Etched in Bone

by Adrian Phoenix

  An image of Chloe sprawled in a pool of her own blood flashed behind Heather’s eyes. Her throat tightened. The words that Dante had spoken to her before Sleep whispered through her memory.

  As long as my past is messing up my present, I’m beaucoup dangerous to you and anyone near me. I’ve gotta find a way to always stay here and now.

  Heather unfolded her arms, trailed a hand through her hair. “I know the risks. But they’re risks I’ve chosen to take because he’s worth fighting for and because I—”

  “Fucking love him and trust him and yada-yada, I know,” Annie interrupted. “But that doesn’t mean he won’t kill you, then hate himself in the morning. Night. Whatever.”

  “He won’t.”

  “You don’t know that. But maybe if Dante went to Gehenna and found someone to teach him how to control all the shit in his head and how to keep from turning cemeteries into rock piles, someone like the Morningstar, he wouldn’t be so flipping dangerous.”

  Heather’s blood chilled in her veins. “The Morningstar?” she repeated, voice low. “Now how the hell do you know that name? I know you didn’t hear it from—”

  Heather felt a sudden intake of breath, felt Dante awaken. His awareness curled warm and inviting through their bond. Heat pulsed through her veins, her body. As much as she ached to race upstairs and fulfill her promise to make Dante pay for falling asleep on her, she knew her skin-on-skin revenge would have to wait for the moment.

  Annie frowned. “Dunno. I guess . . . I was just thinking of fallen angels and maybe I remembered the Morningstar from a book I read or something. Fuck. I don’t know.”

  Everything in Annie’s expression and body language suggested she was telling the truth—she had no idea why the Morningstar’s name had popped into her head and rolled off her tongue.

  A dark possibility brewed in the back of Heather’s mind, a possibility that iced her to the bone. Her thoughts flipped back to Damascus and the discovery that one of the Fallen had broken into their motel room, frying the electronic lock and searing off the door chain, but—after magicking her and Cortini into sleep—had left without Dante. Which had made absolutely no sense.

  “Holy fucking hell,” Von mutters. He looks at Dante. “Not that I ain’t glad, but why the fuck would they leave you behind?”

  “I don’t think they woulda. We’re missing something.”

  The Morningstar had admitted in the cemetery that he’d been following them and had broken into their room in Damascus—I’ve been keeping an eye on you for your father—but she was pretty goddamned sure that he’d lied.

  Prince of Darkness. Big surprise, right? Of course he’d lied.

  And Heather had the horrible feeling that he’d planted a suggestion in Annie’s dreaming mind or hypnotized her or bewitched her while in their room. Had told her to steer Dante to Gehenna—and to the Morningstar.

  Christ. What if Annie’s mind hadn’t been the only one seeded full of suggestions?

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Dante laughed, and the mental sound, the feel of his laughter, was a devilish hand trailing fire and wicked promises up Heather’s spine to the nape of her neck.

 

  Heather’s breath caught rough in her throat when she felt Dante’s lips upon hers in a ravenous kiss, his heated hands cupping her face, his burning leaves and November frost scent enveloping her senses. Everything else faded away—the club, Annie, the Morningstar—beneath the intensity of Dante’s sending.

  Then he was gone, his shields in place.

  Oh, he’s going to pay for that one too.

  Heather became aware that someone was snapping their fingers in her face.

  “Hey, fucking Earth to Heather,” Annie said, snapping her fingers once more. “You’ve got that day-dreaming, inward look junkies on the nod get. Or like when I’ve seen Silver mind-chatting with other nightkind. Since I’m pretty sure you ain’t spiking black tar heroin into your veins, I’m guessing it’s that temporary blood link thingie.”

  Cheeks flushing, Heather turned her thoughts back outward and focused on her sister. Annie stared at her with an unnerving intensity.

  “Sorry about that,” Heather said. “And you’re right, except the link’s no longer temporary and I get caught up in it since I’m not used to it yet.” Of course, Dante hadn’t helped things one bit. She drew in a breath to calm her racing heart.

  Annie narrowed her eyes. “You’re saying that you’re fucking permanently linked to him?” she asked, disbelief playing across her face. “How the hell did that happen?”

  “We don’t know exactly how it happened. I fell into his dreams or he pulled me in and somehow . . .”

  Annie looked away, a muscle flexing in her jaw. “Well, that sucks for you.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you’ll never ever be alone again.”

  Sliding off the bar stool, Annie scooped up the pack of Camels and tucked the book of matches inside the cellophane. Grabbing the bottle of Wild Turkey, she said, “Think I’ll see if the guys need any help.”

  Heather watched her sister walk away, Annie’s hip swing growing more pronounced with each step closer to the Cage and the three Inferno members setting up equipment inside of it, wondering why she felt like she’d just been slapped and hard.

  30

  OF GODS AND VAMPIRES

  ROME,

  THE PROTESTANT CEMETERY

  March 28

  RENATA ALESSA CORTINI DROPPED down from the moonlit sky with its brushstrokes of pale clouds, landing with easy grace on the cemetery’s gravel path. The high altitude cold had glazed her fingers with frost, iced her nails. She threw back the hood of her black cloak and scanned the cemetery.

  Moonlight glimmered on the bristling rows and layers of elaborate marble tombstones. Lambent-eyed cats—the cemetery’s sleek guardians of the dead—prowled the paths between the graves.

  Renata closed her eyes and listened. On the old side of the cemetery, beyond the gate, the hummingbird flutter of a mortal heart winged around the slow, measured drumbeat of a vampire’s pulse. She opened her eyes, a smile brushing her lips.

  Fionn and his blood gift.

  A little calico cat slithered from around a white tombstone, scraping its furry side along the marble, and blinked moonlight-silvered eyes at Renata.

  “Buona sera, bella,” Renata greeted with a smile as she walked along the gravel path, past the darkened and closed office, and through the gate into the oldest part of the cemetery. Less crowded, this side—fewer headstones and more lush grass between them.

  A warm breeze rustled through the leaves of oaks, pine trees, and cypress, carrying the sweet smells of honeysuckle and roses through the air. Well-fed cats of all sizes and colors—tabby, calico, tortoiseshell—padded among the old graves or watched with lambent eyes from the benches positioned throughout the cemetery.

  Renata loved the Protestant Cemetery. RESURRECTURIS was carved deep into the stone above the cemetery’s main entrance, sanctifying it as a place for those who will rise again. Peace and stillness ran deep here, like a river within the earth’s heart.

  A sacred place.

  Often in the quiet hours of the night, she’d soar over its stone walls and bask in its silence and calm like a cat stretched out in a pool of warm Mediterranean sunlight, the cemetery’s ancient and thick Roman walls blocking out all traffic noise from the streets beyond.

  Renata scanned the shadows for Fionn, drawn by the rhythm of his heart, as she followed the stone path meandering around the grounds. She walked past tombstones and weathered monuments, her
attention coming to rest on the ancient pyramid looming just behind the short, iron-barred fence and the figures shadowing its stone—one standing, one kneeling.

  Renata left the stone path and started across the night-draped grass. A lean figure wearing a long, black coat stepped forward. His shoulder-length hair—gold and honey and red—flickered like flame in the warm breeze. An intricate band of Celtic knot-work was blue-inked across his handsome face, running beneath his light-filled eyes and across the bridge of his nose.

  Beautiful Fionn, from Ireland.

  Renata nodded in acknowledgment as she drew to a halt in front of Fionn’s tall, muscular form—six-four to her five-two. He wore tight-fitting black leather pants and a white poet’s shirt beneath his long coat.

  Fionn was the only member of her privy council within the Cercle de Druide that she truly trusted and the only member she had told that a True Blood—Dante Baptiste—had been found by her mortal daughter, the child of her heart, Caterina.

  Now she was about to entrust Fionn with an even more powerful secret—that she suspected Dante Baptiste was much more than a magical True Blood.

  Caterina’s words sparkled like fairy dust in Renata’s memory.

  The Bloodline still holds, Mama, and a myth from the ancient past now walks the world. I’ve seen him. Fallen and True Blood.

  And not just that. A Fallen Maker.

  Renata’s blood thrummed with excitement as she considered all the ramifications, all the possibilities. The time of gods and vampires had, at long last, returned.

  According to Caterina, Dante Baptiste had rejected the Fallen by turning dozens of them to stone in Damascus, Oregon. And this pleased Renata because, at the heart of the matter, Dante had been born vampire. He belongs to us, not the Elohim. We shall guide him.

  “Mo bhean,” Fionn greeted formally, dropping with feline grace to one knee in the grass. He bowed his head, one gold-and-fire side braid swinging against the side of his face. “I seek thy blessing.”

  Renata bit her lower lip and hot blood welled, washing away pain’s sting. “Then rise and receive it, mo pháiste.”

  Fionn stood and, grasping her shoulders, bent his face to hers and kissed her deeply, drinking in her blessing with his lips and tongue. He smelled of peat and smoky fires, of deep, dark forests.

  His warm hands slid away from her shoulders as the kiss ended and he straightened to regard her with eyes the color of a winter sea—blue-gray and full of hidden depths. He licked the last drop of dark blood from his lips with a slow curl of his tongue—and the sight melted the final bit of frost from Renata’s flight-cooled body.

  Well. At least I’m no longer cold.

  “I brought an offering, my lady,” he said, his lilting voice like musical honey.

  Renata glanced at the young mortal male kneeling in the dew-wet grass behind Fionn, his head respectfully bowed. His pulse raced through his veins. Mingled lust and adrenaline and an opium-laced merlot spiced his blood.

  “Grazie,” she said with a quick smile. “He smells absolutely delizioso. I shall share him with you, of course. After we talk.”

  Fionn nodded, “Have you news of the True Blood?”

  “Sì. Troubling news received from my llygad this evening.” Renata crossed the moon-silvered lawn to a bench and sat. A tabby jumped down, deciding it didn’t care to share its perch.

  Renata crooked a finger, and by the time she had lowered her hand, Fionn was sitting beside her, fingers absently stroking the ghost-pale fur of a purring cat already snuggled into his leather-clad lap.

  “Troubling?” he asked, a frown pinching the skin between his eyes.

  “His home was burned down to the foundation last night in New Orleans and a member of his household is believed to have died in the fire.”

  When Renata had received word of the fire, uneasiness had trailed a cold finger down her spine. The fact that she’d heard nothing of this from Giovanni—already in place in New Orleans to meet with Dante Baptiste and offer him the support of the Cercle—had left her more than a little disturbed.

  “Does Baptiste have any ongoing feuds?”

  Renata nodded. “According to my llygad, Dante was accused a year ago of murdering an entire household, but for one survivor, by torching their home. The matter was dropped due to lack of evidence and motive.”

  “A household for a household,” Fionn mused. “Sounds like the sole survivor finally decided to take matters into their own hands. Any word about the fire from Guy Mauvais? Since he’s master of the city, he must know something.”

  “He knows, sì, since he ordered it done as punishment for his fille de sang’s murdered lover,” Renata said, voice tight. “A matter of personal revenge taken out on innocents. According to Mauvais, Dante admitted to the murder.”

  “Then the matter should’ve been settled between them, not taken out on the boy’s household,” Fionn said. “Where is the honor in that?”

  “There’s more,” Renata said. “According to rumor, Mauvais kept his llygad away from a meeting he held aboard his riverboat, a meeting that Dante Baptiste was rumored to attend—by force.”

  “So anything that happened or was said during this rumored and unverified meeting can’t be confirmed.”

  “Exactly.”

  Fionn swore in deep-throated Gaelic. “Mauvais knows, then.”

  Renata nodded. “That Dante is True Blood, sì, I would imagine so. Given that the meeting was forced, I expect Mauvais took blood by force as well.”

  Fionn swore again, causing the ears of the cat curled up in his lap to twitch.

  “And one final bit of news—Mauvais’s llygad reported that just before the Winter Rose undocked from the wharf, a strange statue was carried on board. A winged and crouching sculpture that seemed to be falling apart.”

  Renata’s heart had danced against her ribs when she’d received that information. Winged stone. Another of the Fallen transformed by creawdwr fire? A chill had touched her spine. Did Guy Mauvais possess one of the Fallen?

  And why had she heard nothing about any of this from Giovanni?

  Two possibilities snapped like fire through her mind—Giovanni as prisoner, betrayed by Mauvais; Giovanni as co-conspirator for power, standing beside Mauvais.

  But she knew from long experience with her fils de sang that a third possibility was more likely: he’d been buried to the hilt inside some lovely little thing, so busy laughing and drinking and fucking that he hadn’t noticed that everything was going to shit around him.

  A muscle flexed in Renata’s jaw. She quickly calculated the time difference. It would be nearly seven P.M. in New Orleans. Giovanni should be awake soon, if he wasn’t already. As soon as she finished here, she would have a long conversation with her fils de sang. One he wouldn’t relish.

  “Sounds like a gargoyle, a statue,” Fionn said. “Why is that worthy of note?”

  “Because it brings us to the heart of why I asked you here, mio amico.”

  “I’m listening, my lady.”

  “There’s more at stake here than you realize,” Renata said, rising to her feet. “I was waiting until I could verify the information before sharing it with you, but given recent events . . .” She lifted one shoulder in a half-shrug.

  “More at stake than True Blood?”

  “Sì, assolutamente,” Renata held Fionn’s winter-sea gaze. “Dante Baptiste was fathered by one of the Fallen. I also believe him to be a Maker.”

  Fionn stared at her, his face shocked clean of emotion, his body held preternaturally still. “There has never been a vampire/Fallen creawdwr,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “Never a mixed-blood creawdwr. Period. There hasn’t even been a Maker since Yahweh’s death. How certain of this are you?”

  “Almost completely. His being fathered by one of the Fallen is beyond question. My daughter, Caterina, has proof of that. She also witnessed him turning Fallen emissaries seeking to guide him to Gehenna to stone.”

  “To stone . . .” Com
prehension glinted in Fionn’s eyes. “You suspect Mauvais has one of the transformed Fallen in his possession.”

  Renata shrugged. “È una possibilità.”

  Fionn scrubbed a hand over his face, his gaze shifting away into the distance. “If this is true, that a True Blood/Fallen creawdwr exists, and he has rejected the Fallen, then we need to claim him before the Conseil du Sang learns the truth.”

  “Sì, the Conseil will have no regard for the creawdwr’s spiritual well-being,” Renata said. “They know nothing of gods and will try to manipulate Dante into serving base causes. He is ours.”

  “Aye,” Fionn murmured, looking at her again. “That he is.”

  “And that’s where you come into this, mio amico,” Renata said. “I want you to bond Dante Baptiste. You have even more centuries than I do. I can’t think of a better teacher to guide him.”

  But what she left unvoiced was her prime reason—Fionn would obey her.

  Fionn blinked. He scrubbed a hand over his face again, whiskers rasping against his palm. “Why me, my lady? Why not you, yourself?”

  “I have too many other responsibilities,” Renata replied. “All of which I would most likely need to give up if I bonded Dante. I have a feeling he would be a full-time job.”

  Fionn laughed, the sound low and warm and very amused. “A polite way of saying I have time on my hands?” When Renata opened her mouth to protest, he held up a hand and shook his head. “I have been bored of late. When do you want me to go to New Orleans?”

  “Soon. I have a task for Giovanni first—I want him to find and kill Guy Mauvais, then offer his head as a gift to Dante, our creawdwr, as a token of our devotion. I want you there with Giovanni when he makes the presentation.”

  “Do you have any images of the True Blood you can share?”

  “Sì, let me contact Stefan.”

  Renata sent to her llygad and asked him to transmit the most current image he possessed of Dante to her and Fionn.