A Rush of Wings

by Adrian Phoenix

  Lucien saw Genevieve in every act of love Dante performed, in every kindness he showed. In those moments, Lucien saw his laughing, dark-haired little Genevieve.

  But, as for the woman who’d killed her…

  Lucien swiveled and watched as Johanna Moore pushed herself free of Jordan’s body. Her hand reached up, grabbing the broken syringe in her throat. She yanked it out, blood trickling from the puncture, then froze, her gaze traveling up the length of Lucien’s body.

  Johanna Moore paled. Her fingers froze around the sliver of steel in her belly.

  Jordan’s blood-frothed lips curved into a smile. His eyes closed.

  “Do you remember Genevieve Baptiste?” Lucien asked, kneeling beside Dante. “My son’s mother?” He picked up Moore’s gun and tossed it down the darkened hall.

  Shock blanched Johanna’s face. Widened her eyes. “Your…son?” she whispered.

  “Oui, mon fils,” Lucien said. He glanced at Heather; she opened her eyes. “But, I believe my question was — do you remember Genevieve Baptiste?”

  Lucien slipped an arm around Heather and eased her up, helping her to sit against the wall. Her gaze remained on Dante, reluctant to leave him. Lucien touched a talon beneath her chin. Heather regarded him with shock-dilated eyes.

  “It’s all right,” he promised.

  Heather drew in a deep breath, then winced. Lucien brushed her hair back from her face. Her wound no longer bled, but she needed medical attention. The drugs had kept Dante from finishing whatever it was he’d started.

  “I’m waiting,” Lucien said.

  “Yes, I remember her,” Moore stammered, voice rough. She yanked the file from her flesh. It hit the floor with a sharp tink.

  Lucien drew a talon across his wrist. Blood welled up. He looked at Moore from beneath his brows. “Say her name.”

  “Genevieve Baptiste,” Moore breathed. “I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have —”

  “Be silent,” Lucien said, gathering Dante into his arms.

  Moore closed her mouth.

  Lucien pressed his bleeding wrist against Dante’s lips. The blood smell roused Dante’s nightkind instinct and he sucked at the wound, swallowing the healing blood. Lucien knew it wouldn’t cleanse all of the drug’s effects, but it would lessen them.

  Looking back at Moore, Lucien said, “I’ve read the file. I’ve seen the CD. I know what you’ve done to Dante. To him and to his mother, my love.”

  Moore looked away. She trailed a shaking hand through her blonde hair.

  Why have you abandoned us?

  Lucien tasted the ashes of bitter regret. He deserved Dante’s hate, perhaps.

  My Genevieve, I am with our son. He is safe at last.

  Lucien pulled his wrist away from Dante’s mouth, then bent and kissed him, breathing energy in between his lips. Urged his son up to consciousness.

  Awaken, child. Time to take your revenge.

  Time to free yourself from the past.

  Dante’s eyes opened, revealing dilated gold-rimmed pupils.

  * * * *

  “Avenge your mother,” Lucien whispered. “And yourself.”

  Pushing Lucien’s arms aside, Dante sat up. The corridor spun. Colored flecks starred his vision. His head ached, but a different kind of pain knifed his heart.

  Heather.

  He looked for her, saw her resting against the wall, a smile on her pale lips. Rising to his feet, he crossed the floor and, kneeling, touched a hand to her face.

  He breathed a little easier knowing she’d live. He’d flooded energy and song into her, seeking what was broken. He wasn’t sure what he’d done, but it had worked. He hadn’t lost her.

  Heather laid her hand over his, her skin cool. Wonder lit her face. “I hear a song. It’s dark and furious and heartbreaking. So beautiful. Is it coming from you?”

  Dante nodded. Leaning in, he kissed her. Her fingers inter-laced with his. “Don’t listen,” he said against her lips. “Shut it out. D’accord?”

  “Let it go. I can build a case against Moore,” Heather said. “Let it go, Dante.”

  Dante leaned back. “No.” He squeezed her hand, then released it. He stood.

  Heather closed her eyes. “Pigheaded,” she whispered.

  Dante spun on his heel and strode across the corridor, past Lucien, Heather’s fear pressed like a rose against his heart. For him. She was scared for him.

 

 

  Elroy the Perv’s body stretched across the doorway, his shirt bloodied, his eyes empty, his heart silent. Dissipating heat shimmered up from the body. Dante’s hands curled into fists. Gina. Elroy had taken the last little bit of her to the grave.

  “Name the one you love,” Dante whispered, stepping over the Perv.

  Tomorrow night?

  Always, ma petite.

  Dante walked into a room rank with buried memories and the smell of old blood and medicine. He looked at the woman standing at the opposite wall — tall, blonde, nightkind. Never taking her eyes from him, she reached for a dart gun on the counter beside her.

  Images sparked: She looks down at him, smiling. He smells Chloe’s blood congealing on the floor, on the straitjacket wrapped around him. “You’ve done well, little one. You failed to protect her, but you protected yourself. No one can ever be used against you if you’re willing to kill them yourself.”

  Sparked: She tightens his restraints, smooths a hand through his hair, then, smiling, steps back as a man in a white lab coat and a clear mask walks into the room, a baseball bat clenched in his hand. And goes to work.

  Wasps droned. Pain whispered through Dante’s mind. White light squiggled at the edges of his vision. He watched her hand slide to the dart gun; he let her curl her fingers around it.

  She’s the one, Dante-angel.

  I know, princess.

  “My True Blood,” she said. A smile brushed her lips. “Do you remember me?”

  “Oui,” Dante said, voice low. “I remember you.”

  Dante moved and caught her wrist as she raised the dart gun, then slammed her against the wall. The dart gun tumbled from her fingers and tunked against the tile. Moore twisted, but Dante held her against the wall, his hands locked around her wrists, his body pressing against hers, his thigh between her legs.

  Dante smelled the blood flowing through her veins, listened to the hard pounding of her heart, smelled her — cinnamon and cloves and cold, cold ice.

  Smelled lust, smoldering and pheromone-rich.

  Moore stopped struggling. She looked into Dante’s eyes. Her breath caught in her throat and another memory-fragment tore through his mind: Moore curled naked and warm beside him, reeking of blood and sex, her fangs in his throat, her fingers in his hair.

  Rage coiled through muscles already taut. “What makes you different from him?” Dante nodded his head toward Jordan’s body behind him.

  “I know what’s best for you.”

  “Yeah, he thought so, too.”

  “No one knows you like I do,” Moore said, voice husky. “I’ve explored your mind. Mapped your psyche. But it’s only a beginning. There are secrets, S —”

  “Ain’t S.”

  Music twisted through Dante: an aria, thorned and dark, prickling around his heart, rising, pounding, a crescendo of fury and chaos and loss. Chords strummed; chaos rhythm pulsed discordant and raw.

  His song burned. Incandescent.

  “Did my mother ask to be turned?” Dante asked. “Did she choose?”

  “Yes. But, she changed her mind later, when it was too late. I couldn’t undo —”

  “Liar,” Dante whispered.

  “What’s that glow?” Moore breathed as he lifted his hands and cupped her face.

  Chaos rhythm plucked at vibrating strands of DNA, breaking, compressing, erasing. Unmaking. Johanna Moore screamed, a long undulating sound that pierced Dante’s aching head. His song pulled her apart — divided her into elements, played an arpeggio with her core. Spilled her
essence. Separated flesh and bone and blood.

  Johanna Moore puddled on the floor, her scream ending with a wet gurgle.

  Blue spikes of energy whipped around Dante, flamed from his hands. He shivered, caught in the song, the rhythms of chaos, the tempo of creation. Closed his eyes. He saw stars. Heard a rush of wings.

 

  Dante opened his eyes. The song faded into silence. Pain scraped through his head. He tasted blood. He looked down at the moist strands that used to be Johanna Moore. Kicked them apart. Then he turned.

  Lucien stared at him, eyes golden, wings arched behind him, his face both rapt and…scared? Dante wondered. Lucien, scared?

 

  Dante walked to the doorway. He knelt beside Elroy’s cooling body. Could he pull Gina from a dead mind?

  “Too late,” Lucien said. “You’ve chosen the living over the dead.”

  Looking up, Dante saw Heather sitting across the hall, face stark, eyes dark and troubled. “Oui. The living over the dead.”

  Forgive me, Gina.

  Standing, Dante stepped over the Perv’s body one last time. He gathered Heather into his arms and carried her down the corridor. His muscles tightened as he smelled fear on her, fear of him. He held her close, his heart pounding hard.

  A man in a snow-dusted parka stepped into the corridor, his hands out and open; Look, nothing hidden here! “I can call an ambulance,” he said.

  “You can trust him,” Heather murmured. “He helped me.”

  “Okay,” Dante said. “Call one.” He breathed in Heather’s scent — rain and sage and blood, drew it deep into his lungs. Scared it was the last time.

  34

  All that

  Could’ve Been

  “Hey.”

  Heather looked up toward the doorway. Dante leaned there in leather and latex, one hand braced against the threshold. Fluorescent light winked from the ring in his collar and from the rings on his fingers. A half smile tilted his lips, lit his pale, gorgeous face. He raised his shades to the top of his head.

  He still stole her breath away. She suspected that he always would.

  Beyond him, in the corridor, nurses and CNAs stared, wondering who paid hospital visits wearing leather and bondage collars, wondering just what had wandered in from the frozen night.

  “Hey,” Heather said.

  She pressed her hands against the mattress, meaning to ease up, but then Dante was there, arms around her, helping her, his hands hot against her skin. Pain rippled through her and she caught her breath.

  “What’s wrong?” Dante asked. “Do you need —”

  “No. It’s okay.”

  Dante looked at her for a long moment, his dark eyes searching her face. Then he inhaled deeply. He pulled the chair close to the bed and sat. He waited. Heather was pretty sure he knew what she was going to say — or, at least, suspected.

  Reaching a hand over the bed railing, she grasped Dante’s hand. A smile ghosted across his lips. He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand. She glanced out the window, at the room reflected in the black sky beyond, and the two people in that room, holding hands and keeping silent.

  Heather thought of the mystified surgeons: the worst of the damage to her aorta and her left lung healed or closed off, or miraculously cauterized. She should’ve bled to death in minutes. She remembered the taste of Dante’s lips, the amaretto taste of his blood; remembered the cool fire he’d breathed into her.

  None of which Heather could tell the surgeons. Or the investigators from the Bureau dispatched to take her statement, debrief her and uncover the truth. Or at least an official version of the truth. She knew better than to mention Bad Seed; she only discussed her hunt for a serial killer and how she’d finally found him.

  One thing she knew for certain — her career with the Bureau was over. Her decision, one she hadn’t voiced yet. The powers that be would be happy to file her away at a desk in an obscure city; would, in fact, prefer it.

  Heather kept Dante from all of them. He’d saved her life. Even without that, she’d never hand him over to federal wolves. Hadn’t Johanna Moore been wolf enough?

  Johanna Moore. What Dante had done…Heather couldn’t wrap her mind around it. What had he done?

  Dante cups Moore’s face. His hands tremble. Glow with blue light. Blue flame. His hair snakes up into the air. Energy crackles. Heather’s skin goose bumps. Her hair lifts. She smells ozone.

  Blue light shafts into Moore’s body, explodes from her eyes, her screaming mouth. She…separates…into strands, wet and glistening, mingled blue and red. Dante unthreads her, separates every single part of her.

  Johanna Moore spills to the tiled floor.

  Energy continues to whip from Dante, blue tentacles snapping into the air and altering everything they touch. A counter twists into dark, heaving vines thick with blue thorns. The dart gun slithers into the shadows.

  Dante’s beautiful face is ecstatic — like it had been when he’d torched the Prejean house.

  In that moment, Heather had been terrified of Dante. Of what he could do. His potential. Yet…had Dante been a voice for his mother? For all of Johanna Moore’s victims?

  “Talk to me,” Dante said.

  Heather shifted her gaze from the window. Smiling, she squeezed his hand. He burned against her palm. Felt fevered. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Ça va bien. I’m good.” Dante held her gaze, his own open and unwavering. “Talk to me, Heather.”

  She nodded. Talk might help. “What you did to Moore…what…how…?”

  “Dunno,” Dante said. He trailed a hand through his hair. “I’ve never done…that…before. The song you said you heard? It’s tied to that. I feel it inside.” He touched their linked hands against his chest, above his heart. “It’s like fingering the strings on my guitar, like composing on my keyboards.”

  “Is it a nightkind or a Fallen ability?”

  Dante stared at her, surprised. “How did you know?”

  “Your father told me,” Heather said.

  Dante nodded, then looked away. A muscle flexed in his jaw. After a moment, he said, “I’m pretty sure it’s a Fallen thing. I used to think it was nightkind, but…” He shrugged.

  “Can you control it?”

  “Not always. No.” Dante looked at her, reflected light gleaming in his eyes.

  “Were you controlling it then?”

  “More or less.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I didn’t have an outcome in mind,” he said, voice low. “But I wanted to finish it — end her fucked-up game.” His thumb once again rubbed back and forth across the back of her hand, a soothing gesture — for them both, she had a feeling.

  Dante was nightkind and Fallen, and a killer. More than enough to send most women — sane women, anyway — screaming into the night. But there was so much more to him — a boy wishing his princess night-night, then walking into a basement alone; a man struggling with his emotions as he spreads his jacket over a friend’s body and sits beside her so she won’t be alone; a lover fitting against a woman like no other ever has — body and heart — asking her to stay.

  It’s quiet when I’m with you. The noise stops.

  Run from me.

  Did either of those statements reflect Dante’s true center? Or did both? Had his life ever been his own? Heather scanned his dark eyes, his beautiful face. In spite of all he was or, maybe, because of it, he’d somehow captured her heart. Not knowing which scared the hell out of her. She needed answers. She needed a chance to catch her breath.

  “Where is this going?” Dante said, watching her. His thumb was motionless on her hand. “Heather?”

  “I want you to go home,” she said quietly. “I’m heading back to Seattle as soon as I’m released. There’s gonna be a ton of shit to deal with.”

  “You don’t hafta deal with it alone.”

  “Yes, I do.” Heather slipped her hand from
his, grasped the cool metal railing. “Dante, I do. I’ve got things to think about — to sort through. I need a little distance. A little time. Nothing’s what I thought — what I believed it was.”

  A half-smile tilted his lips. “Nothing and no one. Believe me, I understand.”

  Heather cupped a hand against his face. “I bet you do.”

  Closing his eyes, Dante leaned into her touch and closed his hand over hers.

  “You need time, too,” she murmured. “You more than anyone.”

  “Don’t tell me what I need.” Dante’s voice was rough, raw.

  “Pigheaded,” she whispered.

  Despite his denial, his life, his world, had been ripped apart — his hidden past, revealed. Did he know any of it yet? Would De Noir tell him? Should she?

  “Has your father said anything about Bad Seed?” She slid her hand from his face.

  Dante’s eyes opened. Something flickered in those dark depths — pain, maybe grief, maybe rage — then vanished. “No. Elroy told me. But I can’t hold onto it.” He shook his head. “No matter how hard I try.”

  Jordan. That hurt. “Oh, Dante, I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” A smile brushed his lips. He pulled his shades from the top of his head, slid them on. “Not your fault.” Standing, he bent over her and brushed his lips against hers.

  “This doesn’t need to be good-bye,” Heather said against his warm lips. “I care about you, you know that, don’t you?”

  “I care about you, too,” he whispered, tracing a finger along the edge of her jaw.

  Heather closed her eyes. When she opened them again, Dante was gone. But the feel of his lips lingered upon hers; his scent hung in the room. She pictured him walking out into the snow-covered night, alone.

  She had a feeling he didn’t expect to see her again. She’d known his leaving would hurt, just not how much. And it did, heart-deep — sharp and unrelenting. Tears slipped hot down her cheeks, into her ears. Folding her arms across her eyes, she wept.

  For all the voiceless dead Elroy Jordan had left behind.

  For justice unrendered.

  For Dante.

  She thought of all that could’ve been — traveling between New Orleans and Seattle; Dante creating music, touring, putting his past together. She might become a victim’s advocate, a PI, something to help those who could no longer speak for themselves, and — together — she and Dante could work to heal his wounded mind and help him find the redemption he sought.