Blood victim, whose memory had been egregiously tampered with, causing disorientation and incoherence. The Venators now believe that Bliss Llewellyn, under the influence of Lucifer, was the real perpetrator.

When Dylan reappeared in New York, he sought out Bliss, who turned him over to her cycle father. Forsyth Llewellyn immediately checked him into Transitions, the vampire rehabilitation center. He was checked out after only a few weeks, and his dead body was later found on Corcovado

Mountain, next to the corpse of Lawrence Van Alen.

As a vampire with no bondmate, Xathaneal was free to choose a cycle mate among the Coven, and was continually drawn to Azazel (Bliss) over history. In 1870, as the eldest son of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, he was engaged to marry Maggie Stanford at the time of her disappearance. It is the Repository’s belief that in other incarnations he was drawn to her as well. May Brewster became Goody Bradford, and

Giulia de Medici was pledged to Paolo Ghiberti.

Current Status: Finished. Slain by Lawrence Van Alen in Rio.

( S e e Revelations: Repository Record #303 for more information on his death.)

Author’s Note: This story takes place after the events in Blue

Bloods and before Masquerade. The story is not told from

Dylan’s point of view, but does shed a little more light on what happened to him.

SHELTER ISLAND

Dylan’s Story

It was the light that started it. Hannah woke up at three o’clock in the morning one cold February day and noticed that one of the old copper sconces along the wall was turned on, emitting a dim, barely perceptible halo. It flickered at first, then died, then abruptly came back to life again. At first she chalked it up to a faulty wire, or carelessness on her part—had she turned off the lights before bed? But when it happened again the next evening, and again two days later, she began to pay attention.

The fourth time, she was already awake when it happened.

She felt around the nightstand for her glasses, put them on, then stared at the glowing bulb and frowned. She definitely remembered turning off the switch before going to bed. She watched as it slowly burned out, leaving the room dark once more. Then she went back to sleep.

Another girl would have been scared, but this was

Hannah’s third winter on Shelter Island and she was used to its

“house noises” and assorted eccentricities. In the summer, the back screen door never stayed closed; it would bang over and over with the wind, or when someone walked in and out of the house—her mother’s boyfriend, a neighbor, Hannah’s friends whose parents had houses on the island and spent their summers there. No one ever locked their doors on Shelter

Island. There was no crime (unless bike-stealing was considered a crime, and if your bike was gone, most likely someone just borrowed it to pedal down to the local market, and you would find it on your front doorstep the next day), and the last murder had been recorded sometime in the 1700s.

Hannah was fifteen years old, and her mother, Kate, was a bartender at The Good Shop, a crunchy, all-organic restaurant and bar that was only open three months out of the year, during the high season, when the island was infested (her mother’s word) with city folk on vacation. The summer people (also her mother’s words) and their money made living on the island possible for year-rounders like them. During the off-season, in the winter, there were so few people on the island it was akin to living in a ghost town.