“You turned your own brother?” Heather asked, surprised.
“I couldn’t bear the thought of watching him grow old and die.”
Heather thought of Kevin, of Annie. Could she have done the same to them? Siphoned off their humanity? Or let them age? Bury them one after the other next to Mom? Her throat constricted.
“So, how does this undead stuff work? Dante’s skin is warm. He has a pulse. He’s intensely alive.”
The corners of Simone’s mouth quirked up in a smile. “Oüi, Dante’s intensely everything.”
Heather stared at her, shoulders tight. Remembered Dante leaning over Simone on the dais steps, whispering in her ear, and touching her hair. She had a strong suspicion they’d been more than just friends once. Were they still?
“We’re not undead,” Simone said. “We’re a separate species. We’ve always lived alongside mortals.” She looked at Heather and smiled.
“And Dante? Do you know who made him?”
Simone’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “No. He’s never said.” She glanced at Heather. “I don’t think he knows. Maybe it’s lost to him.” Sorrow sharpened the planes of her face.
“Like so much else,” Heather said. “Hidden behind his headaches.” Or was he what Ronin had called him—True Blood? Born vampire?
Her name was Chloe and you killed her.
Ronin’s smooth, commanding voice wormed through Heather’s thoughts. What if Dante didn’t remember his past because he’d done terrible things? Things he couldn’t bear to remember?
Were Ronin’s attempts to awaken Dante a desire to trigger him, to wind him up and turn him loose? But if Dante could be triggered, wouldn’t that mean he’d been programmed? And wouldn’t that mean his memory had been deliberately crippled? Would certain questions trigger protective subliminals like migraines? Unconsciousness? Madness?
Heather’s heart pounded in her ears, drowning out the sound of the road rushing beneath the van’s wheels, beating cadence for the thoughts pulsing through her mind—black ops ran mind experiments, had for decades. Government funded and Bureau protected.
She heard Stearns’s voice: He’s no longer your concern. But that meant he was someone’s concern. Whose? And which agency? How deep did this go?
Heather looked out the passenger window. Her reflection, pale, pensive, and weary, hid the night beyond. The shadows and what they might contain no longer seemed so scary. Not compared to the place her suspicions had brought her—a place both very dark and very real.
And Dante was caught in the middle—lost, maybe. Heather’s hands knotted in her lap. Not if she could help it.
And her investigation? If Ronin and Jordan together were the Cross-Country Killer, the evidence would nail them, give a clear voice to their victims. The dead would finally speak.
Link the DNA evidence. Nail Jordan. Prove the CCK hadn’t died in Pensacola. But what about Ronin? Could a human court even touch him? If she suggested he was vampire, the case would be thrown out of court and her career’d be over.
Would nightkind care if one of their own butchered mortals? Dante cared, but was he an exception?
Maybe she’d have to settle for Elroy Jordan.
The van slowed and Heather opened her eyes. Simone parked in the gravel drive curving in front of the house. Heather glanced at the dark windows. “Is your brother home?” she asked, pulling the door latch.
“Oüi.” Simone opened the driver’s door and slipped out of the van. “He just doesn’t need light.”
Heather climbed out of the van and into the chilly, humid night. The air was sweet with the scent of wild roses and cherry blossoms and moss.
“Wallace.”
Heather froze. She recognized the voice. She’d listened to it for years. Been guided by it. The fact that he was in New Orleans was enough to ice her blood. The fact that he was at Dante’s house scared the shit out of her. She slid her right hand into her trench. Reached for her .38.
“I wouldn’t.”
Heather turned around, pebbles from the path crunching beneath her shoes. Stearns stood beside the van’s driver’s side door, a silencer-equipped pistol pressed to Simone’s left temple. He held the vampire’s arm in a tight-fingered grip.
“We need to talk,” he said.
***
DICKHEAD’S NOSE FLATTENED. He fell off the stool, mingled pain and surprise flickering in his eyes. He hit the floor, blood spurting from his nostrils.
His sidekick, Davis, blinked, his mouth half-open. He reached inside his jacket, but Dante stepped forward and back-fisted him with his blood-smeared left hand. Seizing the stunned detective by the back of the neck, he pounded Davis’s face against the bar’s polished surface. The detective crumpled to the floor.
Standing between the two downed mortals, Dante glanced up to see Maria pressed up against the bottle-lined shelves, eyes wide, a hand to her mouth. Movement on the floor caught Dante’s attention.
LaRousse struggled to his knees, eyes watering, nose swelling. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gun—looked like a nine mil.
“You ain’t walkin’ from this—” LaRousse’s words, blood-thick and harsh, ended abruptly when Dante kicked the nine mil out of his hand. The detective’s wrist snapped, bent at an unnatural angle. He screamed through gritted teeth.
Dante crouched in front of LaRousse. Pain prickled along his temples, behind his eyes. His vision blurred. Latching onto the detective’s shoulder, he forced LaRousse’s head up and to the side with a hand to his chin. Blood pulsed fast and frantic within the mortal’s arched throat.
Baring his fangs, Dante lowered his face to LaRousse’s warm, reeking flesh.
“I work for Guy Mauvais. I have his protection,” Dickhead said, his voice a strained whisper.
Dante let go of LaRousse’s shoulder and tore at his tie and shirt buttons. A button flew through the air. The shirt ripped. There, glimmering in the hollow of the detective’s throat, iridescent, was a rose; visible only to the eyes of nightkind.
“Hey! Asshole! What the fuck you think you’re doin’?”
Dante glanced at the speaker. The athlete from the pool table charged toward him, face tight and glowering, pool cue reversed and brandished like a baseball bat. Dante shoved LaRousse away hard. The detective slid across the hardwood floor and slammed against the wall.
Dante straightened from his crouch, hands intercepting and seizing the pool cue as Athlete swung it down. Dante stepped past Athlete in a rush of air and wrenched the pool cue from his grasp. Athlete’s expression shifted from righteous rage to confusion. He stared at his empty hands.
How does it feel, marmot?
Whirling, jaw clenched, Dante whacked the pool cue across Athlete’s back. Athlete stumbled forward, body arched. A quick stride stood Dante in front of the off-balance pool player. He smashed the pool cue against Athlete’s temple, canting his head to one side. The cue snapped in half. One splintered end pinwheeled through the air and crashed against the wall phone behind the bar, knocking it from the wall. It exploded against the floor, dinging once.
As Athlete slumped to the floor, Dante swiveled and looked at Maria. She’d turned her face away from the flying spear of wood, shielding herself with one hand, the other still outstretched toward the now useless phone.
A raw-throated scream of rage spun Dante around again, the other half of the pool cue still clenched in his hand. Good Ol’ Boy Terry lunged at him, fingers wrapped around the hilt of a hunting knife. Beer Gut followed, red-faced and sweating, hot on Terry’s heels, cue stick clutched in both hands.
“C’mon, Ernie! Let’s take out the motherfuckin’ trash!”
But Terry rushed forward alone. Dante noticed Good Ol’ Boy Ernie had stopped to scoop something up from the floor.
Dante swung one arm up to grab Terry’s knife hand as he slammed the broken pool cue across Beer Gut’s belly. Beer Gut’s breath whoofed out from his lungs and he fell to his knees. His cue stick dropped from his h
ands, clattering against the floor.
An image of Lucien slumped on his side across broken pews, plaster and gold flecks of paint dusting his hair, a length of splintered wood impaling him, flickered through Dante’s mind.
Mon ami—
You look so much like her.
Sudden searing pain fractured Dante’s thoughts, scattering the fragmented images and half memories. Terry’s hunting knife plunged through his palm and out the back of his hand. Wasps droned. Stung. Venom poured through Dante’s veins. Snarling, he yanked his arm back, jerking the knife hilt from Terry’s grasp.
“Yeah!” Terry crowed. “Take that, mother—”
Dante swiped the back of his impaled hand across Terry’s work-grimed throat. Blood sprayed Dante’s face and shades, hot and fragrant. He licked it from his lips. He tugged the knife from his hand and dropped it on the floor.
The frenzied drumming of Terry’s dying heart sucked Dante in and, unable to resist the pungent blood scent, he wrapped his arms around the man, pressed his parted lips against the gashed throat. Blood poured into his mouth. Together, Terry and Dante dropped to their knees.
You were wrong, boy. I’ve had more than a taste.
You can still save him, True Blood.
As Dante drank the diminishing flow, he heard whispers, whispers not from within. “Aim for the head and don’t…fuck in’…miss.”
Dante moved—diving to the floor and then rolling to his feet—as fire flashed from a gun’s muzzle. The bullets slammed into Terry’s still crumpling body—one, two, three.
“Shit!” Davis cried.
Dante scooped up the broken pool cue half and hurled it at Davis, hitting him in the temple as he pulled the trigger again. The shot went wild, hitting—
“Wayne!” Ernie screamed.
Dante slammed his fist into Davis’s chin, snapping his head back. At the same moment, he seized the cop’s gun hand and wrenched the pistol from it, tossed it away. He punched the cop again. Stumbling, spitting blood and teeth, Davis grabbed at a table for balance, but missed. As he went down, the back of his skull connected with the edge of a chair with a loud crunch. He slumped onto the floor, eyes half-closed. The smell of blood and shit curled into the air like smoke.
Dante winced as a hoarse scream behind him pierced his ears, his aching head. It was followed by klik-klik-klik-klik. He turned.
Ernie held Dickhead’s nine mil in a white-knuckled, two-handed grip, his eyes squeezed shut. On the floor at his feet, Beer Gut—Wayne—had toppled, a bullet hole in his temple.
Dante jerked the gun out of Ernie’s trembling grasp and saw that the safety was on. He looked up from the nine mil, caught a glimpse of his reflection in Ernie’s ever-widening eyes. Then both eyes rolled up to the back of Ernie’s head as he crumpled to the floor in a dead faint.
Tucking LaRousse’s gun into the back of his pants, Dante swiveled in time to see the detective scuttling along behind the bar, headed for the restroom hallway. Dante started after the detective, but a low, harsh sob stopped him at the bar’s edge.
He vaulted over the bar, landing in a crouch in front of the black-haired bartender. She’d huddled down against the counter. Terror rippled across her face when she saw Dante and she clapped a hand over her mouth. Gaze locked on him, she groped for the baseball bat propped against the counter. Dante swatted it out of her reach. It tunked to the floor, then rolled away.
“Mother Mary, Papa Legba, protect me from this angry loa,” she whispered.
She smelled of jasmine and deep water, but fear edged her scent, stealing the sweetness from it. Dante lifted his shades to the top of his head. Tears spilled over her dark lashes. He leaned in and brushed his lips against hers. He wiped away one of her tears with his thumb, smearing blood across her dark cheek.
He thought of red hair and cornflower-blue eyes and creamy skin. Remembered a friend saying, I’m your backup.
Dante pulled back. Stood. Lowered the shades over his eyes again.
Dante walked past the counter and down the hall. He paused at the men’s room door and listened. Dripping water. Crossing the hall, he walked into the women’s room. No urinals, but just as graffiti-etched and grungy as the men’s room. Dante strode across the stained floor.
Dickhead stood beneath the no-escape window, smoothing his sweat-damp hair back with his hands. Bruises darkened the skin around the detective’s eyes and across the bridge of his smashed nose. He watched Dante warily, but made no move to run.
“Wallace’s boss is looking for her. He called.”
Dante seized LaRousse by the lapels of his jacket and jerked him close. Only an inch separated their faces. Reeking of blood and beer, LaRousse stared at him, fresh sweat beading his forehead.
“Whatcha tell him?”
“To look for you.” A sardonic gleam lit LaRousse’s eyes. “That you had her all hot and bothered. That’s what you do, right? Stir people up. Suck them dry.”
The detective stank of envy and frustration.
Prick thinks I’ll murder everyone in their beds.
“Who you working for?” Dante asked, voice low. “Besides fucking Mauvais?”
“Look, I can spy for you, if you want. I—”
Fingers still latched onto the detective’s lapels, Dante shook him. “Who else?”
Wouldcha?
Yeah. Probably.
All color drained from Dickhead’s face. “The writer, Ronin.”
“Whatcha do for him?”
“I helped him contact Étienne—”
Vision blurring, Dante flung LaRousse into one of the stalls. The door whanged against the metal side. The detective landed on the toilet, his head and shoulders thumping against the tiled wall. Pain contorted his face.
Is the rock god over there good for it?
We gotta go, sexy. Tomorrow night?
Shhhh. Je suis ici.
You can still save him, True Blood. All you have to do is—
“Wake up,” Dante whispered. The drone of the wasps died.
Walking into the stall, Dante pinned LaRousse with a hand to one shoulder and a knee snugged against his crotch. He forced the detective’s head to one side, baring his throat. The rose tattoo sparkled under the fluorescents.
“You never cared who killed Gina,” Dante said, lowering his head, listening to LaRousse’s galloping heart. “You only wanted to nail me.”
“I have Mauvais’s protection—”
“Not from me, you fuck. Not. From. Me.”
Dante tore into the detective’s throat. LaRousse screamed.
***
HEATHER WRAPPED HER FINGERS around the .38 in her pocket. Stearns’s tousled hair and shadowed eyes told her he hadn’t slept in a while and his steady hand told her he’d pull the Glock’s trigger without hesitation.
“Let go of her,” Heather said. “If you want to talk to me, fine. Since when do you need hostages?”
“I don’t think you understand the situation,” Stearns said. His gaze flicked to Simone. “Or what you’ve allied—”
Simone twisted and ducked with mind-boggling speed. The silenced Glock went off with a hushed thffft at the same moment she seized Stearns’s gun hand and wrenched it back. The Glock dropped into the dew-glistening grass.
“Down. Or I snap it,” Simone said.
Eyes squeezed shut, hissing in pain, Stearns dropped to his knees. The blonde eased up on his wrist, but kept it in a firm grip.
Heather scooped the Glock up from the grass and pocketed it. She pulled her .38 free of the trench and aimed it at Stearns. “What are you doing here?”
He opened his eyes. A wry smile stretched his lips. “Rescuing you.”
“Are you involved in the cover-up?” Heather asked. Her aim didn’t waver. “The Pensacola murders?”
“No. But I know who is. And I know what they’re protecting.”
She stared hard at the man who’d guided her career, who’d attended her Academy graduation, and who’d helped her with Annie when her f
ather refused. Stearns held her gaze, hazel eyes steady. Stubble darkened his face. Unshaved. Sleep-smudged. Wired. A man on the run?
All through my career, he’s had my back.
Would that change if the Bureau asked it of him?
Heather lowered her .38. If so, I’d already be dead. She nodded at Simone. With a dry tsk and a toss of her head, Simone released him. He stood, wiping at the wet, grass-stained knees of his trousers.
“Where’s Dante Prejean?” he asked.
Heather stared at him. “Why? What does he have to do with this?”
Stearns looked at her for a long moment, a muscle jumping in his jaw, then he glanced away. “He’s not what you think he is.”
“And what do I think he is…sir?”
“Human.”
“I know what he is,” Heather said quietly. She lifted the .38 again. “Nightkind. Maybe True Blood.”
“True Blood…?” Simone whispered.
Stearns stared at Heather, his hands motionless at his side. She thought she saw a sudden spark of fear in his eyes, then it was gone, swallowed by the shadows.
“He’s also an experiment,” Stearns said finally. “I have a file in the car and a CD that you need to see. Then you’ll know exactly what Dante Prejean is.”
“His name’s not Prejean,” Heather murmured.
Simone circled Stearns. “I’ll never let you near him,” she said. Moonlight gleamed in her narrowed eyes and from her revealed fangs.
The whoosh of massive wings drew Heather’s attention to the house.
Moonlight shimmered along De Noir’s huge black wings as he landed on the roof above Dante’s bedroom. His long black hair spilled unbound to his waist. Pale blue light flickered around his shirtless form and glimmered from the pendant at his throat.
He dropped into a crouch, wings folding behind him. A breeze stirred his hair, but otherwise he was motionless. Twin points of golden light starred the night as he stared into the darkness.
Heather’s breath caught in her throat. Fallen. Étienne’s voice slid through her thoughts: Nightbringer.