A Rush of Wings

  Ronin doubled over, his fingers sliding away from Dante’s throat. Sucking in a throat-burning gulp of air, Dante hooked his hands on either side of the journalist’s head and rammed Peeping Tom’s smug, lying face into his upraised knee.

  Bone crunched. Blood sprayed.

  Dante shoved Ronin away from him, tossing him completely across the freezer. The journalist stumbled, struggling to retain his balance.

  Blood slid down Dante’s throat. He wiped a hand under his nose. Blood, gleaming almost black in the candlelight, smeared the back of his hand. Wincing in the light, he reached for his shades and realized he’d lost them in his fight with Étienne.

  Nausea twisted through Dante’s gut. The migraine pierced his mind with blinding shards of white light, hacked at his thoughts. But one thought persevered—Jay.

  Dante shoved the pain below. Pushing himself away from the wall, he went to the center of the freezer. Jay’s eyes opened. Relief flickered in their green depths. A smile ghosted across his lips.

  “Mon ami,” he breathed. “I’m so sorry—”

  “Shhh. Je suis ici.”

  Dante circled Jay’s bound and dangling body, his eyes on Ronin. The journalist straightened, his dark eyes calm above his blood-smeared face. Gaze never leaving Ronin, Dante slipped his arms around Jay, lifting him up and off the hook. As he crouched, easing Jay onto the concrete floor, Ronin grinned. Then he moved.

  Uncoiling upward, Dante placed his feet on either side of Jay’s body and braced himself for Ronin’s attack. Denim slid across latex. As Dante ducked and swiveled, something caught his hair and yanked his head back. Pain rippled through his scalp.

  “Caught you, marmot.” Étienne, up from concrete floor and joining the fight.

  A flurry of fingertip jabs hit Dante in quick succession, stone-edged and quick; then Ronin whirled away. Minefields of pain exploded with each jab. Base of throat. Sternum. Gut. Crotch. Dante gasped for air, but gagged instead as his burning insides tried to turn themselves inside out. He spat blood onto the floor. His vision blurred.

  Ronin wheeled around for another pass. Dante swung his arms up, blocking the first two blows. The last two knifed into his ribs on either side. Pain stole his breath.

  Send it below or fucking use it.

  “Your pretty little FBI agent won’t be joining you,” Ronin said. He knelt beside Jay. “A shame, really. Might’ve been amusing.”

  Heather. The thought hurt, a jagged splinter of glass. Light pinwheeled through Dante’s vision. His head ached. Pain pounded at his temples. Jay.

  Send it below or fucking use it.

  Dante leaned back into Étienne’s warm body, then stepped forward and kept moving. Pain tore through his scalp as tendrils of hair ripped loose, still wrapped around Étienne’s fingers. Blood trickled down his neck, sticky and warm.

  “Wake up, S,” Ronin murmured. His forefinger slipped across Jay’s throat.

  Blood sprayed across the grimy floor and spattered Ronin’s face, the white straitjacket. Jay choked.

  “No!” Dante dropped to his knees beside Jay and bit into his own wrist. Blood welled up, dark and rich and full of life.

  Jay looked at him, eyes dilated, scared. And dying.

  Arms locked like steel bands around Dante. Yanked him onto his ass. He struggled to break free, twisting, and driving an elbow back into Étienne’s ribs. The vampire’s breath exploded from him in a pained whoof. Dante scrambled to get his feet under him. Etienne dug in his fingernails, piercing latex and skin. Dante hissed.

  The blood flowing from Jay’s slit throat had already slowed. It spread in an ever-widening pool around Jay, staining his hair red. Jay’s half-lidded gaze fixed on Dante.

  “Hang on,” Dante said. “Hang on.”

  A smile flickered across Jay’s pale lips.

  Throwing himself forward with every bit of adrenaline-fueled strength he had, Dante dragged Étienne with him across the floor as he crawled to Jay. Sweat trickled into his eyes. Pain needled his temples. He sank his teeth into his healing wrist. Blood welled up again.

  I knew you’d come for me.

  Jay’s thought penetrated the pain snaking through Dante’s mind, silenced the voices whispering from below.

  I knew you’d come.

  More weight dropped on Dante, flattened him against the concrete floor. Another set of hands pulled at him, yanking him back up onto his knees. Straitjacketed him with steel arms. Thighs pinned him. A hand closed on his throat, around the collar.

  I knew.

  Dante strained to pull free of the limbs holding him, strained to lower his mouth to his wrist. Strained to haul all three of them across the floor. He slid maybe a foot forward before his strength gave out.

  A sigh escaped Jay’s lips. His heart stopped. The light winked out of his eyes.

  A hand brushed Dante’s hair aside. Warm lips touched his ear.

  “How does it feel, marmot?”

  Dante screamed.

  * * *

  19

  Elohim

  « ^ »

  WINGS SLASHING THROUGH THE night air, Lucien flew, eyes closed, listening to the complicated aria vibrating through his heart and mind and weaving a dark refrain of information into his consciousness. He now knew the singer, how far he had traveled. And why.

  So Lucien kept silent, his own wybrcathl unvoiced. He refused to share anything with the one warbling into the lush New Orleans night.

  Cool, moist air rushed past him, beading his face with moonlit drops of dew. Lucien still tasted Dante’s blood, dark and sweet, on his lips. Still felt his reluctance and frustration. Smelled his hurt, sharp and bitter.

  You’ve always been there for me. Whatever’s wrong, let me be there for you.

  No. Close your mind. Shield it. Promise me.

  Fuck you.

  Promise me.

  Opening his eyes, Lucien pushed all thought of Dante out of his mind. His song wasn’t the only thing he refused to share. His wings swept through the night, kiting him to the ground as he descended into St. Louis No. 3. Dead leaves swirled along the cemetery path, caught in his wing gust. Lucien touched bare feet to the cold stone walk.

  An aingeal was perched on a mist-shrouded tomb marked BARONNE, his black, leathery wings encircling his body and sheltering him from view—except for his taloned feet. Silver markings, visible only in starlight, etched his wings. His scent, ozone and fallow earth and night-chilled dew, perfumed the city of the dead.

  Sudden, unexpected longing burned through Lucien’s veins and tightened his throat. His pulse pounded in time with the wybrcathl’s haunting rhythm. Loneliness snaked around his heart. It had been so long. Ah, but by his own choice.

  “Hail, Loki. Well sung,” Lucien said. “Your invitation has been received.”

  The wybrcathl ended abruptly and thick silence, absent even of insect song, wound through the cemetery.

  “But not answered in kind. Most intriguing, brother.” The aingeal’s wings curved back to reveal his bowed head.

  Silver markings looped and whorled along the entire right side of Loki’s nude body, across his throat, torso, and taloned hand. Gold-lace bracers encircled both corded wrists and his right biceps. A thick gold torc twisted around his throat. Long red hair veiled his face. Several strands fluttered in the breeze.

  Loki lifted his head. Golden eyes glowed in the darkness. “Expecting to be challenged for your aerie?”

  “A challenge?” Lucien snorted, folding his arms across his chest. “From you?” His wings arched up behind him. “Are you trying to kill me with laughter, brother?”

  Folding his wings behind him, Loki glanced up at the moon, a long-suffering expression on his face. “Phaaugh! Same old Samael. No sense of humor.”

  “At least I have more than Lilith.” Even after a thousand years or more, he still felt a twinge when speaking her name.

  “Spoken like a true former lover.”

  Stepping forward, Lucien reached up and seized Loki’s ankle
. Yanked. Expression startled, wings fluttering, Loki tumbled from his perch.

  “Has she forgiven you that ‘Angel Moroni’ stunt yet?” Lucien asked.

  “Well, more or less,” Loki muttered. Kneeling on the mist-shrouded ground, he glared at Lucien. “Was that necessary?”

  “Absolutely. Tell me, does she still rule Gehenna?” An image of flowing black hair, dark eyes, and creamy skin flashed into Lucien’s mind. He went cold as he realized how much Genevieve had looked like her. Had?

  Still kneeling, Loki plucked several yellow carnations from the vase in front of the tomb’s padlocked iron fence. “I’m surprised you care after all these centuries tucked away in the mortal world,” he murmured. “But, yes. And Gabriel has joined forces with the Morningstar to mount yet another campaign against her.”

  Lucien crouched in front of Loki. “And you, naturally, are playing both sides.”

  Loki breathed in the carnations’ sweet scent, his eyes closing in pleasure. Mist snaked around his nude form. Clung to his wings in wisps. “Mmmm. Naturally. But that’s not why I’m here.”

  Lucien touched a talon to the X-rune pendant at his throat. The breeze whipped strands of hair across his face. “No, it’s not. You seek a branch of the Elohim that no longer exists, a branch that died with Yahweh.”

  Opening his eyes, Loki regarded him speculatively. “No longer exists? Please. We both know there’s a Maker here.” He nibbled at the yellow petals with sharp teeth. “I’ve heard his anhrefncathl, brother—wild, young, masculine. He’s powerful. But you must’ve heard his chaos song, too.”

  Lucien held the aingeal’s gaze and said nothing. He’d believed—he’d hoped—that since the Elohim had withdrawn from the mortal world so long ago, that Dante’s song would remain unheard; that the first creawdwr born since Yahweh—and the first mixed-blood Maker ever—would remain undiscovered.

  A foolish hope. A desperate belief.

  Loki lowered the carnations and looked at Lucien for a long moment. “I never expected to find you, though. You’re still spoken of in whispers.”

  Lucien shook his head, disgust knotting his muscles. Spoken of in whispers. Because he’d tried to defend a tormented creawdwr. The sound of Yahweh’s anguished words still echoed through his mind after all this time.

  Let them have me.

  His thoughts strobed back to Dante. A fist clenched around his heart. He met Loki’s careful gaze. The aingeal plucked a petal from a carnation and slipped it into his mouth. Starlight glimmered along his tribal markings.

  “Together we could bind this creawdwr,” Loki said. “Keep him safe from insanity. Bind him and train him. We could unite the Elohim and you could rule Gehenna once again.”

  “Rule,” Lucien spat. “Think twice before you insult me again.” He stood, hands knotted at his sides. “I’ll never allow this creawdwr to be chained to Elohim will. Mark me well, I will kill him first.”

  All expression vanished from Loki’s face. He shifted his attention to the graveyard bouquet in his hand. “You can’t keep him from going mad, brother. Not alone,” he said, his voice thoughtful. “If you won’t bind him, perhaps death would be best.”

  “I can’t bind him alone.” Bitterness edged Lucien’s voice, a bitterness that surprised him. He glanced away.

  “You need me.”

  Lucien laughed. “I’ve gotten along just fine until now.” He looked at Loki, met his golden gaze. “Leave it to you to throw the truth in my face.”

  Loki brushed pollen from his lips, trying to hide his smile. “Our secret,” he said. “Lilith and the Morningstar will never know. None of them will. You can trust me in this.” False sincerity lit his eyes. “I swear, Samael. Upon my name.”

  “Ah.” Lucien lifted his palms and examined the blood welling in the wounds left by his talons.

  “I’m intrigued by your pendant,” Loki said through a another mouthful of carnation. “The rune for partnership. A gift?”

  “Yes. From my son. A very special child.”

  Loki choked, coughed, then smiled. “A son? Congratulations—”

  Lucien lowered his bleeding hands over Loki’s head. Pale, ethereal light curled away from his palms, mingling with the mist. Blood dripped onto the aingeal’s red mane, then onto the shrouded earth. Bound.

  Loki’s eyes widened in horrified realization. “Special…? The creawdwr!” Unable to move from where he squatted, he curved his wings forward protectively. The pale mist roped around the hunched aingeal, weaving a solid web.

  “By earth, blood, air, and the power of your true name, Drwg of the Elohim, I hold you to your vow and seal you to stone,” Lucien said, his deep voice carrying into the night. “No voice, no sight, no breath until I break the seal and restore you to flesh. Upon my name, it is done.”

  Weariness burning behind his eyes, Lucien dropped to one knee and painted a blood glyph on Loki’s stone forehead. He gazed at the crouched statue. Wings curved forward, mouth open in an endless scream, partially devoured flowers clutched in one taloned hand, Loki guarded the iron-gated tomb behind him—an unwilling gargoyle.

  “Now I trust you, brother.”

  Lucien’s wings lifted him into the night. He spiraled up above the glittering city and the wide, light-slicked river stretching into the distance. He drew in a deep breath of icy air. But dread, black and hard as a stone, lodged in his belly.

  Dante’s anhrefncathl—a creawdwr’s unique song—had breached the thin wall between Gehenna and the mortal world.

  Had only Loki heard Dante’s song? Had he come on his own? Or been sent?

  Far above Lucien, a plane soared through the night, lights strobing through the darkness. The dragon roar of its passage gradually faded.

  How much longer could he hide his child from the Elohim? How could he keep Dante from using his creawdwr gifts? Gifts? Since when was madness a gift? The last creawdwr had remade his face into a searing pillar of light. Had torched bushes with a single glance.

  I am.

  Old sorrow tightened Lucien’s throat. He’d been unable to protect Yahweh from Elohim court intrigue. Or from his own disintegrating mind.

  Yahweh had called him friend, too.

  Lucien’s fingers closed around the wind-chilled pendant at his throat. Time to tell Dante the truth; time to give Dante his name. His thoughts slipped back to Genevieve, to the beautiful young mortal he’d loved for a brief time. Dante was True Blood, born vampire. Which meant Genevieve had been turned during her pregnancy.

  Lucien released the pendant. Where was Genevieve now? Nightkind or mortal, she never would have abandoned their son. Not while she still breathed.

  A dark certainty roosted in Lucien’s heart. Genevieve, the laughing, questioning little Ursuline Academy graduate, no longer drew breath. He remembered the honeysuckle fragrance of her black hair, the warmth of her embrace, the questions in her dark eyes.

  If you exist, then God must, also.

  Yahweh died, little one. Mortals must become their own gods.

  The Church wants to be God. But it’s empty. I felt that the first time I knelt at a pew. Love is real, though. Love and faith.

  Faith in a dead god?

  No, mon chéri. In each other.

  Cold wind stung Lucien’s eyes and iced the moisture on his face. Dante would never forgive him. For not speaking. For lying. For not knowing he existed. Would that be penance enough, my Genevieve? If I gain our son’s hatred, but keep him alive and sane, would that be enough?

  I always intended to return to you….

  Lucien unblocked his link with Dante and opened it with a flick of energy. Sharp-edged, crystalline pain blasted through his mind. Rage, heartbroken and primal, howled through his very essence. Dante’s inner shields had shattered and fallen.

  Stunned, overwhelmed by the cacophony, Lucien tumbled and plummeted toward the glittering city.

  * * *

  20

  The Darkest Heart

  « ^ »

  “Beneath st
ill waters I lie / my mother’s fingers anchoring my hair / to the porcelain bottom / she ripples above me / a goddess / not a woman / seeking to wash taint from blood / beneath still waters I lie / my mother, my anchor / I close my eyes / and breathe / beneath still waters…”

  E read the poem aloud, speaking over the gurgling, wheezing sounds issuing up from the sofa. He closed the book and slipped it back into his satchel.

  “I fucking love Navarro’s work,” he said to the gasping thing on the blood-soaked sofa. “He speaks to the darkest heart.”

  Leaning back in the easy chair, E tilted his head and regarded his latest creation. Thing was apt. He’d removed everything that made Keith male and placed them artistically around the room. On the coffee table beside a candle. On the bookshelf nestled next to a framed photo of Keith and someone…lover…sibling…who gave a rat’s ass?

  He grinned. Well, Keith probably gave a rat’s ass.

  The gurgling, wheezing sounds continued. E smoothed his latex-gloved hands down the front of the blood-spattered butcher’s apron he wore. Buck-ass naked underneath. Kept his clothes clean and was, frankly, liberating. He leaned forward and dug in his satchel until his fingers found the shape he sought. He pulled out a cordless drill. Tapped the on button. It whirred to high-speed life. He pulled down the welding goggles parked on top of his head and walked to the sofa.

  Dead, was he?

  Case closed, was it?

  The wet gasping sounds became faster and more frantic.

  “Time to recite a poem for me,” E murmured, lowering the drill.

  * * *

  21

  Descent from Grace

  « ^ »

  LUCIEN FELL. THE WORLD spun beneath him. The city blurred into a single point of dazzling light. Cold air whistled past, frosting his cheeks and icing his hair, his wings.

  Dante’s barriers had been smashed. Fragmented memories crept out of the depths and slithered across his consciousness. Pain devoured Dante from the inside out, pain strong enough to knock Lucien from the sky.