It’s quiet when I’m with you. The noise stops.
Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus.
I’ll help you stop it forever.
“Let’s see if you survive this, my little night-bred beauty,” a voice murmurs, breath warm on the nape of Heather’s neck. Something pierces her throat. Fire scalds her lungs. Devours her breath.
Heather falls, sprawling on her side across the nomad’s body. The blood boils in her veins, the pain stealing her voice.
The teen whirls, shovel blurring through the air, and hammers the needle-plunging man into the ground. Blood splashes onto the teen’s pale face. His gaze locks onto Heather. He sucks in a breath, face stricken. The shovel tumbles forgotten from his fingers.
“Heather,” he whispers, voice rough. Dropping to his knees, he gathers her into his arms.
Shaped at last, his name spills from Heather’s lips. “Baptiste.”
Everything stops. Hushes.
The consuming fire inside her winks out. The pain disappears, never was. Dante flickers from the teen and into himself—here and now.
The raging noise- and debris-filled tornado sucks in Cecil Prejean and Robert Wells, then spirals up on itself and vanishes with a small pop.
A pearlescent light shimmers around them, cups them, shining and silent.
Binds them together.
Wasps drop from Dante’s hair, from beneath his fingernails, from his arms, and fall into the grass, metallic bodies curled in.
He holds Heather close, holds her tight, holds her like he’ll never let go. “What the fuck you doing here?”
Face tucked against Dante’s heated neck, Heather laces her arms around him, her heart drumming a deep rhythm. “I got a little lost inside your head,” she admits.
Dante says nothing; just kisses her forehead, her eyelids, her mouth, his lips fevered and amaretto-sweet. Sleepiness spirals through her as warm and cozy as a familiar bed.
“Rêves doux, catin,” he whispers, his burning leaves and frost scent wrapping around her like a blanket. He eases her from his arms and into the wet grass beneath the willow.
Heather curls on her side, her hands tucked under her cheek. She watches Dante from between her lashes as he goes to Von, wishing she could help him, wishing she could stay awake, but the need to sleep thickens within her.
Dante sits in the grass just behind the nomad, then pillows Von’s head on his leather-clad thigh. Loss shadows his face, determination knots his body.
“A wished-hard thing takes a shape within the heart,” he says, soft and low. “Takes shape. Becomes real.” Raising his wrist to his mouth, he bites it, drinking in his own dark blood.
As sleep shutters her eyes and plunges her into a soothing darkness, Heather’s last vision of Dante in the pearl-glossed air beneath the weeping willow is of him tucking a lock of black hair behind his ear as he lowers his face to Von’s and kisses him with blood-smeared lips.
She hears a rush of wings.
29
A DIRTY MIRROR
ALEXANDRIA, VA
SHADOW BRANCH HQ
March 26
MERRI SUCKED IN A long breath of air, opened her eyes, and got a stunning eye-level view of beige carpet. Great. Lovely. Sleep knocked me on my ass before I could reach the bed. Damned stay-awake pills.
Rising to her feet, Merri walked into the bedroom, peeling off her clothes as she went and dropping them behind her. She paused, her hands reaching for the back of her bra. A scrap of yellow legal paper lay on the carpet just inside the door.
A smile curved her lips. Looked like Em had left his usual, I’m awake, you’re not note. An on-the-road tradition between them. Picking up the paper, she flipped it over. Yup. Emmett’s sloppy scrawl—in felt-tip, no less.
HAHAHA! By the time you wake up, I’ll already be debriefed and lounging in my spacious luxury room! You snooze you lose!!
“Lucky bastard,” Merri muttered. Wadding up the note, she lobbed it into the trash basket beside the bed. She sat on the bed beside her laptop. Green telltales winked along the computer’s slim edge, a flash drive still plugged into a USB port.
Before-Sleep memories sledgehammered through Merri’s consciousness: contacting her mère de sang about the Fallen Stonehenge, sneaking into Purcell’s office and downloading files.
Looking at those files.
“Let me hold him!” Genevieve screams.
Ice-cold fury frosted Merri’s veins, so cold, she half-expected to see white mist pouring out from beneath her skin.
Dante Baptiste—not Prejean, no way that goddamned child-pimping bastard’s last name should ever be attached to anyone, let alone a True Blood.
A True Blood—stolen at birth—had been shaped into the cold, murdering monster Bad Seed and the fucked-up minds behind it had yearned for. He’d been programmed, designed, to kill; those he loved hadn’t been immune to that design.
Chloe lies in a pool of her own blood, her blue eyes empty.
But Baptiste had loved. At least once. Something true sociopaths were incapable of—except for self-love. Maybe that meant Baptiste could still be salvaged.
She needed to talk to Emmett and Galiana.
Unhooking her bra, then pulling down and kicking off her panties, Merri hurried into the bathroom and hit the shower. But not even the fresh and soothing scent of her English lavender body wash could ease her troubled thoughts.
I have a suspicion that events beyond the scope of mortals or even vampires might be unfolding.
Merri had a feeling Galiana might be right. And that scared the ever-loving shit out of her.
EMMETT OPENED THE DOOR and waved his partner inside with a grand, sweeping gesture. “Enter, She Who Is About to Face the Spanish Inquisition,” he teased as Merri, her lavender-scented hair wet and slicked back from her face, slipped into the room. “Wanna grab some java before your debrief?”
“No,” Merri said. She pulled her clove cigarettes from the pocket of her black suede jacket and lit one.
“What’s got you all worked up?” Emmett asked, closing the door. He turned around to face her. Leaned one shoulder against the door. “The debrief was routine—”
Merri shook her head. “I’m not worried about the debrief.” She reached into her pocket and grabbed the flash drive, then held it between her thumb and index finger for Emmett to see. “You need to look at this.”
“I’ll bite. What’s on it?”
“Prejean’s history. Beyond what we were given. Way beyond.”
Emmett chuckled and pushed away from the door. “Okay. I’ll bite again. What were we given about said Prejean?”
“Quit playing with me, Thibodaux,” Merri said, exhaling clove-scented smoke. “Now’s not the time. You remember all that enhanced vampire bullshit Gillespie gave us about Prejean and about him being part of some mysterious TSP? Well, that’s exactly what it was—bullshit. He’s a god-damned True Blood.”
“Yeeaahh, right, a True Blood working in a government TSP. Oh, hey. I know! He was teaching them how to keep things really secret, things like their existence.”
“It’s not like Prejean had a choice. And that’s not his name, by the way.”
Emmett’s amusement faded. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Want to start at square one?”
Merri stopped pacing. She stared at Emmett. “What?”
“Exactly, sistah. What. But I’m listening, so enlighten me.”
A cold lump of dread sank like a scuttled submarine into the pit of Merri’s stomach. Her fingers curled around the flash drive and tucked it against her palm. “What did you discuss during the debrief, Em?”
“What the hell, Merri? You know we can’t discuss that before you go in.”
“Tell me, goddammit.”
Emmett crossed the short distance between them and planted himself in front of her. “What’s going on?”
A muscle flexed in her jaw. “The debrief, tell me.”
“All right. We discussed the Rodriguez c
ase, of course,” he replied. “And how you and me discovered evidence that indicated Wallace and Lyons suckered some poor transient desperate for cash into whacking Rodriguez, then whacked the transient and made it all look like a burglary gone bad. ”
“Yeah? And why did Wallace and Lyons want Rodriguez dead?”
“You know this, Merri. Why are you making me repeat it? They wanted Rodriguez dead because he’d learned they’d falsified evidence in several cases …”
Tears stung Merri’s eyes. The motherfuckers had wiped Emmett. That’s why they’d taken him into debrief early—to separate them. She wiped at the tears threatening to spill over her lashes with a furious sweep of her thumb.
Wipes happened to witnesses and perps, not to SB field agents.
What the hell had she and Emmett stumbled into?
“Merri, are you crying?” Emmett asked, voice low. “You’re freaking me out.”
“They’ve wiped your memory, Em. They fucking wiped your memory.”
The color drained from Emmett’s face. He stared at her. “No, that can’t be. Why would they? They brought us here to congratulate us for …” He shook his head. “No. No.”
Merri latched her fingers around his forearm, felt the hard muscle beneath. He looked down into her eyes. “I’m next,” she said. “Part of the reason why is on that flash drive. Maybe what we discovered at the compound is another part of why.”
“The compound? Shit! What compound? What did we discover?”
“If that’s gone too, then I’m fucking right.” Merri sucked in a deep lungful of smoke, then exhaled. She looked up into Emmett’s eyes. “Have I ever given you reason not to trust me?”
“Nope.”
“You need to trust me now, Em, okay?”
Emmett raked his fingers through his hair. Drew in a shaky breath. Nodded. “Okay. If you’re next, then we’ve gotta get out of here.”
“Truth, brothah.” Merri squeezed his arm one more time before releasing it. “Leave behind everything you can’t slip inside your laptop case or in your pockets. I’ll do the same.”
“Yeah, strolling along the corridor suitcase in hand might be a dead giveaway.”
Merri nodded. “We’ve got a little bit of time. I’m not supposed to be in debrief until twenty hundred hours.”
Emmett glanced at his watch. “Twenty minutes. Think there’ll be problems getting out?”
“There’s no reason for them to think we’d try to escape—we both believe we’re doing a routine debrief.” Merri strode to the door. “No reason for alarm or worry. No reason for us to be watched.”
“Roger that.”
“See you in five.” Merri opened the door, then paused. She turned around.
Emmett grabbed his shoulder holster from the easy chair he’d tossed it onto and buckled it on, the leather creaking. Picking up his Colt .45, he chambered a round, then slid the gun into the holster.
Memory wiped.
A sick feeling twisted through her. Was her little data-theft adventure in Purcell’s office part of the reason why? “Em?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m so sorry.”
He looked at her, his gaze steady. “Don’t be.”
Merri slipped out the door. After she and Emmett escaped somewhere safe, she’d make sure he learned the truth. She’d make sure he learned the flash drive’s contents inside and out, backward and frontward. She’d make sure no one would ever do another B&E gig in his mind and steal bits of his life, his reality, away again.
Merri’s mère de sang responded immediately, concern buzzing through her sending.
A second of stunned silence pulsed through Merri’s mind, then: < A True Blood. By all that’s holy, Merri-girl, that’s good news.>
Merri looped the strap of her laptop’s black leather carrying case over her shoulder, then left her room. Emmett waited for her in the hall.
“You take the south elevators to the parking garage, I’ll take the north,” he said. “I’ll meet you at the car.”
“You mean I’ll meet you,” Merri said with a quick smile. She moved.
30
AT THE HEART OF IT ALL
NEW ORLEANS
ABOARD THE WINTER rOSE
March 26
JUSTINE AUCOIN AWAKENED. SHE stared into the cabin’s gloom. The riverboat creaked as the Mississippi lapped delicately against it. Beyond the curtained windows, the sun lingered just above the horizon. Evening had not yet arrived with its subtle, cool scents and its electric lure of mystery and danger; the world colored in shades of midnight blue, black, and deepest purple.
What had awakened her?
Uncurling from the silk sheets and velvet comforter, Justine sat up and listened. Creaking wood, splashing water, the babbling, unshielded thoughts of the servants and apprentis, the silence of Sleeping vampires.
She extended her senses out, searching for danger, for anything out of place, or for anyone who didn’t belong. Nothing disturbed the spiderweb of security erected and maintained by Guy Mauvais’s Sleeping mind. Ah, no longer Sleeping. Her père de sang was also awake.
Justine smoothed back her long hair and was about to turn around, a question on her lips, but it hit her then, like a spike through the heart, and her breath caught in her throat.
Once more, absence had awakened her. A void where once a Sleep-cool body had curled beside hers.
Justine closed her eyes. Even after a month, her grief whittled at her. She refused to swivel around and look at the empty bed. She wanted to keep the image of Étienne’s black braids fanned across the pillow as he Slept, wanted to keep the image of his smooth café au lait skin showcased by her burgundy silk sheets.
She wouldn’t look. She would pretend—as she had for the last month or so—that he still Slept, awaiting her kiss to reel him up out of dreams and into the night.
Before Dante Prejean had murdered him.
Smoothing back her long dark hair, Justine rose to her feet. She plucked her red silk bathrobe from the hook on the back of the cabin’s door and slipped it on. Belting it at the waist, she sat at the polished maple vanity and picked up her brush.
Drawing it through her thick coffee-colored hair, she regarded her reflection in the vanity’s mirror—white skin, full pale lips, large dark eyes still drowsy with dreams and shadows. Snow White before the apple. She touched her fingertips to the black velvet choker with the white rose cameo encircling her throat.
Guy’s amusement swept through her.
Justine’s heart leapt into her throat. She rested her brush on the vanity, her hand trembling.
“I HAD A SUMMONS sent to Prejean’s home,” Mauvais said, shifting his gaze from the black water rippling past the Winter Rose’s bow to Justine’s lovely moonlit face.
“He’ll ignore it. Just li
ke every other time.”
Mauvais nodded. “Most likely. But this time, it’ll cost him if he does.”
He breathed in his fille de sang’s scent of wild rose—prickly and sweet—along with the river’s odor of cold water, mud, and fish. Justine’s scarlet gown looked nearly black in the starlight, its trimmed black lace curving around her full, white cleavage and shoulders.
“Why do you suppose Renata Alessa Cortini is interested in that defiant, murdering brat?” she asked.
Mauvais shrugged one shoulder. “Perhaps the defiant brat murdered someone else he shouldn’t have.”
He replayed his earlier conversation with Rome’s leading lady and principal voice in the Cercle de Druide, examining it for hidden meanings and nuances he might’ve missed while listening to her enticing Italian-accented voice.
My fils de sang, Giovanni, will be paying you a visit, M’sieu Mauvais.
I am honored to play host to your son, ma belle dame. Will this be an official visit?
No, Giovanni is merely on a fact-finding mission.
I shall assist him in every way, Signora Cortini. What information is he seeking?
Everything you and yours know about Dante Baptiste.
Baptiste? I know of a troublemaking and unruly Dante Prejean, but no Baptiste.
Ah, sì, we’ve recently learned that his true name is Dante Baptiste.
An intriguing bit of information—Baptiste, not Prejean. A name change to hide other crimes, perhaps? A matter Mauvais intended to investigate further.
“I hope to find justice for Étienne,” Justine murmured.
Mauvais looked at her. Justine gazed at the cloud-smudged night sky, her face wistful. Unable to stop himself, he brushed his fingers against her soft cheek.
“And if you don’t?”
“Then I will settle for revenge.”
“Is there a difference, ma belle?”
Justine sighed. “I don’t know. Does it matter?” she asked, leaning against him.
Mauvais slipped an arm around her night-cooled shoulders. “Perhaps not.”
Boards creaked beneath shoes as a servant hurried toward them. Ah, but not alone. Mauvais detected a slow and unfamiliar heartbeat edging the mortal servant’s rapid patter.
Beneath the Skin Page 28
