Etched in Bone
Page 13
Blue and white and red lights strobed through the night.
Dante’s heart hammered against his ribs. Despite the blood racing through his veins, he felt ice-cold.
What the hell did I do?
“I need to fix this,” he whispered.
A warm hand tucked into his. Dante smelled lilac and evening rain.
“Yeah, you do,” Heather said. “But not tonight.”
“What the . . .? Are those people or ghosts?” A startled voice asked.
“Huh? Where? Christ!”
Several firemen in reflective tape-striped turnouts stood facing them, their eyes shadowed beneath their helmets, bodies rigid with surprise.
Standing on the path outside the tomb, the Morningstar tossed a glance over his shoulder at Heather before returning his attention to the mortals in front of him. “Cover your ears,” he told her.
Heather clamped her hands over ears as suggested.
The Morningstar unfolded his wings with a taut snap. Their undersides glimmered with a wet mother-of-pearl sheen, pale blue and purple. His body gleamed, as though captured sunlight burned beneath his skin.
The Morningstar’s radiance beamed throughout the ruined cemetery, searing away the low mist and bleaching the scene white.
Dante hastily reached for his shades and discovered he’d lost them. Again. Squinting, he shaded his eyes with the edge of his hand. His eyes teared.
“Shit,” Heather whispered.
The firemen lifted their arms to shield their faces from the blazing light.
“What the fuck is that?”
“Shit. Another bomb?”
“Holy fuck! Are those wings?”
The Morningstar’s voice pealed through the dying night. “Sleep.”
The firemen crumpled to the cracked stone path. Dante heard the soft thump of bodies falling throughout the cemetery, heard the clatter of dropped flashlights and equipment.
The Morningstar’s radiance dimmed. He swiveled to face Dante, his skin still glowing with light. His smile made Dante wish for his shades again.
“See you in two weeks,” he said.
13
DARK AND DAZZLING
NEW ORLEANS
CLUB HELL
March 28
VON MCGUINN TOSSED BACK another shot of Jim Beam Black. It burned like gasoline all the way down, leaving behind the aftertaste of caramel-smoothed oak on his tongue. And, like the twenty previous shots, it didn’t do one damned thing to ease the tight knot of worry prickling in his chest.
He glanced at the clock hanging on the wall between the booze-filled glass shelves behind the bar. Its red-eyed bat hour markers indicated 4:25 A.M.
Dante’d gone offline around two. Von could still feel their link, but whenever he tried to reach Dante, his sending would vanish—a message unsent and unreceived, like an e-mail hovering in the Ethernet waiting for a downed server to reboot so it could slide into the appropriate inbox.
Grabbing the nearly empty Jim Beam bottle from the bar’s polished and now bourbon-sprinkled counter, Von splashed another round into his shot glass. Tossed it back. A little more napalm added to the pool of unease curdling in his guts.
Dante, man. Where you at?
Unreceived messages. Blocked links. Oh. And the explosion he’d felt ten or fifteen minutes after Dante and Heather had split for St. Louis No. 3. Yeah, don’t forget that. Let’s just toss it into the mix, get everything stirred up real goddamned good.
Normally the trip to No. 3 was a ten-minute drive, longer if you hit the lights wrong or got swallowed up in traffic, but with Dante behind the van’s wheel, Von figured five minutes max with Dante blowing every red light.
Then the explosion. Not close. Several miles away, at least.
Von had frozen, heart jackhammering against his ribs. Possibilities had flipped through his mind like a Slinky down a set of stairs.
Terrorist bombing. Plane crash. Massive levee failure. Steamship explosion on the Mississippi. Asteroid. Worlds colliding. The freaking apocalypse.
Anything could’ve happened. Didn’t mean it had anything to do with Dante.
But images of fallen angels caught in coils of blue fire and plummeting from rain cloud-paled skies as stone had flashed behind Von’s eyes.
I’m gonna find Lucien and bring him home. We just lost Simone. We ain’t losing him too. Dante’s voice had been rough and low, tight with grief. But his body had been coiled with determination and a low-simmering rage.
How you plan on doing that? You don’t even know where he is or how to get there. Where the hell do the Fallen live anyway? I know it’s called Gehenna, but . . .
Dunno. But I’m bringing him home, mon ami.
Then I’m coming with you, little brother. That’s fucking final.
No. I need you here. I gotta know that everyone’s gonna be safe, and I trust you to do that.
So I just get to worry about you and Heather?
I can reach you.
So could Simone. Didn’t do her much good, did it?
Von’s hands clenched into fists, the scars on his knuckles stretching tight over the bone. I can reach you. Dante was wrong about that. The silence between them buzzed against Von’s nerves like a sander on low speed.
Dammit, Dante.
Von drew in a deep breath, caught a lingering trace of cloves and tobacco and dark beer on sawdust. Blew it back out again. Chased away the storm of dark memories and cleared his thoughts. Fretting was wasted energy.
Setting his shot glass on the bar, he snatched up the bottle of Jim Beam and resumed pacing, following a long-legged path in front of the darkened Cage and the dais leading up to Dante’s bat-winged throne. The feather and bone fetishes dangling from the Cage’s steel bars fluttered in Von’s fast-paced wake.
For a second, he thought he caught Simone’s magnolia scent, thought he saw her sitting on the top step of the dais, her arms wrapped around the long, shapely legs revealed by her denim mini-skirt, the club lights streaking her long, spiraled blonde hair gold and deepest blue.
She was laughing, light dancing in her eyes. Come dance with me, cher.
Pain twisted around Von’s heart. Tightened his throat. The stink of burning wood, singed clothing and hair suddenly coated his nostrils.
Gonna kill Mauvais. Slow. Maybe over years.
“You’re gonna wear a groove in the floor, dude.”
Von glanced up. Silver stood on the second floor landing, one hand on the banister. His silver eyes gleamed. His anime-styled midnight purple hair poked up in peaks and angles from his head and looked almost black beneath the dim lights on the staircase. Soot still smudged one pale cheek, his nose, and forehead—evidence of the fire he’d barely escaped.
Von slowed to a stop at the foot of the stairs. “Where’s Annie?”
“She finished the vodka, then passed out.”
“Both damned bottles? Girl drinks like nightkind. And dances on tables like she’s auditioning for a job on Bourbon Street.”
“She was trying not to feel,” Silver said quietly.
“I think she succeeded,” Von drawled. “Until she wakes up, anyway.”
A smile ghosted across Silver’s lips. “She’ll still be drunk.”
“Holy shit, I’d hope so.” Von paused, then asked, “And Trey?”
Silver shook his head, sorrow drawing his features taut. “The same. Just staring into the dark. Eerie’s curled up with him, working purr-mojo, but I don’t think it’s helping. Nothing is.” Raking a hand through his hair and disarranging it even more, he added in a thick voice, “I can’t believe she’s gone. And I’m scared Trey’s gonna follow her. He doesn’t want blood. He doesn’t want talk. I ain’t even sure he’s blinking. It’s like his body’s here, but . . .”
“He just lost his sister and his mère de sang, Silver. He’s in shock. He needs time to grieve. As much as we can give him.” But Von wondered if time would be enough. Simone had been Trey’s only tether to the world, just as she’d bee
n his only kin. “We all need time.”
“People always say that, like time is fucking Oxycontin,” Silver muttered, his voice prickling with pain and anger. “Like I could just down a handful of time and not worry about it hurting any more. Instant fix. But I can’t. And time takes fucking forever to heal. How’s that for ironic? Fuck time. And fuck Mauvais for taking her from us.” The banister creaked beneath Silver’s white-knuckled hand.
“I hear you, bro,” Von said softly. He tapped two fingers against his chest over his heart. “I hear you. And trust me, Mauvais is fucked—he just don’t know it yet.”
Losing someone you cared about—hell, be honest—someone you loved, never got easier no matter how many decades slid past. Mortal. Nightkind. It didn’t matter. Even though the nomad clans taught that death was a part of the natural order, like birth and sex, it was nothing to rejoice in as far as Von was concerned. Especially when someone died hard. And alone.
Von couldn’t imagine the hurt lessening, couldn’t imagine ever losing the heart-squeezing sound of Simone’s screams. His fingers squeezed tight around the Jim Beam bottle’s neck, then he heard glass shattering. Liquid splashed over his hand, his knuckles. The sharp odor of bourbon soaked the air.
“Jesus Christ,” Silver said, eyes wide.
Von closed his eyes, sighed. After a moment, he opened them again and looked at the broken bottle neck clutched in his hand. The rest of the bottle was scattered in glittering black pieces on the floor. Blood dripped from the cuts and nicks on his booze-stung fingers.
“Well, hell. I was gonna drink that.”
“Not anymore,” Silver commented. “But if you strip off your jeans and table-dance in your undies while screaming ‘you can’t touch me, motherfucker’ like Annie, I’ll get you another bottle.”
“Don’t believe I’d jiggle as fetchingly, though I’d be willing to give it a try if the tips were good. And I can get my own bottle, smart-ass. How ’bout you get me a broom instead?”
“Damn. I already had a title for the YouTube video—Swinging Nomad Dick.”
“Think that was the title of my first porn flick. I’ve been used, man. Tragic story.”
Silver rolled his eyes. “Tragic—to the viewer. If such a flick existed. Tattooed nomad booty.” He shook his head, then moved down the stairs.
“Wouldn’t’ve been just my fine ass.”
“Now you’re scaring me.”
Von tossed the blood-smeared bottle neck onto the floor. Glass crunched beneath it. He licked blood from his knuckles, tasted copper and bourbon and heated grapes.
Hunger scraped at his belly and backbone. He needed to feed, and as soon as Dante and Heather were back safe and relatively sound, he’d head out to hunt. Grab a quick alley snack before dawn.
A blur of movement, a streak of purple hair, black tee and studded black jeans, a cinnamon and smoke-scented breeze, then Silver stood beside Von. Handed him a push-broom and a dust pan. “Heard anything from Dante?”
Wrapping his uncut hand around the broom’s smooth handle, Von shook his head. “Nope. Not yet. But he’ll contact us as soon as he finds Lucien.”
Von kept his current inability to contact Dante to himself. No need to get Silver more worked up than he already was. He swept up the broken glass, the broom’s bristles smearing the spilled bourbon across the wood in a thin, dark streak.
“He’ll contact you, you mean.”
Von stopped pushing the broom and glanced at Silver from beneath his brows. Silver stood with his back against the bar, his hands behind him gripping the bar’s edge, his biceps bunched and hard. Beneath the club’s low-lit overheads, his face was pensive and all angsty teen. Boy was twenty-five, but his body would forever be that of a sixteen-year-old.
But not his eyes, which were knowing and shadowed and razor-edged.
“Well, if you wanna be literal, then yeah, that is what I mean.” Bending, Von swept the pieces of dark glass into the plastic dustpan. “You chose to lie to him—no matter your intentions. You knew the consequences.”
“Yeah, but . . . shit. It’s been over a year. I’ve never known anyone to hold a grudge like he does.”
Von straightened. “He’ll forgive just about anything—except a lie. Especially coming from someone he trusts.”
“He doesn’t trust me.”
“Nope,” Von agreed. “Not anymore. But he does care about you, man. You still have a chance to earn his trust again.”
“I don’t get what his thing with lies is all about. People lie all the fucking time. It’s no big deal. I just don’t get it.”
“No big deal? Your lie tricked Dante into helping his best friend commit suicide by vampire and you don’t think that’s a big deal? Now you’re lying to yourself.”
“I was trying to help. I wanted to save Leigh’s life.”
Von snorted. “So you turned Leigh against his will and now he’s in Portland with your père de sang because he can’t stand the sight of you and because Dante won’t speak to him anymore. Yeah, that was all real helpful.”
“I fucked up, I know that. And I’ve apologized over and over. But Dante still won’t let me back in.” Silver touched a finger to his forehead. “It was a lie, not murder.”
“In this case, that’s where you’re wrong. With that lie, you also messed with everyone’s free will. And if you don’t get that, you’ll never understand Dante.”
“Guess I’m fucking doomed then.”
“You just might be, with that kinda attitude.”
Going to the trash can behind the bar, Von dumped the dustpan’s contents into its black plastic-lined interior. He parked the broom against the wall. Plucking a bottle of Jack Daniel’s from the glass shelves, he sauntered around the bar to join Silver. Poured shots for them both. The liquor’s golden tones wafted into the air.
“I’m gonna tell you something I don’t think Dante understands himself. Maybe somewhere down deep inside him he does, but not here.” Von tapped a finger against his temple, then touched it to his chest at heart level. “Because it’s here.”
Turning around, Silver leaned his black T-shirted side against the counter. He picked up the shot glass, then tossed it back. Sweat instantly sprang up on his forehead. “I’m listening,” he said, voice hoarse with whiskey.
Von rolled his shot glass between his fingers, watching the play of light across the booze’s amber surface. “Dante’s been lied to from day one. Lied to. Used. Fucked with. Picked apart, then stitched back together again. Maybe he doesn’t remember most of it, but it’s still a part of him.”
A low simmering anger reignited, tightening the muscles in Von’s chest and shoulders as he thought of some of the images he’d caught glimpses of in Dante’s mind—splinters of his dark, dirty, and violent past piercing and impaling his present.
On his knees, Dante looks around. All three badass men sprawl on the bloodied floor. He swivels, wiping blood from his mouth and reaching for Chloe. But she’s no longer in the corner. His hand freezes.
Von slammed back his shot. “Ain’t nothing dishonest about Dante. What you see is what you get.”
Silver snorted. “That’s pure bullshit, man. There’s layers and depths to Dante that people don’t see when they’re busy drooling over him. Depths they don’t wanna see.”
Von chuckled. “Well, yeah, that’s true. But I stand—lean, actually—by my words. Just because those idiots ain’t looking for the truth of him don’t mean it ain’t there to be seen.”
Silver frowned, the skin wrinkling between his eyebrows. “The truth of him? Don’t you mean in him?”
“Nope. I meant just what I said. The truth ain’t just words or deeds, it’s threaded into our DNA, etched into our bones, pulsing through our veins. Each of us is shaped by the truth of our natures. You can be the evilest motherfucker striding the world, a bloody knife in each hand, and still be brimming with down-to-the-bone truth.”
“Awesome,” Silver muttered. “A llygad lecture. Should I take note
s?”
“If you plan to pass the pop quiz later, I’d advise it.”
“It ain’t a pop quiz if you warn people beforehand. Doofus.”
“That’s llygad-doofus to you, and did I say pop quiz? ’Cuz I meant ninja-quiz since you’ll never see it coming.”
Glancing at Silver’s empty shot glass, Von arched an eyebrow. At Silver’s nod, he splashed more Jack into both shot glasses. Thumping the bottle back onto the bar’s light-streaked surface, Von downed his shot.
“And Dante?” Silver asked. “What’s his truth?”
“Dante’s truth is dark and dazzling; it lays the heart bare. All you hafta do is look.”
Silver’s head tilted back as he lifted his glass to his lips and knocked the shot back. Blew out a whiskey-fumed breath. “Yeah, that’s the fucking goddamned truth all right.” He looked at Von, a muscle playing in his jaw. “But what does it have to do with lying to him?”
“Everything. His truth demands truth in return. Whenever you lie to him, you bury truth and trust in an unmarked shallow grave. Whenever you—” Von’s words froze unspoken in his throat when a thought blazed through his mind like a burning arrow.
Von laughed out loud, relief draining the tension from his knotted muscles like oil from a bike engine.
Feeling the heat and weight of Silver’s gaze, Von poured another shot of Jack for both of them, then clinked his glass against Silver’s. Silver stared at him, his expression both hopeful and wary. “Well?” he asked.
“Dante’s on his way back. He found Lucien too.”
Silver closed his eyes, a smile curving his lips. “Goddamn.” He tossed back his shot, then opened his eyes again. “Did he say where he found Lucien or how?”