She halted in front of a male figure. His hands were lifted in front of himself, his face averted, as though warding off a blow. She drank in all of the statue’s details—the braided and twisted open-ended collar circling his throat, the nipples on the bare chest, the muscle definition, the fall of fabric in his kilt, the upper arch of his wings.
From within the white stone, a heart fluttered, the sound slowing as Merry listened. She touched a gloved and shaking finger to the figure’s face. Tiny blue sparks crackled into the ozone-spiked air.
“This is unreal, Goodnight. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Merri replied. “But I do know these aren’t statues.”
“Aren’t statues? Is that the stay-awake pills talking or are you actually saying these are real angels and that someone Medusaed them into stone?”
“Looks kinda like statues of the Fallen,” Merri said, her gaze lingering on the featherless wings. She drew in a deep breath of ozone-spiked air to calm her wild pulse.
“The Fallen? You mean as in fallen angels?”
“The Elohim, yeah.” Merri stepped out from behind the oak, her palms sweating around the grip of her Glock.
“You shitting me?”
“Nope.”
Merri moved to the next statue, a female, her gown clinging to voluptuous curves, her wings flaring behind her, her desperate gaze on the sky above, her hands at her mouth. Merri’s gaze moved up as well, to the angel capping this statue and the previous one, an angel in flight, wind whipping through the length of her hair and rippling the fabric of her gown, wings cutting though the air, her expression one of joy.
“Merri?”
“I hear their hearts, Em. I hear their goddamned hearts.”
Emmett whistled low and long. “Jesus Christ! Jesus fucking Christ. But who or what could turn fallen angels to stone?”
Merri sensed power in each stone figure, power that tingled against her gloved fingertips. She remembered tales of Fallen magic, whispers of angelic battles.
Back in the beginning—when the Elohim fought their wars for power over the mortal world—blue fire lashed through the air, girl, filling it with the smell of lightning just before it strikes.
Or so a wandering llygad told me, back in the day, Merri-girl.
Just fairy tales, or so she’d always believed. Even vampires had myths and legends. But as Merri paced her way around the circle of stone angels, each face was a masterpiece of shock, fear, disbelief, and horror. Except for the capping stone angels, who’d been captured in luminous white stone as they winged through the night sky—and it had to have been at night, right? Maybe even as she and Emmett had stood in Rodriguez’s living room talking to Gillespie.
Maybe during their flight down to Portland.
She regarded the cave that the Fallen surrounded. Water roared in the darkness below. And she thought she heard something beneath that, a voice, no—voices. She held up her hand, motioning for Emmett to hold still and keep quiet, and listened.
Three different voices singing in unison: Holy, holy, holy.
The hair prickled on the back of Merri’s neck. The voices sounded off, cold, inhuman. And not just vampire inhuman—something-out-of-deepest-darkest-nightmare inhuman. She shot Emmett a glance.
“I hear voices below.” She pointed to the cave mouth. “Three voices, singing.”
Emmett frowned. “Singing?”
Merri nodded. “But it’s weird. The voices seem intertwined somehow.”
Stepping past the stone-captured Fallen, she walked to the lip of the cave and knelt in the dirt. Holding her Glock down at her side, she leaned forward on her left hand and peered into the thick darkness below. Cold, moist air reeking of ozone and fresh-turned soil and rushing water wafted against her, chilling her to the bone.
She caught the faint gleam of the river far below. Moisture glistened on stones protruding from the cave’s throat. Beneath the river’s rush, voices drifted like mist, warbling a multiple-throated chorus, Holy, holy, holy.
Merri shivered. She had the strong and undeniable feeling that whoever—or whatever—was singing in the darkness below was about as far from holy as she was from mortal.
She felt Emmett kneel down beside her, caught his anise and ice scent and felt soothed. Her partner didn’t believe in monsters or fairy tales, and that calmed her. He leaned forward to peer into the cave too.
Something moved down in the darkness beside the river, something pale and thick, humping along the stone like a gigantic slug.
Holy, holy, holy …
With a half-strangled gasp, Merri shoved away from the cave mouth, heart hammering, falling on her ass. “Something’s down there,” she choked out, refusing to take her eyes off the cave’s black lip. “Something moving.” Something that might climb out of the cave and hunch into the stark and unforgiving light of day.
“What?” Emmett asked, his voice tight, on alert. “What’s down there?” A peripheral flash of movement told her he’d leaned over farther in his effort to see into depths mortal eyes couldn’t fathom.
“No.” Merri reached over and grabbed Emmett’s arm, hauled him away from the cave. “I don’t know what’s down there, but I don’t think it’s—”
An abrupt bumblebee buzzing vibrated against Merri’s taut nerves and she moved on pure instinct, locking her fingers around her partner’s arm and hauling both their asses away from the cave and past the Fallen Stonehenge to the safety of the pines in a single blurring rush.
When she stopped, Emmett stumbled free of her grasp and up against the trunk of a pine tree. He dipped his hand into the pocket of his windbreaker, pulling out his cell phone. He held it up as it buzzed and bumbled in his hand, a huge grin on his face.
Cheeks burning, Merri glared at him, daring him to say anything.
Emmett glanced at the cell phone’s screen. His grin faded. Gillespie, he mouthed. Thumbing the TALK button, he said, “Chief.”
Emmett raked a hand through his auburn hair as he listened, all mirth vanishing from his face. He nodded. “You got it, Chief. Just gone. No idea what happened. But we stumbled across a wounded fed, SA Brian Sheridan. Someone put a slug in his thigh.” He listened for several more moments, then said, “Roger that.” He ended the call and slipped the cell phone back into his pocket.
“What’s the news?” Merri asked as his gaze lifted to meet hers.
“Gillespie wanted to let us know that the house was gone.” A wry smile touched his lips. “Code 54. And he’s on his way here.”
“Great,” Merri murmured. A secure-and-contain order meant that anyone who wandered onto the scene—a newspaper carrier, a hiker, a child chasing a ball—would be scooped up and tossed into an evidence van to be debriefed.
Looking past Emmett, Merri caught movement as Holmes and Miklowitz stepped out of the guest cottage, their faces grim. Spotting her, Miklowitz shook his head.
“Our perps don’t seem to be here—alive or dead,” she said. “Unless they were gobbled up by the cave.”
Emmett sighed. “If they’re alive, no telling where they are. Prejean’s either Sleeping somewhere safe or buzzing on stay-awake pills.”
Merri nodded. “Provided he’s alive.”
“What the fuck happened here?” Emmett asked quietly. Strain edged his voice. “I mean—fallen angels morphed into stone, a missing house, and a mysterious cave. How is this even possible?”
“Don’t know, partner.” Merri turned away and scanned the oaks and evergreens following the gentle slope of the land up to the stand of mist-garlanded pines at its crest. A gleam of white from within the shadows beneath a fir’s heavy branches caught her eye. Another of the Fallen or …
The image of pale, pale skin and deep, dark eyes flashed into Merri’s mind and her pulse leapt into high gear. Her fingers tightened around the grip of her Glock.
Merri moved. She breezed through wet undergrowth, thorns catching at her slacks, her suede jacket, hooking, then tearing free. Even before she re
ached the figure, she realized it wasn’t Prejean. Just more blue-sparked stone.
Halting in front of the kneeling fallen angel, Merri wondered why this one was so far from the others. Trapped within white stone, the angel’s heart pulsed. Her waist-length stone locks rippled in chiseled waves from her bowed head, framing her face. A slender open-ended collar encircled her throat.
The fallen angel’s wings were curved forward as if in an attempt to shelter herself, her eyes closed, her hands clenched into fists in her lap. She didn’t look horrified or shocked or enraptured like the others ringing the cave.
Whatever had happened, they’d been caught off guard.
Not her. She’d knelt before the inevitable, a supplicant for mercy she’d known she wouldn’t receive. Whoever she was, she would’ve had a prime view of what was happening to the house and her companions. Yet she hadn’t attempted to escape.
Maybe she couldn’t escape.
Merri crouched and touched the angel’s knotted fists. Blue sparks snapped the smell of ozone into the pine-scented air. Cold iced Merri’s spine.
Who or what had the power to transform the Fallen to stone?
And why had the Fallen come here?
6
KNIFE’S EDGE
OUTSIDE DAMASCUS, OR
THE HAPPY BEAVER MOTEL
March 25
CATERINA WAITED UNTIL HEATHER’S breathing had shifted into the easy rhythm of sleep, then she rose to her feet and padded to the desk. She plucked Von’s leather jacket from the back of the chair and pulled it on, trying to keep the jingling to a minimum. She caught a faint whiff of motor oil and smoky incense from the jacket’s lining.
The sleeves swallowed her hands and the shoulders hit her at the biceps. She had a feeling that she probably looked like a teen wearing her outlaw boyfriend’s jacket. But at least the Browning snugged into her jeans at the small of her back was hidden from view.
Caterina’s sneakers whispered across the carpet as she walked to the door. She unchained and unlocked it. Easing the door open, she slipped outside, pulling it shut behind her.
She scanned the motel parking lot. Barely visible white paint outlined the parking spaces in front of numbered doors. Only a handful of cars, windows fogged, occupied the slots. A crow hopped along the blacktop while, above, several white and gray seagulls wheeled in the gray morning sky, lamenting the lack of food.
Across the parking lot, between the cottage marked OFFICE and the door numbered 1, several vending machines huddled behind a grilled cage. To the cage’s left, a stainless-steel box full of ice hunkered beside a pay phone.
Caterina studied the mist-wrapped trees across the highway. An unusual shadow beneath a fir held her attention for a moment. Her muscles unknotted as she realized it was only that—a shadow cast by drooping branches. The cool, moist air smelled of pine and wet asphalt. Pale mist feathered the hills and floated ragged across the highway.
She touched her throat, remembered the heated touch of Dante’s lips, the sharp pain as his fangs had pierced her skin, the pain vanishing as he drank her blood down—an offering from Alex Lyons.
She was still weak from blood loss and in poor shape to defend Dante as he Slept. She’d finally used up the adrenaline surge that had buoyed her on the hill at the Wells/Lyons compound, and she felt light-headed with fatigue.
Her hand slipped down to the front right pocket of her jeans, her fingers tracing the rounded shape of the quarters she’d taken from the console in Heather Wallace’s car. Food first, then she had phone calls to place.
She wasn’t sure what had happened to her cell phone. It had been tucked into a back pocket of her jeans when she’d dropped by the guest cottage to check on Athena Wells. Hours later, she’d regained consciousness bound and gagged inside the main house, surrounded by bits of the dead, and guarded by a demented woman. The cell? Long gone. She could only hope that it had disappeared along with the main house.
Caterina stopped in front of the vending machines, cold sweat beading her forehead. One held only drinks, the other candy and snack food. No orange juice, but Red Bull was offered. That’d have to do. Hands shaking, Caterina plugged in quarters, punched the appropriate button. A loud clunk into the vending machine’s bottom tray announced the Red Bull’s arrival.
Pulling it free and popping it open, Caterina poured half of it down her throat in one long swallow. She pressed the cold can against her face and sighed. The Red Bull hit her empty stomach like an iced brick. Stepping over to the snack machine, she studied its dubious offerings.
Hoping for a decent mix of protein and carbs, Caterina chose Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and a small bag of mixed nuts. She slotted in quarters, then gathered her purchases with shaking hands when they clunked into the tray. Finishing the Red Bull, she dropped the empty can into the blue recycle bin beside the trash can.
Caterina leaned against the black grille protecting the vending machines and reviewed her mental to-do list as she ate her snack food.
To-do number one: Call her hotel in Portland and let them know she wouldn’t be checking out until later tonight.
To-do number two: Call the airline and book another flight. She’d already missed the one she was supposed to be on.
To-do number three: Check in with her handlers and see if Dante Baptiste’s status had changed since Rodriguez’s murder.
Dante’s programming was triggered.
Heather Wallace’s quiet words had created an avalanche of ice within Caterina. Who else knew how to activate Dante’s programming? She not only needed to guard her True Blood prince, she needed to protect him from himself as well.
The only thing was, she might not be able to do so alone.
She hadn’t known yet that Dante was more than True Blood, that he was a Maker as well, when she’d last spoken to her mother, Renata Alessa Cortini. Von had said the Fallen couldn’t be trusted. Not where Dante was concerned, anyway. Would Renata and the other Elders or the llygaid know how to guide Dante? How to teach him?
Creawdwrs had always been Fallen only. As far as she knew, Dante was the first vampire/Fallen Maker. What if the Elders, learning of Dante’s programming, decided he was too dangerous? Decided that a monster lurked beneath his skin and behind his eyes?
If the damage is too great, then bring him to us so we may end his life with love and respect. He belongs to us. Alive or dead. Not in the hands of mortals, not even yours, my little love, child of my heart.
She’d felt his lips hot against her throat, felt him drinking in her blood, drinking in life, had seen the gold light glimmering in his dark eyes, the wonder on his gorgeous face when she’d told him that her mother was vampire.
Your mother’s nightkind?
No monster this True Blood prince. Wounded and scarred, yes. But the future pumped within his heart and flowed through his veins.
The future for all of them: mortal, vampire, Fallen, and everything in between.
If he fell, the world would fall with him.
Calm and purpose unwound within her.
Caterina popped the last salted cashew into her mouth. She crumpled up the empty package and tossed it into the trash. Swiveling around, she bought another Reese’s. She scooped it out of the bottom tray, then stepped over to the pay phone. She dropped quarters into the slot, then punched in the numbers and code for an international calling card issued in her mother’s name.
If the SB ever felt compelled to go over her phone records, she didn’t want a few calls from a pay phone in the Damascus area popping up like a screaming car alarm.
After she’d phoned the hotel and the airline, she made a third call. But not to the SB. That call would wait until she could call from her hotel room or via her laptop. As the phone trilled in her ear, Caterina tore open the Reese’s package with her teeth.
The trilling stopped as, thousands of miles away in Rome, someone picked up the receiver and said in a low, musical voice, “Sì?”
“Ciao, Mama,” Caterina replie
d. “I found him.”
THE MORNINGSTAR STOOD BEHIND a tall fir tree, one shoulder leaning into its rough-barked trunk. Rain dripped onto the fragrant green needles in the dirt beneath its branches. Mist undulated down the hill and across the highway, a ragged ghost.
A red neon sign flashed MOTEL VACANCY above the mist, bright as flame against the gray sky and shadowed hills. Brass numbers marked each motel room door. But he only watched number 9; the room with an empty parking slot in front of it now that the dark-haired woman had moved the sapphire blue Trans Am.
The door to room 9 opened and the dark-haired woman slipped out again, wearing the nomad’s leather jacket this time. She eased the door shut. Walking with an easy grace, a predator’s deliberate pace, she padded past the empty parking space, then stopped. She appeared to scan the parking lot, the highway, and the woods beyond.
Appeared to zero in on him.
The Morningstar drew in a breath. Held it. Shaped a hunting blind of tattered mist and rain and glistening, green leaves around himself; a seamless illusion.
Silence—except for the pat-pat-pat of the rain onto pine needles—filled the woods like cotton, absorbing and muffling all sound. Birdsong vanished. Insect clicking stopped. Nothing scurried or dug in the underbrush. Not with the Morningstar standing still and quiet, his radiance dimmed.
After one more long look at the spot where he stood, the mortal resumed walking, stopping at the vending machines.
The Morningstar released his breath and it feathered the air white. The blind vanished. He wondered about the lithe, dark-haired woman and the others who’d walked into room 9 with her. He needed to learn more about Dante’s companions, needed to know who surrounded him and why.
Needed to learn more about Dante.
But the very fresh memory of how the others—including his cydymaith, his luscious Lilith of Lies—had been transformed into white power-sparked stone kept him on the safe side of the highway. Then, like now, the Morningstar had watched from deep within the pines as Dante had lost all control of his creawdwr magic.