Etched in Bone (Maker's Song #4)

by Adrian Phoenix

  Disbelief danced across Uriel’s face. “But Gehenna—”

  “Je connais,” Dante said, voice weary, a near sigh. “The Morningstar told me that your world is dying and y’all need me to pump new life into it, yeah? I’m willing to consider it, but on my own time and my own terms.”

  “Perhaps after you’ve seen your father and Heather home,” the Morningstar said, crossing the terrace in long strides. Brushing past Lucien, he sauntered to a stop beside Uriel. “And after you’ve rested.”

  Dante shrugged. “Maybe, yeah. We’ll see.”

  Heather stiffened. “If he returns to Gehenna, it won’t be alone.”

  “Of course,” the Morningstar murmured.

  Uriel’s smile suddenly looked strained, looked more like clenched teeth than a smile. White fire pooled in the palms of both hands, spun into two tiny wheels. “Even though . . . Lucien is your father, I fear for your safety. He murdered the last creawdwr and I’m concerned that history might repeat itself.”

  Dante shook his head. “I’m not, and it won’t.”

  “If we allow you to leave Gehenna, how do we know you’ll return?” Uriel asked, his little spinning wheels vanishing like snuffed candle flame when he fisted both hands. “We can’t rely on maybe and we’ll see.”

  “You ain’t got no say in whether I leave or not,” Dante said, another dark and dangerous smile slanting across his lips. Eros caught a tantalizing glimpse of fang tips. “Let me make this real fucking clear: I. Ain’t. Running. And I sure as hell ain’t hiding. I’m gonna be easy to find.”

  “We can set up a meet-and-greet like you mentioned earlier,” the Morningstar said, his pale brows knitting together thoughtfully. “Allow all of the Elohim to see you and speak with you. After that, we can discuss making arrangements for you to heal the land. And for training you how to do so.”

  Dante raked a hand through his hair, blue flames pinwheeling along his fingers. “Yeah, d’accord, that’ll work—as long as the nephilim and the chalky dudes are at the meet-and-greet too.”

  “Chalkydri,” the Morningstar reminded.

  A hint of a smile brushed Dante’s lips. “You can still blow me.”

  Dante’s flippant, Cajun-spiced words goosed Eros’s pulse. He closed his eyes and allowed himself to dip his toes into the heated pool of an incubus’s natural erotic vision; he imagined the Morningstar dropping to his knees in front of Dante and unbuckling his belt. Then replaced the Morningstar with himself. Felt the belt buckle’s cold steel beneath his fingers, heard the rasp of the zipper as he drew it down inch by inch.

  Fire pulsed through Eros’s loins.

 

  Morrigan’s command splashed into Eros’s imaginings like a boulder into a mud puddle. His eyes jerked open, the vision ruined.

  Uriel frowned at Dante. “Even if we agreed to these arrangements, what guarantee do we have that you’d actually return?”

  “I said I would,” Dante replied, looking him in the eye.

  Uriel stared at him. Seemed nonplussed. “You’re giving me your . . . word?”

  Morrigan laughed, a crow’s mocking amusement. “Do you also cross your heart and hope to die?”

  Without looking away from Uriel, Dante raised his hands level with Morrigan’s veiled face and extended both middle fingers. “Yup. I’m giving you my word.”

  “Dante never lies,” Lucien said. “If he says he’ll return, then he’ll return.”

  “That may be true, but it’s not good enough,” Uriel said, shaking his head. Starlight glinted along the glyphs inked into his black skin. “We’ve waited too long, Dante. We can’t just let you walk away again. We either need a hostage—and I vote we keep your father—or a blood pledge.”

  “Keep me then,” Lucien said, wings flexing. Gold light glimmered in his eyes.

  “They’re not keeping you or anyone else,” Dante growled, gaze locked with Uriel’s. “No hostages.”

  “Then we need your blood pledge,” Janus said in a light Italian accent. Beads clicked as his fingers worked along his rosary. He studied Dante with eyes the deep blue of a long summer evening—and unreadable. “It will be your promise to us that you will return. A promise we can trust.”

  “No,” Lucien said. “Absolutely not.”

  Eros arched an eyebrow. “Do you speak for the creawdwr?”

  “No, he doesn’t,” Dante answered. He rubbed a hand over his face. “Fuck. Fine. Tell me what this blood pledge involves.”

  “Like Janus said, it’s a promise,” the Morningstar said. “The only blood involved will be your own, so no one will be attempting to lay a blood spell on you. It will simply link you to your word, make your promise physical. And once the promise is fulfilled, the link vanishes.”

  “So it’s temporary, yeah?”

  The Morningstar nodded. “Yes. And harmless—for the most part.”

  “For the most part?” Heather questioned. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “If a pledge isn’t fulfilled in a timely manner, then the link begins to produce pain as a reminder and as incentive.” The Morningstar shrugged. “Mild pain. Nothing to be concerned about.”

  “What he hasn’t told you,” Lucien said, “is that Heather will be affected by your pledge too. All bondmates are. Any pain you earn from the pledge, she’ll share.”

  “She’s mortal,” the Morningstar pointed out, voice amused. “The pledge won’t affect her in the same way—if at all. At most she might get a whisper, an echo. But as long as you fulfill your promise, neither of you will feel anything.”

  Dante shook his head. “Ain’t risking Heather.”

  “Doesn’t sound like much of a risk, Baptiste.”

  Dante glanced at Heather and, seeing the question in his dilated eyes, Eros realized that the gorgeous mortal was more than just a bodyguard. She was the creawdwr’s partner in more ways than one, a partner whose opinion he valued—a true bond.

  “Too many to fight,” she murmured. “But I’ll back your play—whatever it is. If we can leave here together and intact, I can live with sharing your promise.”

  Dante twisted around to face her, then bent his head and touched his forehead to hers. She rested her free hand on his leather-clad hip. Neither said a word, but Eros had no doubt plenty was passing between them.

  A dark pang of envy jabbed into Eros as he watched them together. They burned like a strong flame cupped between two hands.

  Dante could do anything to her—reshape her, transform her, unmake her—yet she didn’t hesitate to touch him.

  “Okay,” Dante said, lifting his head to look at Uriel. “I’ll do it, but I choose the Morningstar.”

  A muscle flexed in Uriel’s jaw. “Of course.”

  Regarding Uriel from beneath his silver lashes, the Morning-star smiled.

  Emotions flashed across Lucien’s face in rapid succession—anger, frustration, despair, fear—and his taloned hands knotted into fists. “I don’t know how you managed to trick Dante into trusting you,” he said, his gaze on the Morningstar, his eyes dangerous black ice. “But I plan to be sure my son knows how skilled you are at manipulating the truth to your own ends.”

  The Morningstar laughed. “Well, you would know all about manipulating the truth to your own ends, wouldn’t you? Given that your son has no understanding of his heritage or his gifts. Nor of his duties. You’ve manipulated him all of his very young life. Kept him ignorant of who and what he is.”

  Dante arrowed a razored look at the Morningstar. “You’re still talking about shit you know nothing about,” he said, then slashed an equally sharp glance at his father. “And he hasn’t tricked me, since I don’t fucking trust him, so you don’t know what you’re talking about either. I’m choosing the lesser of . . .” He paused to make a point of counting each of the Seven, before finishing, “. . . five evils.”

  “You don’t know what you’re doing, child,” Lucien grated. “I appreciate you coming for me, but leave me behin
d. Take Heather and go.”

  “No. Quit fighting me, dammit,” Dante said, his voice strained. He looked at his father with a strange mix of fury and anguish. “I ain’t losing you again.”

  The muscles in Lucien’s shoulders cabled. Drops of dark blood spattered the marble beneath his clenched hands. Closing his eyes, he nodded.

  Shifting his attention to the Morningstar, Dante asked, “So how do we do this?”

  “It’s simple,” the Morningstar replied. “A bit of blood from you, a bit of magic from me and we’ll seal the pledge to your heart. You need to take off that torn and bloodied thing you call a shirt first.”

  “That part of the ritual?”

  “No. I despise that shirt.”

  A smile tilted the creawdwr’s luscious lips. He peeled off the offending shirt with the cryptic NIN letters in one fluid motion, wincing in pain as he did, then stuffed one end of it into the left rear pocket of his leather pants.

  His muscles must still be tender from wing-birth. Eros paused in his admiration of Dante’s bared torso—white skin, lean muscles, hard, flat abs, and on the sculpted chest above the left nipple, a small bat tattoo—and thinned his shields so he could extend his senses outward, rechanneling his erotic focus into a healer’s questing scan. Brushing against Dante’s ragged shields, he took a peek inside.

  A grave lined with upright shovels, their blades buried into the sawgrass . . .

  Boy needs a lesson. Boy always needs a lesson . . .

  Wasps wriggle beneath black-painted fingernails . . .

  A savage meat hook gleams beneath fluorescent lights . . .

  Holy, holy, holy . . .

  I’m scared, Dante-angel. But I’m glad I’m with you . . .

  Eros reeled himself away, feeling scorched, his senses crisped—and he hadn’t even gone inside. His breath hissed out between his teeth. Fire ravaged the creawdwr’s mind. Voices whispered and capered. The past and the present flipped back and forth like a double-hinged gate in a gale.

  Not only young and untrained, the creawdwr was damaged. Dante wasn’t mad, not yet. But he would be. Between the creu tвn and the damage he’d only glimpsed, Eros knew it was only a matter of rapidly passing time.

  Was it possible to heal him? Or was the damage irreparable? Or would it be more advantageous to make sure Dante continued to need a healer—one he might wish to bind himself to? Eros’s heart kicked hard against his ribs. He might’ve just found a way to gain the upper hand against the Morningstar and the other members of the Seven.

  “What’s next?” Dante asked. Sweat glistened on his forehead. His muscles rippled and flexed as though he was struggling for control. His eyes unfocused. “Ready for use, yeah, Papa?” he whispered.

  “Baptiste?” Concern knitted Heather’s brows. She reached for him. “Stay with me.”

  As though the marble floor had abruptly tilted beneath his boots, Dante stumbled a step sideways. He threw out a flame-swallowed hand to brace himself against one of the fluted columns guarding the entry.

  Blue flames flared against the moonlit marble column. The column dissolved into a hailstorm of tiny blue stones that scattered across the floor in all directions. Dante hit the marble on his hands and knees, his wings flaring and flapping in a belated effort to restore his balance.

  Panicked murmurs and cries rippled throughout the terrace like pebbles tossed into a lake.

  On his hands and knees, Dante shook his head as if to clear it. Dozens of little moths—or what looked like moths—wriggled out from beneath the creawdwr’s fingers with their black-painted nails, fanning their sable wings. Song chimed into the air with each wing flutter. Fewer stones littered the floor.

  Curiosity and fear twisted through Eros in equal measure when he saw the blue-sparked image of a hook centered in each soft wing. He saw the same fear reflected in every face on the terrace.

  Including Heather’s. But her fear was for Dante, not of him.

  “Shit,” Dante whispered. He shoved himself back up onto his feet, his expression dazed, uncertain. Fresh blood trickled from his nose. His wild, searing anhrefncathl spilled away into silence. The flames vanished from his hands.

  “You’re in Gehenna,” Heather said, reaching up to push his sweat-dampened hair out of his face. “You came here for Lucien and found him. We’re going home as soon as the blood pledge has been made. You with me, Baptiste?”

  Swallowing hard, Dante nodded. “J’su ici.” He squeezed his eyes shut. When he opened them again, he glanced at the Morningstar, his pale face resolved. “Let’s do this.”

  12

  THROUGH THE WORMHOLE

  GEHENNA

  THE ROYAL AERIE

  The Night of March 27–28

  THE MORNINGSTAR RESTED A moonlight-gilded talon against Dante’s chest just above his heart. Pain throbbed at Dante’s temples, swirled through his thoughts like a red-hot poker as he met the fallen angel’s blue gaze. Tension corkscrewed his muscles.

  Keep focused. Stay here. Get this done.

  The Morningstar lifted a brow. “Two weeks enough time?”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “Breathe in,” the Morningstar suggested.

  Dante drew in a breath of cool, jasmine-scented air. Pain needled his chest as the Morningstar’s talon pierced his skin, sliding its full length into his pectoral muscle, then out. The image of a wasp’s stinger flared in Dante’s mind, then faded. His heart kicked hard against his ribs. Stay here.

  Blood welled hot against the wound and Dante watched as the Morningstar traced a pattern in the blood with his finger—a symbol, a sigil—murmuring in a language Dante didn’t know, but the words strummed against his heart like fingers across guitar strings.

  “A vow made in blood and fire,” Lucien translated, his voice tight, “a promise to return to Gehenna in two weeks, a pledge freely given, shaped in blood and sealed with fire . . .”

  Heat trailed the Morningstar’s finger, burning against Dante’s blood-slicked skin like a lighter’s flame.

  “ . . . and if the pledge isn’t honored, if you do not return as promised, then this mark will remind you and compel you. Shall give you no other choice but to return and fulfill your obligation.”

  The Morningstar pressed his hot palm against the blood sigil he’d just traced on Dante’s skin. “This will hurt,” he warned in a whisper. “A lot.”

  Nodding, Dante tensed his muscles. Took another deep breath. Then a bolt of lightning struck him straight through the heart. Electricity surged through his skull. His muscles locked. He felt his body spasming. The electric smell of ozone and the stink of scorched blood—his own—curled into his nostrils.

  Molten chains coiled around his heart and locked into place.

  As suddenly as it had begun, the pain stopped. The lightning vanished. Dante felt himself falling, felt hands seize his biceps, hold him steady. Kept him on his feet.

  “It’s done,” the Morningstar said.

  Dante blinked away the black spots flecking his vision, sucked in a ragged breath. “Christ. I think hurt a lot was a bit of a fucking understatement,” he muttered.

  A smile quirked at the corners of the Morningstar’s mouth. “A bit,” he agreed. He dropped his hands from Dante’s arms.

  Dante looked down at the sigil seared into his chest. No visible burn, just ridged white skin in the shape of an upside-down pyramid with a smaller reversed triangle hooked to its base with graceful curlicues. A scar. His first.

  “You okay, Baptiste?”

  Dante turned and looked at Heather, saw the strain on her face, the fear in her eyes, felt her fatigue. “Зa va bien, catin,” he replied. He reached for her hand, folded his fingers through hers. “We’re done here. Let’s go home, yeah?”

  A weary smile curved Heather’s lips. “Oh, hell yeah.”

  “Wait! You can’t leave.”

  The Morningstar’s daughter, Hekate, hurried across the terrace, her sandals pattering against the marble, and brushed between Lucien and
her frowning father. “What of my mother, little creawdwr?” She stopped in front of Dante, her violet eyes meeting his, wavy tendrils of moon-silvered hair framing her face. “What of all the others you’ve turned to stone? Our emissaries?”

  “Who’s your mom?” Dante asked.

  The Morningstar grasped his daughter’s elbow. “Not now. There will be time for this later.”

  Hekate yanked free of her father’s hold and said, “My mother’s name is Lilith.”

  Dante remembered Lilith—golden eyes, midnight hair, rain-beaded face. Remembered her lies even better.

  Your father’s dead, little one . . . Gone to ash. Nothing remains.

  “Sorry to hear that,” Dante said. “But she’s gonna stay stone.”

  Hekate’s pale brows knitted together, her expression disbelieving. As she opened her mouth to protest or argue or—given the sudden frost in her eyes—cuss him out, another voice cut in. A familiar voice. A lecturing voice.

  Dante’s hunger shoved its way up, back from below.

  “A fate no doubt deserved by our lovely Lilith of Lies. But as for the others, their only intention was to welcome you.”

  Golden wings folded behind him, Gabriel strolled from the arched doorway onto the landing terrace, the ends of his whiskey-amber hair curling against the waistline of his blood red kilt, his eyebrows lifted in a stern expression edged with mock regret—like fucking Papa whenever he took off his belt and looped it.

  Stopping beside the chick with the veil and the dude with the crimson wings and hot honey gaze, Gabriel touched a hand to his healed throat. “Creawdwr,” he murmured, moss green eyes wary.

  “Gabriel,” Dante drawled. “I’m still trying to picture what’d you’d look like on hooks down in the pit. Got a feeling you’d look much like Lucien did.”

  Gabriel’s expression hardened and a challenge flared like match-sparked gasoline in his eyes. As he opened his mouth to reply, the Celestial with the red wings laughed, a low and sexy sound like warm silk sliding along naked flesh.

  “Now there’s an image to inspire sweet dreams,” the red-winged angel said.

  “Keep your opinions to yourself, Eros,” Gabriel growled, folding his arms over his sculpted bare chest.