“Quitte moi tranquille,” he muttered, sleepily swatting at her hand, his eyes fluttering shut again.
“Dante, hey, c’mon, wake up.” Annie pushed his silky hair back from his face and behind his silver hoop-rimmed ear. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw blood trickling from his nose and over his lips.
Migraine. Fuck. At least his hands aren’t doing their blue-glowy thing. Wait. Maybe it’d be better if they were glowing.
Footsteps thundered up the stairs.
“C’mon, wake up!” Annie urged. “Heather’s in trouble! They’re taking her away.” Desperate and out of ideas, she slapped Dante, rocking his head to one side. “Wake up!” As she pulled her hand back for another blow, Dante’s fingers locked around her wrist in a heated steel grip.
His eyes opened. A rim of dark brown slashed with red circled his dilated pupils. Baring his fangs, he hissed, a chilling and primal sound. Annie froze, the hair lifting on the back of her neck. She saw no hint of recognition in his eyes.
“Hey, dork,” she said through a mouth gone dry. She stared at his slender, deadly fangs. “C’mon, it’s me. Annie. Heather’s in trouble.”
Dante’s dark brows slashed down and his muscles corded as he visibly struggled to shove away the pain or nightmares or fucking brutal memories that were busy hiding reality from his perception at the moment. “Heather,” he whispered.
Annie remembered what Heather had told her just a few nights earlier.
Sometimes he slips between worlds—from now to then. But he’s fighting like hell to stay here and now with us.
“We’re at Club Hell, since your house burned down,” Annie said hurriedly, remembering how Heather would sometimes remind Dante of where and when he was. “But it’s daytime, and Heather’s in deep—”
Dante’s dilated eyes focused. “P’tite, what—” His words cut off as his gaze shifted past her, then several things happened with breathtaking speed.
Something hot splashed Annie’s chest and spattered her throat, her lips.
Dante tossed Annie across the hall.
Annie saw blood streaming in dark rivulets from a hole in Dante’s chest. She had time to think His heart before her head slammed into the opposite wall.
A gunshot exploded through the air.
Black flecks sprinkled her vision. Pain moshed through her skull. “No,” Annie groaned, struggling to get to her hands and knees. Something stung the side of her neck. Cold swirled into her veins.
“Jesus fucking Christ! That was one helluva lucky shot, Wallace. Good thing your daughter made the bloodsucker pause. Otherwise he woulda been on his feet and on us.”
“No shit.” Her father sounded shaken.
Annie plucked the dart from her neck, dropping it onto the carpet with fingers that already felt numb. She crawled over to Dante. He lay crumpled on his side, one pale arm across his waist, the other flung above his head. Like he was Sleeping.
Except for all the blood glistening on his white skin.
“Dante?” Annie choked. She grabbed his shoulder and gently shook it. “Dante?”
Less gentle hands seized her by the shoulders and pulled her back to the wall she’d dented with her head. “Keep away from him,” her father said.
Cold leached the strength from Annie’s muscles, short-circuited her reflexes. Frosted her thoughts. “You fucking bastard,” she slurred. Her lips felt Novocain-numb. “Why the fuck did you shoo’ him?”
“Hush, just go to sleep, sweet pea,” James Wallace murmured. He crossed the hall to stand over Dante’s body, his Glock in hand. Sweat beaded his forehead.
Despite the numbing effects of the drugs spiraling through Annie’s system, dread lodged like a pail of pebbles in her belly. She swallowed hard. She tasted blood, coppery and somehow sweet, like grapes, on her lips—Dante’s blood.
James Wallace seemed to study Dante, his gaze sweeping his body from head to toe. “His pictures don’t prepare you—” He bit off his words, then shook his head, his face disgusted. Dropping to one knee beside Dante, he pressed the muzzle of his gun against Dante’s blood-slicked chest, above his heart. He squeezed off two more rounds. Then he placed the gun against Dante’s temple.
“No,” Annie begged. “Daddy, no, please.”
James Wallace ignored her. “For Heather,” he said, his voice low and level and Arctic cold. He pulled the trigger. Blood spattered the wall. The stink of cordite and scorched blood curled into the air.
Annie screamed—or tried to, anyway. All that came out of her numbed vocal cords was a muted groan.
“He won’t be getting up again, not with those bullets inside of him,” James Wallace said, rising to his feet. He looked at the pair of black uniforms who’d accompanied him up the stairs. “Shoot the others.”
Annie felt her drug-iced body slump over onto the carpet. She lay there, helpless, tears blurring her vision, scalding her face. She heard doors being kicked open. Heard two more shots—one for Silver, and one for Von. She sobbed.
James William Wallace stopped beside her, his shoes gleaming with blood. Kneeling, he slung her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, then straightened with a grunt and headed down the stairs.
Annie’s view of the floor dimmed, then melted away into darkness. She wondered if the drugs numbing her body and her grieving heart would hurt the baby. Then she wondered if it would matter. Wondered if she even cared.
As Annie tumbled into unconsciousness, three words followed her into the dark, three words spoken by the man who had once been her father.
“Burn it down.”
3
A BITTER PILL
NEW ORLEANS
ST. LOUIS NO. 3 CEMETERY
Three days earlier …
Night of March 27–28
MOTHERFUCKING VAMPIRE WAS BREAKING into a cemetery.
Parked across the street from crypt-filled St. Louis No. 3 and the black van Dante Prejean and Heather Wallace had arrived in, Shadow Branch section chief Sam Gillespie watched as Prejean boosted the petite FBI agent over the cemetery’s locked wrought-iron gate, following her in a heart-stopping blur of motion a second later.
The pair trotted down the cemetery’s central cement path and out of sight.
Gillespie tipped back his bottle of Pacifico and drained it, the beer tasting warm and a little flat. Being the last of the six-pack he’d brought with him, he’d nursed it to make it last. He unwrapped a stick of Juicy Fruit and popped it into his mouth. Placing the empty bottle on the rented Nissan’s passenger side floorboards, he grabbed his binoculars and slipped out of the car. He glanced at the trunk. He wanted to take the scoped sniper rifle with him—just in case the moment was finally right.
The moment to slay a monster packaged in a riveting and dangerous form; a monster who unmade people and murdered others. A monster fathered by a being that, until two days ago, Gillespie had been blissfully unaware existed—a motherfucking fallen angel.
A monster partially created and released by the SB itself—Dante Prejean.
Yeah, great. Sure. And if a curious cop stopped to see what he was doing loitering outside a closed cemetery in the wee hours? A black man with a rifle? Let alone a black man with a rifle babbling about slaying monsters and making the world a safer place? Gillespie shook his head. He could just imagine how well that would go over. He’d be Tasered to the ground and pissing himself before he could even reach for his ID.
He couldn’t afford to be arrested. Couldn’t afford for the SB to discover where their AWOL section chief had gone or what he planned to do to their pet monster. But he also couldn’t afford to let an opportunity to put Prejean down slip past him.
Gillespie scrubbed a hand over his head, the buzzed-to-the-scalp hair smooth beneath his palm. No choice. He’d have to risk the rifle. He walked behind the Nissan and unlocked the trunk, then bent into the interior, his Gore-Tex jacket rustling. Tossed aside the blue tarp and flipped open the latches on the rifle case.
Once he had the rifle o
ut of its smart-foam interior and the scope screwed onto the barrel, he wrapped it up in the tarp. Trotting across the street, Gillespie headed for the shadows beneath an oak rooted into the strip of lawn along the sidewalk in front of the cemetery gates. The burnt-oil stink of exhaust from cars cruising the street behind him stung his nostrils. Considering it was after midnight, the amount of traffic surprised him.
Looks like the city comes to life after midnight. A vampire of brick and concrete and wrought iron, cloaked in ghost-gray Spanish moss.
Night-thick shadows stretched from beneath the oak’s twisted branches, veiling Gillespie from the traffic rushing along Esplanade Avenue. He rested his back against the oak’s rough trunk, the tarp-hidden rifle propped beside him. He slipped off his gold wire-rimmed glasses, folded them, then tucked them into a pocket of his jacket.
Lifting the binoculars, he scanned the cemetery for any sign of Prejean and Wallace among the white and gray tombs.
A flash of movement between a couple of moonlight-washed crypts at the cemetery’s center caught his attention. Prejean, streetlight winking from the steel ring in the bondage collar strapped around his throat, had straightened from a crouch, his gaze on the night sky.
Even through binoculars, the bloodsucker’s beauty was mesmerizing—a fact photos alone couldn’t adequately prepare a person for, a fact that had caught Gillespie off guard the first time he’d seen the bastard in the flesh. Had slowed his reactions.
But not this time. Not ever again.
For this go-round, Gillespie had the advantage of distance and secrecy; Prejean was unaware of his presence.
A careful sighting through the rifle’s scope, a twitch of the finger against the trigger, and Prejean’s blood and brains would be spattered all over the weathered white crypt he and rogue FBI agent Heather Wallace now stood beside.
A bullet wouldn’t kill Prejean. No.
But a bullet would put the fucking vampire down long enough for Gillespie to scale the cemetery’s locked wrought-iron gates and finish him. A bit of gasoline and a match ought to do the trick. At least he hoped so. To be honest, he wasn’t sure. Dante Prejean wasn’t a regular vampire. Not by a long shot.
True Blood and more …
Gillespie remembered the last time he’d fired a gun at Prejean, just a few nights ago in the parking lot of a worn-down motel at the other end of the country in Oregon.
Prejean lowers his hand and knots both into fists. His gaze locks with Gillespie’s. The bloodsucker’s coiled muscles unwind. Gillespie pulls the trigger and keeps pulling, but Prejean is gone.
A semi hauling steel and cruising at the speed of light slams into Gillespie, bulldozing him down to the pavement …
He pushed away the unwelcome memory of heated lips touching his throat and the twin stabs of pain that followed as Prejean’s fangs had pierced his skin.
And the reason why Gillespie was still alive and drawing in air?
An innocent child, caught in the crossfire.
A mother’s anguished scream cuts through the pop-pop-pop of gunfire in the parking lot. An anguished scream that draws Prejean away like a dog to a whistle.
Goddamned fucking vampires. Goddamned fucking Prejean.
Ten years ago, like most people on the planet, Gillespie hadn’t even known vampires existed outside of bestselling YA books and sexy, fake blood–drenched series on HBO and Showtime. Most people on the planet still didn’t know the truth. He often wished he’d also remained in blissful ignorance.
Not only did vampires exist, they participated in every level of government. Always had. Always would. Just as they would always feed on the blood of humans.
Hell, since the SB had recruited Gillespie ten years ago from the FBI and had then stripped him of his illusions, he’d worked alongside several vamps. Some good, some not so much. He hadn’t always liked it, but he had adapted. Learned to look the other way when necessary.
But not now. Not when he had a chance to do something that truly mattered. To make things right after a lifetime of failure, cowardice, and fuckups.
Kill a born vampire—a deadly and gorgeous bloodsucker who’d transformed a head-shot little girl clutched in her wailing mother’s arms into someone else entirely.
How had Prejean done it? How had it even been possible?
Blue flames flare around Prejean’s hands, engulfing the child cradled in his arms. Black hair ripples into red tresses, golden skin lightens to freckled and fair, life-sparked blue replaces empty jade green eyes.
Gillespie shoved aside the memory. He wished for another cold bottle of Pacifico or six to wash the bad taste out of his mouth. He chewed the piece of good ol’ Juicy Fruit gum with grim determination.
What about Wallace? Take her out too?
Gillespie sighted in on the attractive redhead, his hands sweating around the binoculars. An FBI agent with a stellar career—until she’d met Dante Prejean and been corrupted. Gillespie remembered the words Wallace had spoken to him a couple of nights ago in the motel parking lot outside Damascus, Oregon.
They’re lying to you. Ask about Bad Seed.
I know about Bad Seed. I know what Dante Prejean is.
I doubt that.
Wallace had been right. He’d had no idea. But that had changed. He also realized it was too late to save the lovely fed; she was lost to Dante-fucking-Prejean, body and soul. And that was a goddamned shame.
He’d make sure that Prejean paid for her too.
But the question now was, what the hell were they doing in the cemetery?
Gillespie breathed in the cool, moist scent of dew-slick grass and sweet cherry blossoms as he studied Wallace and Prejean. The redhead, wearing a purple tank top and black leather pants underneath her unbelted black trench, dropped into a crouch in front of a crypt, her expression perplexed as she studied the path. What were they looking for?
Prejean bent and scooped something up from the path. Gillespie frowned. A rock? His heart slammed against his ribs when blue flames flickered to life around the vamp’s pale hands, sparked from the rings on his fingers and thumbs. Prejean bowed his head, his glossy black hair swinging forward to curtain his face. Wallace stood beside her lover, her expression concerned.
What the hell is the little shit doing now?
“Don’t move,” a woman’s low voice said from behind Gillespie. A familiar voice. One he couldn’t quite place. Something hard jabbed into the base of his skull.
Gillespie froze, his fingers still wrapped around the binoculars. Sweat broke out on his forehead when he heard the click of a trigger easing back. “I’m not moving,” he managed to say in a level tone.
“Must admit, I’m surprised to see you here, Chief Gillespie,” the woman said. “I expected someone lower on the totem pole to be sent to safeguard SB interests. Or is this Underwood’s idea of punishment? Have a few beers too many on the job?”
Safeguard? Relief washed through Gillespie. Whoever this woman was, she thought he’d been assigned to protect Prejean. She knew his name and his reputation for boozing, knew just how low he’d fallen in Special Ops Director Underwood’s regard.
A fellow Shadow Branch agent? If so, as much as he didn’t like it, he would have to kill her before she reported his presence in New Orleans.
But she’d said “SB interests,” not “our interests.”
“I haven’t yet discovered what constitutes too many beers,” Gillespie replied, allowing his brain time to root around in his memory for a face to match the familiar voice. “Whose interests are you safeguarding?”
“Certainly not Dante Prejean’s.”
Interesting. “Perhaps we have something in common, then.”
The woman snorted. “Oh, I doubt that.” She pressed the gun barrel harder against Gillespie’s skull. “Lower the binoculars, but keep your hands up.”
Gillespie did as instructed, looping the binoculars strap around his neck, then lifting his hands, slow and easy. “I’m not safeguarding SB interests, ma’am,” h
e said quietly, still trying to place her voice. He felt her gaze burning a hole through his skull. “And Underwood doesn’t know I’m here.”
At least not yet. But time was running out.
“If that’s the case, what are you doing here?” she asked.
“Safeguarding human interests by killing Prejean.”
“And what are your plans for Wallace?”
The woman’s voice clicked then, a slot sliding into place inside Gillespie’s mind. And the knowledge shocked him like a screwdriver into an electrical outlet.
Monica Rutgers. FBI. Assistant Director in Charge. His mind scrabbled for a reason why she would be in New Orleans instead of at her desk in FBI headquarters in D.C. She was years and many pay grades away from field work.
Instinct guided his next words. “I have no interest in Wallace, ma’am,” he lied. “Just Prejean. But why are you here?”
“You can drop the ‘ma’am,’ Rutgers will do. I’ve resigned and I’m here as a private citizen.”
Gillespie stared at the black wrought iron gate in front of him, stunned. Resigned? When had that happened, and why?
“But it seems that you’re right, Chief Gillespie. We do have something in common, after all.”
“That is?”
“We both want Prejean dead,” Rutgers said.
Gillespie’s pulse picked up speed. “We might have a better chance of accomplishing that together.”
“Perhaps. What’s he doing in the cemetery?”
Gillespie started to shake his head, but the painful scrape of the gun barrel against his scalp aborted the movement. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “He and Wallace seem to be looking for someone or something.”
“Well, then, put those binoculars to use, Chief, and let’s see if they’ve found what they’re looking for.”
The gun barrel’s pressure vanished from the back of his head and Gillespie exhaled in relief. He glanced at the woman as she stepped up beside him.