A Rush of Wings

by Adrian Phoenix

  Another cigarette-raspy laugh. “Full of attitude, aintcha, boy. Move your ass or I’ll just send little m’selle feisty in your place —”

  Dante turns and kisses Chloe’s forehead, smoothes her long hair back from her face. “Night-night, princess. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Worry shadows Chloe’s face. “Dante-angel…”

  He shakes his head. “Shhh. Je suis ici. Don’t come down. Not tonight.”

  She nods, unhappy. Dante blows her a kiss and walks from the room.

  The footage ended. Heather paused a moment — how old was he? Twelve? — then she forced her fingertips from her palms, and clicked on the next section.

  Later, eyes burning, she understood why De Noir had said that Dante’s past was something better left unremembered. She understood it would break his heart. And she understood why Stearns had called him a monster.

  * * * *

  Choking on blood, Dante awakened. Darkness. Engine noise. Pain raked his chest. Blood filled his mouth. Turning onto his side, the handcuffs clunk-tunking as he moved, he spat blood on the floor until he could suck in a breath of air.

  Dizzied, he listened to the engine’s soothing, steady sound. He glanced down. A knife’s hilt protruded from his chest.

  “We’ve entered Alabama,” Elroy said. “Don’t it feel good?”

  Dante caught Elroy’s shaded gaze in the rearview mirror. The Perv grinned.

  “Never mind the shiv,” he said. “Couldn’t resist. How does it feel?”

  Dante coughed, spat, then said, “Fuck you. Take these cuffs off and I’ll show you.” He jerked his arms, rattling the cuffs.

  Elroy laughed. “That’s my Bad Seed bro.”

  Dante drifted off again as the miles rolled past, not really asleep, but caught in a twilight-zone haze created by drugs and pain. He opened his eyes as the van slowed down, then stopped.

  The Perv keyed off the engine and stretched. He slipped between the seats, pausing to close a curtain between the front of the van and the back. He crab-walked over to Dante’s side of the van. Grabbing a battered black satchel, he opened it and pulled out a file folder thick with paper.

  “Time for you to learn a few things.” Elroy dropped onto his knees and bent over Dante. “Like who and what you are.” Grabbing the shiv hilt, he yanked the blade out of Dante’s chest.

  Refusing to touch his bond with Lucien, Dante tried his links to Von and Simone instead. Pain buzzed through his head as each attempt rebounded, unheard. Whatever the Perv was pumping into his veins had muffled his mind like a thick layer of gauze.

  Elroy played with the shiv, twirling the blade up, over and around. Wet with blood, the knife glistened beneath the covered light. On his last over-and-under pass, he drove the blade into Dante’s stomach.

  Dante squeezed his eyes shut. Pain stole his voice. Another punch and the pain seared his chest, sucked away his air. He coughed up blood.

  “Time to teach you all things S,” Elroy murmured. “Open your eyes.”

  Fingers fluttered across Dante’s eyelids. Whispered across his lips. He smelled blood on Elroy’s fingers — his own. He opened his eyes and looked into Elroy’s sweating face. The grin had vanished. His fingers still held the second shiv in Dante’s chest. He pressed down on it. Leaned into it and twisted.

  Pain corkscrewed through Dante’s chest and black spots speckled his vision. He bit his lip, determined not to scream, determined not to give the sick little fuck the satisfaction.

  Dante-angel?

  Shhh. Not now, princess. Gotta wake up. Gotta quit dreaming.

  “Listen to me,” Elroy said.

  Dante blinked until his vision cleared. Spat blood. Coughed. The handles of two shivs stuck up from his body, one in the belly and one in the chest.

  The Perv held up photos. Dante stared. They were of him, but when he was younger, from the years he couldn’t remember. Pain pricked behind his eyes, jabbed his temples.

  “You’re part of a project called Bad Seed,” Elroy said. “Me too. In fact, we’re the last surviving members. They got me when I was two or three after my parents did the ol’ you-kill-me-I’ll-kill-you routine.” He held up a photo of a grinning toddler. “Wasn’t I a cutie?”

  Elroy picked up a folder, flipped through the contents. “Now you, you they had shortly after conception. They nursed your mama through a difficult pregnancy, then whacked her after you were born. Being a bloodsucker and all, they cut off her head and torched her body.”

  Heart pounding, struggling for air, Dante tried to make sense of Elroy’s words. Pain scoured away his thoughts. He coughed. His mother…

  Genevieve.

  You look so much like her.

  Wasps droned and his vision blurred. From a great distance, he heard the Perv say: “She named you before she died. And it amused Mommy-Bitch Moore to let you keep the name. Dante.”

  Something smacked hard across Dante’s face, rocking his head to the side. His teeth sliced into his lower lip again. White light sparked and flared at the edges of his vision. Narrowing his gaze against the light, he focused on Elroy’s sallow face.

  “I was losin’ ya,” Elroy said. “Your nose is bleeding again, by the way.”

  Dante coughed, a lung-tearing spasm that brought up gouts of bright blood. Elroy scooted back out of gouting/spitting range.

  “Take out the fucking knives,” Dante whispered after the spasm had passed. “Then go on. Read it to me. Hit me if I pass out. But read it to me.”

  The Perv lifted his shades and stared at Dante, hazel eyes full of wonder. “Read to you?” Crawling back over, he grabbed the hilt of the shiv planted in Dante’s chest and pulled it out. Traced it across Dante’s belly, blood trailing in its wake. “My pleasure.”

  Dropping his shades back over his eyes, Elroy read to Dante, pushing down on the shiv in his belly or backhanding him or both whenever the migraine threatened to drag him under.

  Foster parents informed that subject has an illness that requires special attention and special nutrition, therefore earning them an increased payment….

  * * * *

  Dante remembered larousse at the tavern, saying: Sixty foster homes, two stints in the loony bin. Light pinwheeled and fractured his vision. His head throbbed. His heart raced. He listened.

  S’s favorite “blankie” taken from him and burned. S forced to watch and informed the “blankie” was burned because he’d been “bad.”

  Foster parents #10 punished S for defiance. They removed the curtains in a room full of windows and locked him in. He stayed in shadowed corners avoiding the sunlight until there were no more shadows….

  * * * *

  Sunlight slanting across the carpet and hurting his eyes, dust motes whirling in the air, fear creeping up his spine — memory yawned wide and Dante fell. Sunlight blistered and crisped his skin. The burned-meat smell curdled in his belly.

  Dante sucked in air and coughed up blood. Pain scattered the memory, swept it away. One little piece of knowledge clung for a few moments: Loony bin stay numéro un had happened right after that bit of punishment.

  Foster mother #12 has developed a fondness for S and is forming a bond with him. S appears to enjoy her company. He will be removed from her care….

  S increasingly defiant. His favorite toy, a plastic alligator on wheels, is taken from him and thrown away. He retaliates by throwing away the foster parents’ cigarettes and beer. S beaten…

  S found or stole a guitar and is teaching himself to play it. He has an amazing ear and learns rapidly. Shows true musical talent…

  S drugged and brought into the clinic for examination and study. Dr. Wells curious, as am I, to learn just how much a born-vampire can endure physically. The experiments will commence tomorrow….

  Fragments of memory buzzed up from below, carried on the wings of Gigeresque wasps: A cold, steel table. Restraints. Needles. Saws. A bloodied baseball bat held by a tech in a face shield and blood-spattered lab coat. White-hot pain wiped the images a
way. He wasn’t remembering. He was experiencing. Elroy’s fist slammed Dante back into the here and now.

  “Read to me,” Dante whispered.

  The Perv stared at him for a long moment, licked his lips, then continued reading.

  Experiments shall be repeated once S reaches puberty…if vampires have a process like puberty. Shall be fascinating…

  S has developed affection for another foster child in his household, a girl named Chloe Basescu. He looks after her. She calls him “Dante-angel” for some reason, perhaps because he protects her from their foster father. S and Chloe often sleep together, but in a nonsexual manner.

  S showing signs of what I believe to be vampire puberty: night prowling, sexual promiscuity within his own age group, biting, fascination with blood, no longer satisfied with his daily dose of “medicinal” blood. He yearns to hunt. He seems to be both excited and confused by his feelings. Overwhelmed by his desires. He confides in Chloe. This troubles me….

  Time to take Chloe away from S.

  Dante backs Chloe into the corner. “Get down,” he whispers. “I won’t let them have you.”

  As Chloe crouches, Orem the orca clutched to her chest, Dante stands in front of her. He hisses. Three men in black suits — bad fucking men like Wells, like Papa Prejean, like all the groping assholes who walk down the basement steps — spread out in the white padded room.

  Hunger/want/need burns through Dante and their pounding hearts draw him. Their sweaty, hopped-up smell dizzy him. All three rush him and Dante drops low, spinning, slashing with his nails. Blood spurts hot across his face. Someone gurgles. Someone else gets behind him. Dante moves. Punching, kicking, biting. Whirls. The blood smell coils through him; he’s lost to it. Drops to his knees and sinks his teeth into warm flesh. Blood pumps into his mouth, sweeter than licorice, headier than sneaked whiskey, and he can’t get enough. He drinks until nothing’s left.

  On his knees, Dante looks around. All three bad-ass men sprawl on the bloodied floor. He swivels, wiping his mouth and reaching for Chloe. His hand freezes at his mouth. His heart thumps hard and fast; breaking.

  Chloe…

  Dante’s princess, his little sister, his heart. He screamed as the in-between memory rammed past the pain. He screamed, yanking on the handcuffs, coughing up blood, choking. Something sharp jabbed his neck — stung. Cold curled through his veins.

  As Dante slid down into drugged darkness, Chloe’s image already fading from his mind —No! Let me keep her!— an answer to a question stood clear in his mind:

  What are you afraid of, True Blood?

  Not you, Peeping Tom. Not you.

  Me.

  Someone laughed and Dante didn’t know if it was himself or Elroy. But whoever it was laughed and laughed and laughed.

  * * * *

  Heather popped the CD out of the laptop. Elbows on the table, she buried her face in her hands, weary and heartsick. Dante had been so caught up in the fight, in his rage and blood-hunger, that he’d struck out at everyone near him — including Chloe. She tried to blank out the images she’d watched, tried to forget the sounds she’d heard — too late. The stricken expression on Dante’s face as he looked at Chloe’s body, the desolate sound torn from his throat, would haunt her forever.

  Like the scream in the slaughterhouse.

  A chair scraped back. De Noir. Heather lowered her hands and looked up. He gathered up the reports, stuffing them back into the folder.

  “I’ll burn these,” he said, his voice level.

  “No.” She sat up. “Dante needs to know…he needs to see…”

  “This?” De Noir waved the folder. “No. He doesn’t. No.” He picked up the CD and closed his fist around it. Plastic cracked. Crumbled.

  “What are you doing?” she cried, leaping to her feet. “We need that —”

  “For what?” De Noir flung the CD pieces to the floor. “To hurt my child? To tear him apart again? The past cannot be changed.”

  Heather stared at De Noir. My child? It clicked then, the relationship between De Noir and Dante — watchful, sheltering, hidden. The sudden gold flecks in Dante’s dark eyes. “Does he know?”

  De Noir nodded, then looked away. “I told him tonight. I’d hoped —” He closed his mouth. Shook his head. He touched a finger to the hollow of his throat.

  The X-rune pendant was gone. Heather sank back down into her chair. “No wonder he didn’t wait when I asked,” she murmured. “He was running from you.”

  “No,” De Noir said. His gaze locked with Heather’s, flared with gold light. “He thought he needed to do penance for Gina and Jay…for the girl he can’t remember.”

  Penance. Everything Dante cared about had been taken from him since he’d been a baby. If he cared, someone or something suffered. Heather trailed a hand through her hair. He went to face Ronin alone so no one else would die. Or suffer in his place.

  “I need this file to find Dante,” she said. “Elroy Jordan has claimed him. The reason why might be in there.”

  “To torture him — just like you told me,” De Noir said. “You warned me that I couldn’t stop it. I refused to listen.”

  The regret in De Noir’s gaze tugged at Heather. She shook her head. “Don’t,” she said. “You thought you could protect him.”

  She stood up, crossed to the counter. The faint smell of coffee lingered in the kitchen. Dumping out the old grounds into the trash, she rinsed the filter in the sink, then spooned in fresh coffee.

  Elroy Jordan was the Cross-Country Killer. Maybe Ronin had been a part of that, or maybe he’d just pointed Jordan in Dante’s direction. Ronin had known that both Jordan and Dante were part of Johanna Moore’s sociopathology experiment. How?

  She poured water into the coffeemaker, set the carafe on the burner, and tapped the on button. What had happened to Ronin? She glanced at De Noir. He stood motionless beside the table, folder clutched in one hand, head bowed. His black hair veiled his face. He appeared to be listening, his body almost quivering with effort.

  “Dante,” he breathed. “Ah, hush, child. I will find you.” Lifting his head, De Noir looked at Heather. “I felt him…heard him…for a moment. He’s…” De Noir swallowed whatever else he’d intended to say.

  De Noir’s expression told Heather that whatever he’d heard or felt from Dante was far from good. Cold twisted around her heart. “Ronin,” she said. “What happened?”

  “Dead.”

  So whatever Ronin had planned, exposé or blackmail, had died with him. How much had he told Elroy about Bad Seed? Enough, she figured, just enough to control him. Enough to whet his appetite for the whole story.

  Heather listened to the coffee as it trickled into the carafe. So what was Jordan’s plan? S is mine. One certainty iced her thoughts: No matter what, Jordan meant to possess Dante. Forever. And from Seattle to New York, graveyards sheltered the remains of all those Jordan had possessed in the past.

  Where was he going? Where was he taking Dante? S is mine. Who had those words been aimed at? Ronin? The cops?

  As the rich, roasted smell of fresh coffee filled the kitchen, the final piece of the puzzle locked into place.

  Johanna Moore. The words had been meant for Johanna Moore.

  Jordan intended to confront her with Dante — S — at his side and under his control.

  Heart racing, Heather rushed to De Noir and grabbed the folder’s edge. “I think I know where they’re going,” she said.

  * * * *

  Johanna returned to the hearth with a cup of brandied eggnog and sat down. Burning wood snapped, releasing the smell of pine into the room. Sipping at her eggnog, she flipped open her cell and speed-dialed Gifford again. His continued silence worried her.

  On the third ring the call was answered, but Johanna didn’t recognize the voice saying, “Hello? Hello? This is Detective Fiske. Hello?”

  “Doctor Johanna Moore, FBI. How is it that you have Agent Gifford’s phone, Detective?”

  “I’m sorry, Doctor Moore,
but Agent Gifford is dead.”

  The black, empty night seeped into Johanna, stilled her heart. “How?”

  “We’re still not clear on the particulars. We have several bodies at the scene,” Fiske said. “Why was your man here?”

  “Surveillance.” The fire snapped the scent of pumpkin and cinnamon into the air. “Are the other dead identified? Perhaps our suspect is among them.”

  “Special Agent Craig Stearns and one of ours, Detective Trent Collins.” Emotion laced Fiske’s voice.

  “I’m sorry to hear that, Detective,” Johanna said. “Please keep me posted.”

  “Who were your people watching?”

  “Thomas Ronin.”

  “House was rented under that name. I’ll call you if I have any other questions.”

  “Fine, Detective. Thank you.” Johanna ended the call.

  She gazed at the fire, the dancing flames calming her, ordering her thoughts. She walked from the living room to her office and stepped behind her desk. She glanced at the GPS receiver. No signal. Like E, S was now offline. Were they together? Was Ronin with them?

  Johanna walked to the window and pushed aside the curtain. Touching the pane of glass between her and the winter sky, she closed her eyes. She wished for snow.

  Stearns and Wallace had cost her a good man, one she’d miss for years to come. What had happened in New Orleans?

  Opening her eyes, Johanna turned from the window. She needed to find her beautiful True Blood child before Ronin corrupted him, twisted him. And if her père de sang was bringing E and S home?

  Then she’d need strength. Johanna pulled on her coat and tugged gloves over her hands — a habit left over from her mortal life. She walked out into the night, her breath a pale plume in the air, and hunted.

  * * * *

  Ducking from the cold, damp wind, Heather pressed her face against Von’s leather-jacketed back as the nomad gunned his Harley up the interstate toward Louis Armstrong International. She kept her arms wrapped tight around the nomad’s waist, grateful for the gloves and helmet Simone had lent her. The wind blew through Von’s hair, whipping its length from side to side.

  Von steered the bike through traffic, swooping in, out, and between cars and semis with heart-stopping speed. The night blurred past, streaked with red and silver.