HEATHER STARED, HEART POUNDING against her ribs, as Dante lifted his glowing hands from Wells’s face. Or what used to be a face. Only smooth skin remained. And behind his absent lips, Wells’s trapped screams faded. Her stomach clenched and, swallowing hard, she looked away.
He couldn’t hold Wells’s face in his mind any more than he could his name.
Looks like he fixed that problem.
A self-destruct safeguard had been programmed into Dante. And Wells had been about to trigger it until…well, until Dante’d made sure he could never speak again.
Drawing in a deep breath, Heather returned her gaze to Dante, carefully avoiding looking at Wells. Dante absently wiped at his bleeding nose with the back of his hand, then knotted his hands into fists—fists engulfed in blue fire. Pain glimmered in his golden eyes. He stood with quick and easy grace, and looked at her.
The sight of him tore at her. Exhaustion was pooled in blue shadows beneath his eyes. And blood slicked the front of his purple PVC shirt, dripped dark onto the carpet.
“Heather,” he breathed, the pain fading from his eyes. Then he stiffened, his body so tight, Heather was afraid another seizure was about to knock him to the floor. But he lifted into the air, instead, his expression startled.
“Shit!” Heather watched as Lyons floated Dante across the room. “Are you nuts? He doesn’t have control of his power!”
“Don’t have anything to lose.” Lyons lowered Dante to the floor beside Athena’s white-gowned body.
Heather thought of his father’s face and thought, Yes, you do. But kept that thought to herself. Anything Dante did to Lyons, Lyons had coming. In spades.
Had coming, yes, but Dante yearned for redemption, to be free of the past. Yearned to know who and what he was. How would he ever be free if she just stepped aside and let him kill? She’d be even more guilty than him, because she truly knew better. Dante didn’t…not yet.
“Hey,” Annie whispered.
Heather looked down. Her sister was kneeling on the floor, the pocketknife previously pressed against her throat now in her fingers. She smiled. After a quick glance at Lyons, she sliced away the flex-cuffs binding Heather’s wrists.
Annie started to rise to her feet, but not wanting her to see Wells, Heather shook her head. “Keep low,” she whispered.
Annie searched her eyes for a moment, then she bit her lower lip, and nodded. She crawled to the sofa, multicolored hair hanging in her face, and started cutting through the sleeping woman’s cuffs.
Rubbing her wrists, Heather glanced around the room for a weapon, found none. “Give me the knife,” she told Annie.
She wouldn’t let Lyons damn Dante. Or let Dante damn himself.
GABRIEL DESCENDED INTO THE pit, his face lit and triumphant, his golden wings gleaming in the last of the moonlight. Wybrcathl trilled and warbled in the skies above.
“I knew you were hiding a Maker,” Gabriel said. “My scouts have already left.”
Lilith’s sending arrowed through Lucien’s mind:
His eyes not leaving Gabriel’s smug face, Lucien sent,
And that, Lucien thought, would have to be good enough.
Gabriel’s tawny brows slanted down, he fluttered closer. “Samael? Who are you sending to?” He probed Lucien’s shields, flexed against them. “Who?”
Lucien flicked open the link between him and Dante, un-sealed their bond. His child’s mind burned, pain-ravaged, a concerto of fire—his shields breached or down. Grief whispered through Lucien.
Closing his eyes, Lucien sent one last thought to Dante, then severed their bond.
TELEKINETIC ENERGY BOUND DANTE in tingling ropes. He tensed his muscles, but even with his strength renewed by Caterina’s blood, he couldn’t twist free.
“She believed you could bring her back from the dead,” Lyons said, his voice thick with pain, face shadowed. “She was…is…an oracle and her vision’s always right.”
“Not about this.”
“If you won’t bring Athena back, then you can join her in the Underworld.” Alex swung up his S&W. Aimed the muzzle at Dante’s forehead. “Your choice.”
“Pull the trigger—”
The sudden thought glimmered in Dante’s mind, stroked across his fevered consciousness like a cool and soothing hand.
The bond between them sprang apart as though sliced with a fire-heated blade, either end coiling away into the ether. And a part of himself unraveled as well. Pain blasted through Dante; an explosion of fire squalled through his mind, his heart, his soul, and whipped his song into a savage bonfire aria.
His song burned, an inferno, chaotic and hungry.
And Dante burned with it.
FUCKER HAD A HELLUVA eye and was a helluva shot, too. Spotted me even when I was moving. Von dropped belly-down to the ground. Pine needles crunched beneath him, fragrant enough to make him sneeze.
A bullet whinged into the soil a yard to Von’s right. Goddamn. Fucker had sharp ears too. Could be nightkind, could be enhanced, or just good at his job. Rain started again, drops pattering against leaves and tree trunks.
Wishing for a downpour, Von rolled to his feet, and moved. He heard a small thip behind him as a bullet notched a tree trunk. A moment later, he crested the rise. Racing past the man in a suit jacket lying down in the dirt, his eye to the scope on his tripod-steadied rifle, Von angled to a stop behind him. Lifted the Brownings.
“Hey motherfucker. You owe me a pair of shades.”
The skies opened up and rain fell hard and fast and heavy. The man froze, his mortal heart drumming louder than Von’s wished-for downpour.
So this comes true, but not my wish for a winning lottery ticket?
“Toss the rifle.”
Hand trembling, the shooter flung the rifle down the hill. It crashed through the underbrush for several seconds before thudding to a stop.
Just as Von opened his mouth to ask the guy who he was working for and who he was gunning for, pain hammered against his shield—raw, primal, and soul-deep—staggering him.
“Little brother,” he whispered, glancing back down the slope. Blue light spiked from the windows of the main house.
Fear laced cold around his heart. Von fired a round into the mortal’s thigh to keep him from moving too much or too far. The man screamed between clenched teeth.
Von ran.
STILL LOCKED WITHIN LYONS’S telekinetic grip, Dante convulsed upright, head whipping, back arching, his limbs and body twisting in a violent and heart-wrenching blur of motion.
Lyons tilted his head, adjusted his aim.
Slipping up beside him, Heather punched the pocketknife blade into his side, between the ribs. Lyons gasped, but squeezed the trigger anyway, the gunfire cracking through the room like thinning winter ice. The smell of cordite curled into the air.
But his concentration had been broken. Dante hit the floor with a hard thump, his rigid body still spasming, contorting.
Heather yanked the knife free and jumped back out of reach as Lyons whirled around, gun held in both hands. “Annie, go!” she yelled.
“Maybe he’ll go to the Underworld for you,” Lyons said. He fired again and Heather threw herself to the floor, rolling to her knees, then diving behind the recliner.
Dante’s seizure ended. He curled up on the carpet, shivering, his breathing rough. Spokes of blue flame wheeled around his hands, spinning out wider with every revolution.
Transforming everything they touched.
The floor rippled, shifted into a forest floor of pine-needled dirt, thick underbrush, and tiny blue wildflowers.
Heather’s adrenaline-hyped pulse jumped into overdrive. Despite the gunfire she’d heard outside, she yelled, “Annie! Get out! Go out the back door!” She leaned past the recliner and risked a glance at the sofa.
Annie, blue light reflected in h
er wide eyes, screamed, “What! The! Fuck!”
“Just go!”
The dark-haired woman was sitting up, no longer asleep. Annie grabbed her hand and yanked her to her feet. The woman flashed a look at Heather, her eyes full of wonder and blue light. “I’ll make sure she’s safe,” she said, a faint European accent to her voice.
Heather shifted back around and her heart slammed into her throat. Lyons stood in front of her, his gun dead-aimed at her head. Dante had risen to his knees, his golden-eyed gaze stunned. Blood spilled from his nose and from his ear, trickling along the line of his jaw.
“Fetch my sister from the Underworld,” Lyons ordered, “or I’m sending Heather down below to keep her company.”
Heather locked her fingers around the knife handle and slammed the blade through one of Lyons’s Rippers, into his foot and through to the floor…earth…beneath. A strained scream escaped from between Lyons’s clenched teeth.
Leaping up, Heather shoved him as hard as she could. Lyons stumbled, arms pinwheeling for balance, tripping over thick, blue-thorned vines snaking across the floor.
Dante caught him with both glowing hands and pulled him down. Blue light whipped around Lyons, through him, shafting out from his opened mouth and shocked sea-green eyes. The gun tumbled from his hand to the dirt. It curved into a black-carapaced turtle that crawled under the recliner.
Heather backed away from the rays of light lashing around Dante and Lyons. Lyons twisted like a rope of licorice in Dante’s grasp, his arms twining around his body, his face shifting. Lyons screamed, the sound edged with blind animal rage and pain.
Energy crackled like lightning into the air, lifting the hair on Heather’s arms and head. Pressure thrummed through the house, pushed against the walls. Her ears popped, and she winced, working her jaw. The mingled smells of ozone and burning leaves and graveyard soil curled into her nostrils.
The house quaked. Trembled. Cracks zigzagged up the walls to the ceiling. Plaster dusted the air. The front window exploded in a spray of glass shrapnel-shards that morphed into a constellation of blinking, blue crystal fireflies flitting past the porch and into the night.
Dante’s song pulsed within Heather, dark and wild and heartbroken, its rhythm vibrating against her heart, within her heart. She stared at him, unable to look away, not wanting to look away.
Dante closed his eyes and shuddered. Pain flickered across his pale face. Two blue bolts of fire spiked out from his hands; one lanced through Athena’s body, the other arrowing across the room to impale her faceless father.
Athena’s dead flesh undulated. As though boneless, her body slithered through the blue-vined underbrush to twist like hot taffy into her brother’s spiraling, stretching form. Lyons’s golden curls rippled into hay-colored fur. Athena’s gown morphed into white feathers. Fur and feathers and hot taffy flesh braided together. The twins were now a single entity.
Lassoed in blue flame, Wells was dragged over the top of the red-berried hedge that had once been the sofa. One slipper caught on a branch and remained behind, dangling like a sun-browned leaf. He clutched the severed head to his blood-soaked chest like a child’s bedtime plushie.
Wells entwined with his children, twirling around and into them, his flesh stretching as though elastic. The decapitated head slid up from his arms and over his featureless face like a mask. Only now the head was that of a young woman with vibrant blonde hair, taut skin, and a gaping mouth.
They rose into the air, bathed in cool, blue fire, a three-faced pillar of flesh. Arms and legs streamlined into feathered tails. Eyes blinked open in the triune creature’s braided torso and back. Rotating mouths opened in a chorus of song: “Threeintoone…”
One of the thick wood ceiling beams cracked, jutting through the roof. Huge chunks of plaster crashed to the floor just feet in front of Heather.
The house continued to quake and shudder. With a rifle-sharp crack, another ceiling beam split and part of the ceiling collapsed across the sofa-hedge.
Heather jumped to her feet, the floor rocking and rippling underneath her.
Dante’s eyes opened, and recognition sparked in his gaze. “Catin,” he said, his voice an anguished whisper. The blue tongues of fire licking out from around him vanished like wind-snuffed candles. He fell to his knees, head bowed, his black hair a lamplight-streaked curtain.
“Threeintooneholytrinitythreeintooneholyholyholy…” The triune beast sang its multiple-voiced hymn as it slithered and humped its way toward the dark hall.
The front door yawned open, then froze in its warping frame. A breeze smelling of pine and rain and cordite gusted into the room. Von came to a stop, struggling to keep his balance as the house shook itself apart, his gaze on Dante’s singing triune beast.
“Holy fuck,” the nomad whispered, holstering his Brownings.
“Yeah,” Heather agreed, her voice shaky.
She crawled to Dante. Kneeling beside him, she pushed his hair back from his face, her fingers skimming across his cheek, his temple; his skin was fevered and heat radiated from him, baked into her. Blood was pooled in his hoop-rimmed ear. That scared her, a lot.
“Dante? Baptiste?”
He lifted his head. His eyes were no longer golden, the irises now rims of deepest brown ringing dilated pupils. She looped an arm around his waist and tugged. “On your feet, Baptiste. We gotta move.”
More windows exploded into shrapnel clouds of glass. Groaning masonry crumbled. Beams splintered. Debris hurtled to the floor.
“I’ve got him, doll,” Von said. “Get the fuck out.”
Heather rose to her feet. “Together,” she said.
Bending, the nomad grabbed Dante’s arm and slung him over his leather-jacketed shoulder. Straightening, he looked at Heather. “Move your ass, woman.”
Noticing Annie’s gym bag by the front door, Heather scooped it up on her way out through the warped doorway, Von hot on her heels.
AS VON FOLLOWED HEATHER off the porch and into the yard, his arm locked across the backs of Dante’s thighs, he heard a familiar sound through the pouring rain—the rush of wings. Relief spun warm tendrils through him.
So Lucien was all right, after all. After what he’d felt from Dante, and Lucien’s continued absence, he’d feared the worst. Because, closed bond or not, Von had known that Lucien would’ve flown to his son’s aid even if he had to wing across oceans and time and hell itself.
Von sent, slowing to a halt and turning.
His thought bounced back, unheard. His relief vanished. Wiping rain from his eyes with the back of one arm, he looked at the black-winged figure standing beneath the evergreens.
Not Lucien. She fluttered her wings, flinging droplets of rain into the downpour. Her long black hair snaked up into the air and her eyes gleamed like golden stars. The chilly air steamed against her skin.
“We don’t have much time,” she said, her musical voice urgent. She stepped from beneath the trees. “The others are on their way. Give me Lucien’s son so I can hide him.”
Lucien’s words sounded deep and clear through Von’s memory: Guard him from the Fallen, llygad. Guard him from them, most of all.
As Von reached his left hand inside his jacket for his gun, the house exploded. And a giant, heated hand hammered him into the ground.
40 THE GREAT BELOW
Damascus, OR
March 25
DANTE HIT THE GROUND hard shoulder first, rolling and bouncing across the wet grass until he slammed into a tree and came to a stop. Bright specks flecked his vision and pain shimmered like heat in his mind.
Lucien…
Je t’aime, mon fils, toujours.
Voices crooned and whispered and demanded, buzzing up from the shattered depths within on the backs of fire-scorched wasps.
You look so much like her.
You wanna take her punishment, p’tit?
How come Papa Prejean handcuffs you at bedtime?
Your heart won me, Dante Baptiste.
Heather’s face flashed behind his eyes as the bright specks faded. Dante tried to catch his breath, but his ribs ached and he couldn’t seem to get air down into his lungs.
Focus on Heather.
He rolled over and onto his knees, pressed his arm against his damaged ribs. Rain cooled his face. He swiveled around. The house was nothing more than a smoking pile of rubble, masonry, and wood. He stumbled to his feet. Heather…
Music trilled into the air, burning and bright, and his song soared up from his core in spontaneous answer. Lucien! He reached for their bond, but found nothing, just a searing emptiness where the bond had been. Pain jabbed Dante’s mind and sucked away his hard-won breath.
The ground rushed up to meet him.
COLD RAIN PLASTERED HEATHER’S hair to her skull and her clothes to her body. Wet grass prickled against her nose. She rose to her knees, ears ringing and head aching. The blast had sledge-hammered her to the ground, knocking the air from her lungs.
“Heather! Fuck!” A voice yelled. Just as Heather gained her feet, Annie skidded to a stop beside her and grabbed her arm. “Are you okay?”
“I think so,” Heather replied. “You?”
“Yeah, but when the house blew up, I thought you…I was scared…”
“Shit,” Heather breathed, spinning around. Von and Dante had been right behind her. Through the rain, she spotted a figure rising to its knees several yards from the twisted and rubbled remains of the main house. Grabbing her sister’s wet hand, Heather loped across the yard to Von.
“You okay?” she asked. She scanned the yard, looking for Dante. Her pulse pounded through her veins. She didn’t see him.
Von blinked, then his eyes focused. He jumped to his feet in one smooth, light-blurring movement. Did a whirling 360. “Where the hell is Dante? Did she take him?”
“Who?” Heather asked, cold seeping in through her wet skin.
“One of the Fallen, a chick,” Von said. “She ordered me to give Dante to her. Said others were on their way. Goddammit! Lucien asked me to guard Dante from the Fallen.”