In the Blood

by Adrian Phoenix

  Dante followed the noise of two fast-drumming hearts, their rhythms overlapping and twisting into one thundering sound. In the darkness pooled in front of the exit, courtesy of a burned-out bulb, a guy in a windbreaker struggled with a woman, his hand locked around her upper arm.

  “Let go of me!” she cried, trying to jerk free. Fury edged her voice, but Dante heard fear underneath. She swung her purse.

  “Goddammit!” The guy dodged, then grabbed her bag and wrenched it from her hand. He tossed it into the parking lot. It hit the concrete, spilling its contents across the pavement. “I spent a helluva lot of money on you! You could at least be nice.”

  “I don’t—”

  Dante moved. He ran across the parking lot, breezing past the woman’s purse, and stopped beside the grabby guy before the woman finished speaking.

  “—owe you shit!”

  The guy, potbellied but thick-muscled, scowled at Dante. “None of your business, asswipe. Get lost.”

  “Yeah, y’know what? Fuck you.” Dante shoved the guy with one hand. Potbelly slammed into the building like he’d been fired from a cannon. He slid down to the pavement, expression dazed.

  The woman blinked, not exactly sure what had happened, but when she noticed Potbelly was down, she ran over and kicked him in the thigh, then gathered up her purse and its contents. Whirling, she hurried back into the club. The steel door slammed shut behind her.

  Potbelly groaned.

  Dante leaned over him, twisted his fingers into the windbreaker’s collar, and yanked the guy to his feet. He dragged Potbelly around the club’s edge to the Dumpster-filled back lot. Hurled him against the building and pinned him there, hand to shoulder, thigh snugged between legs. Potbelly stared at him, mouth open, eyes dilated, and Dante realized his hood had fallen back.

  “My God…”

  Dante breathed in the mortal’s adrenaline-and-lust-spiced scent, listened to his jackhammering heart and thought of the blood pumping through his veins. Just beneath the skin. Promising pleasure. Promising relief. Hunger uncoiled.

  He shoved Potbelly’s head to one side, before he could say another word, and tore into his warm, pulse-pounding throat with his fangs. Burrowed into his flesh.

  And fed.

  20 LET THE DEAD REMAIN DEAD

  Seattle, WA

  March 23

  Shannon staggers along the highway’s edge, thumb out, peering into the darkness. She really has to get home. She only stopped for a few drinks while out on errands. The kids were at soccer practice or guitar lessons or Scouts, and she had a few moments to herself.

  A few moments to concentrate on all the amazing ideas and thoughts and plans buzzing in her head like busy little bees that won’t let her sleep. Light seems to fill the darkness behind her eyes at night, illuminating her mind, and working in cahoots with the stupid busy little bees.

  Just a few moments to drown the fuckers and put out the light.

  The next thing she knows, it’s dark, and the moon’s high in the sky. Her new friends try to talk her into staying and, for a second, she considers it. Then she remembers Jim saying: I’ll take the kids from you, Shannon, I swear to God! You need to pull yourself together. You need to get back into rehab.

  So she pulls free of her friends’ beseeching hands—C’mon! One more drink!—and escapes into the chilly October night. Car won’t start and she can’t find her cell phone. Screw it. She abandons the car, and decides to thumb a ride home. Probably will piss Jim off—he’ll rattle more crime statistics until she blocks out the sound of his voice by humming to herself.

  Sometimes she wishes he’d never joined the fucking FBI. She can’t compete with that kind of love, that kind of devotion. He was like a priest, and forensics was his act of communion with the Holy Bureau.

  October, and the air is crisp. But she’s not cold, she’s on fire and alive and flying. Heather’s birthday is coming up. She’ll be twelve. Twelve going on forty. She sees too much and maybe not enough.

  Have I lost her?

  Shannon stumbles, her heel catching on the asphalt’s ragged edge. She giggles. Good thing she isn’t driving. Point in her favor. She licks the tip of a finger and strokes an imaginary line in the air. Sliding off her shoe, she peers at the heel.

  Headlights pierce the night. Shannon sticks out her shoe instead of her thumb, cocking her weight onto one hip and smiling. The headlights glow, twin moons filling her vision and dazzling her sight.

  The car pulls over, tires crunching on gravel, the muffler streaming a plume of exhaust and the heady smell of gasoline in the air. The engine purrs.

  Headlight-blinded, she wobbles as she tries to put her shoe back on. She hops backward before sprawling on her ass. She throws back her head and laughs. Good thing she isn’t walking the line for a cop. Another point in her favor. She draws another imaginary line in the air. Slipping off her other shoe, damned heels playing havoc with her balance; well, that and all the booze, Shannon climbs to her feet, stumbling only a little. She’s brushing the dirt off her hind end when the driver’s door opens.

  A man slips out of the purring car, and something gleams in his hand.

  “Need help, Shannon?” he asks.

  WITH THE SMOOTH IDLE of a well-tuned engine still in her ears, Heather awakened, heart racing. Light filtered into the room between the slats of the closed blinds. Rolling over onto her side, she pulled open the nightstand drawer and fished out a memo pad and pen. She wrote down as many details as she remembered: the car not starting; the lost cell phone; the cold, crisp air; the smell of pine and rain-wet blacktop; the man speaking her mother’s name.

  Shannon and her killer knew each other.

  Heather stopped writing. Wait. This was a dream—only a dream. Not a glimpse into the mind of a woman twenty years dead. Just a dream, a recurring one that she’d had for years, not an interview with a victim.

  Sighing, Heather tossed her pad and pen onto the nightstand and sat up. She wrapped her arms around her sheet-draped knees. Eerie was on his back at the foot of the bed, his belly up for pats. He watched her through slitted, contented eyes.

  “Morning, you,” she said.

  Just a dream, yes, but one that was refusing to fade. She still heard the creak of the car door opening, Shannon’s drunken giggles, still smelled cigarette smoke from the tavern. Just a dream, but one that’d dropped her deeply into her mother’s mind, a dream laden with more details than ever before.

  Ever since D.C.

  Sighing, she glanced at the clock. The red, glowing numbers shocked her completely awake. 11:45 a.m. Shit! Jumping out of bed, Heather plucked her robe up from the chair and slipped it on over her PJs, belted it.

  Ever since she’d been shot, she’d been sleeping later and later. She wondered if the shock to her system had altered her biorhythms. She’d never really been a morning person, but had learned to cope over the years, like most people in the human workaday world. Could Dante, while healing her, somehow have changed her? She went still inside at the thought.

  Mantra: One thing at a time.

  Drawing in a deep breath, Heather pushed aside her troubling thoughts, knowing she’d examine them again later and in more depth. She stepped into the hall and smelled fresh-brewed coffee, the welcome scent filling the house.

  She paused in the hall, combing her fingers through her hair for several moments before she realized she was gathering energy, preparing for Annie.

  But instead of moving forward, she closed her eyes, uncertainty and desperation twin spikes nailing her in place. Could she help Annie? She was running out of options, running low on hope. Sure, the truth about their mother might grant insight into Annie, but would it be enough to save her?

  Shannon’s bleak thought echoed within her: Have I lost her?

  Heather opened her eyes. No. I can’t. I won’t. Shoving aside her doubts, she walked into the dining room. Annie sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the sofa, flipping through one of Heather’s books on vampires—Whi
le We Sleep. A mug rested on the coffee table.

  Annie glanced up. “Hey. Good noon. There’s coffee.”

  Heather smiled and nodded. “Yeah, same to you. And thanks.” Going to the kitchen, she pulled a mug from the cupboard and poured coffee into it, sugared and lightened it with half-and-half. Curling up on the sofa, she asked, “How you feeling? No hangover?”

  Annie closed the book, and placed it back on the coffee table. She shrugged. “I’m fine.” She glanced over her shoulder at Heather, her blue, black, and purple hair swinging against her face. “I’m sorry about last night, about all the stuff I said about Mom. Seeing those pictures…I mean, I never imagined…”

  “I know,” Heather said. “Nothing ever prepares you for the reality.”

  Annie’s apology surprised her. Normally when she spun out of control, lashing out at everything and everyone around her, she’d pretend afterward like it’d never happened. Or excused it away as just being drunk.

  “How do you handle it? Seeing bodies, I mean? Does it ever freak you out?”

  “Sure, it freaks me out from time to time. And to be honest, I don’t know how I handle it, I just do.” Heather took a sip of coffee, then added, “I have to if I’m going to find out who killed them.”

  “But Mom’s been dead for ages,” Annie said, pushing her hair back from her face. “Why are you digging into it now?”

  “Because I watched someone else speak for his mother and realized no one, not even Dad, had spoken for our mother.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  “Dante.”

  “His mom was murdered too?” Annie asked. She curled a lock of hair behind one ear, revealing the studs circling its rim, her face thoughtful. “No wonder…”

  “No wonder what?”

  “Nothing.” Annie shook her head. “He’s nothing like the other guys you’ve dated. Well, I mean, aside from the fact he’s a freaking vampire.”

  “True.”

  “And he looks awfully young. You robbing the cradle? Or is he like centuries old?” Annie scooted around to face Heather. Sunlight glinted from the rings looped through her eyebrows.

  “Thanks, thanks a lot, Little Ms. I’m-Twenty-six. Wait till you’re thirty-one. He’s twenty-three, so he’s been out of the cradle for a while and we’re not dating, anyway.”

  “Oh. Excuse me.” Annie rolled her eyes. “Sleeping together, not dating.”

  “Okaaay, let’s turn this conversation to you,” Heather said. Eerie hopped up onto the sofa and, purring, graced her lap with his warm presence. She set her mug on the arm of the sofa and petted him, smoothing her palm down his silky, furred back. “So what’s the plan? Is this just a visit, or are you seeking sanctuary?”

  Annie’s shoulders hunched forward, her body stiffened. “Fuck, I haven’t even been here a day and you’re already trying to get rid of me.” Setting her mug back on the coffee table, she rose to her feet.

  “Don’t start,” Heather said. “I’m not trying to get rid of you. You broke into my house and I want to know if you have a plan. What about your apartment in Portland? Are you moving here? What about a job? Your meds? Therapy?”

  “Oh, I get it.” Annie turned around, her hands clenched into fists. “Let’s just lobotomize Annie. Make everything much simpler for you, wouldn’t it?”

  Heather picked up Eerie and placed him on the cushion beside her. “Quit twisting things around! This isn’t about me!”

  “Sure. Uh-huh.” Pointing her middle, fuck-you finger at the carton on the table, Annie said, “That dead bitch is more important to you than me.”

  Fury pushed Heather up from the sofa and onto her feet. “Annie, stop,” she said, voice low and tight. “Stop, right now.”

  “You only care about the dead! That’s all you think about! Talk about!” Annie yelled. “Maybe if I died—”

  Heather grabbed Annie’s shoulders. “Don’t say that!”

  “It’s true!” She knuckled a fist into Heather’s shoulder. “What if you’d died, huh? What if you’d fucking died and left me all alone?”

  Hot pain knotted Heather’s shoulder, but Annie’s words hurt worse than her punch; her words knifed Heather’s heart and stole her breath. What if you’d died?

  Heather wrapped her arms around Annie and pulled her stiff, but unresisting body into hers. Hugged her tight. “It’s all right. We’ll figure it out. You know I’d never ditch you. It’s just that things aren’t safe—”

  “Let mom stay dead, Heather. Let mom stay dead so we can be a family again.”

  Heather went still. She felt cold, like winter had awakened within her, gray and icy and stark.

  I want us to be a family again. All of us. But don’t dig up the past, Heather. Look to the future and let the dead remain dead.

  Maybe no one’s phone had been tapped.

  She’d only told one person what Dante had done. She poured her secrets and confessions into Annie, believing that as keeper of Annie’s whispered yearnings and manic desires, her sister wouldn’t judge her. Believed their shared secrets strengthened the bond between them—sisters and survivors.

  Glad that Prejean saved your life.

  How many secrets had Annie bartered away over the years?

  Numb, thoughts reeling, Heather held Annie, realizing for the first time just how alone she truly was.

  21 IN THE DIRT

  Damascus, OR

  March 23

  ALEX FINISHED BURYING THE remains of Athena’s latest experiment, tamping the dirt in place with the back of the shovel. Sweat stung his eyes. He straightened, wiping his sleeve across his forehead and arching his back to work out the kinks. He sucked down pine-scented and river-cooled air to wash the stink of melted flesh out of his nostrils.

  Leveling the shovel over his shoulder, he headed back to the cottage and the shower. After toweling his hair dry, he pulled on jeans and a black Inferno tee, one with flames licking up from the sleeve hems and the word BURN to the left of center on the chest. He laced his Rippers, shrugged on his hoodie, then followed the wind-through-the-trees rustle of Athena’s whispers.

  She sat cross-legged on the sofa in the front room’s closed-curtained gloom, light from the laptop monitor flickering across her face, sparking in her eyes. Her lips moved as she whispered.

  “I’m leaving for Seattle,” Alex said, stopping beside the sofa. Blue light flashed across Athena’s rapt face as she watched Dante unmake Johanna Moore yet again. He suspected she had that scene on a repeating loop.

  “I’m leaving,” he repeated gently, crouching beside the sofa. “Can I trust you to stay here while I’m gone?”

  Athena nodded and her hair tumbled into her eyes. She brushed it back with an absentminded sweep of her hand. Blue light danced in her eyes.

  “Stay away from Father. Which means you can’t snuff Mother either. Promise.”

  “Promise.”

  “What do you see?” Alex asked.

  “A night sky full of black and gold wings,” she murmured. “The Fallen descend, setting the sky afire with their song. I see a woman balanced on a tightrope.”

  “What does this mean?”

  “Ask Dante.”

  Alex grasped his twin’s hand and squeezed. “Thena, will you be all right? You could always come with me.”

  She looked at him then, the glare from the monitor vanishing from her eyes. “I’ll be fine, Xander.” A small smile brushed her lips. “And you’ll do much better in Seattle without me.” She squeezed his hand back, warm and quick.

  The circuit closed again and, for a too-brief moment, Alex felt connected and whole. Then Athena released his hand. Her gaze returned to the monitor. She touched the keypad and light flashed across her face again. Danced in her eyes. Her lips moved, whispered.

  He’d lost her. Again.

  Alex rose to his feet, opened the front door and left the cottage. The misty rain had stopped. Pale and ragged streamers trailed from the gray clouds, combing across the tops of the trees
. A breeze smelling of pine and moist earth rustled through the trees, a soft sighing whisper.

  Call me Hades.

  A chill swept over him, goose bumping his skin.

  Time was running out. Faster than he wanted to imagine. Faster than he could imagine.

  Alex sprinted across the yard to the gravel driveway and his Ram. Rain beaded on the truck’s ruby-red finish, glistened on the windows. Sliding in behind the wheel, Alex glanced at the floorboards.

  The former shotgun satchel now contained everything he needed to restrain Dante. The iPod encoded with his father’s instructions to Dante and a small, slim trank gun were in his hoodie pockets. As was something Father didn’t know about and sure as hell wouldn’t approve, a flash drive containing all of Bad Seed’s history and Dante’s past.

  Just in case everything went south.

  “Amen, brother,” Alex murmured, starting up the truck.

  DOWN IN THE DIRT, pine needles, and bugs, Caterina watched through binoculars as a tall, lean-muscled blond man in jeans and black hoodie climbed into a pickup. He backed the pickup down the driveway to the highway below and drove away.

  Looked like Alexander Lyons had the day off, given the way he was dressed and the late afternoon hour. That left his twin in the cottage and his dying mother in the main house with his father.

  “Wonder how long the son’ll be gone,” Beck said.

  “Does it matter?” Caterina asked, keeping her attention focused on the expensive house nestled in the pines. “It’ll only take me a moment to finish Wells.”

  “Yeah,” Beck sighed. “Little Ms. Bad Ass.”

  “Keep your commentary to yourself.”

  “Got it. Little Ms. Bad Ass is working.”

  Caterina’s muscles tensed, and for a moment, she held in her mind a very clear picture of herself garroting Michael Beck with her binoculars strap, imagined twisting it tight, her knee in his broad-shouldered back. And, for some reason, that image cracked her up. It was like a scene from a retro action flick full of cheesy puns and stiff dialog.