After the ropes were undone, after the cuddling, the three fell asleep.
John Janté, Valerie’s beautiful Frenchman, leaned against a Cooper Mini, his dark hair matted with gravel. His accelerated healing had already closed the cuts on his face. His gasping breath broke the silence over the now trashed impound yard.
Lance Soliel, their lover, the recently ascended Angel of the Lost, floated in the wet night air. His white feathers shook like knives, cleaning themselves of his own battle. The mind-controlled Fallen Angels were set free.
Mina’s eyes opened. She held out her broken arms. The sweet and musky blood brought saliva to the vampire’s mouth.
“Come to me, my husband,” the corpse crooned, gesturing to Valerie. “Won’t you embrace me as you once did?”
Valerie took the body in her arms and made love to the memory of a lie.
She woke with the taste of old rotten blood in her mouth.
Without disturbing her men, she slinked out the open window.
The disgusting images never stopped. Valerie wanted to dig her eyes out, throw herself on a stake, even beg Lucifer for the ability to forget. She ran faster, pushing the edges of her speed. She sucked in air.
Valerie might have been transformed from a vampire to something unheard of, but oxygen was still an intoxicant. Vampires on oxygen were known to lose control of their judgment. As if she had taken a shot of cocaine directly to her brainstem, her nerves screamed, as raw as though they had been sandpapered. Her eyes bulged.
At three in the morning, Lake Geneva transformed from a deep, cold blue into luscious purples and greens. The urban glow of the city spread like a lighthouse over the water and shed illumination upon the nearly vertical mountains. The bucolic glory of central Europe never failed to inspire awe in any beholder.
The boulders and lichen of the tree line gave way to the edge of the snowpack. Her bare feet made no indentation on the fresh powder.
Valerie wanted to forget. She would erase the memory of Mina’s dying face. But it was acid-etched into the bottomless depths of her sick mind. She flowed across the rooftops of downtown, the colored lights sending aurora-like colors across the water. She jumped from building to building, landing with light feet that never stumbled. Valerie’s undead muscles didn’t burn from the exertion; after all, that required a metabolism. Her body went numb from the brutal pace. Grief gripped her throat as tightly as a barbwire noose. The nausea did not abate.
Valerie shook with unleashed horror that did not let her sleep.
Lance liked sleeping. It was a comfortable holdover from his recent human past. The press of his spouses’ skin grounded him, gave him peace after he plunged into horror to find those lost in fear.
Sometimes, sleeping was not all it was cracked up to be.
“Where’s Nelson?” Lance demanded.
Too many caves, too many holes, too many rocks for Afghan insurgents to hide Cpl. Nelson. Lance scratched at his sweat matted hair under sand-colored camouflage helmet and face netting.
The young man had been captured while saving a woman collapsing from a hospital. But it had been a ruse. The lieutenant had forgotten a basic rule: when you break into a room of conspirators, shoot the woman first.
The poor child was most likely now confessing to things he couldn’t have possibly done. Where could Nelson be?
A tiny part of Lance’s brain, the one he’d been trying to suppress since he was eighteen, whispered to him.
“East,” it said. “Go east.”
He tried to ignore it as he and his men crouched in the shadow of their vehicle. He mentally argued with the voice.
“Nonsense,” he thought back at it. “All the tracks lead west.”
All he managed to do was make himself ill.
He caved to the pressure banging against his skull. “This way,” he ordered. “Alpha squad, follow the trail west. Benning and Chan, with me. I have a hunch.”
Benning and Chan shrugged and hopped in the Humvee. He pushed the pedal to the metal. His brain let him toward a large rock in the middle of nowhere.
“You ok, Soliel?” Chan finally asked. She was panting under her pack, but her normally calm eyes were worried. Lance realized he had driven the three of them into the ground in complete, haunted silence.
Lance’s shoulder blades prickled. He flexed his muscles, trying to ease the pain. It didn’t abate, but got stronger as he neared the boulder.
“Here.” He ignored her question. “He’s got to be here.”
He turned in a slow circle. As he faced the boulder, his eyes squinted against the heat radiating off the stone. A trickle of sand curled under the boulder and disappeared. Just like when he was a child at the beach and watched the sand run under a shell.
The urgency got worse.
Lance knocked on the shoulder-high rock. It clanged.
“Help me.” A weak voice came from under the metal.
Chan and Benning dropped to the ground. Their brown and tan fatigues blended into the dry ground, rendering them nearly invisible. They set up a perimeter the best they could on the low ground.
Calmly, methodically, Lance ran his hands under the edge of the metal, looking for a clasp or hinge, anything.
“Hang in there, Nelson. We’re here.”
Nelson groaned. The metal hummed in response to the sound, its low harmonics worsening the banging in Lance’s head. He and his people were as exposed as a broken tooth out here. Something wanted them dead and it was close. Desperate, he dug underneath the rim. The minute he saw Nelson’s sun-blistered hand, he grabbed the man’s sleeve and dragged him out through the shallow channel he’d made.
The sand underneath his chest chittered. His skin crawled.
Spiders. He hated spiders.
“Let’s go,” Lance ordered Chen and Benning. He tossed Nelson over his shoulder and sprinted for the Humvee.
The second their doors closed, three trapdoor spiders, each larger than his vehicle, emerged from under the metal boulder.
“Shit!” He threw the wide-bodied SUV into a three-sixty. “Chen, you’re our tail gunner. Benning, call air support and strap Nelson in. We’re twenty minutes out and in close contact with hostiles.”
A spider reared. Chen shot out the animal’s legs, leaving it thrashing on the ground.
The second spider chased them, its eight legs covering the ground faster than their four wheels. The damn thing moved like smoke.
“Hold on, man. We’re almost there,” Benning pleaded.
Lance glanced in the rearview mirror. Nelson’s chest heaved. His eyes filled with blood. He spasmed over and over, wrenching about so violently that Lance heard bones break over the engine’s strained howl. With a final convulsion, Nelson stilled.
What happened next was the second most disgusting thing Lance had ever seen.
Two black, hairy spider legs crawled out of the corners of Nelson’s open mouth.
Benning and Chen both screamed. Benning slapped the handle of his sidearm, but a fanged head popped out before the pistol cleared its holster.
It was fast. But not as fast as Lance, a Fallen Angel desperate for redemption.
He whipped his hand into the air and caught the spi-derlet in mid-jump. He crushed it in his hand, the poisonous goo sizzling through his leather glove.
Benning stared.
“There’s more in there,” Lance shouted. “Push him out.” Silence met his order.
“NOW, you two!”
Chen and Benning maneuvered Nelson through the side door and pitched the corpse onto the gravel.
Three more tiny spiders emerged. Like voracious cannibals, they set to eating Nelson’s head.
“Where’s that air support?” Lance asked.
“Here!” Chen replied.
An Army helicopter, sleek, black, and on the move, roared over the struggling HMV.
The resulting carnage was ugly. But the nagging on the back of his skull worsened. He scanned the hills surrounding them.
&nb
sp; The sand to their left shifted like water parting before a shark’s fin.
“This whole valley is a nest,” he told Chen. “Tell them. Tell everyone!”
Two days later, the ragged but complete camp replanted their standard. Lance’s nagging voice had saved everyone but Nelson.
And Lance hated spiders more than ever.
Lance’s head jerked on the pillow as though he had been electrocuted. Annoyed, John Janté threw an arm over his husband’s chest. “Will you two crazy kids let me sleep?”
“Sorry, sweets.” Lance’s human guise rippled, revealing wings of majestic gold and white. “Work calls.”
The Angel of the Lost dropped a quick peck on John’s lips and disappeared.
“Merde.” John wrapped his blanket over his head and tried to go back to sleep. One would think angels moved as silently as an owl on the hunt, but no. Whenever his husband traveled the cosmic pathways, electricity buzzed through the apartment, frying all the fuses and stinking up the place with ozone.
Fortunately, Valerie had left the window open after herself. He groaned. Two weeks straight of her running away instead of asking for help. It had to stop, but how the hell does one discuss PTSD with a vampire? He punched his pillow. Why the hell hadn’t he settled down with a well-adjusted mortal or two? Why an angel who vanished at the drop of a feather, a vampire who could never ask for help, and a child who could read minds?
From the nursery, Minerva whimpered. John sat up, wide awake. She had made a noise!
“Dad?” she whispered in his mind. “Where is everyone?”
Hurrying, he fumbled into his slippers and robe.
The latch on the baby’s door stuck for a moment; then John shuffled into the room. Little Minerva’s big blue eyes tracked him as he crossed to her crib. He lifted her from beneath her armpits, her orange fuzzy onesie tickling his chest.
“I am right here, chérie.” He sat on the rocking chair and patted her back.
“Then all shall be well,” the child murmured, and tucked her head under his chin. Her renewed contentment reverberated in his mind.
Yes. This was why he wanted the life he had. How would he ever be satisfied without a child who could speak telepathically, a wife who had fought for him, and a husband who gave succor to those lost?
After all, he was easily bored.
Like jagged, lethal teeth, the Swiss Alps reached high into the dark night. The Milky Way brushed the tops of the mountains, making the deep snow look as though stars had poured down the peaks and coated them with thick, rich cream. One could imagine angels dancing on the smooth untrammeled snow, heralding the arrival of great events.
On the very highest tip on Monte Rosa, the very highest mountain of the range, Lance Soliel stretched his wings like a giant bird. Eight feet to either side of his body, his wings, more symmetrical and powerful than even the long perfection of the arctic tern’s, thwarted the biting wind.
The resulting pocket of still air cradled a thin tent. Inside, ten humans, as fragile as eggs, huddled together, conserving what little warmth they had left. Lance extended his hands over the top of the tent. Up here, the cold killed.
As carefully as a lace maker over her pillow, he gathered the weak radio waves together into an intricate construction, creating a signal that guided the rescue team toward the lost climbers’ battered tent.
The rescuers hadn’t known they had been following an angel’s light. Instead, they had heard the lost climbers calling on the radio, even though they shouldn’t have been able to hear a thing in high atmosphere.
All in all, being an angel was pretty cool. He could spread his consciousness to near-infinite lengths. On occasion, he was granted glimpses of the Divine’s pattern. The best part of all, though, was being with his loves and watching their family grow.
A trickle of unease remained lodged in the base of Lance’s spine. Something had been nibbling at the corners of their home life. Valerie no longer spent the night in her bed. Minerva’s physical development lagged. John worked all hours.
Lance might be an angel, but he didn’t know how to find what they were losing.
A flash of feathers surprised Lance. Very few things flew at these altitudes.
Death, clad in its customary gray robes, flapped its black wings like a hummingbird’s as it came to a light landing. The two friends bumped fists. Lance’s rough knuckles tapped against Death’s protruding bones.
“How have you been?” Lance asked.
Using the tip of its scythe, Death flipped back the soft fabric of its hood. Under the starlight, the other angel’s bare skull gleamed as though it had been polished.
“I am sorry to interrupt, but I have not come for a visit. You must come with me.”
“I will not leave these to the elements.” Lance shook his head.
Death extended its long phalanges toward the tent, letting its palm hover over it as though testing the heat. “They will live.” The oldest angel turned its empty eye sockets to Lance. “War is upon us. You must come with me before all is lost.”
CHAPTER 4
Chad Trask’s feet hurt in ways he’d never imagined possible. His eyes itched from lack of sleep. His nerves strained from searching for two vampires in blood-matted PVC. He’d spent the night traveling from bench to corner to doorway, convinced every breath would draw the vampires to him.
His friends had to be dead. No one could survive that much blood loss. He couldn’t stop seeing Andrew’s life gushing across the vampire’s face. Great arching gouts had flown into the air and spilled into the streets. Those beasts had deliberately made their bites as painful and wasteful as possible. Chad picked at a rust-colored spot on his sleeve.
He discreetly sniffed his clothing and choked. He smelled like he’d rolled in piles of pennies—a nasty combination of sweat, dirt, skin, and copper. Light-headed, he looked to the skies for hope.
Despite the misery of the night, the dawn had arrived. Cobalt blue and hot red streaks filled the clouds with the crazy saturated colors of a 1950s musical.
He rubbed his eyes. What the hell was wrong with his brain? Only an insane person would think of something so ridiculous after such a horrible night.
When he opened his eyelids again, he saw the early risers wandering the sidewalks in search of coffee. Several people jogged with their dogs. None of them made eye contact with him. Several crossed the street to avoid him. How could they be so normal? Didn’t they know the world was ending?
The morning sun infiltrated the canyons of Portland’s fashionable Pearl District. No nightwalker could safely slink from shadow to shadow now.
He stopped in front of the building that housed his father’s office. All he had to do was survive yet another disappointed lecture and he could use the BMW to drive home.
Of course, his father had been too thin-lipped and hunched over lately to deliver a coherent reprimand. Ever since the Consortium for Concerned Citizens had been disgraced, his parents had not gone out, had not entertained. His mother no longer went to work at the library. A FOR SALE sign decorated their front yard. On the bright side, they had sold the family yacht.
The fateful night that Radu Tepes had been exposed as a Nazi sympathizer, he had been on that yacht with Chad. Tepes had tempted and then threatened him. A few more seconds and Chad would have been a blood slave for the rest of his life. He rubbed the back of his neck, scrubbing away the memory.
Don’t think of the dark woman and the Frenchman who had saved him. Don’t think of the bizarre lights in the sky and how he swore he’d seen Lance Soliel fly with white wings.
Chad’s parents refused to discuss the situation. Their fall from grace was bad enough without their son sounding like a ranting preacher.
He tugged at his dirty jacket, forcing fresh air next to his skin. Nothing for it, though. There was no other way to get home and get clean. Chad smoothed his hair; might as well try to look somewhat respectable.
In the daylight, surrounded by normality, the night
’s horror seemed far away.
He eyed his father’s office building. The Baxter Building looked nothing like its high-rise comic book namesake. A modest twelve stories and charmingly tattered, it had been empty except for a photography studio and a particularly delicious pastry shop. The Consortium for Concerned Citizens, a mere shell of its former glory, had fit easily onto two floors of the squat brick and river rock building.
The bouquet of coffee, chocolate, and warm croissants perfumed the morning. As he approached the crosswalk, his belly rumbled. The thought of sweet dough and rich coffee made him aware of the foul feel of his tongue and fuzzy teeth. Licking his lips, he pushed the button for the crossing signal.
The entire building blew up.
The noise was indescribable: a devastating cacophony of explosives, the screams of those inside and out, and the thunder of tearing rock and cement. Then, a black cloud flew into the air and rained shrapnel of stones and concrete. Slabs of wood the size of his leg plummeted into the street. The surrounding buildings were bombarded with fragments.
Chad dropped and rolled, finding scant protection under the seat at a bus stop. Dust coated his open mouth, the taste of violence and death bitter. His heart battered the inside of his rib cage. His lungs squashed tighter and tighter until his breath came in tiny sips. Dark spots before his eyes blotted out the devastation. But not enough to miss what happened next.
The center of the Baxter Building collapsed inward like a sinkhole. Anyone there would have been killed instantly. The outer corners tipped up until they aimed at the sky. Like a horrible funnel, the corners slid downward into the core of the cave-in. He clutched the legs of the bench between his white fingers.
Desperate, Chad crawled toward the ruined structure. The skin of his hands tore on the sidewalk’s buckled cement. Splinters pierced his knees.
His father was in there.
Nothing else, not vampires, not war, not the injured around him, mattered.
CHAPTER 5
9 a.m., August 1st
Umar Mernissi, were-hawk, attorney, and paranormal rights activist, had everything he’d dreamed of nine months ago. At long last, he led the Consortium for Concerned Citizens. He was the world’s most prominent paranormal. The woman he fancied was about to visit him. He lived in Portland, Oregon, a quirky and beautiful city with abundant water. And, of course, a large corner office with an enormous desk and a deluxe, high-end leather chair.
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