Etched in Bone

by Adrian Phoenix

  Von looked down at the magnolia-scented bundle of black cloth in his hands. Blinked. “You sure, little brother?”

  “Oui. J’su sûr. She loved you.”

  “She loved you too.”

  “Keep it for luck.”

  “People are staring at you.”

  “Don’t fucking care.”

  Von swallowed hard, then nodded. “Okay then.” He turned to his bike and carefully folded the hoodie into the pack strapped to the sissy bar.

  Boisterous zydeco bounced into the evening air from speakers hanging above the front door of a souvenir shop—one of a zillion souvenir shops in the Quarter—across the street.

  “What the hell?” Von said, peering at the Harley’s fuel tank, a low and dangerous edge to his voice “Is that a dent? On my fucking bike?”

  Dante froze, thinking of the cemetery destruction and the force behind it. Uh-oh.

  Von crouched in front of his Harley Fatboy, leather jacket creaking as his fingertips circled a small dent in the fuel tank.

  “Shit. I didn’t notice that last night, but, yeah, it’s probably my fault,” Dante said, crouching down as well to examine the damage. “Je regrette, mon ami.”

  “You bet you’re sorry. You ever damage my bike again and I’ll kick your ass.”

  “Duly noted.”

  Von grunted, then rose to his feet. He straddled the Harley Fatboy’s seat and kick-started the engine. As it roared to life, he regarded Dante with a mixture of exasperation and affection. “See you at Lake Pontchartrain after you feed, little brother. Try not to destroy the city in the meantime.”

  “Didn’t have citywide destruction on my to-do list, but I do now. And fuck you.”

  “Awww. Love you too, you contrary little bastard.”

  After a mutual double-handed flipping-off session, Dante watched Von steer his bike into traffic, the Harley’s deep rumble vibrating in through the soles of his boots as the nomad gunned it up Saint Peter toward Royal.

  As his hunger guided him to Basin Street and Saint Louis No. 1 with its choice of tourist-mugging predators, Dante mentally replayed the conversation he’d shared with Heather before slipping from the club to hunt.

  What happens when we get to Lake Pontchartrain? I’m pretty sure you don’t plan on rounding up those arsonists of Mauvais’s for nightkind cops or nightkind courts.

  Nope. Those bastards are dead, they just don’t know it yet.

  Simone’s gone and everyone else in the house could’ve died with her, including Annie and Eerie, so I get it, Dante, I do. But what worries me is this: where does it end? Does it become an endless loop of violence and revenge? When do you let go of it?

  Never, catin. This is the nightkind world. The tempo is savage—marked out in blood. Grudges are nursed like precious and ailing infants over centuries. It ain’t like the mortal world, it can’t be.

  I’ve noticed, trust me. But you can change your role in that world. You can change anything and everything. You could even let go of that endless loop.

  Maybe, yeah. But not tonight, catin. Not tonight.

  She nods, and her tight-jawed expression tells Dante this conversation isn’t over, not even close; then she pulls her gun free from the back of her hip-huggers and ejects the magazine, checks it, then slams it back home again—an automatic action.

  She asks: So when are we going?

  Dante was yanked from his thoughts by a panicked scream. A man in an over-sized black hoodie punched a woman in the face, yanking her purse strap from her shoulder. He pelted down the sidewalk in a long-legged stride, the purse tucked like a football against his ribs.

  Dante blurred after the mugger in an adrenaline-fueled rush and body-slammed him into the cemetery wall. Slashed his fangs into his sweat-salty throat . . .

 

 

  . . . and drank deep.

  39

  PAST THE POINT OF NO RETURN

  NEW ORLEANS

  LAKE PONTCHARTRAIN

  March 28

  TREY CAUGHT THEM ALL off guard.

  As Heather eased the van, headlights off, to a halt in the lot at Breakwater Park’s far end, Trey slammed open the side door and bolted outside in a dreads-trailing blur. He disappeared into the night-inked park and from view, but Heather didn’t need clairvoyance or a crystal ball to know where he was headed like a fanged, heat-seeking missile—the lakeshore beyond and the arsonists waiting at the distant boat ramps for their ride.

  “Fuck!” Dante moved and seemed to vanish from the van.

  Lake-chilled air salted with the scents of brine, marsh grass, and decaying wood poured in through the opened passenger door. Dante was long gone.

  “Wow. Did not see that coming,” Silver muttered from the backseat, his tone the verbal equivalent of an eye roll. “Trey breaking his promise to wait? I mean, seriously.” He jumped out of the van. “I think he just fucked the plan.”

  Heather had to agree.

  Since Von and De Noir’s surveillance hadn’t turned up any indication of a trap, just a pair of anxious fire bugs waiting to go home, it had been decided to use them before handing them over to Trey.

  The plan had been simple—in theory. Wait for the yacht’s power boat to arrive. Knock everyone out before warning could be sent to Mauvais. Pilot the captive-laden boat back to the yacht with herself, Von, Silver, and Trey aboard. Dante and Lucien would fly, hopefully adding a shock factor to the yacht-storming when they winged down to the deck.

  Once we’re on the yacht, cher, they’re all yours—Mauvais too. Just wait until then, so we can catch the fi’ de garce off guard, yeah?

  Mauvais’s fille de sang is mine too, Tee-Tee. Promise.

  Dante’d bitten his lower lip, then given his promise, his sworn word, in a tender kiss.

  If Dante didn’t catch up to Trey before he reached the boat ramp, the nightkind half of the Molotov cocktail–tossing pair would send word of the ambush to Mauvais, making it impossible to get the drop on the Creole lord.

  Heather pulled her Colt from her trench coat pocket and chambered a round. As she was reaching for the door, Silver yanked it open, expression tense. Moonlight haloed his anime hero–styled hair. Heather hopped out of the van and he snugged an arm around her waist, bracing her against his hard, lithe body. His fresh, just-sprinkled-cinnamon scent filled her nostrils.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  “Let’s haul ass.”

  Silver moved.

  The night streaked past in cool, midnight shades of shadow and moonlight as they blurred across the parking lot, past pale rocks and old splintered logs and into the cool green of the park; blurred through marsh grass and past clusters of palm trees and along a curving stretch of pavement leading to the boat ramps.

  “Shit,” Silver said, slowing to a stop at the ramp’s mouth. He removed his arm from around Heather’s waist. “Looks like we missed the party.”

  Heather’s fingers tightened around the grip of her gun as she pieced together the scene meeting her gaze.

  Two bodies lay sprawled on the ramp. One seemed to be missing its head.

  Blood pooled on the concrete, glinted wet in the moonlight. Dripped from Trey’s fingers, his dreads, freckled his expressionless face. And the smell of it, thick and coppery, curled like smoke into the air.

  The low throbbing sound of an idling engine drew Heather’s gaze to the sleek power boat bobbing beside the ramp’s end. Dante, his pale face almost luminescent in the dark, hauled a panicked-looking man out of the boat by one arm and tossed him onto the ramp.

  The man’s boot soles slipped on the blood-slicked concrete and he would’ve gone down if not for Dante’s hand around his biceps. All color drained from the boat pilot’s face as he realized what he was standing in. He looked at Dante, then froze. His mouth dropped open.

  “Hypnotized by beauty,” Silver commen
ted. “Like a rat in front of a cobra. Wish I could do that,” he added.

  Heather flicked a glance at Silver, wondering at his wistful tone. His attention was focused on Dante, his expression shadowed and brooding, a teenager’s intense and single-minded want despite the fact that he was actually a year or two older than Dante.

  Heather looked away, a wisp of uneasiness curling through her. He has a crush on Dante. And not in a good way. Does Annie know?

  “Our quarrel ain’t with you,” Dante said to the boat pilot. “We’ll leave you—”

  Blood sprayed across Dante’s face. Fountained into the air from the pilot’s headless neck stump. Spattered the concrete in dark and glistening drops. Trey stood behind the pilot, the man’s open-mouthed head in his hands.

  Heather blinked. She hadn’t even seen the web-runner move. Her stomach knotted and she looked away from the head he held.

  Dante released the spasming body. It crumpled against the ramp. He wiped blood from his face with his mesh sleeve. “Dammit, Trey! That wasn’t necessary. He was just a fucking servant.”

  But Trey said nothing. He simply tossed the head into the dark waters of the lake, the splash loud in the strained silence. The slaughter on the boat ramp had happened with breathtaking speed. Three dead in less than three minutes.

  “So much for the element of surprise, doll.” A whiff of gun oil and frost.

  Heather jumped. Whirling, she glared at the nomad now standing beside her. “Christ! I need to get bells for all of you.”

  Von snorted. “You still wouldn’t hear us coming, woman.”

  Thinking of Dante’s silent tread, his soundless motion even with jinglies on his leather jacket, Heather sighed and nodded. “Probably not,” she agreed.

  “The question now is, did the nightkind half of this house-torching pair get a warning off to Mauvais before Trey wrenched his head from his shoulders?” Von said, stroking the sides of his mustache with his thumb and index finger.

  Heather returned her gaze to the lake where it blended with the starlit horizon and spotted what she believed to be Mauvais’s yacht in the distance, a shape outlined in white pearls of holiday light—La Belle Femme.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “The yacht doesn’t seem to be moving.”

  “I’d bet my left rim Mauvais knows we’re here, doll—or that someone is, anyway.”

  Heather frowned. “But why wouldn’t he just leave?”

  “ ’Cuz he ain’t worried, catin,” Dante said, trailing a hand through his hair. “We’re nothing but a household of snot-nosed kids to him.”

  “Exactly,” Von said. “But just because he ain’t worried, it doesn’t mean he ain’t gonna hunt you down later to spank your ass over this. Especially when three of his own—one nightkind and two mortals—are dead.” He glanced at the headless night-kind body. “Well, mostly dead. We still need to burn this bastard.”

  “So what now?” Silver asked. “We’ve got the boat. Do we go after the asshole and finish this?”

  “Oui, cher, we finish this,” Dante said quietly, his gaze flicking over each of them in turn before returning to Silver. “If we don’t, if we wait for a different night or better odds—it won’t be me the fi’ de garce comes after, it’ll be all of you.”

  “So he’ll punish you through us,” Heather said, studying the light-beaded yacht.

  “Not if he’s dead,” Trey said, voice flat. “Not if I feast on his heart.”

  “Exactement.”

  A shadow swooped across the dock and Heather looked up. His black wings extended like a thermal-gliding dragon’s, De Noir glided through the night sky in a slow, lazy spiral on his way down to the ground.

  “Von mentioned that Mauvais tasted your blood,” De Noir said to Dante as his feet touched the concrete. “He’ll want more. He might be hoping you’ll come to him.” His wings folded shut behind him with an easy grace. “And he’ll be ready.”

  “So he can keep you on tap,” Von speculated, his expression providing a new standard for deadpan. “Chain you up and keep you in the wine cellar to be brought out for those special occasions.”

  Dante snorted. “You mean he’ll try. I ain’t planning on letting anyone hold me down this time.”

  “You didn’t plan on that last time either, little brother,” Von pointed out.

  “Yeah, yeah, blow me. But I get your point, llygad.”

  “Wait. You what? Check my pulse, doll. Did my heart just stop?”

  “That can be arranged,” Dante growled.

  “Tempting as that is, I think I’m gonna pass on the opportunity to become a part of the body count. But thanks for thinking of me.”

  Dante rolled his eyes. “Anytime.”

  “Excuse me, but is his heart still beating?” Heather asked, pointing at the headless nightkind body on the ramp. Her memory flipped back to the night Dante had killed Étienne in the slaughterhouse.

  Wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his wrist, Dante stands. Étienne’s head dangles from his other hand, braids wrapped around his fingers. He drops the head onto Étienne’s chest. The braids jitter with each beat of the heart. The eyes blink.

  “Oui, he’s still alive,” Dante replied. “And we need to finish him.”

  De Noir joined Dante beside the bodies. “You kill him, Mauvais will feel it and know beyond a doubt something is wrong. There will be no turning back.”

  “We’re already past the point of no return,” Dante replied, nodding at the bodies.

  “The murdering motherfucker burns,” Trey said. He was staring out across the lake to the yacht, despair hollowing out his eyes. His bloodied hands flexed at his sides. “I don’t give a shit what Mauvais knows or feels or suspects. This murdering motherfucker burns.”

  Dante gave De Noir a look, one that seemed to say, that settles it, yeah?

  A muscle flexed in De Noir’s jaw, but he said nothing more.

  “I’ll check the boat for a gas can or something,” Silver said. He loped across the ramp, jumped into the power boat, then ducked into the cabin.

  A stiff breeze, smelling of saltwater and fish, gusted against Heather and she pulled her trench coat tighter, grateful she’d worn it. She tucked her Colt back into her pocket. The yacht remained on the horizon, glittering like a constellation upon the lake.

  Von nudged her with his shoulder. “Hell, this’ll probably be our best shot at Mauvais, anyway,” he said. “He wasn’t expecting us when he took to his yacht in the first place, so he can’t have more than a fraction of his household with him.”

  “Not to mention a smaller cache of weapons,” Heather said.

  Von nodded. “True, darlin’.” He strolled up the ramp toward the bodies.

  Dante bent and hooked his fingers into the collar of the headless nightkind’s burgundy silk shirt. Or, at least Heather thought the shirt was burgundy. Maybe it hadn’t been before all the blood.

  Von scooped up the head and held it by its short, bleached blond hair, a look of mild distaste on his face. “Picking up severed heads. I’ll never get used to shit like this,” he muttered. “And if I ever do—fucking bring me down in a hail of bullets.”

  Heather felt a sympathetic smile twitch across her lips. “As long as you promise to do the same for me.”

  “Done, doll.”

  Dante hauled the body toward Heather’s end of the ramp, blood painting a dark, wet trail on the concrete behind him. Heather’s shoulder muscles cabled tight as she remembered how Étienne’s body had struggled to escape the flames.

  Dante’s dark eyes met hers. Comprehension and sympathy glinted in their depths.

 

 

  Dante’s breath caught in his throat and he stumbled. The shirt collar slid from his grip. The body thumped bonelessly to the concrete. Dante squeezed his eyes shut, his body stiffening with pain and tension.

  “Aw shit
, little brother.”

  Heather’s heart skipped a beat when she saw a dark line of blood ooze from Dante’s left nostril. She felt something jagged and red-hot, like a broken and burning branch, jab against her shields.

  Pulse racing, Heather struggled to spin her shields tight, to layer more steel around her mind, but instead she felt something different, something she hadn’t experienced before during the short time of their bond—a thought-blanking, body-numbing arc of electricity, as though a downed and wriggling power line had been jammed into her skull. Her muscles spasmed, locked.

  Just before her vision whited out, she caught a glimpse of Dante falling, his body convulsing, heard frantic voices—Von and De Noir—and the high drone of an engine powering away, and smelled the thunderstorm scent of ozone.

  Then bolt after searing bolt of lightning struck her, contorting her muscles and reducing her mind to molten slag.

  HEATHER TASTED BLOOD, COPPERY and warm, but with an unusual undertone, like just-ripened grapes. Felt it fill her mouth. She turned her head to spit it out, but a strong hand held her jaw closed.

  “No, you don’t, doll. You need to swallow it, just like the other mouthful.”

  The other mouthful?

  Her body hurt all over—muscles throbbing, joints aching—as though she’d been in bed for days with a severe case of flu, and her skin prickled, a pincushion for a million tiny needles.

  What happened? Where am I?

  “Swallow, darlin’,” Von repeated. “And I totally mean that in a non-dirty way.”

  Realizing the blood had to be Von’s, Heather did as the nomad urged and choked down her mouthful. Coughing, she opened her eyes.

  Von leaned over her, the skin between his eyebrows creased, worry in his green eyes. Several strands of dark hair had escaped his ponytail and trailed across his face. A relieved smile brushed his lips.

  “Hey,” she whispered. “What happened?”

  “Hey back, woman. You gave us a scare.”

  Heather blinked. Tried to remember where she was. She looked up into the night sky. She smelled brackish water and mud, heard the slap of water against pilings. Then, like a pool being filled with a garden hose, where and when and what trickled into her mind.