Stearns fell to his knees, his face blank.
Aiming for the unsub’s head, Heather squeezed off a round just as the man ducked down behind the van. “Trent,” she shouted. “Head him off!”
Heather lunged for the MG, diving behind it. She glanced at the house and her heart jumped into her throat. A blood-drenched figure bent over Collins. The detective’s hands hung limp at his sides; his entire body seemed boneless. Thomas Ronin lifted his face from what remained of Collins’s throat.
Heather swiveled and opened fire on the vampire. Grimacing, fangs bared, Ronin tossed the detective’s body at her.
“Shit!”
The body hit, knocking the air from her lungs and taking her to the ground. Heather’s head bounced against the wet grass. Flickers of light sparked through her vision. Trapped beneath Collins’s weight, she struggled to breathe. She pushed at the body, sucking in the smells of sweat, blood, and shit; of death. Images of his shredded throat and lax face filled her mind. She shoved, frantic and gasping for air. Finally with one last thrust, she wriggled free of the body. She sucked in air, half sobbing.
Ronin now held the dark-haired unsub, his face buried in the man’s throat. The unsub kicked, pounded, and squirmed. He emptied his gun into the vampire’s gut. Ronin quivered with each bullet, snarling as he fed. Blood dribbled onto the concrete.
Climbing to her knees, Heather aimed at Ronin’s head. She caught peripheral movement from the house and swung around, gun in both hands. De Noir, shirtless and shoeless, stepped out of the house, crossed the yard in two quick strides, and seized Ronin by the neck with one hand.
The unsub spilled to the drive, his body loose in a way that turned Heather’s stomach. Ronin twisted in De Noir’s grasp and slashed him across the chest with his fingers. Blood spilled, then…stopped. The gashes faded. Vanished. De Noir’s wings unfurled. He carried Ronin into the sky.
The van started up. Reversed. Bumped up and over the unsub’s body. Skidded out into the street. Heather jumped to her feet, heart pounding. Jordan! She raised her .38. Jordan puckered his lips, lifted his hand, and blew her a kiss. She fired. The bullet starred the passenger window. She squeezed off another round, but the gun clicked, the magazine empty.
Jordan hit the gas. The van accelerated down the street and into the night.
Heather tipped her head back and screamed, “Fuck!”
Jordan was gone. Dante shot…Dante…She whirled. The threshold was empty.
De Noir must’ve moved him or —She ran out into the street. The van was gone.
S is mine.
* * * *
Lucien twisted in the sky, talons buried in Ronin’s shoulders. The vampire sank his fangs into Lucien’s chest, sucking in healing, life-sustaining blood. Lucien pummeled Ronin’s head with his fist, distorting the skull and popping its fangs from his flesh.
The skull rippled, returned to its original shape. Ronin locked gazes with Lucien. “That taste,” he said. “Like Dante’s blood — unique.”
“I hope you enjoyed it. It was your last.”
Lucien gripped the vampire at shoulder and hip, then wrenched. Blood sprayed into the night as flesh and bones tore, separated. Torqued. Ronin screamed, eyes shut, his fangs moonlit. His nails gouged furrows down Lucien’s chest.
Lucien pulled Ronin apart at the waist. Organs dropped to the earth, a shower of gore. Below, the Mississippi snaked, glimmering beneath the stars, a black river crossing a black land. Lucien released the vampire’s lower portion. Legs spasming, it fell into the river.
Winging through the night, Lucien slapped away Ronin’s clawing, punching hands, fended off his snapping jaws. He hovered above a riverside factory smokestack. Sparks flitted into the sky from its dark mouth.
“I would lay the world to waste for my son,” Lucien said and pulled his talons free of Ronin’s flesh.
As the vampire fell, he grabbed the X-rune pendant. The chain snapped. Smiling, Ronin plummeted into the smokestack, the chain wrapped around his fingers. A shower of sparks flew into the air.
Lucien stared into the night, hand at his throat.
The pendant was gone.
29
All Things S
Darkness.
Music pounded, his own. Inferno.
Smelled blood, sour sweat, engine exhaust.
Tasted blood in his mouth, his own.
Something jabbed against his neck. Stung. Cold chemicals flooded his veins. Dulled the pain in his head.
“Mine,” a voice whispered. Unfamiliar. Fading. Fingers touched his face. “I’ll be your god and you’ll love me.”
Darkness. Drug rush. Dante fell, dreaming.
* * * *
Heather sat in the grass beside Stearns’s body, her hand frozen above his motionless chest, longing to touch the man who’d been more of a father to her than James William Wallace, yearned to say good-bye. But she couldn’t force her hand any lower.
He shot Dante in cold blood. And now —
A rush of cold air fluttered Heather’s hair, drew her gaze up. De Noir’s black wings cut through the sky, flapping as he landed. His golden-eyed gaze skipped around the yard. Desperation shadowed his face.
Sirens pierced the silence.
“Where is he?”
“Jordan has him,” she said. “In the van.” S is mine. Her eyes stung.
“I can’t feel him,” De Noir said, voice strained. “Something has obscured our link. Feels like…static.” Fanning his wings, he lifted into the air.
“Wait!” Heather climbed to her feet. She looked around the yard turned killing ground. All dead. A pang of regret pierced her as her gaze fell upon Collins’s body. She remembered their earlier conversation about LaRousse: The man didn’t deserve to die hard.
Neither did you, Trent, she thought, throat tight.
If she stayed, she’d be busy making statements and doing debriefings for hours, possibly days. The CCK had Dante. Dante was nightkind, true. But Elroy Jordan was a sexual sadist who now possessed a victim who healed. One he could “kill” over and over again. She couldn’t afford to lose time.
“Take me with you,” she said.
De Noir hovered in the air, face cold and unreadable.
“I know Jordan’s patterns, I can help. Please.”
De Noir’s taloned hands curled into fists. He dropped to the ground again. The sirens drew closer. Heather ran across the street to Collins’s car, threw open the door and stretched across the seat. Grabbing the briefcase, she ran back to the yard and De Noir.
“Hold on,” he said, wrapping an arm around her waist.
Heather draped an arm around De Noir’s neck, heart kicking against her ribs. His wings flared, air gusted, and they rose into the sky. She looked down. Squad cars screeched to a slanting halt in the street before Ronin’s house. Blue lights strobed across the houses, cars, bodies. A block down the street, an ambulance waited, lights flashing, for the all-clear signal from the cops.
The wind of De Noir’s passage blew cold against Heather’s face, frosting her hair, her lashes. Shivering, she shut her eyes. De Noir closed his other arm around her, held her tight and without effort. His heat radiated into her, melting away the cold. She tucked her face into his neck. His warm, earthy smell turned her thoughts to Dante.
Heart aching, muscles knotted, Heather shouted her thought into the night, hoping, somehow, that Dante would hear her.
I’m coming for you.
* * * *
Darkness.
Pain throbbed in his head. His neck. Burned in his shoulders. Muscles twisted. He tried to lower his arms. Metal bit into his wrists. Clunked against more metal.
Handcuffed.
Dante opened his eyes. Red laced his vision. He lay on his side, arms stretched above his head. He smelled cheap tobacco and plastic and the sharp scent of his own blood. A mortal knelt behind him. Gripped his shoulder. Pain wormed and worried into his neck, the base of his skull. Blood trickled hot down his neck and under his shirt.
Papa Prejean’s basement.
Dante jerked down with all his strength. Pain bit into his shoulders again. Clunk-tunk. The cuffs held.
The hand on Dante’s shoulder pinched. Hard.
“Hold still,” an unfamiliar voice said. “You do that again, no telling where this shiv’ll end up.”
Dante squeezed his eyes shut as the shiv dug and scraped. More hot blood flowed down his neck.
“Got it! Hot damn!”
The digging stopped. Dante released the breath he’d been holding and sucked in a lungful of stale air laced with the mortal’s old smoke-and-bile stink; a stink he recognized, but couldn’t name. Like an ice pick jabbing behind his eyes, migraine pain stabbed his thoughts, chipped away at his concentration.
The mortal wiped at his neck. Paper rustled. Then he slapped something across the wound. “Gotcha Batman Band-Aids. Thought you’d like that.”
A fingertip shove to Dante’s shoulder rolled him onto his back. His handcuffs clinked. And, beneath him, plastic crinkled. Dante opened his eyes and winced. A small covered light burned above him in the ceiling. Not a basement, no. A car? No sensation of movement. No engine hum. Not moving.
A shadow shuffled past, silhouetted against the light. Kinda looks like Peeping Tom’s assist —
Elroy the Perv knelt beside Dante, a grin stretching his lips. A sling cradled his left arm against his chest. In his right hand, pinched between two fingers, he displayed a bloodied sliver of plastic. “See this?” he said. “A bug implanted at birth. So you could always be followed. Studied. Et cetera, et cetera. I had to dig mine out by myself.”
Pain slammed through Dante’s skull. Bugs? Implants? An image flickered behind the pain — a woman, short blonde hair, blue eyes, fangs — murmuring, They’re afraid of you, my little True Blood. Pain shattered the image.
Ronin’s low voice: What are you afraid of, True Blood?
A needle pricked the skin on his throat.
“Your nose is bleeding,” Elroy said. “That’s kinda sexy.”
The Perv’s lips, hot and tasting of tobacco, pressed against Dante’s mouth; his kiss as gentle as a fist. As Elroy’s hand glided over Dante’s body, the drugs tumbled him back into the darkness of Papa Prejean’s basement.
Dante-angel?
Let me burn, princess.
* * * *
Heather opened her eyes as De Noir descended, gliding, onto the wrought-iron balcony outside Dante’s bedroom. She slipped her arms from around his neck and stepped down onto the concrete. Her hand felt frozen to the briefcase’s handle. A quick glance revealed bright red fingers, cold, but not iced.
She walked into the unlit bedroom through the opened French windows. The air smelled of candle wax and crisp autumn leaves, smelled of Dante. The sight of the unmade futon, the rumpled sheets, twisted her heart. She closed her eyes.
Focus on finding Jordan. Focus on finding him fast — before he goes to work on Dante and learns he never has to stop.
Heather opened her eyes and strode across the room. As she rounded the corner into the hall, she saw Simone on the stairs, her pale face anxious.
“Lucien told us what happened,” Simone said, stepping onto the landing. “What do you need Trey to do?” Her dark gaze shifted past Heather and up.
De Noir stepped past Heather, buttoning on a black shirt.
Lucien told us what happened. Of course. Heather swallowed back the words she’d planned to say, hard words —Dante took a bullet to the head and now a serial killer has him, just as he said he would, just as he promised, in innocent blood.
Heather said, “I need your brother to do another search for any kind of rentals or purchases recently made by either Ronin or Jordan. Have him do a vehicle search too.”
“D’accord.” Turning, Simone trotted down the stairs.
De Noir glanced at the briefcase. “What’s inside?”
Heather looked up and met his gaze. “Dante’s past.”
“Where did you get it?”
“From my boss,” she said, voice low. “The man who shot Dante.”
De Noir’s jaw tightened. His gaze shifted to a point above and beyond Heather. Tendrils of his black hair snaked up into the now electrified air. The smell of ozone spiked the air. Heather’s hair lifted. Her skin tingled. Lightning strike.
“Have you looked at what’s in that case?”
“No. I’d hoped to give it to Dante.”
De Noir’s gaze dropped and swept over Heather. She saw nothing she recognized in his eyes, human or otherwise. After a moment, he nodded.
“Then we shall look at it together,” he said.
* * * *
Arm throbbing, E steered the van into a rest stop off I-59. Needed a pick-me-up. He shut off the engine, glanced in the rearview mirror. Dante slept, head turned to one side, handcuffed wrists stretched above him.
E opened the door, slid partway out, then froze. Maybe Dante wasn’t sleeping. Maybe he was faking it and planned some kind of kicking, yelling, rescue-me-bullshit. Better make sure. Climbing back into the van, E crawled past the front seats to the back, and scooted to the air bed.
Dante’s breathing was slow and easy. Strands of black hair partially covered his face. E poked him in the ribs. Nuthin’. Doped and flying sky-high. He grabbed his shoulder, shook him. Nuthin’.
E’s gaze scrolled down the bloodsucker’s hard, yummy body — bondage collar; vintage black NIN T-shirt, rucked up a little, a line of flat belly exposed; chain-strapped black jeans, metal-studded belt, the belt and jeans unfastened at the moment.
E bent over Dante, a shiv sliding into his good right hand. He punched the shiv into Dante’s chest. The bloodsucker’s body spasmed. His breath caught, rattled, then released hard and fast. Blood bubbled up on his lips. But his eyes didn’t open. Out cold.
Damned good drugs, E mused. Wonder if he can heal with the shiv in his chest?
Rummaging through his satchel, E dry-swallowed a handful of pills, then made his way up front again. He hopped out of the van and sauntered to the free-coffee stand. The image of Dante sleeping with the shiv buried in his flesh burned itself into his mind and left him trembling.
* * * *
Heather sat at the kitchen table, the briefcase open on the cobalt-blue tablecloth, and switched on her laptop. De Noir drew up a chair and sat beside her, frowning. Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the folder from the briefcase, set it on the table and opened it.
Photos spilled out: some current, taken surreptitiously, Dante unaware; others showed Dante as a teenager, a child, a toddler; the boy’s wary gaze, the toddler’s fanged half smile, the teen’s smirk and raised middle finger.
She handed each photo to De Noir. He studied every image for long moments, jaw tensing, wordless. One photo captured her attention: Dante laughing, his arms around a grinning girl with freckles and long red hair, her face half turned to him. Dante appeared to be twelve, maybe thirteen, the girl eight or nine.
Her name was Chloe. And you killed her.
Heather stared at the picture, at Dante’s happy face, the only photo of him laughing — big brother and guardian angel for another child lost in the system of foster homes and state programs. Handing De Noir the photo, she slid the CD into the laptop’s drive. When a menu popped up, she lined down to the section marked S AND CHLOE and clicked it open. Surreptitiously filmed footage filled the monitor:
In faded jeans and a gray tee, Dante sits cross-legged on the floor, his back against a neatly made bed, his attention focused on the book in his lap. Chloe sits on the bed in lavender cords and pink Pooh sweater, watching him, her sneakered feet kicking idly against the bed frame. A plushie orca is tucked under one arm.
“Sound it out,” she says, twirling a strand of red hair around her finger.
“Kum…for…kumfor…tay…bull…kumfortaybull. Comfortable.”
“You got it!”
“Yeah?” A pleased smile lights Dante’s face.
“Yup,” Chloe confirms. “
Now finish the sentence.”
“Pooh’s bed was comfortable and…warm.”
“You learn fast,” Chloe says. “I bet if you didn’t sleep during the day and could go to school, you’d get straight As.”
Dante snorts, then glances back at her from over his shoulder. “I’d have all Fs.”
“For…?” Chloe coaxes, gathering his hair into a ponytail and smoothing its black length between her hands. “What starts with F?”
“Fuck school.”
She giggles, covering her mouth with her hand. “Dante-angel!”
A blur of motion, then Dante is suddenly up from the floor and tickling Chloe. She shrieks with laughter, rolling on the bed, her sneakers thumping the mattress. Laughing, he tucks an arm against his side and tries to protect his ribs from her retaliatory fingers.
He tugs free the plushie orca from under Chloe’s arm and swims the toy through the air past her grabbing hands. He stops it at her nose. Leans it forward. “Mmm-wah !” A big sloppy orca kiss.
“Can I brush your hair while you practice printing the alphabet?” Chloe asks.
“Sure,” Dante says, handing the orca back to her.
“Boy, you need to get your ass down to the basement and now,” a man’s voice — bayou-bred and deep — says from off-camera. “Gotta visitor comin’ and gotta cuff you up. You don’t need none of dat school shit for the work you do, petit . Waste o’ time.” The speaker laughs, a cigarette-raspy sound ending in a cough.
“Fuck you,” Dante says. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Chloe’s smile vanishes and she sits up, the plushie held tight against her pink sweater. “Leave him alone,” she says, her voice sharp, her brows slanting down — defiant and pale.
“Hush, you. Or I’ll put my hand upside your head.”
Dante’s hand squeezes Chloe’s knee. She closes her mouth. He looks at the speaker, all expression gone from his face, but fire burns in his dark eyes, a fire the speaker must feel, see.
“You’re gonna need more than handcuffs to hold me if you touch her,” Dante says, his voice low and flat.
A Rush of Wings Page 28
