Etched in Bone

  Fate was cycling around for the Fallen, and this time it came in the lovely form of a half-blood and damaged creawdwr named Dante Baptiste; the passing seconds of their coming Second Fall marked out in paint on a concrete floor.

  Teodoro nodded, satisfied with his efforts, then gathered up both paint can and brush and rose smoothly to his feet. Once the circle had dried, he would tack the carpet and pad back down over it.

  In his stocking feet—to spare his fine leather Italian shoes any accidental paint drips—he padded behind his desk. His cell phone bumbled like an angry bee against his desk blotter. Putting the paint can and brush on top of the cloth bag he’d carried them in, he sank into his desk chair and grabbed the phone. A quick glance at the caller ID confirmed the call was one he was expecting—Purcell.

  The field agent started speaking without any preamble as soon as Teodoro flipped the cell open.

  “I picked the kid up at the Baton Rouge airport and got her all settled at Doucet-Bainbridge,” Purcell said. “She seems happy enough. Especially since she thinks her goddamned psycho angel will be coming to see her.”

  “And so he will. Once you’ve fetched Wallace.”

  “I gotta admit, seeing that kid was a shock. She looks exactly like Chloe.”

  “Looks, yes,” Teodoro agreed. “But Violet is very much herself.”

  “All right. I’m heading back to New Orleans. Anything else?”

  “No. Just be sure that Wallace dies in front of S. Make sure he watches.”

  “Understood.”

  A click, then dead air. Purcell had ended the call in the same abrupt manner in which he had started it.

  Teodoro tossed his cell onto the desk blotter, then leaned into his chair, the springs creaking comfortably beneath him as he rocked back. He felt a sharp pang of regret as he thought of Violet.

  She yearned to see her angel again, unaware that the next visit from her dark-haired savior would most likely result in her death—a live-action replay of a heart-breaking dance in a white-padded room, a hook curving from the ceiling.

  According to the memories and knowledge Teodoro had gleaned from Caterina Cortini’s mind, the young creawdwr was struggling for balance, for a handhold in the present, but kept slipping into the past.

  Heather Wallace seemed to anchor him. Steady him. Calm him.

  Maybe reenacting Chloe’s death wouldn’t be necessary, Teodoro mused. Maybe simply seeing Violet/Chloe in that sanitarium would be enough to tip Dante Baptiste into madness, especially after watching Heather Wallace die.

  Thinking of lifeless white faces and funeral blossoms, Teodoro wished with every bit of his heart that it could be so.

  He’d always had a soft spot for children.

  43

  ALL HE CAN TAKE

  NEW ORLEANS,

  CLUB HELL

  March 29

  DANTE SLEPT ON HIS stomach, his face turned toward the door, black tendrils of hair across his face. But his face wasn’t peaceful and his dreams weren’t pleasant. She’d felt his nightmares scraping against her shields, drawing her up from sleep.

  Wearing only a fleur-de-lis T-shirt and panties, Heather sat down on the mattress beside him and held her breath as she gently pulled the sheet back. The skin on Dante’s back was white and flawless again, the third-degree burns healed.

  Heather released her pent-up breath in a low, relieved sigh. Dante’s intoxicating scent of burning leaves and November frost filled her nostrils, the gut-wrenching reek of scorched flesh gone.

  She didn’t know how long it normally took for injuries as devastating as Dante’s burns to heal, but she had a feeling the blood De Noir had forced past Dante’s lips during their highspeed power boat race across Lake Pontchartrain had helped accelerate the process.

  Heather caressed Dante’s sweat-damp hair back from his pale, beautiful face. It hurt to realize that he wasn’t resting, not really, not with his fevered heat, the tight line of his jaw, the blood oozing from his nose, the tension in his Sleep-caught body.

  I think he’s had all he can take, doll. Heart and mind. If I knew a way to hide him from the world until he could regain his balance, until he had the chance to face his past on his own terms and reconcile himself to it …

  Too late. Much too late.

  Heather didn’t harbor any doubts that Dante blamed himself for what had happened to Trey. She also knew that he wouldn’t forgive himself for it either.

  And she would never forgive Trey.

  Heather raked her fingers through her sleep-tangled hair, a red-hot knot of anger burning in her belly. It pissed her off that Trey had used Dante to commit suicide-by-Maker or whatever he’d been trying to accomplish. She wished she knew what the web-runner had whispered in Dante’s ear as he’d embraced him.

  Whatever it had been, he’d used Dante—no matter his reasons, no matter his grief or his need to avenge his sister, no matter how wobbly his sanity—he’d wielded Dante like a razor blade to the wrist, and she would never forget that.

  She honestly didn’t know if Trey was dead or simply transformed. The web-runner had vanished from the yacht in a blue wink of light, then all hell had broken loose.

  Heather locks her arms around De Noir’s neck so he can use both hands to scoop Dante’s drugged form up from the glistening hide of the half-Made heaving and rolling leviathan. De Noir rises with powerful strokes of his wings, Dante clasped between his hands.

  Trey flickers like a dying light, then blinks out.

  Heather’s alarm klaxons blare as all outside sound seems to vanish, as though the vast lake has sucked in its breath. For a microsecond, the night holds utterly still.

  Then a deep, bone-vibrating whoomph shatters the silence as the yacht/leviathan detonates, but Heather never sees the explosion, never sees Dante knocked from his father’s grip. De Noir has already swept his wings around to shield her.

  A concussive blast of superheated air hammers into them, bowling them across the sky. Heather clings to the fallen angel with every bit of her Von-enhanced strength, battered even within the shelter of his wings. Her blood chills when she sees an orange glow backlighting De Noir’s wings and realizes he is on fire. And that they are falling.

  They hit the lake with bruising force. As Heather sinks, struggling for air and entangled in De Noir’s wings and her trench coat, she hears the water hiss as it douses the flames.

  Someone splashes into the water, seizing her with steel-fingered hands, hauling her to the surface and to the waiting power boat. Von. The nomad lifts her up so Silver can pull her in.

  Dante lies unconscious in a puddle of water on the boat’s bottom, his back a charred and blistered mess. Heart pounding, Heather sinks down beside him. Her hands sweep over him, seeking other injuries, and she discovers that his latex jeans have melted to his legs in a few spots. Her stomach knots.

  De Noir joins them a moment later, his blackened and burned flesh already healing, his hair once more spilling like black silk down to his waist. He is nude, his trousers having burned away, but holds himself with an easy and unself-conscious grace. Heather’s cheeks heat as she realizes Dante has inherited more than just large wings from his father.

  De Noir kneels on Dante’s other side. He slices a talon along the inside of his wrist and, as the blood wells up, smears it across Dante’s lips.

  KNUCKLES RAPPED ON THE bedroom door. “Heather? You awake?” Annie’s voice.

  “Yeah, come in,” Heather replied, pulling the sheet back over Dante.

  The door swung open and Annie stepped inside in a swirl of cigarette smoke and cherry-vanilla perfume. She wore a black safety-pinned T-shirt reading Drama Queen in white letters and a purple taffeta skirt over fishnet tights and her Doc Martens.

  Heather felt a pang of concern as she took in her sister’s colorless face, the purplish smudges beneath her eyes. Annie still hadn’t said a word to her about the positive pregnancy test—not that there’d been time.

  Maybe Heather would have to initia
te the conversation herself, take Annie out for a po’boy sandwich and a walk along the river: a sister-to-sister conversation away from all the guys—mortal and nightkind.

  “What’s up?” Heather asked.

  Annie shouldered the door shut behind her. Her gaze flicked to Dante, then back to Heather. “A couple of people are downstairs asking for you and Gorgeous-but-Deadly. People with that fucking official stink on ’em, y’know?”

  Heather sat up straight, her pulse picking up speed. “Did they give names?”

  Annie shrugged. “Yeah, Mary something and Emmett Tibbie-something, I think. A black chick with that nightkind vibe and a tall Clint Eastwood–looking guy, but young For a Few Dollars More Eastwood, not old, withered Gran Torino Eastwood.”

  “Who’s on duty downstairs?”

  “Jack and Eli. And Dante’s hottie dad. Antoine had to go to work.”

  “Good. Tell them to keep a close eye on this pair,” Heather said. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  With a nod, Annie pirouetted around in a rustle of taffeta and left the room.

  Heather leaned down and brushed her lips against Dante’s. Tasted blood and amaretto and brine. “Je t’aime,” she whispered, trailing her finger along his jaw.

  Heather winced as she rose to her feet. She hurt all over, her muscles and neck stiff and sore and aching, as though she’d been air-bagged in a high-speed fender bender. She figured she’d be feeling a helluva lot worse if not for Von’s blood and De Noir’s sheltering wings.

  She padded over to the French windows and carefully twitched the heavy curtain aside just enough for her to take a peek outside. Rose and purple painted the horizon in soft, silky color. Nearly sunset. She patted the curtain back into place.

  She dressed in a hurry, pulling on black hip-huggers and a tailored indigo shirt with silver buttons. She slipped a fresh clip into her Colt, then tucked the gun into her jeans at the small of her back. Glad that she’d already washed up and brushed her teeth, she finger-combed her hair, then strode for the door, Von’s words playing through her memory once more.

  I think he’s had all he can take, doll. Heart and mind. If I knew a way to hide him from the world until he could regain his balance, until he had the chance to face his past on his own terms and reconcile himself to it …

  She intended to block the world from Dante and give him that long overdue chance—before it was forever beyond his reach. Her throat tightened, ached. She could only hope that it wasn’t already too late.

  Heather pulled the door open and stepped out, nearly running into someone standing on the other side of the threshold. Heart in her throat, she was already reaching for her gun when she realized the someone was De Noir.

  “Jesus Christ! I need a bell for you too.”

  He regarded her with amused and very unsurprised black eyes—he’d no doubt heard her crossing the floor—his hand lifted, fingers half-curled as if about to knock. His tall, tight-muscled physique was draped in a nicely tailored purple silk shirt and black slacks.

  “My apologies,” he rumbled. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I just came up to suggest that I stay with Dante while you’re out of the room.”

  Heather exhaled in relief. “I like that suggestion. Yes. Please stay. I don’t want him to wake up alone, not tonight, not after what happened.”

  The amusement faded from De Noir’s eyes. He slipped past her and into the lamp-lit room. “Nor do I,” he said, his gaze lighting on her face again. “Go. Do whatever you need to and don’t worry about Dante.”

  “Thank you.”

  De Noir quietly closed the bedroom door.

  Turning, Heather walked away, heading for the stairs.

  THE PAIR WITH THE official stink stood together at the bar between Eli and Jack. The drummer, forearms resting on the bar’s polished surface, chatted amiably with the tall, ginger-haired and handsome Clint Eastwood lookalike—Christ, Annie was right on the money about that—both men’s expressions relaxed and full of eye-crinkling smiles. Like long-lost cousins reunited for a Labor Day family barbecue.

  The woman leaning against the bar beside Clint Eastwood wore black slacks, a white blouse, and a black suede jacket. She was small and slender, but curvy. Heather would bet she was shorter than her own five-four. She also happened to be gorgeous, with shining black hair pulled back in a high ponytail and smooth espresso-dark skin.

  And another thing Annie had been right on the money about?

  She was nightkind.

  Captured light glowed in her eyes as she swiveled around with a preternatural grace as Heather stepped off the stairs. How is it that she’s up and around and not still Sleeping?

  A few mortal heartbeats later, her partner straightened and directed his gaze in Heather’s direction also.

  As she crossed the dance floor to the bar, Heather said, “I hear you’re looking for me. Who are you and what do you want?”

  The woman glided forward, her boot heels soundless against the wood floor. “I’m Merri Goodnight, and this is my partner, Emmett Thibodaux,” she said, nodding her head at Clint Eastwood. “We’re Shadow Branch field agents—or at least we used to be.”

  “Until the mofos decided to mess with our minds and we went on the run,” Thibodaux put in, his voice a soft Louisiana drawl. “Now we’re looking for a way to keep alive and to be of service to y’all in the process.”

  “We also have a gift for Dante Baptiste.” Goodnight held up a flash drive between her thumb and index fingers, and Heather’s heart started pounding. “His past.”

  44

  DROWNING

  NEW ORLEANS,

  CLUB HELL

  March 29

  YOU AIN’T LOSING ME, Tee-Tee. We ain’t done, you and me.

  Not yet.

  Dante drew in a deep breath and opened his eyes, pain shimmering in his mind like heat lightning. Before-Sleep images strobed through his memory: stark and unforgiving and utterly unchangeable.

  The boat ramp on Lake Pontchartrain. The light-pearled yacht. Trey wavering like water, like dimming light, between his hands.

  Pain scraped his heart hollow.

  “Trey,” Dante whispered. “Fuck.”

  “Trey had a choice last night.” Lucien’s deep voice. “You didn’t. You can’t blame yourself for his decision.”

  But Dante knew that wasn’t true. The conversation he’d had a few nights ago with Von in a rain-wet Colorado freeway rest stop steamrolled through his mind.

  Like it or not, you’re a creawdwr. There ain’t been one in thousands of years. Everyone’s gonna want a piece of you, from mortals to nightkind to Fallen. And you ain’t ready to face any of them.

  I wanna face them. Torch ’em. Burn ’em to the fucking ground. The FBI’s smearing Heather’s name and rep and setting her up to be a future suicide, and the SB wants to take her apart to see what makes her tick—because of me.

  You. Ain’t. Ready. To. Face. Any. Of. Them. You have power like no one else in this world. And if you don’t learn how to use it, how to control it, you’ll destroy the world and everyone on it—including Heather.

  And Heather’s soft plea from the night before underscored Von’s warning: Forget about Mauvais for tonight. You’re not ready to face him. Wait until you are.

  Dante knew beyond doubt that if he’d just listened to Von and Heather, if he’d just shoved aside his stubborn pride and fury, last night never would’ve happened and Trey would now be waking up from Sleep in his room down the hall.

  “Ain’t true. Ain’t Trey’s fault, and I ain’t letting you blame him,” Dante said. “I can’t even keep myself in the here-and-now. I knew I was a fucking danger to everyone. And I chose to lead everyone to that goddamned rendezvous and right into a trap.”

  “I’m not trying to lay blame,” Lucien said, his voice soothing—the gentle stroke of a hand against a fevered temple. “But you don’t need to either. What happened, has happened. It can’t be changed. Trey stole the boat, raced to the yacht, and w
e followed to his aid. And when you lost control of the creu tân, he embraced you and allowed you to transform him.” He paused. “Do you know where he is?”

  Dante blinked. “What?”

  “You transformed him. You didn’t unmake him. So he must be somewhere.”

  You made me into something that ain’t never gonna be stopped by a trap or bullets or distance, something that Mauvais won’t be able to hide from …

  Hope curled like fresh blood through Dante. “Then he’s fucking hunting Mauvais. If I can find him, I can change him back—”

  “If he wants it. And not until you’ve learned how to control your power.”

  Dante shoved himself up into a sitting position on the bed, the sheet whispering across his thighs. The room spun. He lowered his head and blood from his nose spattered the sheet. He dug his fingers into the mattress as he waited for the world to finish its dizzying pirouette.

  He felt Lucien behind him, seated in the armchair, radiating a calm, powerful energy. A soothing presence. Dante drew in a breath, inhaled his father’s earthy scent.

  A pang of regret pierced him. I’ve missed him.

  Dante’s back muscles suddenly spasmed, his body remembering the explosion, the smell of burning flesh, and the water’s cold touch. Heather shielded by Lucien’s wings.

  “Catin,” he breathed and reached for the steady flame of her presence.

 

 

 

  Dante threw back the sheet and rose to his feet. He stumbled as the room whirled, spun, and dipped. A heated hand locked around his biceps. Kept him on his feet.

  “No, child,” Lucien said. “You’re not ready.”

  Dante shut his eyes as the room played carousel, pain throbbing at his temples.

  Relief flooded in through their bond. He felt Heather’s soft lips on his, a kiss brimming with blood-stirring promises, then she was gone, her shields tight.