All That Falls

by Kimberly Frost

  She held out her arms, opening herself to his scrutiny. “I’m fine.”

  “If Merrick and Lysander were excluded from the law against the fallen being allowed into the Etherlin, would you consider coming home? Would you meet with us here where it would be safer for you and Cerise? We might be able to come to an agreement that’s acceptable to everyone.”

  “I don’t know,” Alissa said, feeling a pang of regret. She loved the Etherlin. She missed the view of the lake from the walking path, missed watching the sun rise over the mountains and her mother’s trees in bloom. She missed the household staff, meeting Dimitri for lunch, and being able to sit outside at the coffee shops and cafés without worrying that she’d be attacked. Then she thought about Merrick, and all the things that she missed about her former home melted away. What she felt for him was bigger than anything she’d lost.

  “Merrick doesn’t really…” Alissa paused. “He doesn’t follow rules, and the Etherlin has a lot of them.”

  “The Wreath and your mother’s house and her memory are here. Richard’s contacted me several times asking for things of hers to be sent to him.”

  “He has?” she asked. Alissa hadn’t realized that her father had been in contact with anyone from the Etherlin.

  “This community was the dream of the muses of only two generations ago. Are you and Cerise really ready to let it die? Because even if Ileana is recovered, her skills and Dorie’s won’t be enough to sustain it. The community will have to change dramatically.”

  “I think it would have to change dramatically anyway for me to come back. I can’t speak for Cerise.”

  “No one can speak for Cerise,” Dimitri said with a fond smile. “Is she all right?”

  Alissa nodded.

  “Will you at least consider it?”

  Alissa nodded again. “I’ll speak to Merrick about it. And to Cerise.”

  “Will you ask her to contact me? I’d like to hear my daughter’s voice for myself.”

  “I will,” Alissa said softly. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry that our choices have been hard on you.”

  “That’s the burden of parenthood,” he said, shrugging. “But no matter what you or Cerise ever do, I’ll never regret that I loved and helped raised you both.”

  Alissa looked down and bit her lip. She took a deep breath in and swallowed against the emotion clogging her throat. She glanced back at the screen with damp lashes. “Thank you for that.” She smiled at him.

  A knock on the door drew her gaze. “I need to go, but I’ll speak to you soon. I promise.”

  “All right. Take care, Alissa.”

  She closed the screen and crossed the room as Ox, who was in the apartment, opened the door with his weapon in hand. Tony, one of Merrick’s men, stood in the hallway.

  He held out a laptop to Ox. “We got past the security on Rella’s flash drive. The boss said to bring it up as soon as we did.”

  Ox took the computer with his left hand and nodded. Tony glanced at her and offered her a quick smile of acknowledgment.

  “Mrs. M,” he said as she took the computer from Ox.

  “Hi, Tony. Thanks very much for this and for your help when we were trying to return from the Sliver.”

  “No problem.”

  Ox waved his gun in a “get going” gesture.

  “See you,” Tony said to her. To Ox, he added, “And that guy, the musician, turned up. He said he heard his sister was here and that we were looking for him.”

  “Hayden Lane? Where’s he at?”

  “Downstairs. You want me to bring him up to you?”

  “No, but you can take him to see his sister, and stick around in the hall. Make sure it’s a quiet reunion.”

  Tony nodded and left.

  Ox closed the door and secured it.

  “I’d like to talk to Hayden Lane,” Alissa said, sitting down on the couch with the laptop.

  “You think the boss will want you to look through that alone? Maybe you should wait till he’s back.”

  She smiled, opening files. “What’s next, Ox? Wrapping me in Bubble Wrap whenever he’s out?” she teased.

  “No, but—”

  “This conspiracy’s big enough that it requires the work of several people,” she said, and he nodded. She looked back at the screen. Troy had kept trophies…pictures of teen girls in compromising positions. She didn’t find any of herself and wouldn’t unless he’d taken them without her knowledge. What she’d kept was a stack of emails, but the pictures would go even further toward making a case against him to protect Jersey from the ramifications of his death.

  Then Alissa found a folder labeled maps. The first one she opened was titled “tunnel.” It was a route from the Etherlin into the Jacobi territory. Her hand hovered over the keyboard, and she moved to the file list to check the date. He’d last modified the file two weeks before she’d been abducted from the Etherlin and turned over to the ventala syndicate. Troy had known. He’d been an accomplice to her kidnapping.

  She double-clicked on a jpeg file and a map of the local area opened. There were several marks on the map. All in wooded areas. One of the marks extended into the Etherlin, near the retreat center. She tipped her head to the side.

  “An unholy arrangement.”

  She jumped at the sound of a voice right over her shoulder. She turned to find her father leaning close, looking at the screen.

  “What do you mean, Dad?” she asked.

  Her father touched the screen over one of the marks and traced a path through the others. “The lines form an inverted pentacle. And look at the superimposed image.”

  She squinted, straining to see the faint image that was like a watermark under the map. A horned goat. She shuddered, her blood running cold. So Troy had been into Satanism, just as Lysander had asserted based on the blood in the vial around his neck. She had been skeptical, though she should have known better than to question Lysander’s judgment when it came to demonology. It was just that she couldn’t imagine Troy serving anyone but himself.

  Alissa pushed the laptop a little farther away with a sigh. She hesitated, feeling extremely uneasy. She thought of the way Merrick had asked her to wash her hands after she’d touched the tainted blackbird sketch. She hadn’t minded. In truth, she didn’t want to brush against evil. She preferred to keep the energy around her pure…or at least well-intentioned.

  “Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of evil,” Richard said.

  She looked at her dad.

  “A very old literary reference,” he added.

  “The Bible?”

  He nodded. “Ephesians.”

  She pushed her hair back, clasping it tight at the base of her neck as though holding it there and preventing it from falling in her eyes would allow her to see exactly what the demons intended.

  She exhaled slowly. “I need to look through these files, but I don’t relish it,” she murmured with a shiver. All things demonic made her skin crawl.

  “I think the marks on this map are caves,” her dad said. “Lysander said that all the demons that have risen over the past several hundred years have done so in this area. These mountains have become dusted with demon ashes. The most powerful muses and the descendants of the vampires migrated here for a reason. There’s supernatural energy in this region that makes it easier for them to gain power. And demons are drawn to angels. To our own angels,” he murmured and then glanced at the ceiling and let out a hiss, as though in pain.

  She jerked her head to look up, but there was nothing overhead. She turned to him. “What is it?”

  “A wound.”

  “Who? How bad?”

  “Gather some things, Moonbeam,” he whispered. “We may need to leave this place in a hurry.”

  “Dad, who’s wounded?” she asked, clutching his arm.

  “Before the night’s over. All of them.”

  The ventala syndicate forces kept pouring into the club. Merrick had sla
mmed into the room on the body of a massive opponent who once fallen did not rise again. Together, Merrick and Lysander were a blur of bloodletting fury, but she couldn’t enjoy the show because she had to strike out against several ventala herself. She’d run out of V3 ammunition, so she’d had to resort to her dagger.

  She felt a whisper of wind behind her. It raised the hair on her neck and she spun, but was too late to stop the hand that grabbed her throat.

  Jerked forward by the angular-featured female ventala, Tamberi Jacobi, Cerise’s knife tumbled from her grasp. Tamberi had come from the women’s bathroom. Had she been lying in wait? She dragged Cerise into the bathroom and threw her against the wall.

  Cerise lurched to her feet as Tamberi stalked forward. They struggled, but in hand-to-hand, Tamberi was fast and vicious. With a sharp crack, Cerise’s head hit the tile and the room became gray and muddled. She felt herself being dragged and saw Tamberi open a passage under a sink.

  A passage?

  Tamberi shoved her, and Cerise fell through a hole. She landed hard on the padded ground and struggled to catch her breath. Tamberi dropped and landed next to her.

  Cerise turned her head. They were in a catacomb under the club.

  Tamberi grabbed Cerise’s hair and yanked.

  “Get up or I’ll slit your throat right here,” Tamberi snarled.

  Cerise didn’t move. Her head was clearing rapidly, albeit with a splitting headache emerging in the wake of the haziness. Cerise had no intention of moving anywhere quickly. Not only because she needed a minute to get her legs to work properly. But also because she wanted one of Lysander’s daggers to follow them down.

  “Get the fuck up,” Tamberi hissed, jerking hard enough on Cerise’s arm to wrench it from the joint. Cerise screamed and slammed her fist into Tamberi’s throat. Tamberi reeled, grabbing her neck and drawing in a wheeze. Cerise swung a leg out in a makeshift roundhouse kick. The bony ventala stumbled sideways, tripping off the mat.

  Cerise rolled to her knees and forced herself up.

  I need a weapon.

  Tamberi came at her. Cerise crouched and launched herself forward, slamming her body into Tamberi. Cerise felt her shoulder grind back into its socket as they landed hard on the stone floor; Tamberi was on the bottom, and Cerise’s hand dug for Tamberi’s gun. The ventala bitch’s fist bashed Cerise’s jaw, and Cerise felt a bone-jarring crack and tasted blood.

  Cerise went momentarily still, then clenched her teeth, sending a wave of nauseating pain through her broken mandible. She launched a new attack, fighting with everything she had. She lost track of the room, of up or down, of left or right. She felt only flesh hammering flesh, pain piled on pain. Then cold metal against her wrist.

  Her fingers struggled to close around the gun’s handle, her index finger digging into the metal loop. She fought to get her bearings and to point the barrel away from herself.

  The bullet exploded from the chamber, and Tamberi screamed.

  Flung off the ventala, Cerise landed hard and the weapon discharged again, the bullet ripping into the wall and sending a scatter of debris.

  Tamberi clutched her lower ribs, breathing hard as blood seeped through her fingers. Cerise’s left arm hung limply by her side as she walked toward the fallen ventala. She held the gun aloft. Cerise needed to put a vampire-killing V3 bullet through Tamberi’s heart or to cut off Tamberi’s head in order to finish her off for sure. Any other wounds, Jacobi could recover from.

  Cerise pointed at the middle of the left side of Tamberi’s chest.

  Tamberi grinned. “Go ahead. It won’t make any difference. Griffin wouldn’t betray you. No matter what was done to him, in the end he wouldn’t turn you over. But that doesn’t mean he won’t end up being instrumental in your death.”

  What?

  Cerise heard footsteps behind her. She turned sharply and saw a figure emerging from the shadows.

  His name slipped past her lips. “Griffin?” she whispered, recognizing that gangster swagger he sometimes had when he walked onstage or into a club.

  Something glinted in the darkness. She couldn’t see him. She squinted and stepped forward.

  A low voice that she hadn’t heard in a long time said, “Hello, Cherry.”

  Then a gunshot cracked the air, and a stinging pain erupted into a sharp cramp in her chest. Cerise fell back, landing flat and hard on the cold ground.

  “What the fuck?” Tamberi said, laughing. “I don’t get you.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  Cerise struggled to breathe, holding her chest, feeling blood pump through her fingers. The arched stone overhead swayed and her vision blurred. A lanky figure approached. She saw the black “Road to Ruin” T-shirt she’d bought, squinted at the man wearing it.

  Griffin?

  No, not Griffin.

  “Hayden?” Cerise croaked.

  “Not at the moment,” he said, crouching, and glassy red violet eyes shone in the darkness.

  She felt something hard pressed under her ribs.

  “I wish we had more time together, Cherry.” He cupped her sex in a crushing squeeze. She struggled to move away, then had a flash of memory. Hands on her throat. Pain between her legs. “I wish we had more time together, Cherry.”

  Her mind wailed, but her lips only moved wordlessly. Then he kissed her, forcing his tongue into her mouth. She gagged. With her wounded jaw she couldn’t bite hard enough to sever his tongue. She fought to slam a fist into his back. She only had a fraction of her strength. Her body seemed to weigh thousands of pounds, and her arm felt like she’d been lifting weights for hours as she raised it to strike him again.

  She clamped her jaws down through the pain, biting his tongue, tasting blood and making him grunt. He grabbed her hair, lifted her head, and banged it against the stone floor. Her jaws jarred open and he pulled his head back with a laugh and spat blood on the ground.

  “Going down fighting. As always,” he whispered with icy fondness.

  Then pop, pop, pop, like firecrackers, three more gunshots tore through her in rapid succession.

  She sank into darkness, ripped apart as much by the last words she heard as by the bullets.

  “Thank you for helping me destroy Lysander. I couldn’t have done it alone.”

  Chapter 24

  Reziel, Lysander thought.

  The club was flooded with the stench of demons as though Reziel were all around him. Lysander and Merrick dispatched the ventala efficiently, but then there were human aggressors who had been anointed with ash. Lysander and Merrick sifted through the men and women who smelled of hell, hunting for a flesh-and-blood demon, but they didn’t find one. And they realized too late it was a distraction.

  When pain cleaved Lysander’s heart, he froze. His eyes widened as he felt Cerise fall.

  His gaze darted around the club, searching for her.

  “Merrick!” Lysander said, spinning around. “Cerise is down. Help me find—she’s badly wounded.”

  “This way,” Merrick said, stalking to the men’s bathroom.

  They tore the doors off to open the stalls, finding only an empty room.

  “I smell her,” Merrick said, looking around.

  “It’s a false trail. I had her in here earlier,” Lysander said, then pain ripped through his guts and he dropped to his knees, gasping for breath. “God, no.” He clutched his chest. “She’s dying.” He closed his eyes. “She can’t die. If I lose her…”

  “Where? Concentrate, Lyse, where is she? Which way?”

  “Below us. She’s in a tunnel below us.”

  Merrick grabbed Lysander’s arm and yanked him up. “C’mon.”

  The club was hazy, and images swam through the blur. Cerise’s face. Red malice-filled eyes.

  Reziel stood before him, smiling. Lysander swung his dagger, but caught only air and the wall.

  Not real.

  “Leave her alone,” Lysander snarled.

  “Why? Because you did?” the demon whispered and faded
away.

  “Hey!” Merrick snapped.

  Lysander’s vision cleared, and he realized they were standing at the bar. Merrick had the bartender by the throat.

  “Where’s the trapdoor to the tunnel under the club?”

  “I don’t know,” the bartender croaked, wheezing for breath.

  Merrick’s grip tightened, and the man’s eyes bulged.

  “You’ve got ten seconds to tell me before I crush your windpipe,” Merrick whispered.

  The bartender’s red face swelled from the pressure of Merrick’s hand.

  “Okay,” the bartender mouthed.

  Merrick’s fingers relaxed enough for the bartender to croak, “All right. It’s in the bathroom. The women’s bathroom.” The bartender struggled to draw in a breath. “False panel under the last sink.”

  Merrick let go, and the man dropped to the floor behind the bar.

  Lysander and Merrick raced through the club and into the women’s restroom. Merrick tapped the wall under the far sink and finding it hollow, kicked the panel open, splintering the wood.

  “Too small for us,” Merrick said, smashing every bit of the frame around the opening.

  “Move,” Lysander said. He ripped a sink from the wall and swung it. Porcelain shattered and plaster exploded from the blows as the hole widened.

  “Good enough,” Merrick said, swinging his legs through the gaping space.

  Lysander followed and dropped twelve feet to land on the floor in a crouch. He sprang forward to Cerise’s body, which lay in a pool of blood.

  Her hands were pale and mottled, but her face was puffy and bluish purple like she’d been suffocated.

  “Christ,” Merrick murmured.

  “Blood in the sac,” Lysander said with a desperate ache in his chest. “It’s crushing her heart.”

  Lysander ripped Cerise’s shirt open and sliced her bra. There were several holes in her chest.

  Merrick knelt, leaning over Cerise with a somber expression and descended fangs. For a split second, Lysander considered telling Merrick to back away, but held his tongue. If Merrick felt himself losing control at the scent of muse blood, he could be trusted to police his own reaction.