“Perhaps,” she repeated. “But I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway. If you had killed him, you wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to murder his flowers.”
Lucien smiled. “Are you certain of that?”
Tilting her head, she studied him. The river breeze lifted tendrils of her black hair and blew them across her face, slashing her lovely face with midnight-black shadows. “Yes, my cydymaith. I’m certain you haven’t killed him…yet.”
“I’m no longer your cydymaith,” Lucien said quietly. “I gave that up as well when I left Gehenna.”
“I didn’t,” she returned with a haughty lift of her chin.
Lucien laughed. “After all this time? Lilith, please.”
The fire in her golden eyes intensified, bright and hot, as if she wished she could burn him to nothing but ash with one glance.
“Do you know where this Maker is?” she asked. “I know he’s young, male, and powerful from his anhrefncathl. And unstable.”
Dread gripped Lucien with cold talons. Even Lilith realized that Dante was unbound, a creawdwr edging toward inevitable madness. Forcing a smile to his lips, he said, “His song brought me, as well. I have no more idea of where he is than you do.”
“Really?” Lilith murmured. She slid a warm hand up his bare chest to his lips. “Then who turned Loki to stone and chained him to the earth?”
Without thinking, Lucien kissed her fingertips. It surprised him to realize how easily he reverted to habits he believed long dead. Surprised and disturbed him. Grasping her hand, he lowered it from his face. “It’s less than he deserves, I’m sure. Loki has any number of enemies,” he said. “Did you send him?”
“No. He’s been spending his time with the Morningstar and that wretch, Gabriel.”
“Ah.”
“How long have you known of the existence of this creawdwr?” Lilith asked.
Lucien shook his head. “What does it matter? I won’t let you have him.”
“So you do know him,” Lilith breathed. “I knew it.”
“Would you like to join Loki, my sweet?”
But Lilith didn’t back away as Lucien thought she might. Instead her hands knotted into fists and her wings fluttered in agitation. “You are selfish,” she said. “Selfish and full of pride. You’d let Gehenna vanish and leave the Elohim homeless and bereft and for what? Because you think only you know what’s best for a Maker!”
“I know I’ll never allow another to be chained to Elohim will!”
“Yahweh was never chained! How can you say that?”
“He was used, manipulated, and lied to! You didn’t hear him, you weren’t with him, you didn’t see—” Throat suddenly too tight for speech, Lucien closed his mouth, and turned away.
Let them have me.
“Do you think you were the only one who loved him?” Lilith asked softly. “Astoreth was his calon-cyfaill, too. And she died with him. I’ve never understood how you survived the bond-breaking.” Her fingers closed around his shoulder, her touch warm and strong. And damp-sticky. Blood? “You’ve given me no choice,” she whispered.
Lucien jerked free of her hand, and whirled. Pale ethereal light streamed from Lilith’s palms. As the binding words slipped from her lips, he dove into the river.
The Mississippi’s cold water sluiced away the blood on Lucien’s shoulder. He berated himself for being so careless. If he’d been just a split second slower, Lilith would’ve finished her blood spell and bound him just as he’d bound Loki.
Then she could’ve returned him captive to Gehenna to face justice for the murder of Yahweh. Or maybe bargained with him, his freedom in exchange for the creawdwr?
Lucien swam underwater for as long as he could. Then, chest aching, he surfaced and gasped in a deep lungful of sweet, cold air. Wiping water from his eyes, he looked for Lilith on the shore and in the sky. He saw nothing—no flash of red, no glowing golden eyes, no movement. She wasn’t gone. He knew better than that; she never gave up, not easily. It had been one of the things about her that he’d once loved.
Until she’d severed that love by convincing a tormented creawdwr to curl himself into a golden ark to be carried across the desert by mortals who worshipped him; a people yearning for a land of their own, a home. Yahweh had guided them, a sacred and crazed divining rod.
With Yahweh gone, and Lucien and Astoreth searching for their calon-cyfaill, Lilith had perched upon Gehenna’s black-starred marble throne in Lucien’s absence. And gone to war with Gabriel and his golden wings—undoing in one heated moment the peace Lucien had so carefully crafted over centuries.
Wings flaring and flapping against the river’s surface, spraying droplets of water in the air, Lucien winged up from the Mississippi and into the night sky.
Gehenna is fading.
Had Lilith spoken the truth? Very possible. The wait for another creawdwr to be born among the Elohim high-bloods had never been this long—over two thousand years. Did Gehenna feed on a Maker much like nightkind fed on mortals? And without the one, the other would die?
Only one way to find out.
Lucien spiraled up into the sky. The air was thin and cold and burned within his lungs. It iced his lashes, froze his wet hair, and frosted his wings white, but melted against his heated skin. Miles blurred past beneath him, and the star-field glow of city lights disappeared as he winged over the dark and restless ocean, the smell of brine thick in his nostrils.
His heart beat hard against his ribs as he drew closer to the gate between Gehenna and the mortal world, a border he hadn’t crossed in literal ages.
Hadn’t dared cross. But he had to know if Lilith told the truth.
A trilling wybrcathl drew his attention. Lilith was warning him away from Gehenna. Interesting, considering that bringing him in to face the Tribunal could only strengthen her rule.
Perhaps she hoped to keep news of a creawdwr’s existence secret until she had him in hand and under her wings.
Refusing to answer her, Lucien flew on, dark doubt brewing deep within him. Loki had said that the Morningstar had allied himself with Gabriel and the two were mounting a campaign against Lilith in another attempt to wrest the black-starred throne out from under her.
If she bound the creawdwr and became his calon-cyfaill, the Morningstar might as well fly down into Sheol, make himself cozy in the embers and pour ashes over his dazzling white hair, because no one would lift wing at his command again—not as long as Lilith ruled with a Maker at her side.
And Gabriel? The amber-haired high-blood would remind everyone that he’d once been the Voice of Yahweh in the mortal world. And would humbly offer his service to the new creawdwr.
A twisted Voice, Gabriel. And heartless. Bitter anger prickled around Lucien’s heart. He’d always regretted leaving the pompous, puffed-up aingeal alive.
And who, Lucien wondered, would be chosen as the other half of the balance and the triad’s third, the second calon-cyfaill? A better question would be: Who would Lilith allow to be chosen?
For his son.
Lucien winged on through the night, his strokes strong and sure. He caught a glimmer of color, undulating waves of purple and pale blue and gold, streaking the sky; an aurora borealis where none belonged.
Lilith’s wybrcathl ended.
Lucien slowed and hovered, his wings flapping, and stared. Where once a golden gate had spun, visible only to Elohim eyes, there was now only a wound in the fabric of reality, and all the colors and energy-life force of Gehenna bled into the mortal skies.
Lilith had spoken the truth. Gehenna was fading.
She hovered beside him, her tresses frozen into long glimmering icicles, the shifting colors reflected across her face. “Why wouldn’t you listen to me?” she muttered.
“Who rules Gehenna?” Lucien asked, fearing he knew the answer.
“Gabriel.”
So, Loki had lied. Not surprising in itself, but what chilled Lucien’s blood was why. Loki had suggested they bind the creawdwr—Dante—toge
ther, suggested that Lucien could once again rule Gehenna. He now suspected that Loki had hoped to overthrow Gabriel by manipulating Lucien’s ambitions, ambitions that had died with Yahweh. But Loki being Loki simply had not known how to speak the truth.
Had Lucien turned an ally to stone?
Beyond the new aurora borealis, a song trilled into the night, a trill answered ten, twenty, thirty times. Black wings and gold wings blurred through the dancing curves of light as Elohim swarmed from the tear between worlds.
“I hope you’ve kept your talons sharp, my foolish, stubborn cydymaith.”
Sudden calm buoyed Lucien. He’d been waiting for this moment for so long that now it had arrived, he felt relieved. He quickly closed his link to Dante and sealed it against any pushes from his child. He considered severing it, but feared what it might do to them both.
“I’ve always kept my talons sharp,” he said, then met the first aingeal head-on, talons slashing. Lilith fought at his side, as though she belonged there, as though all the centuries apart had never happened, her wings lashing the sky and her talons flinging dark blood into the night.
As though she believed escape were possible.
4 IN THE DARK
On I-5 between Portland and Salem, OR
March 22
SHANNON WALLACE DIED BENEATH the sheltering branches of an oak tree, her blood soaking into the pine-needled ground like rain on a hot summer day. She died in the dark without a struggle. She died drunk. And she died looking into the face of her killer.
Of that, Heather Wallace felt sure.
Twigs and dead leaves crunched beneath her Skechers as she stepped through the underbrush. She stopped beside a lichen-laced oak and stood at the spot where her mother’s body had been discovered two decades earlier.
Memories whirled like pinwheels in Heather’s mind, the revolving images blurring from one into another.
Whirl: Mom laughing. A smile lights her face and the air shimmers around her like a summer dawn. Rose incense burns in the little brass holder.
Whirl: Mom silent and focused as she cleans the house, scrubbing every surface with cleanser and stiff-bristled brushes. For hours and hours. For days.
Whirl: The raw sound of Mom’s rage. The crash and crack of thrown dishes, stoneware shrapnel. The heavy stink of cigarettes and booze.
Whirl: Mom sits at the kitchen table, elbows propped on the littered surface, her head in her hands. Her hair, uncombed and lank, spills over her knuckles. A cigarette burns in an ashtray full of stubbed-out butts. Empty brown prescription bottles roll on the table beside an empty bottle of vodka.
Whirl: Mom laughing…
Heather blinked the images away and drew in a deep breath of sun-warmed air to clear the lingering memory-smell of smoke and roses from her mind.
Shannon had been thirty when she died, mother of three, wife to FBI forensics expert James William Wallace. Heather had already outlived her by a year.
Shannon had been a woman no one had ever championed, not even her husband. The case had gone cold. Forgotten. No justice rendered. Heather wasn’t blameless either—even after she’d learned the truth about her mother’s death, it’d taken six years for her to act. And watching as Dante had spoken for the mother he’d never known.
“Avenge your mother,” Lucien whispers as Dante’s eyes open.
Heather hoped finally to speak for her mother.
And maybe, just maybe, the truth would heal Annie.
But before Heather could help her sister or champion their murdered mother, she needed to keep herself alive. And to do that, she wanted the Bureau to see an agent so focused on her job that she voluntarily worked a cold case while on medical leave just to keep occupied, an agent who behaved as though nothing had changed in the last three weeks.
Even though everything had irrevocably changed—including herself.
Dante…
She touched the spot on her chest where the bullet had pierced her, felt the steady beat of her heart beneath her fingers. Remembered the desperate sound of Dante’s voice, his words husky and Cajun-spiced: I won’t lose you.
Heather closed her eyes and gently pushed the memory aside. Not now.
After a moment, she opened her eyes and peered into the gloom beneath the trees, inhaling the thick smells of pine, damp soil, and moss. The trees and shrubs muffled the rush of traffic on I-5. Crouching, she studied the ground, trying to imagine what Shannon had seen and felt that last night of her life. Tried to work it like any other case.
Even twenty years ago, leads in the case had dried up fast. Shannon had left the Driftwood Bar and Lounge in northeast Portland alone around 11:30 p.m. on October first. Employees and patrons were interviewed, barfly statements sifted and compared.
Shannon Wallace frequented local watering holes and often made hookups. Wasn’t thought to be too choosy, according to her drinking buddies.
The Portland PD detectives working the case at the time had believed Shannon Wallace to be a victim of a serial killer working the I-5 corridor, the Claw-Hammer Killer. The CHK preyed on prostitutes and barflies, women who generally wouldn’t be missed. Not immediately, anyway. The FBI task force hunting for the CHK had also believed Shannon a possible victim of their perp.
If that was true, then Shannon had already been championed.
Special Agent Craig Stearns, then of the Portland field office, killed the CHK—a Hillsboro carpenter named Christopher Todd Higgins—during a violent struggle while serving a search warrant shortly after Shannon’s murder.
Stearns.
Heather fixed her gaze on the green and gold leaves above her. Tried to resist the memory flip back to New Orleans. Failed.
Stearns lifts his Glock and calls Dante’s name.
Dante, hands braced against either side of the house’s open threshold, turns. Fire sparks from the Glock’s muzzle. His head snaps to the side as the bullet catches him in the temple. He stumbles, then falls. He sprawls across the threshold, half-in and half-out of the house.
Stearns strides toward Dante’s body, gun in hand. Heather bails out of the car before Collins brings it to a full stop. She runs, .38 clenched in both hands. “Drop it!” she yells. “Don’t make me do this!”
Stearns spares her a glance, then turns back to Dante. Aims.
She fires.
“Shit,” Heather whispered, dropping her gaze to the ground. Only three weeks had passed and the memory still cut deep. She blinked until her eyes quit burning.
According to Inferno’s MySpace page, the band was on the road, so Dante was safe—for the moment. And Stearns, her mentor, the man who’d been more of a father to her than James Wallace, was dead, buried with honors in Seattle’s Lakeview Cemetery.
She drew in a deep breath. One thing at a time, Wallace. Just one thing at a time.
A heavy thunk penetrated the green-lit silence. Car door.
“Wallace? You okay?”
Sounded like Lyons had tired of waiting. Maybe he needed to stretch his legs. Maybe he was bored. She was pretty sure, however, he’d been asked to keep an eye on her, so maybe he was curious in a need-to-take-notes kind of way. She hadn’t wanted a guide to the kill site in the first place, and for someone of Lyons’s rank to volunteer for the job was more than a little unusual.
“Yes, sir, fine.”
Heather stood. Brushing dirt and leaves from her jeans, she turned and, ducking under low, slender branches, walked from the grove just in time to see Portland SAC Alex Lyons slide something into the pocket of his hoodie. Cell phone? she wondered. Blackberry? She walked across the grass to her car. Early afternoon sunshine sparked diamond dazzles from her sleek sapphire-blue Trans Am.
Lyons slouched against the passenger door, smoking. The breeze ruffled his curly blond hair. He looked at Heather, squinting in the sunshine. Lines crinkled around his green eyes, lending him rugged good looks and a Marlboro Man masculinity. Tall and lean-bodied, he wore weathered jeans, a gray Plan B hoodie, and black Rippers. She pegge
d him in his early thirties, but suspected at heart he remained forever twenty and golden.
“Get what you were looking for?” he asked, straightening. He dropped the cigarette to the pavement. Ground it out with a twist of his Rippers.
“Yes, sir. I appreciate you coming out with me on your day off.”
Lyons shrugged. “Not a problem. Glad to help.”
“Well, it wasn’t necessary,” she said. “And thanks for rounding up the Portland PD’s file on Higgins to compare with the Bureau’s file on the Claw-Hammer Killer.”
“Again, glad to help. Especially someone like you.”
“What do you mean—like me, sir?” Heather pulled open the Trans Am’s passenger door and scooted across the black leather interior to the driver’s seat. She grabbed her seat belt and strapped it shut.
Lyons slid into the passenger seat and closed the door. He fastened his seat belt. “I mean, aside from being a fellow agent, someone with a personal stake in the case.”
The smell of his cologne curled into the air, a cologne Heather remembered her brother wearing—Drakkar Noir—but in this case, its mingled lemon, sandalwood, and amber scent was edged with cigarette smoke.
“And all those sirs are way too formal for a day off,” he added with a smile. “How about you call me Alex and I’ll call you Heather.”
“Wow, good thing that happens to be my name.”
“Beautiful, smart, and a sense of humor,” Alex chuckled. “A killer combination.”
“You just caught me on a good day…. Alex.”
“So what’re your thoughts on the case after reviewing it?”
“Higgins was probably good for my mother’s murder,” Heather said. “But I’d like to know for sure.”
“I understand that completely.”
Heather keyed on the ignition. The Trans Am’s engine rumbled to life. She hit the gas and shifted the car through the gears to fifth, merging smoothly with the I-5 traffic.