Etched in Bone

by Adrian Phoenix

  Agents of destiny. Epstein’s words haunted her.

  Unlike almost every other operative under my command, you’ve always known, always understood, what we did and why.

  She understood all too well.

  Caterina crouched and shrugged off her knapsack. She reached into it, her gloved fingers seeking and finding the EMP minibomb’s smooth shape—the B-and-E pro’s new all-purpose crowbar for gigs in the electronic world. She slid the minibomb onto the lockbox and thumbed in a ten-second countdown.

  Swiveling around on her heels and turning her hunched back to the door, Caterina pulled her goggles up and over her eyes. The night shifted into shades of gray and ghost-green. She unholstered her Sig, then, with the silent countdown ticking away in her mind, she pulled her oil-cloth wrapped silencer from the knapsack. She screwed the silencer onto the barrel with quick and efficient twists, and chambered a round.

  Her pulse threaded through her veins hard and fast. Her palms sweated inside her gloves. In the past, she’d always viewed her termination assignments as marks, targets. Her sworn duty.

  But this time she would be executing a man she knew and respected.

  With each life we end, we alter the future, end possibilities. We become agents of destiny. Severing some, fulfilling others. A hard and honorable duty.

  Epstein had altered his future the moment he’d assigned Caterina to end Dante Baptiste’s life, handing her a folder with instructions on how to kill a True Blood, never suspecting she’d already altered her own destiny.

  Caterina kneels and places her borrowed gun at Dante’s pale bare feet. He stares at her, disbelief flashing across his beautiful face . . .

  A soft beep. Countdown achieved. The porch light vanished.

  Caterina swung back around. The light on the lockbox had gone dark as well. The mini had done its job in complete silence, hitting the house and yard with a wave of EMP energy. A faint whiff of ozone curled into the air.

  Rising to her feet, Caterina eased the door open just enough to slip inside, her sneakers squeaking against the hardwood floor. She winced, hoping against goddamned hope that the slide of rubber against wood hadn’t been heard upstairs. She pushed the door closed, but didn’t shut it—not all the way.

  Sig in hand, Caterina hastily toed off her Airwalks. She listened. Adrenaline pumped through her veins with each rapid pulse of her heart, fine-tuning her senses.

  Refrigerator hum. The ticking of the pendulum clock. A gurgle from the toilet. And silence from the bedrooms upstairs.

  Caterina drew a breath in through her nose. The faint odor of Epstein’s cherry cordial pipe tobacco. The fishy scent of broiled salmon.

  She padded along the foyer’s polished floor in her stocking feet, her shoulder against one wall, her Sig secured in both hands. She paused at the mouth of the dark living room. Her night-vision goggles painted the room in pale shades of green as light from outside—light beyond the limited reach of her mini-bomb—filtered in through the blinds, outlining the shadowed humps of furniture.

  Locating the staircase, Caterina strode across the room and up the stairs, her socks whispering against the runner. She moved along the outer edge to avoid creaks, her gait swift and light. On the landing, she paused for a moment as she considered the shadowed mouths of three rooms.

  Guest room. Bathroom. Master bedroom. One room on the right-hand side of the hall, one dead ahead—the bathroom, in all likelihood—one room on the left-hand side.

  Caterina held her breath and listened. A low, almost inaudible snore drifted down the hall from the right. She swung to the right and followed the carpet runner stretching the length of the narrow hall to the doorway, her footsteps as light as meringue.

  Pressing her back against the wall, Caterina stopped and listened again. Now she could hear Epstein’s breathing. Steady, rhythmic, the quiet snore buzzing into the air like a bumblebee every few breaths.

  A hard and honorable duty. No, make that just a hard duty. No honor in shooting a sleeping man, no matter how necessary. She owed Epstein—mentor, hard-nosed boss, fellow samurai—more than that. But she couldn’t afford to give him more. Couldn’t afford to satisfy her own sense of honor. If she lost, Epstein would send someone else after Dante, maybe even himself. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, risk Dante’s life.

  The future pumps within Dante’s heart and flows through his veins. The future for all of us: mortal, vampire, and Fallen. If Dante falls, the world and all it holds will fall with him.

  Caterina rolled her shoulders, attempting to siphon some of the tension from her muscles, then she stepped into the room, lifted her gun, and fired twice at the figure curled on its side beneath the blankets. The body jumped with each hushed thwip.

  Sorry, Ep. Nothing personal.

  But even as her finger was squeezing the trigger, warning prickled along her spine. Instinct slammed into high gear. Pure adrenaline flooded her veins. She caught a faint whiff of cherry tobacco.

  A motherfucking dummy in the bed.

  Caterina ducked and whirled to the left, another gun’s muted thwip hot on her heels. She swung the Sig up for a return shot. But Epstein had anticipated her action and had stepped in even as she’d spun away, closing the distance between them in a single long-legged stride.

  A gun barrel—well, the silencer, actually—jammed hard against Caterina’s forehead, its heated mouth burning against her skin. She went still. He yanked the Sig from her grip and tucked it into the back of his khakis.

  The night-vision goggles stole the blue ice color from Epstein’s eyes, made them luminous with captured light. But the winter in his gaze chilled Caterina to the bone.

  He wasn’t expecting just anyone. He was waiting for me.

  “Goddammit, Cortini,” he said, mingled disappointment and ice in his voice. His white hair, cut high and tight military-style, was a ghostly gleam in her goggles. “I was hoping to hell the evidence was wrong.”

  “Evidence?” she asked, then a dark possibility occurred to her. “You found my gun. In Damascus.”

  Epstein nodded, face grim. “And not just your gun. The techs processing the scene in Damascus also found your missing partner’s gun in what appeared to be an empty grave. Beck never would’ve left his weapon behind. So that suggested he’d never left the Wells compound, like you said, or driven you back to your hotel. It also suggested that you’ve been lying and Beck is dead. The only question is why.”

  “It was necessary,” Caterina replied, holding Epstein’s gaze. “And not a decision I made lightly.”

  “Very vague, Cortini,” Epstein growled. “Care to fill in a few details?”

  “Not really.” She also didn’t plan to waste any more time with talk.

  Swinging both hands up, she clapped her palms against Epstein’s ears, then hammered the heel of her hand into his unprotected belly just above the pubic bone.

  Epstein doubled over, pain contorting his face, baring his teeth. Caterina pivoted behind him, reaching for the gun nestled against the small of his T-shirted back, but he twisted away and wheeled around before she could grab it.

  Son of a bitch!

  Sliding back a step, Caterina snapped out a front kick to Epstein’s gun hand, pinwheeling the Glock into the air. She barely had time to lower her foot back to the floor before Epstein came at her with a breath-stealing flurry of precise and deadly blows.

  Caterina tossed up forearm and knee blocks, fending off each bruising hit from its intended target as she spun on the balls of her stocking-clad feet. She launched adrenaline-fueled punches and open-handed blows of her own as she danced a whirling, punishing, Mach-3 martial arts tango with the man who’d taught her much of what she knew.

  Sweat trickled between Caterina’s breasts. Her breath burned in her lungs, her throat. She fought without pause or thought, her muscles and reflexes responding with speed and accuracy. This was a primal battle. One for survival. A duel between samurai.

  And soon, one of them would be dead.

&nbs
p; Caterina caught Epstein’s sudden subtle shift of position, and she used a change-body technique to slither aside just as his combat-boot-clad foot rocketed past her cheek in a lethal roundhouse kick.

  Dropping, she knocked Epstein’s legs out from under him with a quick leg-sweep. He crashed into the bed, sliding down the comforter-humped but empty mattress—wait, where’s the dummy or pillows or whatever that was rigged under the blankets to draw my fire?—then rolling, but Caterina was on him. She yanked her captured Sig free of Epstein’s khakis.

  The hair prickled on the back of Caterina’s neck.

  Someone was behind her. Bastard wasn’t alone.

  She snapped the gun up, intending to fire a couple of rounds into Epstein’s skull before spinning around to take on his partner, but before she could even squeeze the trigger, a Fourth of July’s worth of fireworks exploded behind her eyes, searing her vision white. Her muscles short-circuited, then went slack, and she flopped to the floor like an air-gunned steer. Her teeth cut into the inside of her cheek. The metallic tang of blood filled her mouth.

  “She would’ve had you,” a low, masculine voice said.

  Epstein grunted in agreement.

  Unsure what had happened to her—if she’d been hit with a Taser or had taken a sledgehammer blow to the temple—Caterina tried to move, struggled to get her hands and knees under her, but nothing happened. Sweat slicked her face and nausea rolled through her belly. Fear slivered her heart with ice. Had she taken a bullet to the neck and been paralyzed?

  “Even though I knew from day one, Cortini, that you had a foot in both worlds, I never questioned your allegiance,” Epstein said. “Not even when I learned that our so-called director was in your mother’s pocket and that she was using him to protect Prejean, because I believed you truly didn’t know anything about Renata’s arrangement with that traitorous prick Britto.”

  “I didn’t know,” Caterina said. At least her vocal cords worked. She spat blood onto the polished oak floor. If she was paralyzed, it seemed to be only from the neck down. Small comfort, that.

  “Maybe you didn’t,” Epstein allowed. “But you do now, right? And you’ve taken Renata’s side and betrayed not only me, but the human race. You might’ve been raised in a bloodsucker household, but at the end of the day, you’re still human, Cortini. Just like me.”

  Caterina saved her breath. Nothing she could say would make any difference. She had betrayed Epstein’s trust. The reasons why wouldn’t matter to him.

  A small measure of relief trickled into Caterina when she felt the pain and pressure of a knee digging into the small of her back. Not paralyzed, then. Drugged, maybe. Epstein wrenched her arms behind her. She heard the ratchet of handcuffs clicking shut, felt the bite of cold steel against her skin. Then rough hands hauled her into a sitting position against the side of the bed.

  Epstein ripped the goggles from Caterina’s face. He stepped back, stopping beside a tall man in slacks and a button-down shirt with rolled-up sleeves. The man’s eyes gleamed in the dark room, a lambent and inhuman gaze.

  Teodoro Díon.

  Caterina’s heart kicked hard against her ribs. Now she knew why she couldn’t move. Her skin crawled. He’s in my fucking head. Switching things off.

  Díon could reach into a person’s mind and pluck information from it. He could also wipe the mind clean of all memories.

  And he was an interrogator for the SB.

  Panic rooted tendrils deep into Caterina’s guts. She met and held the interrogator’s calm, curious gaze. The powers that be at the Shadow Branch declared Díon a man with special gifts, a rare talent. But she felt pretty damned sure that he wasn’t mortal. Nor vampire, given his tanned olive skin and his regular daylight hours.

  Could he be Fallen?

  A smile quirked up one corner of Díon’s mouth. He lifted a hand and seesawed it in the air. A chill rippled the length of Caterina’s spine. He was still in her mind, like a cockroach inside a wall.

  Díon arched an amused eyebrow.

  Words burst like soap bubbles in Caterina’s mind: Interesting analogy.

  Sweat beaded her forehead. She corralled her thoughts, steered away from recent memories—especially those involving Dante Baptiste.

  “Get the lights,” Epstein ordered.

  Díon stepped back and flipped on the wall switch. Caterina winced as the bright overhead illuminated the room.

  “Why did you kill Beck?” Epstein asked, folding his arms over his chest.

  Caterina shook her head, refusing the images, shooing away the memories, her gaze never wavering from Díon’s watchful face.

  “I never dreamed I’d be having you interrogated,” Epstein said, shaking his head, voice laced tight. “Never imagined you giving me cause. I believed we were two of a kind. Old school warriors. You’re one of my best, Cortini—hell, you are my best; or were, anyway—and I trusted you.”

  Each cold word, diamond-hard and true, shanked Caterina to her core. “I know, and I wish it hadn’t come to this.”

  “But I was wrong about you. You’re not samurai. And you have no honor.”

  Caterina looked away from Díon then and met Epstein’s gaze. She lifted her chin. “So says the man who planned to execute his own master.”

  “Britto stopped being my master the day he decided the life of his dying son was more important than the integrity and honor of the SB, more important than his allegiance to the goddamned USA or even to the human race, and sold his soul to Renata Alessa Cortini in exchange for his son’s life.” Epstein barked a laugh. “Are you actually trying to tell me you came after me out of loyalty to that bastard?”

  “No. I—”

  Epstein waved a hand wearily. “Save it. I don’t want to hear any more lies.” He nodded at the man standing at ease beside him. “Díon will dredge the truth out of you.” He glanced at the interrogator, jerked his head in a nod, then stalked over to the upholstered bench at the foot of the bed and sat on it, his back ramrod-straight. He rested Caterina’s Sig on his thigh.

  Díon sauntered across the floor, one hand tucked casually into his trouser pocket, handsome face amused. Caterina closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath of air reeking of sweat and musky adrenaline, hoping to calm the frantic pounding of her heart.

  Maybe she couldn’t stop him from mind-raping her, but she could keep her emotions stowed away. She refused to give him fear.

  A quiet thump on the hardwood floor told her that Díon had knelt beside her. She caught a whiff of vanilla-spice and spring dandelions and maybe a hint of lightning-strike ozone. Ozone. Like in Damascus. The image of blue sparks skipping along white stone, stone that had once been Fallen flesh, popped unbidden into her mind.

  Caterina’s heart refused to quiet, refused to slow.

  Warm fingertips caressed her temple. The heated touch left Caterina feeling drowsy but dizzy, like a child falling asleep on a merry-go-round. Nausea cramped her belly. A cold sweat slicked her body.

  “Relax,” Díon murmured. “Submit.”

  “Potete andare diritto ad inferno,” she spat.

  “One visit was quite enough, thank you. Hell is chock-full of fanatics. You, however, might fit right in.”

  Memories flipped unbidden through Caterina’s mind, like thumbed-through cards in a Rolodex, and flared in-the-moment vivid behind her eyes.

  Flip: Beck yanks the Colt free of its holster. Caterina squeezes the Glock’s trigger. The bullet hits Beck between the eyes, and he is dead before his body crumples to the ground and rolls down the hill. . . .

  Flip: Dante Baptiste rolls up to his hands and knees, his gaze on Caterina’s bleeding throat. Hunger and delirium burn in his dark, dilated eyes. His beautiful face is etched with pain, blood trickling from one nostril. Weariness smudges the skin beneath his eyes blue. He crawls to the sofa, then rises to his knees.

  Dante leans over Caterina. He lowers his face to her throat, his lips parting and revealing the points of his fangs. Wishing she had the use of her
hands, Caterina tries to shake her hair back, then arches her neck to make it easier for him to feed since he also doesn’t have the use of his hands. . . .

  Flip: Dante’s seizure ends. He curls up on the carpet, shivering, his breathing rough. Spokes of blue flame wheel around his hands, spinning out wider with every revolution.

  Transforming everything they touch. . . .

  Flip: The night rustles, full of wings. Ethereal music rings through the wet air as the Fallen sing to Dante Baptiste. . . .

  Flip: A spear of blue light pierces the fallen angel. His mouth opens in shock, then fear tremors across his face as blue flames light him up from within, turning his skin translucent. The light flickers out. A stone statue stands on the wet grass beneath the evergreens. . . .

  Flip: Caterina kneels and places her borrowed gun at Dante’s pale bare feet. He stares at her, disbelief flashing across his beautiful face. . . .

  The kaleidoscopic whirl of images and memories slowed, then stopped. Caterina sucked in a ragged breath, then opened her eyes. Pain pulsed at her temples. She felt blood slick the skin beneath her nose.

  Díon regarded her for a long moment, his face thoughtful, then he rose to his feet and turned to face Epstein.

  “What did you learn?” Epstein asked. His fingers flexed around the Sig’s grip.

  Caterina had no doubt he planned to finish her with her own gun. Given the intensity of the pain in her head, she could almost welcome a bullet. Almost.

  “Plenty,” Díon replied. “She killed Beck to keep Prejean safe.”

  “Because he’s a goddamned True Blood. I knew it.”

  “Turns out his name is actually Baptiste,” Díon murmured, sauntering over to join Epstein at the upholstered bench. “And you’re only partially correct. Baptiste is also a Fallen creawdwr. And that played into her decision too. As did her belief that he isn’t the monster Bad Seed tried so hard to twist him into.”

  Caterina stared at Díon, heart sinking. He was Fallen.