Jesus Christ. Bitter acid burned at the back of Heather’s throat.
Regret curled thick through Von’s sending, as did a brass-knuckled resolve.
Heather assured him.
Apprehension sank an anchor into Heather’s belly as she realized she no longer felt the thrum of the nomad’s energy through their link.
Empty silence.
Heather’s hands clenched into fists on her chenille-covered thighs. If the link had finally given up the ghost before she could even give him a hint, some clue as to her whereabouts—
Von confirmed her fear. —a deep and deadly determination composed his sending, a promise mind-to-mind—
A smile stole across Heather’s lips.
Closing her eyes, Heather did exactly that. She shoved her way past sedative-thickened dreams and shock-hazed memories to the previous night, in search of the words that had spilled so damned cheerfully from James Wallace’s lips.
A ceiling dotted with soft, recessed lights; a fuzzy where-am-I? feeling that quickly morphs into an icy ribbon of fear as she realizes she doesn’t know; the pull of restraints at her wrists and ankles as she tries to sit up.
“Pumpkin.”
James Wallace stands in the doorway, his eyes hidden behind the reflections glimmering on the lenses of his glasses.
“What have you done to Dante?” she asks, her voice tight, simmering with bitter fury despite the drugs cocooning her mind.
“You need to focus on your own life, Heather. You need to reclaim it. And once we’ve freed you of that damned bloodsucker’s influence, once we’ve scrubbed the taint of his touch off you, you’ll be my daughter again, the brilliant FBI agent.”
Heather’s eyes opened. James Wallace didn’t realize he no longer had a daughter. Not yet. But what else had the bastard said? She rubbed her forehead as though she could summon the memory like a genie from a lamp.
A nurse in blue scrubs pads into the room carrying an IV bag, which she starts to connect to the IV stand positioned beside the bed. “You’ll feel much better once the drugs start to work,” the nurse assures Heather. “It’ll make the therapy easier, as well.”
And there they were—the magic words.
Welcome to the Strickland Deprogramming Institute.
Heather quickly sent the memory to Von with its priceless nugget of information, then realized with a hollow feeling that he was gone once again. Hoping against hope that it was just a brief glitch like last time, she continued to send the memory to him on a repeating loop.
Heather opened her eyes, then rose to her feet. Maybe she could gather a little more intel for him—provided it wasn’t too late. Hurrying to the window across the room, her slippers whispering across polished tile, she looked out through glass and steel mesh into a parking lot surrounded by forested green and a high fence. Several dozen cars, SUVs, and pickups populated the blacktop, bumpers glinting in the sunshine. She narrowed her eyes trying to make out a license plate. Was that Texas?
Heather exhaled in relief. The link was still working—for the moment, anyway.
Frustration sliced through the nomad’s sending.
Gripping the smooth wood of the windowsill, Heather poured everything she had into sending the memory one more time, knowing it might be her last chance. Focused on the most important part: Welcome to the Strickland Deprogramming Institute and Texas.
But once again, Von’s energy had disappeared, leaving only silence behind. Heather had a sinking feeling that the link had finally unraveled. Sighing, she rested her head against the sun-warmed glass and wearily closed her eyes. She had no way of knowing if the information had reached Von or not. While she hoped it had, she needed to plan as if it hadn’t.
She needed to steal a Taser and a phone. A tight smile curved her lips. Hell, a nail file had saved her ass in the past, maybe she’d get lucky again. She also needed to find a way out of Strickland, a path past all the security escorts and door guards, past the alarms she knew had to be rigged into every entrance and exit.
She’d bet anything the fence outside was electric—not a lethal charge, but one strong enough to stun. And even though she hadn’t seen it from the vantage provided by her window, she had no doubt that there would be security personnel patrolling the grounds and guarding the front gate.
Stealing a car would be difficult—unless she could find an older, pre-computerized model. Possibilities streamed through her mind. Maybe a hostage. Maybe a fire. She could attempt to slip away during the confusion that was sure to happen when the facility was evacuated.
Heather felt an urgent tug to the east through the bond connecting her to Dante, a restless drive to go now, and knew—down to the bone, heart-deep, and gut-sure—that if she followed that intuitive eastward pull, she’d find Dante at the end of it.
Living, breathing GPS, Von had called her. Maybe, but Heather sensed only a general direction, nothing specific like ‘left turn in two point five miles.’ She had a feeling another analogy was more accurate—she was a compass and Dante true north.
All she needed to do was start walking.
But the cold prickling along Heather’s spine warned her that she needed to hurry. A timer set to an unknown hour was ticking away the minutes. A deadline with an unspecified but looming date was breathing down her neck.
Words Dante had said only two nights ago returned to her. Stark, whispered words she was determined to prove wrong—a lie.
I feel like I’m running out of time, catin.
No, cher, no. I refuse to lose you.
But if she remained sitting on her butt in Strickland gambling that Von had received her last transmission, that was exactly what would happen, she would lose Dante. Lose the man—nightkind/Fallen/creawdwr—she’d chosen to stand beside, come Gehenna, Molotov cocktails, government assassins, or even her own damn father.
I feel like I’m running out of time, catin.
Heather sent to him.
This time her sending vanished instead of bouncing back unheard, but Heather had no idea whether that meant Dante had actually received it or if his pain and nightmares had simply devoured it.
It didn’t matter. She would keep trying. Just like he had in the club. As she’d seen through her sister’s eyes in the images Von had poured into her mind.
Dante half slides, half falls to his knees on the Oriental carpet in front of their room, his black-painted nails scraping furrows along the threshold on his way down. “J’su ici, catin,” he whispers, his words Sleep-slurred. “Je t’entends.”
I’m here. I hear you.
Heather had believed it impossible to reach Dante while Sleep embraced him, but when James Wallace had sauntered into the club she’d hammered a warning against his shields anyway. And he’d heard her. He’d fought his way free from Sleep’s talons for her. Stubborn will. Quiet strength. Fierce.
She would do no less for him.
Prying her fingers loose from the windowsill, Heather turned away from the tempered
glass and the lowering sun and shadowed grounds beyond it, and headed back to the bed. Hours and hours of forced sedatives and emotional stress had taken their toll. She wouldn’t be any good to anyone, let alone herself and Dante, if she keeled over from exhaustion.
Heather kicked off her slippers and slipped beneath the bed’s flowered comforter. She’d rest for a little bit, then eat. Despite having no appetite, she needed to refuel, to build up her strength. She had no idea how far “east” might turn out to be.
As she draped an arm over her eyes, a dark and terrifying scenario popped into her mind. Crackled ice through her veins. Suppose Shadow Branch operatives had been watching the club and, witnessing James Wallace’s little snatch, murder, and burn routine, had decided to take advantage of what must have seemed like the perfect opportunity.
A black ops version of a Powerball win.
And what if the SB discovered that Dante was much more than a True Blood? Discovered he was also a creawdwr? That he could not only Make and Unmake anyone and anything, but open gates to other worlds as well?
With just one whispered word, the SB could trigger Dante’s programming and twist him, force him, into becoming—
An image flickered to life in the darkness behind Heather’s eyes, an image infused with Dante’s scent of burning leaves and November frost; a recurring vision of a possible future, of a destiny embraced.
Tendrils of Dante’s black hair lift into the air as though breeze-caught. Gold light stars out from his kohl-rimmed eyes. He looks up as song—not his own—rings through the air. The night burns, the sky on fire from horizon to horizon.
—the Great Destroyer.
Heather still didn’t know which path her vision revealed—Dante as never-ending Road fighting to save the mortal world and everyone in it or as Great Destroyer leading the Fallen to war—but it wouldn’t matter if Dante didn’t survive what James Wallace had done to him. And Dante’s survival was all that mattered. The rest could wait.
But that sending also vanished, a single rain drop into a vast, black lake. Despite the cold fear knotted around her heart, exhaustion could no longer be denied. Sleep swept over Heather in a relentless tide, claiming her as she sent to Dante one more time.
6
ONCE ONLY
PORTLAND, OREGON
FBI WEST COAST FORENSICS LAB
LUCIEN, DECKED OUT IN a black Prada suit and a scarlet silk tie, offered the receptionist a warm smile before swiveling and short-circuiting the security camera with a tiny arc of electric blue fire flicked from his fingertip, the movement too swift for human eyes. The sharp scent of ozone cut into the air.
“May I help you, sir?” the receptionist asked cheerfully.
“Yes, you certainly may.”
Crossing to her desk, Lucien leaned over it and, before she had time to do more than widen her brown eyes in alarm, he touched two fingers to the center of her forehead. Blue light glowed cool against her skin.
“Sleep,” Lucien commanded in a low voice.
The receptionist’s eyes fluttered shut. She slumped into her chair, head lolling against her shoulder. A soft sigh escaped her lips. Lucien removed his fingers from her forehead, then straightened, his gaze on the door that she and her desk had guarded.
Etched in delicate gold letters on its frosted upper panel: Special Agent-in-Charge Oscar Heyne. James Wallace’s direct supervisor, the person who had needed to approve his leave of absence, and the person most likely to know exactly where to find Wallace and the daughter he’d drugged and kidnapped.
And the very man Lucien sought.
After Annie’s attempts to call her father had ended in voice-mail messages, Lucien had gently interrogated the guilt-and bourbon-numbed young mortal about her father, his habits, and his role in the FBI. Then Lucien had taken to the sky, winging for Portland.
As Lucien grasped the door handle, a conversation he’d had with Heather not even a week ago played through his memory.
I’m not with the Bureau anymore. According to the FBI, I’m a much-valued agent, but one now lost to paranoid delusions, due to a hereditary mental illness, and in desperate need of treatment.
Are you expected to survive said treatment?
I’m sure it’ll end in a tragic suicide.
And Dante?
Snipped as the final loose end linking the Bureau to Bad Seed.
Perhaps Wallace had been doing the Bureau’s dirty work when he’d shot Dante.
With a flip of the handle, Lucien opened the door and stepped inside. Heyne’s office was modest, full of clean lines and masculine leather furniture and framed forest scenes. The desk was neat, the chair behind it unoccupied. On the west wall hung a six-by-six foot painting of forested hills wreathed in ragged mist.
Oscar Heyne stood in front of that primal and lonely scene, gun in hand.
As he studied the silent FBI agent, Lucien skimmed one hand along the back of a leather chair parked in front of Heyne’s desk. The buttery aroma of sunblock filled the room. Beneath that, he detected another familiar, but surprising, scent.
SAC Heyne wasn’t mortal. He was nightkind.
And using stay-awake pills like those Merri Goodnight had given Von.
Slim and of average height, Heyne’s skin was a shade lighter than his dark coffee eyes, his short-cropped hair flecked with gray. Given the lack of lines in Heyne’s face, Lucien suspected the gray came courtesy of Clairol in an attempt to mimic the passage of time.
“I admit, I didn’t expect a vampire,” Lucien commented. “I must applaud the FBI’s efforts at diversity.”
“Who are you?” Heyne looked Lucien over, speculative gaze drinking in and weighing details. “Suit’s too expensive, too fine for government wear, so I think I can safely eliminate you from the SB rank and file.” His nostrils flared. “What are you? You’re not mortal, not vampire—”
“No, I’m not,” Lucien agreed, unknotting and removing his tie. He draped it over the back of the chair. “Who I am doesn’t matter. As for what, perhaps it’d be best if I demonstrated. Save us a little time in pooh-poohing, denials, and demands for proof.”
Heyne arched one eyebrow. “Color me intrigued,” he said in a dry baritone, keeping the gun—what looked like a standard-issue Glock—aimed at heart level.
“You might as well put that away, it won’t do a bit of good.”
“I think I’ll keep it.”
Lucien shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
“If this is a stripper-gram, supernatural or otherwise,” Heyne said as Lucien continued to undress, “I’m all out of cash.”
“It’s not. And keep your wallet in your pants.”
Once his suit jacket and shirt had joined the tie on the back of the chair, he flexed his shoulders and unfurled his wings, fanning the smoky incense scent of wing musk and deep, dark earth into the air.
Heyne’s gun dropped from his hand to thud against the carpet. His eyes widened in mingled disbelief and fascination. “Fallen,” he whispered.
Blue flames arced around Lucien’s body, electrifying the air, and glowing as reflections from picture frames, the polished leather, and in Heyne’s eyes. Lucien’s hair, tied back in a ponytail, snaked into the air on the currents of Fallen power.
“What do you want?” Heyne asked with surprising calm.
“Information,” Lucien said. “And I’ll ask each question once and once only.”
“And if I refuse to answer?”
“You have a choice: pain free or not. To be honest, I hope you choose not. It’s been a long time since I’ve delivered a bit of Old Testament–style wrath.”
Heyne’s face turned the color of ashes. “Ask, then. If I know, I’ll tell you.”
“Does James Wallace know that he was the Bureau’s Trojan horse?”
Heyne scooped up the Glock, but by the time he fired a split second later, Lucien was already on him, wrenching the gun from his fingers
and enfolding the vampire within his smooth black wings.
Lucien smiled. “Old Testament it is, then.”
7
BENEATH A CURVED SHADOW
BATON ROUGE
DOUCET-BAINBRIDGE SANITARIUM
“DANTE? DANTE-ANGEL? YOU NEED to wake up before they come back.”
A child’s voice—Chloe?—patted against Dante’s consciousness just like the fingers against his face. Her words sounded worried, a frowning downward turn of tone that suggested she was dealing with something she didn’t quite understand.
He tasted blood at the back of his throat—his own. Smelled it, thick and copper bright. Pain throbbed at his temples, prickled deep in his chest. Hunger scraped through him with razor-edged claws, leaving him hollowed, empty.
A woman’s voice whispered through his memory, the words as casual as a shrug, You won’t save her, you know. You’ll fail.
And from deeper within: Again.
Dante’s eyes flew open. Black specks pinpricked his vision. The brilliant overheads spiked jagged shards of light through his pupils and into his brain and, wincing, he lifted a hand to shield his eyes.
“Goody! You’re awake!”
He blinked until the specks vanished and Chloe’s freckled face, framed by long tendrils of red hair, swam into focus above him. Given his perspective, Dante realized that he had to be lying on the floor, the eight-year old kneeling beside him.
“What’s wrong, princess? You okay?” Dante asked. His words sounded slurred—even to himself, as fuzzy as the thoughts shuffling through his aching head. And he didn’t feel like he was waking up at twilight, hungry and alert; he felt more like he did at dawn, just before Sleep rushed over him in a cool, dark wave and yanked him under.
Worse, he felt shaky and weak, like he’d hadn’t fed in days.
Another voice whispered: This is all wrong. You need to wake your ass up.
“I’m okay, but you’re bleeding again, Dante-angel,” Chloe announced, touching her nose, then her ears to demonstrate from where. “I don’t think the doctor fixed your owies right.”