“Well, that remains to be seen, darlin’.”
Frowning, Holly stepped forward, bent, then twisted the unlucky bastard’s head to the left. His neck broke with a sharp snap. He went limp, down for the count until his body healed.
Silver, now standing at Von’s left, whistled, low and impressed. “Can all llygaid kick ass like she does?”
“Aside from me, you mean?” Von said, dryly. Folding his arms over his chest, he added, “Miková there used to be llafnau before she came to her senses and joined the llygaid ranks.”
Silver whistled low again. “No shit?”
“No shit, indeed.”
Von caught a peripheral flash of movement from his right and looked in time to see Merri push her partner’s gun hand down. He felt a sudden pang, missing Heather and her quiet confidence, her inner strength.
You hold tight, woman. We’re coming for you too.
“See the crescent moon?” Merri murmured to her partner.
“Yeah, okay. Got it. But what the fuck is . . . lav-nigh?” Thibodaux asked, brow furrowed.
“Llafnau are the nightkind version of Navy SEALs,” Merri replied, sparing Von the necessity. “The special forces branch of the llygaid.”
“Roger that.” The wariness in Thibodaux’s sharp blue eyes throttled down a notch, but he didn’t holster his gun. He kept the Colt ready at his side and glanced at Von. “I also get that this is vampire business. Think I’ll go upstairs and take a look around. Make sure our Navy SEAL there didn’t miss someone.”
Crossing the floor in a long-legged stride, the former SB agent headed for the staircase.
Von watched him go, amused. Double-checking our hearing and our noses. Man doesn’t take anything for granted—including supersonic nightkind senses. Gotta admit, I like that.
The reek of smoke, scorched wood, and freshly spilled blood hung thick in Von’s nostrils, at the back of his throat, as he got his first good look at the damage to the club, courtesy of James Wallace.
The fire-blackened bars of the Cage, the fetishes nothing but ash.
The flame-gutted stairs leading up to Dante’s cheesetacular bat-winged throne. Or the twisted and fused thing that used to be his cheesetacular bat-winged throne, anyway.
Water damage.
Fire extinguisher foam—thick and petrified and reeking of chemicals—on walls and floors and furniture.
The stink of scorched wood and plastic and metal.
It hit Von again—the cold, furious feeling that had struck him like a brass-knuckled fist to the gut when he’d learned from Lucien what had happened while he’d Slept. His jaw tightened, pulse throbbing at his temples.
An image stolen from Annie’s memory flashed behind his eyes.
Dante half slides, half falls to his knees in the bedroom doorway, his black-painted nails scraping furrows along the threshold on his way down. Head bowed, black hair veiling his face, he whispers, “J’su ici, catin. Je t’entends.”
I’m here, doll. I hear you.
Those words alone told Von that Heather had managed to summon Dante up from Sleep—through their bond, no doubt—and most likely saved his life in the process.
J’su ici.
But that was the problem. He wasn’t here.
Worse, they still had no idea where to find him.
Everything could be repaired, rebuilt, bought anew. Tougher security installed. Guards hired. But without Dante, none of it mattered.
“I don’t know who they are,” Holly was saying. “But I followed them in.”
“Thanks for that, Miková,” Von said.
Holly shrugged. “I needed the workout. Sadly”—she glanced down in disdain at the nearest unconscious idiot—“they didn’t give me much of one.”
Von tilted his head, studied the groaning nightkind on the floor. “Might’ve seen a few of these bastards aboard the Winter Rose.”
“Figures,” Silver growled.
Von met and held Silver’s seething gaze.
Silver nodded, then looked away, a muscle flexing in his jaw.
Shifting his attention back to Holly, Von said, “Did anyone happen to say why the fuck they were in here?”
“Da. They mentioned looking for some poor bastard named Vincent. Seems they wish to tear him a new one.”
“Well, they can stand at the back of the line.” Von looked at Silver, perplexed. “Wanting to tear Vincent a new one I get. But why look for him here?”
Silver shook his head. “Beats the hell outta me.”
“Who’s Vincent?” Merri asked.
“Magazine Street lord,” Von replied. “British. Seventies glam. Looks like Ewan McGregor in that movie Velvet Goldmine. Full of himself. Annoying. Generally harmless. Until recently.”
“And what happened recently?”
“None of your business,” Von said, looking at Merri pointedly from beneath his lashes.
Comprehension glimmered in her eyes. To her credit, she didn’t even look in Holly’s direction. “Fine. Be that way.”
Holly said softly, “We need to talk, McGuinn.”
Von nodded. “I figured as much.”
“Alone,” Holly suggested.
“Okay. But before we talk, I wanna haul the rest of this trash out to the curb.”
“Fine. Haul away.” Holly sauntered across the nightkind-littered floor to the bar, stepping on anyone in her path and leaving a renewed trail of pained grunts and groans in her wake. “There’s a restaurant across the street. Meet me there when you’ve finished.”
“I’ll do that,” Von said.
For a split second, as she passed him, Von caught a whiff of her homey, warm-kitchen-in-a-snowstorm scent—honeyed black tea and vanilla—before it was swallowed up by the stink of charred wood and melted plastic.
“Still like your style, darlin’.”
Heading for the exit, Holly shrugged. “I know.”
15
LIKE DISTANT THUNDER
WASHINGTON, D.C.
PLEASANTVIEW CONDOMINIUMS
BARRY LANG STEERED HIS Prius into his slot in the condo parking lot, switched off the engine, and barely resisted the urge to thump his head repeatedly against the steering wheel. Instead, he leaned back in his seat, the vinyl squeaking beneath him, and rubbed a hand over his face.
The news from Portland was bad.
No, worse than bad, unbelievable.
As if the mess dumped into his lap following Monica Rutgers’s abrupt resignation hadn’t been enough, the murder of an FBI agent at the satellite forensics lab—inside his own goddamned office, no less—was definitely the tasty cherry on top of the steaming shit sundae Barry’s life had become since he’d taken over Rutgers’s position as ADIC.
Sighing, Barry lowered his hand to his seat belt, his gaze focused on the night-draped greenery beyond his windshield. Normally, a soothing sight—the neat landscaping, the tranquil design of flower beds and trimmed hedges and blossoming cherry trees. But now he only saw darkness and shadows pooled beyond the sidewalk.
Someone had sauntered into the Portland lab, disabled the security cameras and audio equipment, then killed SAC Oscar Heyne. A vampire, for chrissakes. No one had seen anything, remembered anyone unusual. Heyne’s assistant couldn’t account for close to an hour of her time prior to the discovery of his body—or the various scattered parts of it, anyway. Simply drew a blank. Of course, after the discovery, she’d fainted dead away. A sample of her blood was currently being tested to see if she’d been drugged.
As for the manner of Heyne’s death, it had netted Barry a call from Deputy Director Phil Beckett himself.
“Heyne was torn limb from limb,” Beckett says, voice grim, “and his head was found perched in his outbox.”
“Christ. The killer couldn’t have been human, then. Another vamp?”
“Maybe, but that’s not all. When his heart was found, it had been turned to stone.”
“Stone? How the hell is that possible, sir?”
“I don’t know. It’s a new one on me.”
“Do vampires even have that kind of . . . of . . . power or magic or whatever you want to call it?”
“According to folks in the know, a True Blood vamp might.”
“Not does, but might?”
“The only other option I was offered by those same folks in the know was fallen angels.”
“Sir, I . . . no disrespect, but given the options, I think we can assume that Dante Prejean is still slaughtering FBI agents. And that the SB is allowing it. Maybe even sanctioning it.”
“So it seems. We need to talk. Somewhere private.”
And talk they had.
Barry powered the driver’s-side window down a quarter of the way, letting in cool air and the smells of cherry blossoms, bark mulch, and grass wet with dew.
He wouldn’t get out of the car and head for his condo until he’d filed away the day’s events—clearing his mental palate—so that when he walked through the front door, he was only Barry Lang, husband and father and golden retriever owner, and not Barry Lang, FBI ADIC.
The meeting with the deputy director had taken longer than Barry had expected, running well past the dinner hour, but DD Beckett had ordered food in—turkey, bacon, and avocado sandwiches and chips—from Subway.
Either the deputy director’s expense account had been slashed during the latest round of budget cuts, Barry had mused, or he was a frugal man—or he just liked Subway.
Barry ticked down the list of topics that had been discussed over Lay’s potato chips, Subway subs, and iced tea.
1. James and Heather Wallace.
2. The SB, Bad Seed, and S—Dante Prejean.
3. The murder of Oscar Heyne and other FBI agents.
4. The mysterious events at Damascus, Oregon, and the SB’s subsequent cover-up.
5. How to give the SB a good, old-fashioned, prison yard–style shanking.
Before Monica Rutgers’s resignation from the Bureau five days before, she’d created a firestorm between the FBI and the SB when she’d defied joint orders and put a tail on Prejean, resulting in a bit of death and destruction in Damascus. But given the intensity of the SB’s reaction—severing all Bureau ties to project Bad Seed and Prejean, further straining already tenuous cooperation between the two agencies—Barry had suspected that Rutgers had done a helluva lot more than put a simple tail on Prejean.
She’d sent an assassin. One who’d missed. Unfortunately.
However it had gone down, the result was the same: the SB had claimed Prejean as theirs only, absolving the Bureau of any responsibility for the murdering bastard.
And now, with Heyne’s death the latest in a recent string, it seemed Prejean’s new fave habit was slaughtering FBI agents. One couldn’t help but wonder if he killed with the SB’s blessing.
Not that it mattered.
Barry and Beckett intended to end Prejean’s new habit. Permanently. Unofficially. And over a long discussion/argument over how—humans had failed before and vampire agents couldn’t be trusted to execute a True Blood, no matter how psychotic—they’d finally realized the answer was sitting in a room at the Strickland Deprogramming Institute, most likely looking for an escape route, unaware that it was too late. They were already coming for her.
Heather Wallace.
A second epiphany, this one on Barry’s part, was to use a new, powerful explosive that was now a deadly favorite of terrorists—N21. A few drops could level a house, a few more a city block. It could be transported inside the human body, implanted under the skin in a tiny disk of plastic much like a GPS tracker, and triggered by a remote.
It had been used on more than one occasion on airplanes with devastating results.
Instead of “helping” Heather Wallace into that tragic suicide the Bureau had planned for her, she would be transformed into a suicide bomber—albeit an unknowing one.
“Christ,” Beckett says, “that just might work.”
“We’ll just dope her up, implant the explosives and a GPS tracker. Once she’s recovered from the sedatives, we’ll do an intensive interrogation just as she’d expect, but—”
“Make sure she finds a way to escape afterward.”
Barry nods. “So she can run straight to Prejean.”
“A touch of a button and BOOM. Prejean, Wallace, and anyone near them won’t be coming back. Ever. And the SB won’t be able to do one damned thing about it.”
“Only sit and spin, sir. Sit and spin.”
“Good. Let’s see how they like it for a change.”
A team would fetch Heather Wallace from the institute in Dallas in the morning, spinning the first part of their plan into place. Nothing more to be done until tomorrow.
Barry drew in a deep breath and caught a whiff of green leaves and deep dark earth, a summer smell in the chilly beginnings of spring. Powering up the window, he grabbed his keys and briefcase and got out of the Prius.
As he stepped onto the sidewalk, Barry caught a shower of blue sparks from the corner of his eye. A glimpse quickly followed by an electric crackle and the thunderstorm scent of ozone.
All the parking lot lights went out.
The tide of darkness and shadows lapping at the edge of the sidewalk spilled over into the parking lot.
Barry’s pulse jumped in his throat. His fingers clenched around the handle of his briefcase. What the hell? Had to be some kind of massive surge or power failure or maybe a late-night squirrel having a fatal encounter with a transformer or . . .
From the heart of darkness flooding the yard and swirling around the Prius, Barry heard a soft, leathery rustle, as of wings. Big ones. Twin golden stars pricked the blackness, the gleam of glowing eyes. He froze, heart kicking against his chest, primal instincts whispering, Drop and curl up and maybe it will pass you by.
But Barry had a feeling it was much too late for that.
The darkness spoke in a deep rumble, like distant thunder, “I have a question for you, one I shall ask only once: Where is Heather Wallace?”
Barry’s legs gave out and he dropped to his knees.
16
CAPTURED IN CHARCOAL
NEW ORLEANS
CLUB HELL
VON TOSSED THE LAST bruised and battered intruder—a dude with GQ cheekbones wearing a sleek European suit—onto the pile of black garbage bags heaped up in the gutter in front of the pizza place next door. One of which split open, its decaying contents spilling out in a stinking sludge of garlic, spoiled sausage, coffee grounds, and rotting lettuce.
Gasping for air, Cheekbones staggered up to his feet and began brushing frantically at his suit.
“Haul ass,” Von suggested in a low growl.
Cheekbones looked around and, realizing he was alone, set off in a stumbling run down the narrow street. Something white fell from his pocket, floating to the street, a pale leaf.
“What’s that?” Merri asked.
“Dunno.”
Von stepped off the curb, walked out into the street, and picked up a folded sheet of paper—thick paper, like an artist would use. A sketch, maybe. A dark, vanilla-spiced tobacco odor permeated the paper, an odor that reminded him of the cigarettes that Vincent seemed to chain-smoke. Although he didn’t see the Magazine Street lord often, every time they had crossed paths, Vincent had been puffing away on one of the Pink Elephants he favored.
And Vincent was an artist.
Straightening, Von unfolded the paper. And realized with a sharp pang as he stared at the oh-so-familiar face it revealed, that the Magazine Street lord was not only an artist, but a damned good one.
The sketch also revealed why Mauvais’s crew had broken into the club—they believed Dante and Vincent friendly enough to play artist and model.
Dante in charcoal—his eyes closed, jaw tight, caught in the act of wiping a dark trickl
e of blood from his nose with a hoodie sleeve, moonlight glinting from the ring in his collar.
A simple drawing, not yet completed, or so it looked to Von, but somehow Vincent had managed to capture not only Dante’s beauty, tension, and pain in bold strokes of gray and black, but had symbolized in that casual swipe of a hoodie sleeve the quiet will that kept Dante on his feet, kept him moving, kept him fighting.
At the bottom of the sketch, printed in charcoal letters: Secrets.
Von reached for Dante.
But all Von received was more silence prickling with barbed-wire pain.
“Is that Dante?” Merri asked as she joined him out in the street, her scent electric with interest. She’d only seen Dante in photos, Von realized, had never met him.
“Yup,” Von replied, his voice rough. He quickly folded up the sketch, then slipped it into his jacket pocket. “Vincent’s work.”
“You never mentioned he was an artist.”
“Never mentioned a lot of things.”
“True,” Merri said without rancor. “The sketch—is that normal? I mean, does Dante often get nosebleeds during what I’m guessing to be a killer headache?”
Von hesitated for a moment, then said, “Normal for Dante, yeah.”
“Christ. Sorry to hear that.”
Returning to the sidewalk, Merri paused in front of the club’s battered green shutter-style doors and lit up one of her clove cigarettes. They were alone. Silver was inside, salvaging what he could from his room and keeping an eye on Thibodaux.
“So spill, nomad. Let’s hear what you didn’t want to say inside about your artist friend.”
Lucien’s old-school Chevy van with its blacked-out side and back windows was parked at the curb, so Von rested his back against it. He folded his arms over his chest, bomber jacket creaking. “Vincent ain’t my friend.”
“I’m hearing history . . .”
“Just the usual. Two cocky bastards. One town. Yada, yada. Not to mention that Vincent was playing two sides—namely, Dante and goddamned Guy Mauvais—against the middle.”
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