“I think he’s going to be too busy unraveling the world to worry about me,” he whispered. A golden fire lit his eyes. “Besides, I’m not exactly interested in winning points.”
Heather squeezed the Glock’s trigger and kept squeezing, emptying the magazine of its ten remaining rounds. The gunshots boomed and roared in the close confines, echoing like cannon fire down the corridor, and leaving her ears ringing. Dark blood bloomed in a tightly spaced circle of wounds just beneath Loki-as-Dante’s pale sternum. Wounds already healing.
The dark brows slanted down. “Ow,” he growled, wrenching the Glock from Heather’s grip and tossing it down the corridor to clatter against the floor tiles. “That actually hurt.”
“Good. It’ll hurt even more when Dante—”
Loki-as-Dante pressed taloned fingertips against Heather’s temples. The lightning storm scent of ozone crackled into the air. The hair lifted on her arms, the back of her neck. Her skin tingled beneath his talons. Fear iced her spine, stole her breath. A smile tilted the oh-so familiar lips.
“I like a good fight, catin. So keep it going,” Loki murmured in Dante’s voice. “I hope you’re telling the truth about others being on their way—especially the Elohim. I feel in a mood for a little chat with my brethren. But first, let’s learn all about you.”
Let me in, chère. Let me in.
Electricity surged through Heather’s mind, a mushroom cloud of devastating white light. Her shields blew apart, Tinker-toys caught in a nuclear wind, and darkness—eager and gleeful—rushed inside. She felt her body convulse, no longer under her control. She couldn’t even scream.
But she tried. Again and again.
45
FALLEN MAGIC
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” the Morningstar called from behind Lucien. “Dante is behind us.”
The spell’s repelling force—like hands shoving at his chest, like a frantic voice endlessly yelling, Darkness comes and death, flee-flee-flee!—vanished as soon as Lucien had flown beyond its range.
“Lucien, wait!” Hekate’s concerned voice. “Your son is in that sanitarium.”
Wings slashing the air like knife blades, Lucien wheeled around to face Hekate and the Morningstar. “Don’t you think I know that?” he answered, his voice harsh even to his own ears. “Dante is Sleeping inside a sanitarium sealed with Elohim blood sigils, alone with whoever put them there. And I couldn’t think, let alone act, because of that damned spell. I had to pull free of its influence.”
“How very odd,” the Morningstar murmured. Late afternoon sunlight transformed the ice melting from the edges of his alabaster wings into hundreds of tiny, fiery prisms. He tilted his head, curious, cataloguing potential weaknesses for future use. “We need to figure out why you were affected and we weren’t.”
Lucien already knew why. The answer burned like bitter acid at the back of his throat. “My protection sigils are gone. Have been for nearly twenty-four years.”
Comprehension blossomed in Hekate’s hyacinth eyes. “The story you told me earlier while we waited for my father.” Swallowing back the questions she no doubt yearned to ask, she touched the small leather bag looped through the belt around her waist and said, “We must remedy that, then.”
“THERE. ALL PROTECTED,” HEKATE said, wiping silver ink from her opalescent talons with a napkin. The ink’s wild mint aroma scented the air, cutting through the smell of spicy fried chicken.
“Thank you.” Lucien studied Hekate’s handiwork. The protection sigils inked into his chest, above his heart and solar plexus, glimmered like moonlit winter ice and tingled cool against his skin like camphor, a sensation already fading.
They sat at a small table inside a Popeye’s restaurant, hidden behind an illusion woven by the Morningstar that showed a table occupied by plump fast-food aficionados instead of a trio of fallen angels engaged in a tattoo session.
“It was because you couldn’t return to Gehenna,” the Morningstar mumbled around a mouthful of red beans and rice. “At least, you couldn’t until just recently.”
Lucien glanced at him, frowning. “What was?” he asked, ignoring the Morningstar’s aggrieved why-aren’t-you-keeping-up-with-my-train-of-thought expression.
“Why you’ve remained without protective sigils for the last twenty-four years,” he sighed, pushing back from the table, his meal of red beans and rice, plus biscuits finished. “No mortal possesses the secret of our protective spells.”
“True enough,” Lucien admitted.
“How did you lose your original sigils?” Hekate asked. “I thought they were permanent, to protect us from mortal and vampire summoning spells.”
Lucien’s thoughts traveled back to Lincoln City and the tiny tattoo shop perched above the cliff-lashing Pacific, back to the woman he’d hunted, only to end up as prey himself.
With one twist of her hand, Paloma summons the ink out of Lucien’s skin, siphoning it through his pores, and unraveling his protection sigils. The silvery ink spatters to the floor, tiny beads of mercury. A heartbeat later, he finds himself trapped inside a magicked circle in a windowless room etched with powerful sigils and angelic script from wall to wall and floor to ceiling.
“They are,” Lucien finally answered, rising to his feet. “But it’s a long story and we don’t have the time. We need to get back to Dante.”
As the three of them walked out into the Popeye’s parking lot, the Morningstar commented, “Not really much need for the protection sigils anymore. Very little summoning going on these days—unlike the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Not with the Internet gods holding mortal attention.”
“True,” Lucien agreed. “And I, for one, don’t miss it.” Unfurling his wings, he leaped into the sky.
LANDING ONCE MORE IN the sanitarium’s car-dotted parking lot, Lucien folded his wings behind him, flicking beads of moisture into air smelling of distant wood smoke and dew. For a moment, he thought he caught a faint whiff of Heather’s scent, but dismissed it. Even if she had escaped and made her way to Baton Rouge, the spell would’ve turned her around and sent her home.
No, just wishful thinking.
He studied the silent and sigil-painted building, feeling an electric tingle as his protective glyphs shielded his mind from the repelling spell’s flee-flee-flee command.
All Fallen magic, whether offensive or defensive, was dark, but—he felt a fierce smile curve his lips—not half as dark or deadly or determined as a father seeking his stolen child.
Lucien arrowed a thought into Dante’s Sleeping mind: The sending vanished like a coin into the black depths of a wishing well, yet still he hoped it had buried itself deep into his son’s dreaming subconscious.
As for whoever held him—Lucien strode straight for the sigil-tattooed doors, voicing a wybrcathl of challenge, of sharp-taloned promise, into the evening air as he approached the sanitarium.
Wings snapped and fluttered as Hekate and the Morningstar descended behind him.
“Wait,” Hekate called. “Something doesn’t look right.” But her warning came too late.
Five feet from the doors, pain exploded within Lucien, an internal pipe bomb that sucked the air from his lungs and knocked him to his knees. He bent over, forehead pressed to the sidewalk, teeth gritted, body knotted, as pain raked and clawed and burned.
He felt as though he’d walked straight into a high-voltage barbed-wire fence and swallowed broken glass—not to mention that pipe bomb full of nails. His one regret was his newfound inability to pass out.
“You need to move!” Someone shouted. Hekate, he thought, but the humming in his ears made it hard to know for certain. “Roll! Crawl! MOVE!”
Lucien wanted to snarl that she should try rolling or crawling or moving while her insides were being pureed and see how reasonable she found that particular suggestion—yet he knew she was right. He had to move.
Forcing his spasming muscles into motion, Lucien managed a one-shouldered roll to
ward Hekate and her father and away from the building. As he did, the pain vanished. “By all that’s holy,” he panted, staggering up to his feet. Aside from a few twinges along his spine, he felt fine. “What was that?”
“A new kind of spell,” Hekate said, frowning as she studied the sanitarium. A light breeze, smelling of distant lightning and impending rain, swept a silver ringlet across her forehead. “Our protection is working against the repulsion spell, but not this one. This isn’t a typical banishing spell. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen before,” she admitted reluctantly, shifting her violet gaze to Lucien. “I didn’t notice the difference until now.”
“Neither did I,” Lucien replied, shaking his head.
Hekate touched his cheek, her fingers soft against his skin. “Are you all right?”
Lucien offered her a smile. “Aside from feeling foolish, yes.”
A melodic wybrcathl shivered into the air in response to his earlier one, a defiant manifesto that both shocked and chilled Lucien—especially given its source.
“Loki,” Lucien breathed, stunned. “Here and flesh again. How? He should still be stone and guarding a tomb in St. Louis No. 3.”
“So that’s what happened to the sly bastard,” the Morningstar mused. “I’d wondered.”
Lucien gave him a sidelong glance. “No doubt. Given that he was here doing your bidding.”
The Morningstar sighed. “So he must’ve claimed. And everyone knows each word Loki utters is purest truth. But whose bidding Loki was or wasn’t doing doesn’t matter at the moment. If you didn’t free him, then who?”
Lucien remembered standing in St. Louis No. 3 several weeks ago and watching his son disappear into the night on the back of Von’s Harley. Remembered the fading feel of Dante’s power skipping along Loki’s stone shape, remembered the faint smell of his unique blood. Remembered the paper prayer folded at Loki’s stone feet.
Keep her safe, ma mère. Even from me. S’il te plâit.
Lucien rubbed his face with his hands, exasperated. In seeking truth, Dante had somehow managed to unravel the spell binding Loki.
Ah, child, what have you done?
He lowered his hands as the wybrcathl continued, each information-drenched trill deepening the chill he felt inside. Loki held not only Dante, but Heather as well. Detecting her scent in the parking lot hadn’t been wishful thinking, after all. Lucien stared at the bespelled building, wondering how Heather had managed to get past whatever spell Loki had spun into motion to keep mortals out and realizing she might not be completely mortal anymore. And as for Loki—
“He plans to help Dante become the Great Destroyer,” Hekate whispered in shocked tones, “then guide him in the world’s destruction.”
“If Loki succeeds, then your son must die,” the Morningstar said, his grim gaze piercing Lucien to his very core.“Even if it means Gehenna dies along with him.”
“Then we need to make certain Loki doesn’t succeed,” Lucien growled.
“What would you suggest we do?” Hekate asked, frustration shadowing her face.
“That you both get out of the way.”
Lucien wheeled around to face the blood-glyphed building. He took a deep breath, centering himself, gathering power, then closed his eyes. He smelled ozone, pungent and thick, felt his hair lift into the air, like midnight lengths of seaweed carried on the electric tide of his power. His hands knotted into fists at his sides. He sensed the Morningstar and Hekate backing away from him, heading for the parking lot’s gates.
Lucien opened his eyes. And voiced his wybrcathl, unleashing his pooled power through his vocal cords in a sledgehammer of sound. Car windows exploded in each vehicle, one after another, a shower of glass tinkling against the pavement while car alarms blared and beeped in cacophonous accompaniment.
The sanitarium’s windows blew out simultaneously, shards of glass raining to the well-manicured grounds and parking lot in a gleaming, deadly shower. As though rapped by a giant fist, the front door buckled inward at the same time.
Lucien ended his song, hushed his power. He bolted for the nearest shattered window, but when he grabbed hold of the windowsill to haul himself inside, he was hit by another pipe bomb of devastating pain. Releasing his hold, Lucien fell to the ground, glass crunching beneath his knees.
Hekate rushed over to join him. “What happened?”
Something very close to despair tightened Lucien’s throat. “The bastard didn’t just paint the blood sigils on the windows and doors.” He looked up into Hekate’s concerned eyes. “He painted them on the windowsills as well.”
Hekate offered him a hand and Lucien accepted it. Her grasp was cool and strong as she pulled him up to his feet. “Then we shall look for another way in,” she said.
But as the minutes melted away and the sun began to sink into the horizon in a blaze of furious color, Lucien’s heart sank as well.
Time had just run out.
“Since we’ve failed to get inside,” the Morningstar said, “we need to convince Dante to come out to us. Lure him away from Loki’s influence.”
But a dark suspicion had rooted itself in Lucien’s heart, a suspicion he now voiced. “He’s my son and half Fallen. The sigils will keep him inside, just as they keep us out.”
As Loki had intended.
Lucien reached for several Sleeping minds, but found only one rising from dreams—Silver’s—and filled it with the day’s grim and frustrating revelations. As he did so, he saw a car pull into the parking lot, then screech to a halt. A man in a black suit climbed out, gun in hand, his expression a blend of disbelief, determination, and shock as he stared in Lucien’s direction.
“Would blood wash away the sigils?” Lucien asked Hekate, eyeing the mortal. “Or act as a bridge across?”
“Not Elohim blood, no. It would be repelled by the spell. But mortal blood . . .”
The man’s face blanked as Loki’s spell kicked in and he started to get back into his car.
A dark smile tugged at Lucien’s lips. “Good.”
He moved.
FACE PAINTED WITH BLOOD symbols like some goddamned primitive hunter, helmet cam strapped into place, and gun in hand, Purcell made his move as the first stars appeared in the darkening sky. The shards of glass strewn on the lawn—thanks to De Noir and his pulverizing vocals—echoed the glittering starlight above.
And speaking of De Noir, he and his pals stood in the parking lot’s heart, engaged in some kind of winged confab. An unhappy one, too, judging by all the scowls.
And no wonder. They were still outside. Standing amidst all that twinkling glass.
And it was that very glass that had made Purcell abandon his original plan to slip into the parking lot, sidle over to the far edge, and use the parked cars for cover as he made his way to the sanitarium’s side entrance.
After De Noir’s little opera of destruction, Purcell had realized that he’d never make across without giving himself away as bits of ex-car windows crunched beneath his shoes. But thanks to De Noir, Purcell no longer needed a door to gain access to the building.
Skirting the parking lot altogether, Purcell stealthed his way through the overgrown field on the other side of the sanitarium’s fence to the back of the building and the truck delivery bay.
Purcell walked in careful and deliberate steps to the empty window beside the now-dented back door. A few shards of glass jutted up from the sill like broken teeth. Hands gloved for just this very reason, Purcell pulled the last bits of glass free and placed them on the pavement.
Tiny bits of pulverized glass crunched beneath Purcell’s gloves as he grabbed the windowsill and hoisted himself up and over.
He was inside.
46
FALLING APART WITH BREATHTAKING SPEED
MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE
LLYGAID COMPOUND
“HOLY HELL,” VON GROANED.
Taiko drummers had somehow taken up residence inside his skull and were now busy pounding the living daylights out of his br
ain. Slitting open one eye, he did a quick survey of his surroundings from the cold rock floor he was sprawled upon.
Moonlight trickled in through chinks in the timber and rock walls, revealing a stone-encircled well in the small, unlit building’s center. Weathered buckets and cobwebbed tools hung from nails hammered into the walls.
The cool air smelled of old wood pocked with decay and insect husks, of rust and moss and dank rock, of deep, still water—and not at all familiar.
Don’t know where I am, but at least it ain’t a jail cell. I think.
Von opened both eyes reluctantly and eased himself up into a sitting position, pulse thundering at his temples. “Crap.” Hunching forward, he closed his eyes again and rubbed his aching forehead with his fingertips.
Ain’t had a hangover in decades, what the—
He never finished the thought.
Memory poured into his mind in a nightmarish flood of images—Dante missing, Heather stolen, Merri’s stay-awake pills, Holly with her angry baby blues and her black-kilted llafnau.
Looks like you’re skipping out on me again.
One night is all I’m asking and then I’ll head straight for Memphis—as ordered. You have my word.
The same word you gave less than a week ago? The same word you gave me not two hours ago? That word, Vonushka? You made me look like a fool.
“Shanghaied,” Von muttered, thumping the back of his head against the rough-hewn wall in disgust, instantly regretting it as the taiko drummers inside his skull launched into a double-time rhythm. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”
Holly and her llafnau had carted his pill-Snoozing ass back to the plantation and tucked him inside the llygaid academy’s well house for safekeeping until he awakened. He’d bet his left rim that the door wasn’t even locked. Who needed locks when you had the nightkind version of SEAL Team Six on hand?
With a disgusted sigh, Von opened his eyes. His headache intensified, the nearly translucent slivers of moonlight creating and stuffing another enthusiastic taiko drummer into his already crowded skull.