Etched in Bone

by Adrian Phoenix

  NEW ORLEANS

  CLUB HELL

  March 30

  LUCIEN ABSORBED THE SCENE beyond the windshield, numbering the combatants and their positions in one quick glance as he brought the van to a rubber-smoking stop behind the white NOPD-marked van angled in front of the club.

  A van unlike any other NOPD vehicle he’d ever seen.

  At the driver’s side door—a man in a generic black uniform and ski mask.

  At the passenger side door—another man in generic black uniform and ski mask crouching behind the door along with a middle-aged man in glasses and a tan trench coat. All were sheltering behind the doors and returning fire through the shattered windows.

  Up the sidewalk and down a few doors, Jack was pressed up against the narrow doorway of DaVinci’s Pizza. He whirled around, red braids flying, and squeezed off a couple of rounds at the van, before ducking back again.

  Emmett Thibodaux popped off a shot as well from his half-kneeling position behind an old rust-tattooed junker parked at the curb, his face a study in cool concentration.

  And crumpled on the sidewalk in an utterly motionless tangle of limbs, fuzzy bathrobe, and wild blue/black/purple hair, was Annie. Somehow she’d ended up outside and in the cross-fire. And that somehow was troubling. Lucien could only hope she hadn’t taken more than one bullet or a fatal shot.

  But it was what Lucien’s studied glance hadn’t shown him that troubled him the most: Where was Heather? Why wasn’t she in the club’s doorway, gun in hand? Even if she was busy protecting Dante as he Slept, she’d do everything in her power to keep her sister safe as well.

  Another dark and chilling possibility pranced uninvited through his mind—Heather lying in a pool of her own blood, her gun on the floor just beyond the reach of her fingers.

  I refuse to accept that possibility.

  Throwing his door open, Lucien jumped from the van, and moved.

  “WE NEED TO LEAVE,” James said, squeezing off a final round into the pizza parlor’s doorway. Brick splintered into the air. “Cops will be showing up soon.” He ejected the magazine from his Colt and pulled a fresh one from the pocket of his trench coat and slammed it home.

  “That’d definitely be a FUBAR cherry on top of the tasty FUBAR sundae this mission just became,” Stevenson agreed, his voice almost cheerful, as if firefights on city sidewalks were as ordinary and to be expected as road construction and driving delays. “Time to haul ass, Mr. Wallace.” He ducked into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

  A bullet starred the windshield.

  Just as James slid into the passenger seat, the sound of screeching tires whipped his head around. A black van had skidded to a stop behind them. The stink of scorched rubber smoked the air.

  Prejean’s mysterious friend/mentor/personal ATM machine, Lucien De Noir.

  James nodded at Annie. “Grab her,” he said to Zimmer, his fellow door-sheltering companion. “Toss her in back and let’s go.” A heated breeze suddenly blew past James, fluttering his hair.

  Zimmer nodded, and that was the last thing he ever did—aside from die. A blur of movement, a sharp snap, then Zimmer dropped to the street, his head canted at an unnatural angle as De Noir released him.

  James blinked, his brain trying to process the fact that one second ago De Noir was inside his van, and now he stood over Zimmer’s body, his eyes glowing with a golden and unearthly light.

  “Jesus Christ,” James whispered, heart jackhammering in his chest.

  De Noir’s nostrils flared as he reached for James, then alarm flickered across his face. He spun away, facing the club’s entrance.

  Survival instinct sucker-punched James’s rational brain, duct-taped it, then tossed it into a closet. Grabbing the van’s door, James yanked it shut. He started to lock the door, then, doubting it would do one ounce of good, his hand skittered away from the lock-tab.

  “Go,” James urged, keeping his gaze riveted on De Noir. “Go now.”

  “What about your daughter?” Stevenson asked, voice shaky.

  “Leave her. She’ll be fine. Just go. Now.” James clenched his hands against the urge to shove Stevenson out of the driver’s seat and take charge of the steering wheel himself.

  Stevenson yanked off his ski mask and tossed it onto the floorboards. Sweat beaded his face, glistened in his hair. He slammed the transmission into drive, then goosed the van onto the sidewalk.

  De Noir whirled around, and James’s heart leap-frogged into his throat. He wondered if his gun with its current crop of ordinary bullets would do anything more than inconvenience De Noir.

  But De Noir didn’t come after them as Stevenson bulldozed over baskets of flowers, plowing down newspaper racks and trash cans before bouncing the van back into the street where he floored it. Instead, De Noir scooped Annie up from the sidewalk and out of harm’s way—namely their frantic, pedal-to-the-metal path.

  James shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead, feeling sick. He’d just abandoned his youngest child, left her in the care of monsters, and the ironic part? They’d done more to protect her and keep her alive than her own father had.

  “I’ll be back for you, sweet pea,” James vowed under his breath. “Count on it.”

  TUCKING HIS GUN INTO the back of his jeans, Jack trotted up the sidewalk to Lucien, worry creasing his face. “Is she okay, her?” he asked.

  “You’ll have to find out yourself,” Lucien said, shifting the unconscious woman from his arms and into the drummer’s. “I’ve got to go. The club’s on fire.”

  Jack stared at him. “What?”

  But Lucien whirled away, leaving his question unanswered, and raced up the sidewalk to the club, the acrid smell of smoke and gasoline fumes stinging his nostrils.

  Inside, he found the bar and some of the tables ablaze, along with Dante’s bat-winged throne. Fire flowed hungrily along the hardwood floor, gobbling up splashed gasoline trails. Reflected orange light glowed from the Cage’s steel bars as its fetishes burned. A flaming gasoline path snaked up the stairs.

  Choking black smoke billowed through the club’s interior. Lucien’s eyes stung.

  He looked up at the ceiling. Why weren’t the sprinklers working?

  “Goddamn,” a low, grim voice said, then coughed. Thibodaux. “This ain’t good. Where’s your fire extinguishers?”

  “The bar, the restrooms, at each wall and on each landing,” Lucien called over his shoulder as he sprinted away to the utility closet stationed in the restroom hallway. A quick check confirmed that the water had been shut off. Lucien twisted the knob back to on and held his breath until water gushed from the ceiling sprinklers, hissing against the flames and soaking him to the skin.

  More smoke thickened the air. Thibodaux’s coughing intensified.

  Lucien heard a fire extinguisher whoosh, adding a chemical stink to the smoke as the former SB agent tackled the more stubborn blazes, but as far as Lucien could see, the sprinklers were dousing the fire—on all floors.

  As Lucien moved upstairs, he blurred through the second floor to make sure no hidden blazes still burned, but found only soaked carpets, soot, and smoke. Hitting the third floor, he paused at Silver’s bedroom, the first off the landing. As much as he wanted to race to Dante’s room and check on his son, he knew Dante would expect him to take care of Silver and Von first.

  Silver’s door was wide open. Dread knotted Lucien’s belly. None of them Slept with an open door. A precaution against any accidental sunlight.

  Despite the smoke and gasoline stench, and the steady sprinkler rain, Lucien caught a whiff of blood as he stepped into the room. Silver was lying on his side, facing away from the door, curled up underneath the blankets. Blood glistened in his hair, streaked the side of his pale face.

  Cold fury iced Lucien to the core.

  So they’d been shot as they Slept, then the club torched to finish them.

  Wrapping Silver up completely in the blue paisley comforter from his bed, Lucien carried the wounded and Sleepi
ng vampire downstairs and outside to the van, then placed him inside—next to Annie.

  Jack had pulled the van up against the curb and was sitting in the passenger seat, his expression anxious, his cell phone in his hand, and a wide-eyed Eerie in his lap.

  “You need help in there, you? Is the fire out? Do I need to call 911?” He glanced at Silver’s comforter-shrouded form. “Is everyone all right? It looks like minou here got out okay.”

  “No. Mostly. No. I’m not sure, and that’s good,” Lucien replied in answer to his questions. “I do need you to get in the driver’s seat and be ready to take off as soon as I have everyone inside. I want you out of here before the police arrive.”

  Sirens rose and fell in the distance, a nerve-tingling banshee’s wail. Death. Disaster. Loss.

  “Oui, sure.” Jack scooted over to the driver’s seat, looking relieved to be doing something. “Where will I be taking ’em, me?”

  Lucien blinked. Good question. A hotel offered too little privacy or security, and it would take a while to locate a house or apartment to rent.

  “My place is in Slidell,” Jack offered.

  “Then that’s where you’ll be taking them,” Lucien said, with a relieved smile. “I appreciate that, Jack.”

  “Ça fait pas rien.”

  “I’ll join you after I deal with the police.”

  Lucien moved, racing back up to the third floor. Von’s door was also wide open and the nomad was sprawled belly-down on his bed, the back of his skull a bloody mess. As Lucien covered him with a wine-dark comforter, he caught a faint, but unusual odor, like tree sap or amber—an odor that tickled the underside of his memory.

  Can’t quite place it.

  Once he had Von safely stowed in the van with Annie and Silver, he hurried back upstairs for Dante and Heather, yelling for Thibodaux to get in the van.

  Lucien slowed to a stop a few feet from Dante and Heather’s room, the water-soaked Persian carpet squishing beneath his feet, as he absorbed the scene in front of their open door.

  Sunlight shafted in from the shoved-aside curtains on the French window at the hall’s end, glittering on shards of glass near the broken window and glinting from shell casings littered around a large, dark, and ragged circle staining the carpet.

  Blood speckled the lower right-hand wall in a high-velocity spray. Lucien crouched in front of the bloodied carpet, pulse winging through his veins. The blood scent was Dante’s—and laced heavily with that tree sap or amber odor he couldn’t quite identify. He picked up and counted the shell casings—six. Lifting them to his nose, he sniffed. More of that odd odor and maybe even its source.

  What had been in the bullets?

  The amount of Dante’s blood soaked into the now waterlogged carpet alarmed Lucien. Even with six bullets—and the amount of times his Sleeping son had been shot deepened Lucien’s fury—the wounds would’ve closed long before Dante could’ve lost this much blood.

  And why had Dante been shot out here in the hall while the others had been shot in their beds?

  Something was very wrong with this picture.

  Lucien drew in a deep breath; he smelled Dante and Annie and Eerie; a lingering trace of Brut—the cologne the man in the tan trench coat had been wearing—mingling with another cologne composed of ginger and green tea; cordite; mortal sweat and fear.

  He counted three mortal scents and one nightkind in front of this room; Heather’s scent was over an hour old. Which again begged the question—where was she?

  A gleam of metal in the sprinkler-soaked carpet on the opposite side of the hall caught Lucien’s eye. He reached over and picked up the bit of metal. It was a small dart. Annie’s condition suddenly made sense.

  She’d been tranked. Maybe Heather had been as well, but downstairs perhaps.

  Lucien straightened, slipping shell casings and dart into his trouser pocket, then went into the bedroom, but found it empty, the comforter gone from the bed. His blood chilled as the meaning of the missing comforter sank in. Had someone wrapped Dante in it to protect him from the sun, just like he’d done with Von and Silver?

  After shooting him six times and setting the club on fire?

  That made no sense.

  And where was Heather? If Annie had been tranked, then carried outside by the Brut team, maybe Heather had already been tucked inside the van. Dante too.

  Lucien went back into the hall. He followed the thick scent of Dante’s blood to the end of the hall and the broken French window. Glass crunched beneath his shoes. Beneath the blood smell, he detected a faint whiff of ginger and green tea cologne.

  Had one party taken Heather, while a second had nabbed Dante?

  Dread sank talons into Lucien’s heart as he stepped out onto the fire escape and noticed several red threads clinging to the iron railing, fluttering in the breeze. The comforter on Dante and Heather’s bed was red.

  And below, the courtyard gate yawned open against the ivy-draped wall.

  Lucien’s pulse pounded at his temples. His fingers curled around the iron railing.

  He reached for Dante’s mind, expecting to brush against the shields guarding his son’s Sleeping mind, but feeling . . . nothing, instead.

  Panic blazed up Lucien’s spine. Torched his thoughts.

  Even shielded or morphine-drugged, he should be able to hear static at the very least. What he’d just experienced was a psionic flatline.

  Meaning Dante was either dead or close to it.

  No. Not possible. A mistake, because we’re no longer bonded.

  And since they were no longer bonded, Lucien couldn’t trace Dante that way, but he could send to him, find out where he was and who’d taken him and Heather, then go after them. Lucien groaned in frustration. Dante had been Sleeping. He wouldn’t know. Not until he awakened.

  If he awakened.

  No.

  Lucien reached out to Dante’s mind again, and this time he detected a low, but ebbing life force, one lacking the energetic spark of healing. Fear knifed his heart.

  Watch over our son, my Genevieve, ma belle ange. Keep him safe until I can find him. In my desire to protect him from the Fallen, I have forgotten to guard him from the treachery of mortals.

  I have failed you both. Again.

  Lucien curled his fingers around the fire escape’s railing and stared into the shaded courtyard. Dante and Heather were gone and he had no idea where to look for them except, perhaps, in Annie’s tranked mind.

  Or he could go to Gehenna and ask the Morningstar for his help.

  The iron railing groaned and screeked beneath his hands.

  48

  VIOLET’S ANGEL

  BATON ROUGE

  THE DOUCET-BAINBRIDGE SANITARIUM

  March 30

  VIOLET WAS COLORING THE pretty balloon she’d drawn on the white padded wall purple—they said she could!—when she heard excited voices from out in the hall. Just as she turned around from the wall and her picture, she heard the door schunk open in the room next to hers.

  Her heart fluttered like a happy fairy in her chest.

  He was here! Her angel was here.

  The man with the blond hair—Mr. Purcell, Violet remembered—who’d picked her up at the airport and driven her here (while sneaking glances at her and pretending not to) had told her that her angel would be living in the room next to hers.

  Mr. Purcell had never said so, but Violet could tell he didn’t like her nighttime angel. His lips would twist like he tasted something pickle-sour every time he said the word angel. The little voice in her tummy told her that Mr. Purcell was not a nice man. He stared too much. And kept making the sour-pickle face. She’d been happy to see him leave.

  And even though she missed her mommy very, very much, she looked forward to seeing her pretty angel with the gold eyes and black wings again.

  Violet carefully put her crayon back in the box, then hurried across the room to her bed so she could climb on it and look through the window into the next room.


  A special room, the nice doctors in their white lab coats had told Violet. So you and your angel can see each other any time you want. Once her angel had arrived, they promised to take good care of him and make him happy. Just like they were making her happy in her little room with the soft white walls and the TV and coloring books and Wii games.

  Violet just wished her mom was here too. But she was still sick in the hospital deep underground.

  Bouncing onto the bed, Violet pressed her hands against the window, and looked into the other room. A doctor in a white coat and a nurse in green scrubbies stood in the center of the room along with Mr. Purcell. It looked like they were arguing.

  A big red blanket—no, it was thick, silly, so it was a comforter—was piled on the concrete floor. Violet noticed a tendril of black hair peeking out of the comforter, and one white hand. Violet smiled. The fingernails were painted black. It was her angel.

  Her smile faded as she watched. Why was he in the blanket? Was he asleep? And why was everyone waving their hands around and looking upset? Their voices were muffled through the thick-paned window, but Violet held her breath and listened.

  But the words she heard made her heart beat fast, fast, fast in her chest.

  Shot. Won’t stop bleeding. Not healing.

  The nurse in his scrubbies knelt beside Violet’s angel and pulled back the comforter. His white skin was covered in red stuff, his face and hair too, like someone had splashed him with a bucket of ketchup. She could only see to his tummy, but everything she saw was wet and red.

  Violet’s breath whooshed out, and her tummy did a strange, twisting roll. Her heart beat faster and faster.

  Blood, her little voice said. That’s blood and he’s dying.

  But he can’t die. He’s an angel.

  He can if the bad people get to him.

  Oh. I didn’t know that. How do I help him?

  Be his angel.

  “Okay,” Violet whispered.

  The nurse flipped the comforter back over Violet’s angel and shook his head. He looked at the doctor in her white coat and they talked about surgery and feeding. Mr. Purcell just paced back and forth, looking like his face had turned into a storm cloud.