Beneath the Skin

  Dante touches his finger against Chloe’s lips and her words stop. “I’ll think of something, I promise. Once we find us a safe place, I’ll come back and fetch them, one by one, d’accord?”

  A smile curves the corners of Chloe’s mouth and her eyes cross in an attempt to focus on the finger against her lips. Laughing, Dante removes it. “Oops. Now you can talk. Sound like a plan, p’tite?”

  “Yup, Dante-angel. Sounds like a plan.”

  “C’est bon.” He finger-combs the tangles from her tresses, his skin pale as moonlight in the red sea of her hair. “You ready to go?”

  “Yup.”

  From the sidewalk circling the park, sharp, excited yaps pierce the air as someone walks their dog along the path. Looking over Chloe’s shoulder, Dante sees a chubby woman in a yellow rain bonnet and rubber boots scolding a small white-and-brown-patched dog—maybe a terrier—straining on its leash.

  “Behave, Jasper! Bad dog, bad!”

  “Let’s go.” Dante stands and holds his hand out for Chloe’s. Her cold fingers wrap around his and he pauses to switch their grips so he can warm her fingers against the heat of his palm. He walks them deeper into the woods and away from the park proper.

  Excited yaps, sharp with let’s play! insistence, chase after them, the rapid tapa-tapa-tapa-tap of four small paws hot on the heels of its barked invitation racing through wet grass and withered leaves.

  As Dante’s putting distance between them with each quick step, the woman in the yellow rain bonnet yells, “Jasper! No! Bad dog! Come back to Mommy!”

  Tugging her hand free of Dante’s, Chloe stops and spins around just as Jasper reaches her. The dog leaps up, yapping, brown eyes glistening with joy, and dances around Chloe and Dante—a twirling, bowing, doggie whirlwind trailing a leash.

  “Look!” Chloe says, her voice almost as excited as Jasper’s. “He wants to come with us.” Kneeling in the grass, she giggles as Jasper plants his muddy little paws on her shoulders and licks her face.

  Rain Bonnet runs across the grass, huffing with each heavy step, her face flushed. “Please stop him!” she yells breathlessly.

  Dante bends and nabs Jasper’s leash. The dog’s whole butt wags along with its stubby tail. He yaps, then sits, tongue lolling between his teeth. “Bon chien,” Dante says, straightening. His gaze lifts to Jasper’s red-faced mommy half running, half walking toward them. “Get behind me, Chloe,” Dante murmurs. “Hold onto my belt.”

  Just in case I gotta move.

  “ ’Kay.” Chloe rises to her feet and Dante feels a tug at the back of his belt as her fingers slide underneath and wrap around it.

  Rain Bonnet stumbles to a stop in front of Dante. She fans her flushed face with her hand. “Jasper,” she pants. “Bad dog.” She smiles at Dante. “Oh, thank you so much, sweetie.”

  Jasper leaps up, yapping and dancing around her jeans and rubber-boot-clad legs. Dante extends the leash to her. “Pas de quoi.”

  “He’s still a puppy and he hasn’t learned his manners yet,” Rain Bonnet says, accepting the leash and slipping her gloved hand through its looped handle. She shifts her gaze to Chloe. “Hi, cutie. Why you hiding behind your brother?”

  “I told her to,” Dante says. He backs up a few steps, Chloe moving with him, her fingers still locked around his belt. “You’re a stranger.”

  A wide smile parts Rain Bonnet’s lips, warms her bonnet-shadowed eyes. “Smart boy,” she says, nodding in approval. “I hope you listen to him, cutie. He’s one smart boy.” Her hand dips into her coat pocket. “I want to thank you kids for your help. Who knows where Jasper woulda ended up if you hadn’t been here to stop him?”

  “Ain’t necessary,” Dante says. “We gotta go.”

  “I’ve got some change here I’m happy to give you.”

  “We can use it to buy something to eat,” Chloe whispers.

  Dante turns and swings an arm around her shoulders, hugs her close. “You hungry, princess?”

  She nods, then she looks past him. Her blue eyes widen. Something whirs through the air and bites into Dante’s throat in several spots—like an angry wasp stinging and stinging and stinging.

  Chloe sucks in a breath and she grabs his arm, her fingers digging into him.

  Dante slaps a hand against the spot and feels a small, wheeled thing protruding from his throat. He plucks it free. A small ninja-type metal star, its points blood-slicked. It tumbles from his fingers into the night-shadowed grass.

  “Run, run, run!” Chloe cries, tugging on Dante’s arm.

  Dante tries to run, but his feet refuse to move. Ice water spills inside of him, cascading from his punctured throat, freezing his arms, legs, frosting his heart. His thoughts ice over as well, and he feels like he’s skating and spinning on a glacial lake.

  The night whirls around Dante, a streak of pale clouds and glimmering stars and skeletal branches. He no longer feels Chloe’s hand. He tries to shove her away, tries to tell her to run, but his voice and lips don’t work either—numb and far away. He falls, the rain-beaded grass rushing up to meet him.

  Rain Bonnet whispers into Dante’s ear as darkness sweeps over him. “No escape for you, sweetie.”

  3

  FRESH OUT OF TIME

  OUTSIDE DAMASCUS, OR

  March 25

  HEATHER WALLACE HELD THE motel room door open as Von carried Dante inside, Caterina Cortini on his heels. Annie stood in front of the muddy Trans Am, hugging herself against the predawn chill despite her wet clothing and stocking feet, her gaze on the sidewalk. Her travel-frayed gym bag rested on the rain-puddled blacktop beside her.

  “Annie, c’mon,” Heather said. She scanned the dying night for any sign of black bird-V’s; for any sign that more of the Fallen hunted for Dante. She listened for the rush of wings.

  Annie looked up, her gaze slipping past Heather into the room’s dark interior. Her face, dirt-smudged and stark in the motel’s buzzing outside lights, wore a troubled expression. “No,” she said, her voice one twist of the knob past a whisper. “Let’s just get back in the car and leave them here. They don’t need us. Let’s go home. C’mon.”

  “We can’t go home,” Heather said, stepping outside. She pulled the door shut behind her. “We’re being hunted. We need to stick together.”

  “Stick together? Are you fucking nuts?” Annie laughed, the sound tight and incredulous. “You saw what Dante did, right? You saw what he made … saw him knock those fucking … angels from the sky, right? And turn them to stone?”

  “I saw,” Heather said quietly. She’d felt it too, as his furious song had pulsed between them, heart to heart, wild and dark and powerful, rippling into her core.

  “Then why aren’t we running the hell away from him?”

  “He sacrificed himself for you,” Heather said, holding up one hand and extending her index finger. “He saved my life.” Extended a second finger. “Now he needs us.” A third finger. “Reasons enough?”

  Annie’s mouth opened, then closed. She looked away, the line of her jaw tight. Her hands knotted into fists. “He’s a fucking vampire,” she grated. “So’s Von. And that Caterina chick is a freaking assassin—one who said she was sent to kill you, by the way. They don’t need us.”

  “Dante does.” Heather’s thoughts flipped back to what she’d been forced to witness, wrists flex-cuffed together, not even an hour ago, as Lyons and his demented twin had tried to pry open Dante’s fragmented and hidden memories.

  Dante falls silent when the seizure ripples the length of his body. His muscles lock, his back arches, and his limbs twist. His head whips back and forth, a blur. Blood flings into the air from his nose, his mouth, his pierced eyelids. The twins push Dante onto the floor and allow the seizure to have its way with him.

  Athena kneels on the blood-flecked carpet beside Dante’s convulsing body and whispers to him: Rememberandrememberandrememberandremember …

  The seizure ends and Dante curls up on the floor, dazed and trembling, sweat-damp blac
k hair clinging to his forehead and cheek.

  Lyons floats Dante up into the air and back onto the sofa. He bends over Dante with a washrag and wipes the blood from his face. And the process starts all over again.

  And each seizure is worse than the one before.

  Heather shoved the memory away, throat tight. “Lyons and his sister just tortured Dante for hours, Annie. You heard his screams.”

  Annie swallowed hard and looked up into the dawn-edged sky, the deep rose line streaking from behind the hills lighting her face. “Aren’t you scared of him?”

  “No, I trust him,” Heather said, joining her sister in front of the Trans Am. “But his power—his magic, his gifts, whatever you want to call it—that scares me.”

  “How can he do those things? What the fuck is he?”

  “I’ll tell you what I know, I promise,” Heather said. “But right now, I need you to get your butt inside.”

  Annie finally looked at Heather. Exhaustion shadowed her face, pooled dark in her eyes. She bit her lower lip and looked for a second so much like she had when she was little that Heather’s heart went out to her. Annie-Bunny.

  Pushing her hands through her wet blue/purple/black-dyed hair, Annie released her breath in a long sigh. “Fuck,” she said. “Okay.” She bent and looped a hand through the gym bag’s strap, then straightened. Snatching the keycard from Heather’s hand, she opened the door and stalked into the room. She headed straight for the bathroom.

  Heather closed the motel room door, latched the lock, and hooked the little golden door chain in place. The bathroom door slammed shut, then the bathroom fan whirred into muffled action. Heather’s muscles knotted even tighter. She rested her forehead against the door.

  Keep it together. Just one thing at a time.

  She drew in a deep breath and immediately regretted it. The room stank of cherry blossom room freshener and, just underneath, the sour-milk odor of mildew.

  “She going to be a problem?” Cortini’s voice, laced with Old World charm, turned Heather around. The Shadow Branch assassin sat perched on the plump arm of the room’s only easy chair, one arm slung casually along its vinyl top.

  “No. And even if she was a problem, she’d be mine to deal with. Not yours. Are we clear?”

  The gloom made it difficult to read Cortini’s expression. Early thirties, Heather estimated, possibly older, but very well-kept if so. Her slim, boyish body was relaxed, but coiled, ready to run, fight, or kill. Even in her wet black sweater and black jeans, her shoulder-length dark hair rain-plastered to her skull, she managed to look unruffled. Deadly.

  “We’re clear,” Cortini murmured.

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Me too,” Von tossed in. “Annie ain’t your concern, Cortini.”

  Cortini’s gaze cut to the nomad. “Llygad,” she murmured, nodding in acknowledgment.

  Von had eased Dante onto the double bed farthest from the curtained window. He finished pulling Dante’s boots off and stood them together on the floor at the foot of the bed. A blur of movement, then Dante’s bloodied and ripped hoodie and PVC shirt ended up on the floor beside his boots.

  Cold fingers wrapped around Heather’s heart when she saw the healing bullet wound in Dante’s chest and thought of Rodriguez—the man who’d shot him in a desperate struggle to save his own life—sprawled on the floor, his throat bloodied and ruined. Thought of Rodriguez’s daughter, Brisia, who would mourn him.

  Where’s my dad?

  Von’s fingers skipped over the purple and blue bruise stretched across the left side of Dante’s rib cage. “Musta happened when the goddamned house exploded.”

  “Or during a seizure,” Heather said, joining the nomad at the bed.

  “Yeah, maybe.” Von gently rolled Dante onto his side, his fingers sliding along the pale skin, flakes of dried blood falling onto the sheets from the healing spear puncture in his back. “Were they using him for target practice or something?” the nomad growled.

  “The or something option,” Heather replied. “Lyons’s sister stabbed Dante when he was helping Annie escape.”

  “The sister Lyons wanted Dante to heal?”

  Heather nodded. “Yeah, well, apparently she didn’t feel the same way.”

  Von shook his head, his face grim. He eased Dante onto his back again, then unbuckled his belt. He glanced at Heather. Nodded at Dante’s leather pants. “He got anything on under these, doll?”

  “No.”

  Von snorted. “Why ain’t I surprised? Well then, let’s leave ’em on in case he has another seizure. The leather ain’t all that wet and, hell, if it was me, I’d hope someone would safeguard my modesty if I was too unconscious to do it myself. If I had any modesty to safeguard, that is.” He brushed damp tendrils of black hair from Dante’s pale face. “Sleep tight, little brother,” he said. He straightened, then swayed. “Whoa.”

  “You okay?” Heather asked.

  “Yeah, doll. Just Sleep coming.” Von looked her up and down, his green eyes Sleep-dilated. “What ’bout you? Boy was drumming you hard during that last seizure in the car. You should get your pants off,” he said, yawning.

  As Heather opened her mouth to protest, he held up a placating hand, palm out, while he finished his yawn—a jaw-stretching one that revealed his fangs, his molars, and even his tonsils. “That didn’t come out quite right, doll. I meant so I could see how much damage Dante did to you.”

  Heather pushed her wet hair back from her face, struggling not to smile. “Just bruises, doofus, and I think I’ll keep my pants on, thanks.”

  “Just what every man wants to hear.”

  The chains on Von’s leather jacket jingled as he shrugged the jacket off, revealing the double shoulder holster strapped on over his black, button-down shirt and the butts of his Brownings tucked into them. He undressed quickly, stripping down to damp royal blue boxers.

  Tattoos inked in blue Celtic designs—dragons, antlered hunters, and ravens among them—swirled up from beneath his shorts to just under his pecs, and flowed around his sides, twining up around his spine to his shoulders.

  “Are those clan markings?” Heather asked, too tired to truly appreciate the tall, lean-muscled view the nomad presented.

  “Yup, rites of passage—from when I was mortal.” A smile flickered across his lips as he traced a finger along an intricate Celtic knot near his right hip. “My first ride as a clan scout.”

  The tight, defined muscles in Von’s chest and shoulders rippled as he gathered up his wet clothing and draped it piece by piece over the foot of the bed to dry. He hung his jacket on the back of the desk chair.

  Leaning against the waist-high dresser, his gaze skipped from Cortini to Heather. He smoothed his mustache with thumb and forefinger. “Since I figure y’all would come to blows over who’ll get to sleep beside me, I’ll make it easy on everyone and share the bed with Dante. I know you’re disappointed, but, hey, I’m trying to be fair here.”

  “It’s kind of you to spare the loser like that,” Heather said, keeping a straight face. Kicking off her mud-caked Skechers, she sat on the bed beside Dante.

  “Ouch, woman. I said ‘get to’ not ‘hafta.’ Just for that, I ain’t gonna leave room for you to snuggle up and snooze beside your man.”

  “That’s okay,” Heather said. “Given my sister’s concerns, I think having one bed for nightkind and one for mortals might be best.” Best, maybe, but she yearned to curl up beside Dante, to hold him close while he Slept, fevered and lost to darkness, to whisper into his ear, You’re not alone. I’m here, waiting for you.

  Von glanced at the closed bathroom door, the humor fading from his face. The sound of shower spray drumming against glass drowned out the whir of the fan. “Anything I should know?” he asked.

  “No,” Heather replied. “She was tossed into the deep end of the pool, but I’ve got ahold of her. She’ll be fine.”

  Von searched her eyes and she knew what he was thinking: in which direction was the bipolar ca
rousel horse Annie rode headed? Up or down?

  Heather sighed and shook her head.

  “I hear ya, doll.”

  Von tugged the elastic tie free from his wet hair, then slipped it around his wrist for safekeeping. He finger-combed his wet shoulder-length hair—hair that would be a deep, glossy brown when dry—smoothing it back from his face. A vertical line creased his forehead between his eyebrows, his thinking-deep line.

  “Got a question for you, Cortini,” he said, gripping the edge of the dresser behind him. The muscles in his arms corded.

  Cortini slid from her perch on the easy chair and stood beside it. She met Heather’s gaze for a moment before settling her attention on Von.

  “A sniper outside the house shot the shades right off my face.” Von touched one of the small, rapidly healing cuts peppering his face. “Whatcha know about that? One-a your guys?”

  Surprise flickered across Cortini’s face. “No. My handlers only sent me.”

  “Great.” Von sighed. “So we’ve got other players on the field.”

  “The shooter must’ve set up after I arrived,” Heather said. “Or maybe he was just waiting to take down whoever came out of the house.”

  “He was hell-bent on keeping me from going in,” Von said, “so I’m betting he didn’t set up until after you arrived, doll. I’m also betting he followed you.”

  “I agree,” Cortini said. “The SB instructed the Bureau to drop their surveillance on you and Dante Baptiste. Someone disobeyed orders,” she said. “And I think I know who.”

  “Do you think it was ADIC Rutgers?” Heather asked. FBI Assistant Director in Charge Monica Rutgers had offered her a choice just a few days ago: accept a promotion and become a marionette for the FBI or have her career and reputation shredded.

  Words whispered through Heather’s memory, a warning from Stearns, her late supervisor and mentor, just a few weeks before in New Orleans, a day before he died:

  You’ve been marked for termination. Me too.

  How high up does this go?

  I think it’s best to behave as though it goes to the top.