Etched in Bone

by Adrian Phoenix

  “No, child,” Lucien said. “You’re not ready.”

  Dante shut his eyes as the room played carousel, pain throbbing at his temples.

  Relief flooded in through their bond. He felt Heather’s soft lips on his, a kiss brimming with blood-stirring promises, then she was gone, her shields tight.

  Leaving him breathless.

  Opening his eyes, Dante glanced down at the long-fingered hand clutching his arm. “Merci beaucoup, mon ami, but you can let go, I’ve got my balance now.”

  “I doubt that,” Lucien said, voice dry. Releasing Dante, he stepped away.

  When Dante turned around—carefully, to avoid more carousel action, something soft and black whapped him in the face, then fell to the floor. He looked down. A pair of boxer-briefs. He met Lucien’s gaze and lifted his eyebrows. “Seriously?”

  “Couldn’t hurt.”

  “Says you.”

  Stepping past the unsolicited underwear, Dante grabbed a pair of black jeans from the bureau, pulled them on, and zipped them up as he walked to the French windows. He pushed the curtains open and looked down into the ivy-draped courtyard.

  I ain’t running and I ain’t hiding, no. But I gotta heal, gotta get control, and get my shit together before I do anything else.

  Before I destroy everyone I love.

  A flicker of blue neon caught his eye, and Dante imagined Trey standing in the courtyard’s shadows, his bundled-wire dreads undulating like flute-hypnotized snakes around his head, his face and body flashing with blue ones and zeroes.

  We ain’t done, you and me. Not yet.

  Dante rested his forehead against the window’s cool glass, his fingers twisting knots into the velvet folds of the curtains. I hope not, cher.

  For a moment, the cold, black tide of grief and guilt receded from his heart, giving him a chance to breathe, to think about how he was going to make things right, or if he even could. Then the tide rushed back in with tsunami ferocity, shoving him down and under into the wasp-droning depths once more. Drowning.

  Trust me, I’ll make sure you regret every breath you’ve ever drawn.

  Boy needs a lesson. Boy always needs a lesson.

  You’re gonna hurt everyone around you.

  That’s my Bad Seed bro.

  Rage flashed white-hot, yanking him up to the surface again, and pounding his fists through glass and wood and plaster. Scorching away all thought, except for one—they were telling the truth, every fucking one of them.

  As he whirled around, jerking the curtains to the floor as he moved, he became aware of someone shouting his name, but he couldn’t stop. Fury fueled every muscle, torched his heart.

  I’ve been lying to myself my entire life.

  That’s my Bad Seed bro.

  Dante grabbed the now-empty armchair and tossed it across the room. It crashed into the armoire with a resounding thud and a sharp crack of fracturing wood. Heated hands seized his arms, talons biting into his flesh. Dante’s fists smacked into a hard, muscled chest. While a calmer part of him knew it was Lucien holding him, the firestorm raging inside wouldn’t let that calm part of himself back into the driver’s seat.

  Dante fought his way free of Lucien’s grip, slashing with his sharp, sharp nails and fangs. He tasted blood on his lips—his own and Lucien’s. As he spun away, someone tackled him, slamming him into the floor. A whiff of frost and gun oil. Another pair of hands pinned his shoulders down.

  Dante kicked and squirmed and twisted in a wild attempt to throw off Von and Lucien’s combined weight, his nails scraping the wood floor. He tossed his head as Lucien touched his fingers to his temples, refusing his father’s touch.

  As the three of them wrestled together on the floor, Dante became aware that someone was screaming a word over and over, a seething, furious, animal howl—Motherfucker! Motherfucker! Motherfucker!—in his own voice.

  And knew it wasn’t meant for Mauvais or Papa Prejean or even the Perv.

  It was meant for himself.

  45

  WISH

  NEW ORLEANS,

  CLUB HELL

  March 29

  THE FBI AGENT ABSENTLY brushed strands of wavy red hair away from her face as she ended her conversation with a quiet “Thanks.” Slipping her cell phone into her jeans pocket, Heather Wallace studied Merri with thoughtful blue eyes.

  “My contact confirmed your story,” she said. “You and your partner are listed as AWOL, and the SB authorities consider you both renegade and possibly hostile.”

  “Ain’t no possibly about it.” Emmett said.

  Merri didn’t need to look at him to know that a muscle flexed in his jaw. She heard the tension and quiet fury in his voice. Smelled it sharp as licorice in his scent.

  “Truth, brothah,” Merri agreed, blowing out a plume of clove-scented smoke. “Hard to maintain a good working relationship with your agents when you tend to mind-wipe them for things like . . . oh . . . doing their jobs. Often leads to disgruntled agents.”

  “Truth, sistah. But only if said agents remember why they’re disgruntled. Otherwise . . .” Emmett shrugged.

  Merri couldn’t argue. And it chilled her to the bone to know that if she hadn’t realized what had happened to Emmett, they would both probably be happily working on their next assignment, unaware that certain portions of their memories had been altered.

  And who’s to say that it hasn’t happened exactly that way before?

  The Cajun drummer with the mane of cherry-red braids—Black Bayou Jack, ma’am, but Jack alone will work—strolled behind the bar, fished around in the fridge, then held up a bottle of Lipton’s unsweetened iced tea. Cocked an inquiring eyebrow.

  “I’ll take one, partner,” Emmett said, “But mine’s gonna need to be sugared and lemon slice dunked. Unsweetened.” He shook his head. “That’s just blasphemous.”

  Merri held up a hand, refusing the offer.

  “I’ll take one, Jack, as is,” Heather said. “Blasphemy and all, though I didn’t realize iced tea was a religion.”

  “It is in the south, hun, you heathen, you,” Jack replied, popping caps off bottles and pouring the tea into ice-filled glasses.

  Heather shook her head, an amused smile curving her lips. Merri drew in her tantalizing scent, lilacs in the rain, sage after a storm.

  Jack set a sugar container, spoon, a small paring knife, and a lemon in front of Emmett before sliding the glasses along the counter. Emmett set to work making his unsweetened tea palatable.

  Heather curled her fingers around her glass. “So why are you doing this?” she asked, glancing at the flash drive lying on the counter beside Merri’s ugly-ass floppy-brimmed hat and leather gloves. “And why did you come here instead of heading underground?”

  “We’ve got a whole list of reasons,” Merri replied, studying the ash on the glowing end of her Djarum Black. She tapped it into the ashtray. “Betrayal. Conspiracies. Memory-tampering. The near certainty of a bullet to the skull if the SB finds us. Which one do you want first?”

  “Let’s start with the one at the top of the list.”

  “That would be Dante Baptiste.” Merri lifted her gaze to Heather’s, but the FBI agent’s face gave nothing away, her expression composed.

  “We want to offer him his past,” Emmett said, “in the hopes that doing so will help free him from the sorry-ass bastards manipulating him. If we can break his conditioning, his programming—”

  “And why do you care?” Heather cut in, her voice edged in icicles. “The SB and the Bureau apparently run black ops programs all the time. That can’t be news to you. Why did you choose to get involved in this one?”

  “Dante Baptiste being True Blood is a huge factor,” Merri admitted. “And, yeah, we knew the SB was running black ops, sure. But until I downloaded that file, I had no idea that those motherfuckers were twisting children into sociopaths. And what they did to Baptiste from the moment he was born . . .” She shook her head, remembering nightmarish images from the fil
e that she would never be able to blot from her mind.

  Chloe lies in a pool of her own blood, her empty blue eyes staring at the straitjacketed boy dangling from the hook above her.

  “And your other reasons?” Heather asked.

  Merri stubbed out her clove cigarette in the ashtray, then held up a finger. Light winked from her high-gloss French manicure. “Emmett’s memory was wiped of Damascus and Dante Baptiste. We want to know why.” She displayed a second finger. “We have few other options.” A third finger shot into the air. “We really have few other options. Oh. And.” A fourth finger. “We’d really like to live through all this.”

  “And I have a family I’d sure as hell like to return to some day,” Emmett murmured. “But in the meantime, they’re safer with me gone.”

  Heather studied Merri for a long moment, then shifted her gaze to Emmett and gave him the same intense scrutiny—as though she could X-ray scan through bone and brain to the mind’s intent and the heart’s dark secrets.

  “Seems to me,” she said finally, “that you’d have a much better chance of surviving if you went anywhere but here. Dante’s being hunted. So am I. You’re just putting yourselves in the crossfire.”

  “We’re being hunted too,” Emmett said, his voice a low drawl. “And the reasons why all lead right back to Dante Baptiste. Seems to me, we might be better off here with y’all, than out there alone. There’s always strength in numbers.”

  Heather sighed, then nodded. “You just might be right about that. Our numbers are kinda slim at the moment.”

  “Speaking of numbers,” Merri said. “There was a guy here earlier, Sasquatch-tall, good-looking, with long black hair. His scent wasn’t mortal or vampire.” Green leaves and deep, dark earth, musky incense, and something that whispered, other.

  A smile flickered across Heather’s lips. “Sasquatch-tall? I’ll have to remember that one. His name is Lucien De Noir.” She hesitated, then shrugged and added, “And you’re right—he’s not mortal or nightkind, he’s Fallen.”

  Heart bashing against her ribs, Merri’s gaze shot over to the staircase De Noir had climbed shortly after she and Emmett had arrived at the club.

  Fallen.

  “No shit? That was a fallen angel?” Emmett frowned. “Didn’t seem very fallen angel-y. Isn’t he supposed to have wings? The angels we found turned to stone in Damascus all had wings.”

  “Trust me, he has wings,” Heather replied.

  Merri flashed back to Galiana’s words. I have a suspicion that events beyond the scope of mortals or even vampires might be unfolding.

  Merri had a feeling her mère de sang’s suspicions had just been confirmed. Dante Baptiste was keeping company with at least one member of the Elohim—which might explain the events in Damascus. Maybe De Noir had been there too. Maybe he’d magicked the other Fallen into stone.

  The sound of Heather’s breath catching rough in her throat swung Merri’s attention around in time to see the redhead’s gaze focus inward.

  What do you want to bet Heather’s blood-linked to Dante Baptiste and the True Blood has just awakened?

  The thought of finally meeting Dante, seeing him in the flesh instead of just photos, sent Merri’s pulse on a light-speed course through her veins.

  Heather closed her eyes for a moment, her body tensing. Her lips puckered as though blowing a kiss. Then she opened her eyes and looked directly at Merri. She nodded at the flash drive. “So what’s that going to cost me?”

  “Nothing,” Emmett replied. “It’s a gift. But it’s one we want to hand to Dante ourselves when we meet him. As a kind of handshake, y’know?”

  “You’re not meeting Dante,” Heather said, and her tone of voice—calm and resolute and edged with steel—refused argument, refused bargains or pleas. “Not tonight. You’re going to have to wait.” She glanced at the ceiling, sorrow shadowing her face.

  Remembering that Dante had just lost one of his household members in the fire that had destroyed his home, Merri thought it likely the young True Blood was grieving.

  “I understand,” Merri murmured.

  Heather looked at her and shook her head. “No, I don’t think you do. But if you’re willing to come back tomorrow night, you can give the flash drive to him then. And if you’re also willing, we’d love to have you on our security team—as long as you’re willing to allow Dante’s llygad to look you over tomorrow evening.”

  Meaning: to scan their minds for deception. An unusual request since lying to llygaid was forbidden and most vampires with things to hide generally avoided contact with the crescent moon-tattooed bards.

  It’d be Merri’s guess that someone had lied to Dante’s llygad, and lied well.

  “I’m okay with that,” she said quietly. “But maybe scanning me alone would be enough.” She glanced at Emmett. A muscle played in his jaw as he tipped his head back and finished his iced tea. She thought of all he’d lost the last time his mind had been touched. “I think my partner’s had his share.”

  A look of sympathy flashed across Heather’s face, but she shook her head. “Sorry, no. I won’t risk it.”

  “So what-all does this scan entail?” Emmett thumped his empty glass down on the counter, ice cubes rattling. His gaze lifted to Heather’s.

  “Just taking a look to make sure you’re telling the truth.”

  Emmett shot a glance at Merri and she nodded. “A llygad would only look, never interfere.”

  Emmett blew out a breath. “All right, dammit.”

  Giving her attention back to Heather, Merri extended her hand, “We accept.”

  ARRANGEMENTS WERE MADE FOR Emmett Thibodaux to join Jack and the guys at the club at noon tomorrow. Then Merri Goodnight would drop by in the evening so both could submit to Von’s mental look-see. After a final handshake, the fugitive pair left to get rooms at a nearby Quarter hotel.

  Even though Caterina Cortini had confirmed Goodnight and Thibodaux’s story, something in Heather’s conversation with the assassin had troubled her. It wasn’t anything she could put a finger on—just an off-note in Cortini’s voice, cold and reserved. But for all Heather knew, that was how the woman always sounded on the phone.

  Assassin, Wallace. Duh. Warm and confidential aren’t in her skill set.

  But what really troubled Heather was the crashing and thumping she’d heard from the rooms above about twenty minutes ago, accompanied by a tendril of fury and despair through her bond with Dante—a tendril that had just as quickly vanished.

  As Thibodaux and Goodnight’s gazes had shot to the ceiling, their expressions wary, bodies tensed, it had taken every ounce of Heather’s will power to remain in her seat and talking when all she’d wanted to do was race up to the bedroom.

  Leaving her iced tea unfinished, Heather headed upstairs, the promise of the Bad Seed flash drive glittering like a jewel in her mind. She hoped viewing it would help Dante reclaim his past and piece together his shattered memories. But, remembering how he’d been unable to even look at a picture of Dr. Robert Wells, let alone his face, she worried that his programming might make viewing the files at all impossible.

  They would know soon, one way or another.

  She ran into Von in the hallway outside their rooms. The nomad was buttoning on a deep green shirt over his wife-beater as he strode toward the landing, his nut-brown hair hanging in loose, shining waves to his shoulders.

  “Hey, doll,” he said, slowing to a stop. “I was just on my way down to post the club as closed tonight.”

  “What the hell happened?” she asked, nodding toward the bedroom.

  “Dante lost it. Me and Lucien sat on him until he wore himself out. Let him vent.”

  Heather’s heart gave a hard thump. “Is he okay?”

  Von raked a hand through his hair and looked toward the closed bedroom door, and his hesitation scared Heather more than anything he could say. “Von?” she urged.

  “No. I think he’s pretty far from okay,” the nomad said finally. “But he’s
hanging in there. The thing with Trey . . .” He shook his head, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “I ain’t none too happy about that.”

  Heather stiffened. “That wasn’t Dante’s fault,” she protested. “Trey ran—”

  “Yeah, doll, it was Dante’s fault,” Von interrupted gently. His eyes met hers. “He went out there knowing he didn’t have control of his power or his past. He could’ve—should’ve—stayed behind.”

  “I don’t remember you advising him of that after his seizure,” Heather said, her nails biting into the palms of her hands. “No, I’m pretty damned sure I never heard your voice saying anything of the sort.”

  “I didn’t,” Von agreed. “I fucked up bigtime. I was worried about catching up with Trey, so, yeah, what happened is my fault too. But when I said I was none too happy about that—I was referring to Trey, doll. He knew exactly what he was doing, knew what it would cost Dante too. And he fucking did it anyway.”

  “My thought exactly.” Heather’s fingers uncurled from her palms. She drew in a deep breath and smelled wax from the candles burning in the hallway’s gargoyle sconces. “Sorry, I should’ve let you finish.”

  “Duh, woman. Duh.”

  Heather quickly filled Von in on her conversation with Goodnight and Thibodaux, and Cortini, and their arrangement for the following night. When the nomad agreed to the double mind scan, Heather stepped past him, heading for the bedroom.

  A hand latched around her upper arm. “Wait.”

  Heather stopped and Von’s hand slid away. She half-swiveled to look at him. Candle light glittered along the crescent moon tattoo underneath his eye. Shadows flickered across his face.

  “Dante’s out in the courtyard with his guitar,” he said. “He kinda rock-star trashed the bedroom and Lucien banished him while he cleans the mess up.”

  “Okay.”

  “Listen, darlin’,” Von began, then paused, trailing a hand through his hair and dropping his gaze to the carpet as though searching for words.

  Heather’s pulse slipped into high gear as she stared at Von, his uncharacteristic hesitation once again scaring her more than anything she could imagine him saying.