Sorry for the slow update! Hope you enjoy :-D

All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother
-Abraham Lincoln

Chapter 13: Messenger of Hope

For a few seconds, the people in the church could do nothing but sit and stare at the roof as the stones that fell became bigger and bigger. Serena could feel her urge for blood rise as the heart around her beat quicker and quicker, the sound of the rush of their blood rushing through veins clear to her ears.

It wasn't until, with a large dunk followed by the scream of his sister, a young boy was hit in the head by a stone that the people reacted. Within seconds, the inside of the cathedral was alive with running people and their screams. Giulia and Juan had been pulled away by the crowd, and when Jane rose she could see Juan in the midst of the people running.

Cesare grabbed her arm. "We must save the Pope." He didn't wait for her nod before running up towards the altar. Had it not been for Jane, he wouldn't have made it; running against a crowd as terrified as this one required a vampire's strength.

The roof that covered the altar and the choir seemed safe and stable but there was no saying how long it would stay that way. Rodrigo was attempting to shout advice over the crowd, telling them to walk close to the walls or the pillars where the roof was less likely to break, but he was not heard.

"Father, are you alright?" Cesare rushed up the stairs.

"Yes, yes, but look. You must help me help them!" The Pope was already on his way down but Cesare grabbed his arm.

"They will hear you no more if you stand amongst them and their danger will be no less if you died. So stay here." Cesare stared into his father's eyes for a moment before Rodrigo finally took that extra step backwards that signaled his defeat. "You must get the choir out safely. Is there a passage?"

"There was, yes. But the door to the priory has been blocked." He inclined to a door, halfway hidden behind stones.

"We must wait, then," Jane cut in. "The roof here is not going to break any time soon, so we will be safe here, at least until the tumult is over."

The two men nodded, both looking up to find that she was right; the roof didn't even have a crack. The Pope then walked up to the very frightened choir, whose widened eyes were watching the chaos beneath them with horror. He began talking to them, attempting to calm them or at least keep them from running into the mass of people.

Suddenly, a loud crack could be heard. Jane instantly turned around to see one of the pillars falling, unnaturally slowly, downwards. It hit the tiles with a sound so loud that Jane's ears were filled with the sound of tinnitus for a long time after. She turned to the choir again, seeing that whatever fear Rodrigo had manage to erase had settled in the boys again.

"It's clearing." Cesare nodded to the nave. The dust from when the pillar had fallen was slowly floating to the ground, revealing a church much less filled with people than before. Jane could count nine bodies, some dead, some very injured, but she couldn't help but wonder how many lay hidden beneath the stones that the pillar had taken down with it. "Father, it's time," he called, seeing as the boys seemed to be preparing to run anyways.

"One at a time, now," the Pope said, trying to slow them down. It didn't work, and within seconds, the entire choir was running out, only barely forming a line.

The youngest of them, a tiny soprano, ran in the back, his small feet not capable of carrying him as quickly as the taller boys. He fell further and further behind, sometimes tripping a bit in his long white and red robes. The Pope watched the young boy closely, so closely that he missed what was going on further up. Jane didn't, though.

Far above the small boy's head, a stone that had been hanging onto the rest of the roof with only a splinter now finally fell down, picking up speed for every centimeter. The boy heard the sound of air moving above him and for a second, his eyes went up and saw his doom before his voice rose in a scream that sounded more like a song; a song of an angel. The light and naturally sad soprano cut through the dust-filled air like a knife, resonating in the walls around the boy, only to be cut off moments later by the dull, soft sound of the stone hitting the head, almost like an anti climax after the beautiful song, a song that still resonated for a second after its end.

Rodrigo fell to his knees after seeing this, hopeless and full of despair. Jane couldn't help but wonder what he was going through in that moment. Then she looked back at the boy and began listening for a sign, anything at all… and there it was; a heartbeat, weak and barely there, but a heartbeat nonetheless.

She made a tiny gesture for Cesare to follow as she rushed down the steps towards the tiny, tiny body that lay on the ground. Jane could move freely in the cathedral without fearing for falling stones so she went in the straightest line from the choir to the boy, but she was startled to notice that Cesare did the same. Noticing his selflessness, she couldn't help but wonder if she'd have acted the same, had she been the human.

She kneeled down beside the lifeless boy and let her hands move across the vital points of his body, feeling a pulse, sensing his breathing. "He's alive," she whispered.

It took no longer than two seconds from when she said those words until Cesare had swept the boy up into his arms and they were both hurrying to the exit.

"We need a doctor!" she called as soon as they came out of the cathedral, finding an enormous mass of people waiting outside. Some were crying, others were roaring and some were praying. Whatever they were doing, by the sight of the young boy, the intensity of their actions grew. She swore she heard a man saying, "Are we letting the damned Borgia Pope kill children now?"

"Didn't you hear me?" she screamed, looking from citizen to citizen. "A doctor, now!"

Some of them had the dignity to shake their heads sadly while others just kept doing whatever they were doing. Jane was about to lose her composure when, as if sent from Heaven, two familiar faces appeared in the midst of the crowd. "Alec," she breathed.

He was running now, his face a mask of relief mixed with dread. Jane rose from her kneeling position beside the boy, whom Cesare had placed on the ground, preparing herself for her brothers arrival.

He came crashing into her, his arms wrapping themselves securely in place around her. "I thought you were still in there." His voice was rasp, horrified and relieved all at the same time.

"You need to help him." Jane quickly unwrapped herself of his arms, not wanting to cause a scene. "Can you?"

Alec smiled and stroked her cheek. "For you."

She felt warm inside, like returning home, and couldn't help but smile as she watched him get to work on the lifeless body. She could see him return to his natural habitat, a place where his confidence in his skills made him capable of commanding the Pope's son around. But when Jane's eyes looked up, she was met by a sight that made her heart stop.

She realized, upon seeing him again, that she had doubted her feelings for Julio. That she had wanted to explore their strength by sleeping with someone as charming as Machiavelli. But in the moment, her love for him was stronger than anything she had ever felt before. It was terrifying.

"I… Julio…" She swallowed. "The Pope is still in there." Julio seemed dumbfounded when she turned away from him and rushed into the cathedral once more. Suddenly she was trembling, the burden of not only the broken cathedral roof, but now also her emotions. She felt guilt for cheating on him, devastated when she realized how Julio might have interpreted her leaving him so abruptly and horrified for what all these emotions would do to her.

Inside, the cathedral was not as dark as before; light fell unstopped through the hole in the roof. The blue sky seemed unfitting to the sad scene that was painted in front of her. Large blocks of white stone were standing, huge and heavy, wherever they had fallen, while the smaller stones had been scattered across the floor, all of it covered in a layer of dust.

Jane found the Pope kneeling before a large pile of stones. Some of the broken pillar had rolled across the floor until it hit a big stone. Here, apparently, a large flake of stone had fallen down upon it. The flake was enormous; it was rectangular and almost as thick as the pillar. Most of its weight, though, was supported by the pillar so it was possible that there was an empty hole between the floor and the flake. You couldn't tell, though, because on each side the flake's ends had broken off and covered the entrances to the possible cave.

Jane's footsteps were easily audible in the pristine silence, yet the Pope didn't seem to notice. "Holy Father?" she said, stopping her steps some meters behind him. When he didn't answer, she continued walking, kneeling by his side when she reached him. He was deep in prayer, tears running down his face.

"Holy Father?" This time, he reacted. His face lifted from his prayer only to look at the stones before him.

"Someone's down there." He collected himself. "What have I done to enrage God so much?"

Jane shook her head. "Nothing." She reached out to grip his shoulder. "We should save whoever is down there."

"We cannot. It is too big, too heavy. She will have died before we get enough people assembled to lift it."

Jane felt her heart sink. He was right; getting enough people to lift the block would take hours at the least and she supposed the person down there was crushed. She stood up and walked to it, her mind racing. She could lift it; she knew that, but not in front of a human. She would not reveal herself. A bloody tear fell down her cheeks and she carefully wiped it away before turning to face the Pope.

He looked at her and nodded, apparently reading her emotions from her eyes. "I know. I am sorry."

For a second, they stood there, watching each other. The next, they were staring in shock at the pile of stones. Because from beneath it, a scream rose; not a scream of fear or of pain, but a scream of life. It was the sound of a newborn.

Rodrigo scrambled to his feet and stumbled to the stones, his hands moving across them. He managed to remove the smaller ones, but they were not the problem. Jane couldn't care less that another tear of blood trickled down her face because what she was about to do would be even harder to explain.

She walked forward, Rodrigo stepping aside for her. She gripped the top of the stone that covered the opening to the cave where apparently a human lay buried. For a moment, she froze. Her mind, too. Then, she had decided.

It took only one yank from her hands to get the stone free and it toppled over, moving away from the cage with a loud, crashing sound.

Jane kneeled to look into the newly revealed opening. In the dim lighting, she saw a woman. Her hair was wet with sweat and blood from her wound in the forehead and dirty with dust. Her face was grey and pale and was only revealed to Jane because her neck was curved unnaturally so that she could look out at her savior with pleading eyes. The only place on her body that wasn't covered in dust was the lines that her tears had cleared. Her breathing was trembling as she tried to speak.

Jane stood up and moved around the pile until she stood on the side where the pillar was. She pressed her fingertips in between the stone of the pillar and that of the flake and pushed upwards.

A slim string of light illuminated the inside of the coffin when Jane's eyes met with Rodrigo's. He was in complete utter shock at her strength. For some reason, Jane didn't feel regret for because of what he was seeing; she felt pride. The string grew wider as she lifted the block higher up into the air, eventually having to step onto the pillar to be tall enough so that she could tilt it over. The air was filled with first the bang of the stone hitting the ground, then the cracking of it splintering.

Before Jane, in between the pillar and the broken flake, in the midst of the chaos, a miracle had happened. From where she stood, Jane looked right down into the woman's face, her light brown dirty hair a halo around her head. The skirt of her beautiful yellow dress was drenched in blood and underneath it, between the woman's thighs, a small bump could be seen.

Jane quickly jumped off the pillar and kneeled by the woman's side, pulled up her skirt and took a look at the baby underneath. Apart from being very small, the child looked healthy. Jane reached for the hem of her own skirts and ripped off a large piece of her under gown. She used the white, soft material to wipe off the newborn's face before wrapping him in it.

The woman's eyes were but crack in her face when she looked up at the unknown woman. When she looked to the other side, she found the Pope of Rome making his way towards her. Jane smiled at her, attempting to calm her. "It's a boy," she whispered.

The woman reached out a trembling arm and Jane let her hold him for a few seconds. "We must get her out of here," she said to Rodrigo.

He nodded. "If… if you help her, I'll take the boy." He seemed to have realized that Jane was a lot stronger than him.

Jane smiled to the woman. "What's your name?"

"Maria." Her voice was strained; she was definitely in pain. "Here," she said, giving the boy freely to Jane, sparing her for the job of explaining. Jane took the boy carefully. The white cloth that covered him was now mostly red and a light pink. She gave him to Rodrigo.

Jane put her arm around Maria's shoulder. "Here, let me help you." Jane got her up into a sitting position, but it was obvious that the woman had limited powers left. Her head fell onto Jane's shoulder and her eyelids fluttered closed; but when Jane spoke more encouraging words, the woman still helped. With closed eyes as to save her strength, she pushed herself to stand and managed to place one foot in front of the other, one step at a time leading her to the doors.

Jane exited first, a bleeding, weak woman leaning against her. Jane found that her brother had laid the other injured in a line and found another doctor to help. Jane gently lay the woman down at the end of the line before turning to see the Pope exit the cathedral. He held the baby boy in his arms gently, trying to lull him back to sleep. He didn't succeed; as soon as Rodrigo set foot outside the cathedral, the boy was screaming again. The reaction amongst the people was very different; some cried, some thanked God, some clapped their hands. But they all had their attention turned, and to them all, this child seemed like a blessing.

All of a sudden, a man's screams could be heard from the crowd. As he came closer, you could make out that what he was calling was Maria's name and before long, he had pushed himself to the front of the crowd and hurried up the steps. He stopped at the top of the stairs, taking in the scene, and then screamed, "No!"

The man leaped to what Jane supposed was his wife. He kneeled opposite to Jane, reaching for his Maria's face and stroking her cheek. Then he kissed her softly, tears running down his face. He then pulled her upper body up so that her head was resting on his thighs. His hands moved through her hair, stroking calmly.

"Signor?" Jane asked uncertainly.

"Who are you?" His eyes stared at her; he was clearly trying to protect her.

"My name is Giovanna." Jane spoke as calmly as possible, hoping the calm would infect him, too. "This is your son." The Pope stepped forward and gave the boy to the man. "He was born just before. We saved him."

He looked at her, clearly not believing her at first. Then his attitude changed and his eyes were full of sincerity when he spoke again. "Thank you."

He gave the child to the mother, let her hold him. Jane backed away and watched them from a distance as they whispered to each other, both crying. She then turned away and found her brother washing his hands in a bucket of water.

"Brother." He looked up at her. "The boy that we brought out before…"

"Michel."

"Where is he?" Alec licked his lips anxiously. He sighed and stood up to look properly at his sister.

"His parents came here some minutes ago to pick up his body." Alec put a hand on her shoulder.

"His body?" Jane looked at him without understanding, but he just nodded. Slowly, it dawned on her. He was dead. The young boy was dead. "It cannot be." Alec just nodded dreadfully before pulling her in for a hug. Jane stood completely still, staring into the clothing that covered his chest. Something inside her broke with the thought.

Just as she thought this couldn't possible get any worse, she heard a scream from behind her. There had been so many screams today that it took her a moment to realize that she had to see to it. Slowly, almost drowsily, she pulled away from her brother. She felt like in a trance when she turned around to find the man, Maria's husband, cramping together above his wife and son, crying.

Jane just stood there, staring at them wit

hout being capable of fully understanding it. Instead, she just observed the man's body; how his crying made his entire body tremble; how his jaw sometimes clenched; how his eyes kept looking from one place to another in search of a God.

After some time, the Pope went to calm him. Jane saw how Rodrigo used gestures and looks to calm the man and suddenly found herself walking towards them, kneeling by them.

"Do you know what you wish to call your son?" the Pope asked the man. He shook his head, so deep in his sorrow over his lost wife. Her eyes had been closed, Jane noticed. She didn't look like she was sleeping, though, which was the entire purpose of closing the eyes of the dead. She looked completely and utterly dead.

"Can I suggest something for you?" The man just nodded, probably only listening so that he had something to hold onto. "Gabriel." There was a pause in which life stood still. "Gabriel was the messenger of God's son. Today, your son has been the messenger of hope for many people. I am sure he will do great things."

The man didn't say anything at first. Then, quietly, he muttered the name. "Gabriel. Messenger of hope."

Jane smiled bitterly as she looked at the boy, Gabriel. She couldn't help but hope that he wouldn't do great things. Great things often brought great evils with them.