He imagined her eyes bright and warm, imagined her hair moonlit and clean, imagined her giggling, a plushie orca tucked under her arm.
Let me go, Dante-angel.
The past uncoiled, then played back in reverse.
Dante crawls away from Chloe, the knees of his jeans dry. The blood that’s smeared and sticky on his hands, his fingers, and beneath his sharp, sharp nails belongs only to the ass-holes sprawled dead on the concrete floor.
Orem floats up from the concrete, the plushie orca’s fur no longer stained with blood but clean-clean-clean, and snuggles into Chloe’s hand again.
The pool of blood surrounding Chloe glides up from the cold floor, beads up and rolls along her skin, trickles away from her hair, all of it pouring back into her slashed throat. The wound zips shut, never was.
Dante’s sharp, sharp fingernails never touch Chloe’s soft throat. Color blossoms in her cheeks, brightens the freckles spilled across her nose. She sits up, her blue eyes wide and scared, but no longer empty.
Dante grabs her and hugs her tight against him. She’s in his arms, warm and alive. It doesn’t happen; he doesn’t kill her. It never happens and never would.
Pain brass-knuckled against Dante’s mind. His breath caught in his throat, rough. His song splintered, then scattered, the complex arrangement not quite complete.
You’ll fail.
Heart hammering against his ribs, Dante kissed Chloe’s forehead. He tasted blood, felt it sticky against his lips. Hunger stirred, hunger once again denied. He breathed in the sweet scent of strawberries and soap.
“Wake up, princess,” he whispered.
A CHILL RIPPLED ALONG Heather’s spine and iced her from the inside out as music, jagged and discordant, prickled against her healed heart for a pulse-pounding moment, then vanished. She stared at the child in Dante’s arms.
Dear God …
The girl’s eyes focused on Dante, no longer empty or unseeing, and no longer jade green, but blue. Long red hair fluttered beside her now-freckled face. Drying blood streaked her new fair skin, but Heather had no doubts that the wounds in the girl’s forehead and the back of her skull had healed.
“My name’s Violet, not Princess,” the little girl said.
Dante lifted his head and shook his hair back from his face. A smile tilted his lips. “Violet? Yeah? T’es sûr de sa? That don’t sound right, chère.”
“It’s right, just ask my mama. Are you an angel?” She touched a finger to Dante’s pale face. Awe lit her sleepy blue gaze. “Your eyes are like gold stars.”
“Ain’t no angel, p’tite.”
“Uh-huh, you are too. Why’re your wings black? You a nighttime angel?”
“Ain’t got wings, princess.” Dante paused, his dark brows slanting down, his expression perplexed. “I’m … nightkind.”
“Nuh-uh, you’re an angel,” Violet declared. She yawned. Her eyes shuttered closed. “Pretty angel …”
Dread settled in Heather’s belly like a bucket of bricks. She doubted Dante was even aware of what he’d done. The taut lines of his body, of his jaw, the sweat beading his forehead, all shouted pain. His words and voice and actions said something else altogether: he was lost in the past.
He’s fighting damned hard to keep himself here and now and with us. But …
Not even twenty-four hours had passed since Lyons and his sister had tried to torture their way past the programming their father had implanted in Dante’s mind, had tried to shove together the fragments of his broken and buried memories.
Not even twenty-four hours since he’d lost Lucien.
I think he’s had all he can take, doll. Heart and mind.
He needs a safe place. And time to heal.
But we’re fresh outta time.
Violet’s mother, still kneeling on the sidewalk and surrounded by blood spatter and glass shards, stared at Dante, her dark eyes wide with horror and shock, both hands pressed against her mouth.
Heather glanced up and saw the same look of stunned disbelief on most of the faces of the people—agents in grimy yellow jumpsuits, staring motel guests—scattered across the motel parking lot and sidewalk. Silence curled through the cordite-smoked air.
Snugging her Browning into the back of her jeans, the barrel hot against her skin, Heather knelt beside Dante, just out of arm’s reach. Blue flames still flickered and snapped around his hands.
“Baptiste,” she said softly. “You hear me?”
He shuddered, blood trickling from his nose, then nodded. “Oui, chérie, I hear you.” He kept his gaze on Violet.
“She’s alive and breathing now, Baptiste. You need to turn off the magic.”
Dante squeezed his eyes shut. “Focus,” he muttered. “Fucking focus.”
Dropping her hands from her mouth, Violet’s mother whispered, “Oh my God. Oh dear God,” her voice rising in volume with each word. “What have you done to her? You changed her! You changed her! Give her to me!”
Panic burned through Heather when she saw the woman lean forward and realized she intended to snatch her daughter away from Dante—from his glowing blue grasp.
“Stop!” she shouted. The woman instinctively froze, her hands still lifted. Her gaze flicked over to Heather. “If you touch him, he might change you too.”
Fear flashed across the woman’s face and she pulled her hands back, knotting them together on her thighs. “I want my daughter back,” she said, her voice quavering. “I want her back right now.”
“I’m working on that,” Heather said, shifting her attention back to Dante and the little girl curled up in his lap.
She wished she could move closer to him, touch him, connect with him in a deeper, more immediate way than just speaking. She worried that words alone wouldn’t be enough. But as long as blue fire flared around his hands, she couldn’t risk it.
“You still listening, Baptiste? We’re at a motel in Damascus—”
“Put the child down now!”
The agent that Dante had knocked down stood a couple of yards away, his face ashen and his glasses askew. Blood trickled along one side of his throat. He held his gun in both hands—shaking hands—the barrel aimed at Dante’s head.
“Back the fuck off, asshole,” Von growled. “You ain’t helping the situation. Let the lady do her thing.”
A muscle ticked in the agent’s jaw, but he didn’t say anything else. His gun, however, remained aimed at Dante’s head.
“Keep talking, doll.”
Heather drew in a steadying breath. “We’re in Damascus, Oregon, Dante. You, me, Von, and Annie, and we’re headed home. The girl you’re holding is not Chloe. Your princess died eleven years ago.”
“Eleven … ? No, it just happened,” Dante said, his eyes still closed. Blood from his nose streaked a dark and glistening trail down his lips and chin. “But I rewound everything, took it all back. Chloe’s safe. Orem too.”
Heather stared at Dante, another bucketful of bricks dropping into her belly. Dante wasn’t just remembering horrific bits of his past, he was reliving them. Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them away.
“You can’t rewind the past,” she said, hating each word as it slipped past her lips. “Chloe’s dead and you can never take that back. It happened.”
Dante’s muscles coiled and flexed as if each word pounded into him like a steel-knuckled fist. His arms tightened around sleeping Violet.
Heather was fairly certain that Violet had died the moment the bullet had slammed into her forehead. Her eyes had been empty. Dante had done more than save her life, he’d brought her back.
Maybe Violet could’ve been resuscitated with CPR, a defibrillator, and drugs and returned to her body; a near-death experience. Not out of the realm of possibilities.
But Dante had rested a hand on Violet’s chest and breathed into her.
He is the never-ending Road.
“You saved Violet, Baptiste. She’s alive—here, now— because of you. Give her back to her mother. Let her go.
”
Dante sucked in a breath, then opened his eyes. He looked at Heather. The gold light had vanished. The blue flames engulfing his hands winked out. “J’su ici,” he said, voice a husky whisper.
“Monster! Give me my daughter!”
Fury scorched all other emotion from the woman’s face as she leaned forward and grabbed Violet. Dante opened his arms and the woman jerked her changeling daughter free.
Violet awakened, rubbed at her eyes. “Mama?”
Heather rose to her feet and held up a wait-and-listen hand, palm out. “He can change your daughter back,” she said, hoping to hell it was true. “All we need is a little quiet and—”
“He can change her back?” A ribbon of hope curled through the woman’s voice. “Just like the way she was before … before—”
“I believe so,” Heather said. “As soon as things quiet down.”
“Ma’am,” the man Heather figured for SB, not FBI, interrupted. “I need you and your child to go to the office until the situation here is contained.”
“But he can change her back,” Violet’s mother protested.
“You’re in danger here,” the SB agent said, voice strained. “You’re in the middle of a firefight. You and your daughter risk being shot—again—or becoming hostages. Get the hell out of here.”
“Wait,” Heather said, “how about a time-out until Dante’s restored Violet back to herself? Then—”
“Then nothing,” he replied. His gaze remaining on Heather, though he directed his words to Violet’s mother. “You’re asking to give your daughter back to a bloodsucking vampire who’s just angling to find a way outta the mess he landed himself in. Get your daughter out of here before I have you arrested for endangering a child. Now!”
Bewilderment flashed across the woman’s face and Heather could just imagine her thoughts: Did he just say bloodsucking vampire?
With a teary glance at Heather, the woman stood, then hurried across the parking lot, Violet clutched against her. Heather watched as Violet and her mother disappeared inside the motel office. She hoped Dante would have a chance to undo her daughter’s physical transformation into Chloe.
A peripheral flash of movement followed by the crackle of glass under boot soles told Heather that Dante had risen to his feet. She looked at him, and the pain and raw grief she saw pooled in his dark eyes tore at her.
Chloe’s death just happened for him.
“You and Chloe never stood a chance against them. You were just kids,” Heather whispered, stepping up beside him. His fevered heat baked against her.
He looked away, blinking, his hands clenching into fists. “I fucked up.”
“Hold it right there, Prejean. Move again and I’ll put a bullet in your head.”
And with those words, the détente created by a dying or dead little girl ended.
Adrenaline surged electric through Heather’s veins, sparked clear and cool in her mind. She reached for the Browning tucked into the back of her jeans.
Fresh outta time.
GILLESPIE TIGHTENED HIS DOUBLE-HANDED grip on his Glock, his palms sweating despite the cool, moist air chilling his face and hands. Clicks and ka-chunks echoed all around him as guns swung up and fresh rounds were chambered.
“Name ain’t Prejean,” the vampire said. He wiped at the blood trickling from his nose with the back of one pale hand.
“I don’t give a shit what your name is,” Gillespie said. “On the ground. Hands behind your head and interlace your fingers.”
“Blow me.”
“We don’t have to do this,” Wallace said, her gun aimed at the center of Gillespie’s forehead. “More innocent people might get hurt or killed. Two of your agents are already down.”
“That’s rich coming from a woman who stood by while her bloodsucking squeeze murdered an FBI agent in his own home,” Gillespie said.
“She had nothing to do with that,” Prejean said, voice taut. “That was all me.”
“Good to know. If you wanna save lives, Wallace, surrender.”
Wallace’s attractive face was calm, resolute. “We can’t—”
Her words were cut off as Prejean staggered against her. Concern flashed across her face. She unwrapped a hand from the grip of her gun to help brace the vampire upright, but he slipped from her grasp. Fell to his knees.
Gillespie adjusted his aim at Prejean’s head, his heart jackhammering against his ribs. Sweat dampened his shirt at the small of his back. And at this very moment, he’d sell his soul without an ounce of regret for just one shot of Jack Daniel’s.
Prejean’s golden eyes. The blue flames from his hands engulfing the little girl.
What the hell had Prejean done to that kid? How had he done it? How was such a thing—turning a little girl into someone else—even possible?
Not just a bloodsucker and murderer, Dante Prejean. But whatever the hell he was, he definitely wasn’t what the kid claimed him to be.
Are you an angel?
Images of the white stone angels at the Wells site scrolled through Gillespie’s mind. The hair on the back of his neck prickled. His finger twitched against the Glock’s trigger. Take the goddamned shot.
But before Gillespie could decide whether or not to shoot an unarmed man—he’s got fangs, speed, and strength, he’s NOT unarmed—the vampire keeled over onto the glass-strewn sidewalk, his body spasming with mind-numbing speed and violence, his black hair whipping across the pavement.
“Shit!” Wallace dropped to her knees beside Prejean. “Von!”
Gillespie stared, amazed. A seizure? He’d had no idea vampires were subject to physical ills or mental short-circuits. He relaxed his finger against the Glock’s trigger.
In a blur of motion, the nomad vamp, Nightwolf colors on the back of his worn leather jacket, appeared on the sidewalk beside Wallace and Prejean, a zippered black bag in his hand.
A gunshot cracked through the night as one of Gillespie’s men fired in a belated response to the nomad’s unexpected movement.
Back turned, McGuinn flipped off whoever had fired, then knelt. He unzipped the bag, pulling out a syringe and vial.
Crisscrossed headlights shafted light across the trio on the sidewalk, spotlighted Prejean’s limb-twisting spasms. Fresh blood from the vampire’s nose and mouth sprinkled the pavement.
“Chief, what the hell is he? How did he change that little girl?” Kaplan asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Kid took a bullet square in the forehead, Chief. She should be dead.”
“Doesn’t mean she was dead,” Gillespie murmured. “I’ve seen people chat about baseball statistics with a crow-bar planted in their skulls.”
“But how do you explain that the kid’s no longer Asian?”
Gillespie pulled his gaze from Prejean and looked at the field agent. She’d trotted from the dubious safety of the bullet-pocked car door she’d crouched behind to join Gillespie on the sidewalk, her Sig Sauer down at her side. Several strands of blonde hair had worked free of her ponytail and now curved along her jawline.
“I can’t,” Gillespie said, meeting her troubled gaze. “I haven’t a clue how he changed her.”
“She called Prejean an angel. Do you think … I mean, could he be—”
Gillespie’s phone beedle-beedled and his heart launched itself into his throat. Christ! I’m wound up tighter than a pig’s tail. Pulling his cell from his pants pocket, he glanced at the incoming number. Underwood. A grim satisfaction curled through him. For once, he had good news to report.
“For now, Prejean’s a murderer. Initiate the arrest,” he said to Kaplan, nodding at the trio on the sidewalk. “But not alone. Shoot if they resist.”
Kaplan nodded, her expression unhappy. She jogged back to the Saturn and the surviving agents.
Gillespie answered the SOD’s call. “Ma’am, good news. We have them—Prejean and Wallace. No sign of Lyons, though.”
“Release them,” Underwood said, her voice
flat.
Underwood wasn’t given to jokes or pranks, so Gillespie could only assume he’d misheard. “Ma’am?”
“I told you to release them.”
Or maybe she’d misheard. “We located Prejean and Wallace. We have them.”
“Perhaps the third time will be the charm. Release. Them. The official search for them has been terminated. That order comes from the director himself.”
“Ma’am, no disrespect, but have you been drinking?”
Underwood laughed, a soft and humorless sound. “No, Sam, I’ve never needed booze to bolster me when things unhinge. Release Prejean and Wallace.”
Gillespie heard a click as Underwood broke the connection—hanging up on him as per the norm. And just like that, his good news had turned into a pile of stinky shit. Acid churned in his stomach, burning its way up his throat.
Gillespie thumbed END, then tucked the cell back into his pocket. He rubbed a hand over his scalp. What the hell had happened at HQ? Why would Director Britto call off the hunt for Prejean, Wallace, and Lyons?
He pondered disobeying the order, pondered telling his agents to open fire—shoot to kill—and end his career. He sighed. Pulling a half-empty roll of Tums from his shirt pocket, he popped the remaining tablets into his mouth, then crumpled up and tossed the empty wrapper. The chalky, mock-fruit flavored Tums masked the sour taste of acid on his tongue.
“We’ve been ordered to release them,” Gillespie called. “Back off.”
His agents, semicircled around the trio on the sidewalk, froze. Relief washed over Kaplan’s face—and not just hers, Gillespie noted. Several other field agents seemed to regard Prejean with something dangerously close to awe.
“What the fuck? Chief, that can’t be right,” Miklowitz protested, turning around to face Gillespie. “They shot Holmes and Cantnor and—”
“And that’s who we need to take care of right now. Have medics been called?”
“Yeah, but …”
“Trust me, I don’t like this any more than you do, but this comes from the top—release them.”
Beneath the Skin Page 18
