Beneath the Skin

by Adrian Phoenix

  “Perhaps you do at that, bella.”

  Renata waved an elegant dismissal with one pale hand. “Sexy smiles and rote flattery, Vanni mio? How disappointing.”

  Giovanni swung off the scooter and stood in front of her. Tall, at least compared to her, just a shade under six feet. His jeans and midnight blue sweater fit him well, revealing a trim, athletic build.

  Taking her hand, Giovanni raised it to his lips. “Bella,” he murmured, his lips warm against her skin. He smelled of the sea, this eldest son, of brine and sand and deep, restless waters. He looked at her from beneath his dark lashes.

  “Have I disappointed you?” he whispered, his lips caressing her captive hand.

  “Many times,” Renata said, her voice tender. She tugged her hand free. “But I love you still, mio figlio. That never changes.”

  But as for her trust, that was another matter entirely.

  Giovanni glanced away, his gaze skimming over the crowds perched on the Spanish Steps and ringing the low, boat-shaped fountain in the piazza’s heart. Golden light gleamed on the Trinità dei Monti and its twin bell towers, glittered like jewels—ruby, sapphire, and emerald—upon the water in the gurgling fountain.

  The sweet smell of azaleas and sugar pastries perfumed the night.

  Soon, very soon, they would hunt and dine.

  Giovanni slid his hands into his pockets. “When are you telling the Cercle?”

  “Not yet,” Renata said. “I’d like to keep this matter just between us and Caterina. Keep it in the family. For now.”

  A smile flickered across Giovanni’s lips. “Ah, sì. You want to make sure that Caterina hasn’t been deceived. So you admit the possibility.”

  “I admit no such thing.”

  “Say Caterina is right, that this Dante Baptiste is not only a True Blood—”

  “Fathered by an Elohim high-blood,” Renata tossed in.

  “Sì—so not only a True Blood, but a Maker as well. Say that is all true.” Giovanni’s gaze came back to Renata, his eyes brimming with reflected color—gold from the church and ruby and emerald from the water, purple and deepest blue from the lingering twilight. “Whose hands do you most want to keep this True Blood out of? The Cercle de Druide? The Parliament of Ancients? Or Le Conseil du Sang?”

  Renata felt a smile curve her lips. She always benefited by allowing Giovanni room and time to think. “Perhaps all three,” she said.

  “I have a feeling the Fallen might be a bigger concern,” Giovanni said. “They will try to claim him.”

  “They tried once already and failed. Dante Baptiste seems quite content to turn the aingeals to stone,” Renata said. “Perhaps his actions—if true—will buy us time. Dante belongs to us. He was born vampire.”

  “Sì, mia signora,” Giovanni murmured. “Born vampire and born Fallen. We shall have a fight on our hands. A holy war.”

  “Are we ready to wage one?”

  “With the Fallen? No. Not as divided as we are. The Cercle can call upon the mortal nomad clans and they would join our fight, cara mia, but we vampires …” He shrugged. “Both the Parliament and the Conseil will scheme to get ahold of Baptiste.”

  Renata agreed. Each vampire faction would slaughter the others for the opportunity to use and manipulate a True Blood, let alone what the youth truly was.

  A creawdwr. Powerful and precious. Ready to be molded by whoever claimed him first—vampire or Fallen. And it would be vampire if Renata had her way.

  “We shall keep him safe and secret for the time being, sì, Vanni mio? This True Blood principe needs time to heal, to recover from all the evil done to him.” The fire burning within her heart flared to life. “And those responsible shall be dealt with.”

  “Has anyone asked him what he’d like to do?”

  Renata considered for a moment for effect, then said, “No, I don’t think so. But he’s too young to know what he wants. He’s a child in need of guidance. We will help him decide what is best for him.”

  Giovanni shook his head, a smile on his lips. “Of course.”

  Renata looped her arm through his. He looked at her, his face bright beneath the piazza’s lights, warm with humor.

  “Shall we dine, mio ragazzo bello?” she asked.

  “Sì, my beautiful Renata, we shall.”

  Arms linked, Renata and her eldest, her thoughtful Giovanni, strolled into the piazza proper and, mingling with the tourists crowding the steps, selected their dinner.

  When she returned to her white stone and evening-cooled apartment later that night, she would place a few very important calls.

  And those who refused to obey would soon find someone at their door bearing a final message, one delivered by a hungry and ruthless stranger. A message that would include all within the household—innocent or otherwise, family, friends, or lovers.

  A message that wouldn’t allow survivors.

  Your time has come to an end. Arrivederci.

  10

  DEMON SEED

  OUTSIDE DAMASCUS, OR

  THE HAPPY BEAVER MOTEL

  March 25

  THE FALLEN ANGEL—AT LEAST that’s what Annie assumed he was—tilted his head. The fiery glow in his eyes vanished. She looked into eyes colored the deep blue of a summer afternoon, framed with pale silver lashes.

  A smile ticked up one corner of his mouth, but it wasn’t a smile that made her feel all warm and fuzzy inside, oh, hell no. It iced her heart.

  “Appears I’m wrong about your devotion,” he said.

  “Why the hell does that matter?” she said, lifting her chin. “Just take him.”

  His gaze, no longer summer, but frost-edged winter afternoon, swept her from head to bare toes. “I wish I could.”

  The goddamned bastard’s white-taloned fingers—Oh, look! Talons. Awesome!—locked even tighter around Annie’s arms, the talon tips pricking through her T-shirt to the skin beneath. Her tingling fingers went numb.

  “Let go, dammit,” she said through her teeth.

  “How is it you see me? That my Word doesn’t bind you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Did the creawdwr—Dante—alter you in some way?”

  “Fuck, no!” Fear spiked through Annie. “Am I not supposed to see you?”

  “No, you shouldn’t see me. My spoken Word is more than enough to bind mortals, but you …” He regarded her for a long, uncomfortable moment.

  Annie didn’t like the way he looked at her. Not one bit. She suddenly felt like a jumbled-up Rubik’s Cube being contemplated by a puzzle master. “The main thing is,” she said, her words tumbling over each other in their haste to get out of her mouth, “you want Dante, right?”

  The fallen angel glanced over his shoulder at the nightkind-only bed and hunger sharpened the planes of his face. “Yes.”

  Annie couldn’t see Dante and Von’s bed since the fallen angel’s body blocked her view. Fucker was huge. Tight muscles and flat abs. Short white hair, but not old lady white, no. Sleek and gleaming like polished ivory, like fresh snow, like the first star at twilight. A thick, open-ended twist of silver curled around his throat. And his skin seemed almost luminous, as if light flowed through his veins instead of blood.

  But she’d plugged the bastard with a bullet and he’d bled like anyone else, so that axed the whole light-in-the-veins bit. And now, only a few moments later, just a pink spot on his skin remained of the wound.

  He was gorgeous, in a weird, not-quite-human-but-still-an-asshole kind of way.

  “Dante’s right there, sound asleep,” Annie said, voice low. “All you hafta do is scoop him up and go. I’ll even hold the door for you.”

  The fallen angel laughed and the sound of it sheeted Annie’s soul with ice. She shivered, arms aching and throbbing beneath his hands.

  “And lo, aingeals learned the seductive art of temptation from mankind.” He returned his attention to Annie, a sardonic smile sliding onto his lips. “Why are you so eager to get rid of the person the other females were guarding?�
�� His wings flared behind him, fanning a smell like smoky incense into the room.

  White, those freaking wings, and smooth as cream frosting, not a single feather. Huh. So much for that, or maybe feathered wings were a good angel perk, who knew? The tips arched over his head and, before he folded them shut again, she caught an opalescent mother-of-pearl sheen—swirling blue, purple, glimmering white—on the undersides.

  “Dante turned a bunch of your kind into flipping statues,” Annie said. “Reason enough?”

  “I watched as it happened,” the fallen bastard murmured. “Impetuous fools.”

  “Wow. I’ve never seen anyone so heartbroken. My sympathies.”

  “You have no idea what I feel,” the fallen angel said quietly. “You aren’t even capable of imagining.”

  “How the hell would you know what I’m capable of, you dick?”

  The fallen angel tilted his head and Annie got that Rubik’s Cube sensation again. Sweat trickled between her breasts even though she felt ice-cold.

  “Who were you defending with that gun if it wasn’t the Maker?”

  “My sister,” Annie replied.

  The fallen angel glanced past her. One silver brow arched. “Ah.”

  “I mean it’s weird enough that Dante’s a fucking vampire, y’know?” Annie blurted. “But now he’s this Maker thing too. He’s having these seizures and shit and it’s too much. Heather, she’s so into him …”

  “Seizures?”

  Annie nodded. “They’ve been doping him up with morphine. I guess his mind’s been messed with—bad, y’know? Maybe you can help him with that. Take him home— wherever the hell that is—and heal him.”

  Annie’s chest tightened. Heather would never forgive her if she ever found out. And, in all fairness, she owed Dante much more than to sell him out. She liked him, hell, she’d craved a tumble with him big-time. But that was before.

  Now, Dante scared the shit out of her. Anyone who could do the things he’d done to Dr. Whacked-Out Wells and his kids, the Amazing Demented Twins—

  They rise into the air, bathed in cool blue fire, a three-faced pillar of flesh. Arms and legs streamline into feathered tails. Eyes blink open in the triune creature’s braided torso and back. Rotating mouths open in a chorus of song: Threeintoone …

  If it wasn’t for Dante, Heather wouldn’t be on the run. If it wasn’t for Dante, this whole mess never would’ve happened. Yeah, but if it wasn’t for Dante, Heather would be dead and in the ground.

  The fallen angel’s hands slid away from Annie’s arms and she rubbed her bruised and talon-pricked flesh.

  Her sister’s words whispered through her mind: He sacrificed himself for you. He saved my life. Now he needs us.

  Annie felt sick. She closed her eyes. “You’re not gonna hurt him, right? ’Cuz he’s a cool guy, don’t get me wrong, and I usually love bad and dangerous boys with a capital L and Dante’s soooo fucking beautiful and bad. He sang to me in Cajun, y’know? Even kissed me, but he’s too goddamned dangerous and I’m scared he’ll hurt Hea—”

  “Enough.”

  Annie opened her eyes as a finger topped by a thick white talon pressed against her lips, stopping her stream-of-consciousness flow of words. She looked into the angel’s blue eyes.

  “He is the creawdwr,” he said. “I would never harm him. I only want to take him home to Gehenna, where he belongs.”

  Annie pushed away the fallen angel’s silencing finger. “Great,” she breathed. “And Dante’d be happier there too, right? In his true home?”

  “Of course. He’s spent too much time in Hell as it is.”

  Annie frowned. “Hell?”

  The fallen bastard waved a taloned hand around the room. “Here.”

  “You mean the motel? Yeah, it pretty much sucks. But the sun was rising and we needed to get Dante and Von inside so they wouldn’t burn and—”

  The fallen angel sighed. “I meant the mortal world.”

  “What the fuck’s wrong with the mortal world, asshole?”

  “Aside from the fact that it’s filled with mortals?”

  “Fuck you.”

  The fallen bastard smiled, but his holier-than-thou expression made a liar of his lips. “What’s your name?”

  “Annie. What do I call you besides asshole?”

  “Star shall suffice.”

  Annie rolled her eyes. “Star, huh? Think it might’ve been the ego that got you kicked outta heaven, dude?”

  The fallen angel—Star—regarded her with icy disdain. “Hardly—even if you choose to believe that particular fabrication.” He crossed his arms over his bare chest. His knee-length cobalt blue kilt rippled like water whenever he moved, a braided black belt with a gleaming silver Celtic knot-work buckle holding it in place at his waist.

  “You promise you won’t hurt Dante?” Annie said. “Everyone’s gonna be pissed as hell that he’s gone and I’m gonna just pretend that I slept through everything like they did and—”

  “I said I wished I could take him. I never said I would take him.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Free will. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?” Star arched an eyebrow.

  “You fucking kidding me?”

  “Not when it comes to free will,” Star replied. “I need to win Dante’s confidence, his friendship, so I can bond with him. Then I’ll return home, the creawdwr at my side. If I take Dante with me now, he might turn every living thing in Gehenna to stone. Or side with my enemies. No, given the seizures you mentioned, I need to bond with him and soon.”

  Star’s face blazed and Annie squinted, wishing for sunglasses. “What if you don’t become BFFs? What if he hates you on sight?”

  “BFFs?”

  Annie sighed. “Best friends forever. What then?”

  “Of course we’ll become friends. He’ll choose me to be his first calon-cyfaill.”

  “Kaw-lawn what the fuck?”

  “Best friends forever. Heartmate and bondmate.”

  “But what if he doesn’t?”

  “I have you, Annie,” Star said, another smile gracing his lips. But this one was warm and ripe with lusty possibilities.

  “Me?” Annie shook her head, but stepped closer, surprising herself. Great—his magic Word or whatever the fuck it is doesn’t work on me, but sex does. Lovely. Just. Lovely. She couldn’t stop wondering if his lips tasted like Dante’s, amaretto sweet and heady. “No. No way. Keep me outta this. I just wanna protect Heather.”

  “You’ll be sowing the seeds that’ll allow Dante to open himself to me.” A seductive whisper, Star’s voice reeled her in.

  Annie kept shaking her head. “No. No. No.”

  The fallen angel chuckled and the sound of it, musical and fluid and warm, poured through her mind and down her spine like heated oil. “But you’re already in it, Annie.”

  He tipped her chin up with a talon, the point pressing delicately into her skin. “You need to do this for your sister. The creawdwr’s beauty has bound her heart. You can free her, keep her safe. Plant the seeds, little mortal. Make Dante yearn for the Elohim. For his place among us. Then I will take over and make him yearn for me.”

  Annie chewed her lower lip. “Okay,” she whispered.

  “Close your eyes,” Star said. His fingers settled on her temples. Hot hands. Dizziness whirled through Annie. “I’m going to find out how you resist my spells and I’m going to learn who your companions are and then I’m going to make you forget all of this so Dante doesn’t pluck it out of your pretty little mind. But the seeds—those will remain—in your subconscious, your dreaming mind.”

  Annie closed her eyes, her heart kicking hard against her ribs. Splinters of ice shivved her mind and she gasped. Then everything disappeared in a blaze of molten heat and honeyed light as Star’s lips pressed against hers and his hands began to peel off her clothes.

  11

  A NIGHTMARE BEYOND IMAGINING

  OUTSIDE DAMASCUS, OR

  THE WELLS/LYONS COMPOUND />
  March 25

  EMMETT STEPPED PAST THE headless body on the dirt-streaked bed, his gaze drawn to the photos thumb-tacked to the walls. The same photo over and over. Dozens, maybe a hundred. Pictures of Dante Prejean in night-vision green/gray. Emmett studied the image, the vampire’s rapt face, his closed eyes, the rays of pale light whipping around him. From him.

  Emmett’s skin prickled. What the hell was that?

  What the hell. His new catchphrase, used ad nauseam throughout the day. A catchphrase he heard repeated every few minutes by the jumpsuited techs prowling the compound grounds.

  Emmett caught another rank whiff of decaying flesh, of mud and clotted blood, and his stomach rolled. Pulling out a stick of Vicks VapoRub from his pocket, he smeared more underneath his nose. The sharp scent of menthol burned through the stench—for now. No matter how many bodies he’d dealt with throughout his years in the SB, the smell always got to him. Sometimes it lingered in his nostrils for days, effectively murdering his appetite until the stench no longer haunted him.

  “Where’s the head?”

  Emmett turned around to face Gillespie. The chief stood beside the bed, his gaze on the headless body dolled up in a blue, dirt-streaked nightie. A small black beetle scuttled from beneath the nightgown’s neck.

  “Damned good question,” Emmett replied.

  Gillespie’s jaw moved as he chewed a wad of gum. He studied the dirt clods leading to the mud-streaked bed and the headless body that rested on it. “Looks like she was in the ground first. Someone dug her up.”

  Emmett took in the body’s withered arms, the wasted flesh, the bony fingers half-curled into claws. “Doesn’t look like any of our perps.”

  “I heard that Lyons’s mother had cancer,” Gillespie said.

  Emmett nodded. “Could be her body, yeah. But I get a feeling it wasn’t the cancer that killed her.”

  Gillespie sighed, scrubbing a hand back and forth over his scalp. “I get the same feeling.” His hand dropped to his side, balled into a fist.

  The chief looked tired, his eyes bloodshot behind his glasses. He chewed his gum with grim determination. Emmett wondered how much booze Gillespie had downed before being ordered to Damascus. Not enough, judging by the chief’s weary expression.