In the Blood

by Adrian Phoenix

  39 A SHAPE IN THE HEART

  Damascus, OR

  March 25

  See, Daddy? See?

  Dante jumped to his feet and spun around. The room whirled and he tipped back into Heather. “Gotcha,” she said, then she sucked in a sharp breath. “Shit!”

  A man stood at the hall’s dark mouth, Annie hugged against his side. He held a knife to her throat. And nestled inside the crook of Annie’s arm was a woman’s severed head.

  “I’m here to rescue you,” Annie muttered, a disgusted expression on her face. “Luke Skywalker I ain’t. Fuck.”

  Dante looked at the man’s face. Or tried to, anyway. His face was a blur, a blank, and the sight of it slid away from Dante’s mind. Pain pierced his eyes as though he’d looked into a bright, dazzling light, throbbed at his temples. He couldn’t remember what he’d been doing or thinking.

  “Your coup has failed, Alexander,” the man said, contempt icing his tone. “You couldn’t even control your lunatic sister. How could you hope to wield S? I expected more from you, much more. Now I’ll have to begin again with a resurrected bride and fresh offspring.”

  Faceless Man’s voice was a finger tripping a switch. Something jagged and off-centered inside Dante ratcheted into gear. His heart drummed a fierce and rapid rhythm.

  Hoping to stop whatever was happening to him, hoping to keep the wrong things from clicking into place, Dante squeezed his eyes shut and dove into the droning, wasp-riddled depths within.

  “Get out of here, Baptiste!” Heather pushed and shoved at him, desperation threaded through her scent.

  “Ain’t leaving you,” he whispered.

  And plunged deeper.

  Holytrinitydantewillmakeusoneholytrinitydantewillmakeusoneholytrinity…

  She trusted you. Guess she got what she deserved.

  Time to take yo’ medicine, p’tit.

  What’s he screamin’?

  Kill me.

  But he couldn’t fall deep enough or fast enough.

  “Open your eyes, S, my beautiful angel sans merci. Open your eyes and look at me. Rip Van Winkle.”

  The voice looped around Dante like a noose and yanked him up again.

  And, unable to stop himself, Dante opened his eyes and looked.

  MARLEY’S INDIAN AND GLEN’S Kawasaki rumbled away, the engines swallowing the silence as they gunned the bikes up the dark, rain-glistening road. Von frowned at the empty Trans Am. Annie hadn’t waited. He shook his head.

  Foolish, darlin’. More than a little.

  Maybe heart and steel runs in the Wallace family—at least in the kick-ass women.

  Von opened the driver’s-side door and grabbed the black vinyl bag from the backseat. Unzipping it, he pulled out a handful of hypes and several vials of dope and shoved them in his pockets. He tossed the bag back into the car and shut the door.

  His gaze shifted up the night-shrouded driveway. All manner of bad shit hammered at his shields. From what he could tell, Dante’s shields were down and his demons were awake and in full voice.

  He hoped the morphine would be enough.

  Von took note of the SUV with a bicycle rack on top parked alongside the road a little ways up. A currently unoccupied SUV, one he remembered parked on Heather’s street.

  Looks like I ain’t the only one sneaking around tonight.

  Unholstering both Brownings, Von moved.

  FAIRY-TALE TRIGGER WORDS.

  Cold fingers closed around Heather’s heart when Dante’s eyes sprang open at Wells’s command. Red streaked his dark irises. Pain dilated the pupils. His attention was riveted on Wells, but a deep and primal rage blazed in his eyes.

  She touched Dante’s arm and he shuddered. His muscles quivered, taut. “Don’t listen to him, Baptiste, listen to me.”

  “He’s not allowed to listen to anyone else, Agent Wallace,” Wells said, looking the worse for wear, hair uncombed, face beard-shadowed, his clothes rumpled. “He won’t hear you.”

  Heather met Wells’s confident gaze. “That’s what Johanna Moore thought too.”

  Wells’s confidence dimmed a notch. He nodded. “Point taken.” He pressed the knife a little deeper into Annie’s throat. She held still, clearly trying not to swallow. A line of blood appeared beneath the blade. “Kindly step away from S, Agent Wallace,” Wells said.

  “His name’s Dante Baptiste. Not S.”

  “If you say so. Now move. Sit on the floor.”

  Sliding her fingers from Dante’s arm, Heather paced aside a couple of steps, then knelt beside the sofa. She studied her sister. She looked pale and disheveled, but more than okay for a woman with a knife at her throat and a severed head in her arms, her gaze steady.

  She’d never expected Annie to return, to attempt to help her. And even though it moved her that her sister had returned, Heather desperately wished she hadn’t.

  “Let Annie go,” she said, voice level. “You don’t need her.”

  “I don’t, true, but S will need her blood sooner or later.” Wells looked past Heather to the living room.

  She glanced over her shoulder. Lyons had pulled the spear from his twin’s body and tossed its bloodied length to the floor. He cradled Athena/Hades in his lap, rocking back and forth. “Nonononono,” he whispered over and over, his voice raw and broken.

  As raw and broken as Dante’s voice had sounded while the twins had tortured him. Any sympathy Heather might’ve felt shriveled in the heat of her anger. A muscle flexed in her jaw and she looked away.

  She wasn’t sure she liked what she was feeling, but she’d have to deal with that later. Right now, she couldn’t, wouldn’t let Wells use Dante.

  With Wells’s attention focused on his grieving son, Heather slipped her hands underneath the sofa. She groped along the carpet for the thing she’d glimpsed beneath the sofa when Dante had been feeding.

  A syringe.

  Heather’s fingers bumped against a smooth, cylindrical shape. Curling her hand around it, she pulled it free.

  “Thank you for bringing Wallace home, Alexander,” Wells said. “I’ll enjoy studying her to see what changes S made when he healed her.”

  I’ll just bet you would, Heather thought. You and the SB both.

  A covert glance at the syringe cupped in her palm revealed that it was completely filled. That alone told her that it hadn’t been intended for humans—too much, even for a fatal dose.

  But for nightkind?

  It won’t do nothing but ease him into sleep, doll.

  Desperation tightened around her throat. She hoped that was true for any drug.

  Rising to her feet, Heather stepped beside Dante, slipping the syringe between her fingers. Wells couldn’t command him if he was unconscious. Wouldn’t be able to force him to do anything. She jabbed the needle into Dante’s throat.

  “No!” Wells shouted.

  Just as Heather’s thumb touched the plunger, a static-electricity jolt zapped her hand. The syringe twitched free of her grasp, jerked from Dante’s throat, and zipped across the room.

  Heather spun around.

  Lyons met her gaze, his own a pale green sea of bitter hate and grief. “Can’t let you do that,” he said, easing his twin’s limp body onto the carpet. “I still need the bloodsucking bastard to heal Athena.”

  Then he rose to his feet in one smooth, athletic motion, lifted his gun, and fired.

  Heather twisted around, heart pounding, and saw a widening circle of blood in the center of Wells’s shirt.

  THE BULLET HIT THE side of Von’s shades, shattering them. El Diablo styled shrapnel thistled his face. “Motherfucker!”

  Von whirled, dropping into a crouch as he spun, and opened up with both barrels. Muzzle flash from the Brownings lit up the shadowed yard and dazzled his vision as he emptied both clips. He dove behind a stack of cordwood smelling of sawdust, mold, and oak. Wood splinters flew into the air when the next bullet slammed into the stack.

  On his back, his gaze on a night sky gone pale with rain cl
ouds, Von ejected the clips, pulled two more from his jacket pockets, and slapped them home—one, two.

  He wiped his stinging face with the back of one hand. His hand came back blood-smeared. “Motherfucker,” he repeated. Blinking the retinal flash ghosts from his eyes, Von rolled up to his knees.

  He caught the glow of muzzle fire across the yard and up an evergreen and oak-sheltered hill. A split second later a bullet thwipped into the wood stack.

  Von grinned. Gotcha, Mr. SUV Sniper Man. Squeezing off a couple of rounds to keep the asshole busy, he jumped to his feet and ran.

  WELLS STARED, STUNNED BY his son’s display of telekinesis. A natural talent, not one he’d implanted or manipulated, one Alexander had kept secret. Then the bullet hit Wells in the chest, staggering him back a step like a hard-knuckled punch. He looked down at the hole in his shirt and the blood soaking into its fabric. The pocketknife slipped from his fingers.

  Annie jerked away from him. He heard a dull thud and looked down to see Gloria’s head rolling on the floor.

  “No!” Wells dropped to his knees and seized the head by the wispy gray hair. He gathered it into his arms. Gunfire cracked through the night outside, a series of shots, then silence. His thundering heart leapt into his throat. Had the SB sent more assassins?

  “Shit!” Wallace said. “Annie, get on the floor! Stay there!”

  S was wincing, his sensitive ears no doubt hurting from the explosive sound of the round Alexander had fired.

  Alexander lowered the gun and strode to the door. Flipped the dead bolt.

  “S, protect me. Kill Alexander!” Pain ripped through Wells’s chest.

  “Listen to me, Baptiste,” Wallace said. “You’re not the killer he’s tried to shape you into since birth. You’re the man your mother wished you to be, wished aloud and from the heart.”

  A muscle jumped in S’s jaw. His eyes squeezed shut, his lashes trembling as though he fought to keep them closed. His taut muscles quivered.

  “Protect me, S!”

  “Shut him out, Dante. You deserve a life of your own, shaped however you want. Shaped from the heart. We’re in this together, all the way.”

  Sweat beaded S’s forehead. “T’es sûr de sa?” he whispered, voice strained.

  “Yeah, Baptiste, I’m sure,” Wallace answered softly.

  Wells stared at S. “Hush,” he commanded, his voice a breathless wheeze. “Open your eyes, S, and look at me. Rip Van Winkle.”

  “Snow White,” S replied. Blood trickled from his nose, spattered on the sofa, the carpet. A dark smile tilted his lips. The tension uncoiled from his body. “Sleeping fucking Beauty.”

  Fear iced Wells’s blood. He struggled for breath. S was somehow circumventing his programming. Maybe it’d been short-circuited when the twins had tried to force his past down his throat. Or maybe it was Wallace. Maybe it was both. Or neither.

  Should’ve made him kill Wallace, like Chloe.

  Wells scooted back against the wall. The coppery taste of blood filled his mouth.

  More shots popped outside.

  S opened his eyes.

  Wells caught peripheral flashes of movement around him—Wallace’s sister crawling to the sofa, Wallace reaching for S, but he couldn’t tear his gaze from S’s beautiful, blood-streaked face, from his golden gleaming eyes.

  Gold, just like when he’d been born. Just like when he’d un-made Johanna.

  Blue flames flickered out from behind S, from his cuffed hands.

  S’s smile deepened at whatever he glimpsed in the depths of Wells’s eyes.

  “This’ll make it easier to kill him,” Alexander said. “But after you bring my sister back from the Underworld.”

  Wells watched, cold and slicked in sweat, as a small key floated across the room and disappeared behind S. He heard a sharp click, then a thud as S shook off the unlocked cuffs. S worked his shoulders, swinging his hands forward.

  Hands haloed in blue flames.

  He’s the one, Dante-angel.

  I know, princess.

  Dante’s song swelled in the dark of his soul, intoxicating and free, a primal aria. Energy crackled along his fingers.

  Vaulting the sofa, Dante landed in a crouch beside the man whose face he couldn’t keep in his mind, Lyin’ Lyons’s dad. The pungent smell of fear oozed from every pore of the Faceless Man’s body.

  “My beautiful boy, my S,” the man said, his voice bubbling, “it’s time to bid you goodnight for—”

  “No!” Heather yelled. “Shut up!”

  White light strobed at the edges of Dante’s vision. Pain blurred his thoughts. He slapped a hand over the man’s mouth. His song raged in wild ascending chords, strumming fast and sharp as he sealed the man’s mouth with blue fire. Blue flames blazed across the man’s face, wiping away all features, making it easy for Dante to look at him. The pain throbbing in his head throttled down a notch.

  The Faceless Man screamed and screamed and screamed, the muffled sound locked inside his throat.

  But inside Dante, the voices whispered.

  Wantitneeditkillitburnit…

  Is he getting what he deserves, Dante-angel?

  Nah, princess, not even close.

  “Little fucking psycho,” Dante said, his song resonating from his heart and into the night, aflame and unfettered.

  DANTE’S anhrefncathl, DARK AND burning and razor-edged, pulsed into Lucien, drawing him up from restless sleep. His muscles flexed and, instinctively, he tried to unfurl his wings, tried to launch himself into the sky.

  Pain pierced his wings, his shoulders, and Lucien awakened. Embers glowed orange-yellow-red underneath him, and Gehenna bled away above.

  As did he.

  A cold knot of dread settled into Lucien’s chest. His child’s powerful chaos song stabbed into Gehenna’s fading night sky, madness glimmering in each exquisite and haunting note.

  Wybrcathl trilled through the skies above, crystalline and pure, and chalkydri chittered below, their excited voices echoing throughout Sheol’s tunnels.

  Anhrefncathl! Creawdwr! The song of a Maker!

  And so, we must face the things we fear.

  Dante was no longer hidden. All of Gehenna now knew a creawdwr existed, and the Elohim would stop at nothing to find him. Soon they would wing to the mortal world seeking the source of the chaos song—a damaged and beautiful boy, his furious son.

  Once again, Lucien’s absence was about to condemn Dante to a hellish existence. Once again he was breaking his promises.

  You’ll never be alone again.

  I will keep our son safe.

  Lucien twisted in his chains. The barbs corkscrewed deeper into his shoulders and blood trickled hot down his back. Pain blackened his vision. A rush of wings and servile chittering from the chalkydri announced the descent of one of the Elohim.

  Swept up by wing gust, sulphurous, stinking air blew over Lucien, but layered underneath was a hint of cedar and warm amber, of myrrh. As his vision cleared, he saw Lilith hovering in front of him, her lush body gowned in deepest blue.

  “Your son has announced himself,” she said, her ember-shad-owed face tight with an emotion Lucien couldn’t quite name. “We’re out of time.”

  “He didn’t intend to,” Lucien said. “He’s in pain.” If the past had finally risen like a tsunami from the depths and broken over Dante, he hoped that Von was close, hoped he had a syringe ready. “You must find him before Gabriel or the Morningstar do. Tell Dante I sent you.”

  “What if he doesn’t believe me?”

  “Tell him he once gave me a gift, one that I cherished, an X-rune pendant.”

  “For friendship.” Lilith’s expression softened. “What happened to it?”

  “It was taken from me,” Lucien said, voice low.

  Lilith glanced up as shadows winged overhead. “Now, Lucien, hurry.”

  Lucien closed his eyes, dropped his ever-weakening shields, and revealed the coiled ethereal bond linking him to Dante—father to son, creator to cr
eated, aingeal to creawdwr.

 

  Closing her eyes, Lilith dipped into Lucien’s consciousness, a mind she’d once known intimately. He felt her presence, intelligent and warm and strong. He felt her trace the bond, tap into its rhythm. Felt it resonate within her mind. Together, they forged a temporary link to each other.

 

  Lilith stared at him, gold flecks gleaming in her violet eyes.

 

  A sudden burr of wings opened Lucien’s eyes. One of the chalkydri, scaled hide gleaming in the ember light, buzzed away. It fluted/chittered in a mock-wybrcathl: “The Nightbringer has a bond with the creawdwr!”

  The chalkydri’s fluting ended in a startled squeak. The strong flap of Elohim wings echoed from the nearest tunnel. Lucien’s heart turned to stone when white wings cut through the darkness at the tunnel’s mouth. He threw his shields back into place.

  The Morningstar emerged into the pit proper, the chalkydri hanging limp from his taloned hand. He dropped the scaled body into the embers. Its delicate wings sizzled on the coals, and the sickening smell of roasting flesh wafted into the air.

  A smile blazed upon the Morningstar’s radiant face. “Still planting seeds of trust, my love?”

  Lilith spun away, her black wings stroking through the gloom for the pale sky above. Lucien focused on keeping his bond bright enough for her to follow. He wished her fletched-arrow speed.

  “I find it amusing that the slayer of one creawdwr fathers the next,” the Morningstar said. “Dante, an intriguing name, but inappropriate, don’t you think? Once he’s seated upon the Chaos Seat, he’ll finally be far and safe from the hell politely referred to as the mortal world.”

  White wings slashing through the reeking air, the Morningstar whirled up to Sheol’s mouth. “And he’ll be mine.”

  Lucien stared after him, cold to his core.

  And Dante’s anhrefncathl still raged through Gehenna’s sky.