So that was it. Goddamned Trey. More fallout from his decision.
Annie’s words replayed through Heather’s memory: Dante’s gonna hurt you, Heather. Not because he wants to, but because he can’t fucking help it.
She had a feeling Dante now harbored the same belief. And she found herself wondering if her sister had shared those words with him too, and wishing Annie hadn’t—no matter how true they might be.
Heather exhaled in frustration. “Don’t worry, I won’t,” she replied. “But if he thinks he’s going to play the noble I-must-send-you-away-to-save-you card, he’s dead wrong—especially if he thinks I’m going to meekly comply.”
Von blinked. A slow smile played along his mustache-framed lips. “I doubt Dante expects meek, doll—not where you’re concerned.”
“Christ. I would hope not.”
Heather turned and marched down the hall to the opened French windows at its end, and stepped onto the fire escape landing beyond its breeze-fluttered curtains. She climbed down the black iron steps to the courtyard, following the furious, heartbreaking sound of Dante’s guitar.
Dante sat on a wrought-iron bench underneath a flowering dogwood tree wearing jeans and collar and nothing else, his guitar nestled against his thighs, his hands blurring across the strings. The music blazing out from beneath his fingers scorched the night.
Moonlight glinted from the black wing of hair falling across his pale face, glinted from his rings, shimmered against his milk-white skin—a part of him.
She could almost imagine Von saying: He is the night.
Heather side-stepped a fallen planter, dirt and yellow rose petals spilling across the courtyard stones, and sat beside him, heart aching, throat tight as she listened to his wordless song of loss and rage.
He was grieving, his song a violent, defiant prayer.
Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.
And the only god listening was himself.
After her trip to Gehenna, Heather was beginning to believe that Dante might be, as a Maker, an actual god—or damn near. Did that possibility scare her? Hell, yes. Would it chase her away? Hell, no.
When Dante’s black-painted fingernails strummed the last chord, Heather leaned forward, cupped his fevered face between her hands, and kissed him thoroughly. A kiss he returned, deep and tender, leaving behind the taste of copper and pomegranates, of blood.
“I’m not leaving you,” she whispered against his lips, breathing in his smoky autumn scent. “You can’t make me. It’s my choice and I refuse to let you take it from me. You don’t have the right.”
“Too dangerous, catin. Ain’t risking you.”
“That’s my decision, not yours. I choose you, Baptiste, and everything that comes with you.”
“Can’t let you do that.”
“Dammit! It’s not up to you. If I want to stand beside you completely aware of the danger, you have no right to deny me.”
“Fuck, Heather.” Dante breathed out in exasperation. He shifted, his warm lips sliding away from hers. Heather felt the guitar disappear from between them, then heard a slight thump as Dante rested it against the flagstones. He straightened, his dark and dilated gaze meeting hers, fire smoldering in his eyes.
Heather returned his glare. “I’m standing beside you—like it or not. And I ‘ain’t asking permission.’ “
“So I don’t get a say in this?” he growled, jumping to his bare feet.
“No.”
“I’m trying to keep you alive, dammit! And just as you are. Why the fuck you fighting me on this?”
“Because you’re worth fighting for!” Heather stood, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. “I’m willing to take my chances, Baptiste—with you.”
“You’re worth fighting for too, catin, don’t you get it? I would burn the world to fucking ash for you.” Dante looked away. Swallowed hard. His hands flexed into fists. “If I ever hurt you. If I ever killed—”
“You won’t. I trust you.”
“Don’t.” Dante’s head whipped around and a dark, desperate fury simmered in his eyes. “Don’t you dare fucking trust me. Simone trusted me, so did Trey, and Gina and Jay. So did Chloe. And they’re all dead.”
Heather took a half pace forward and pressed her fingers against his lips, silencing him. “No,” she said. “That’s not going to happen. It’s not. The Fallen are going to teach you how to control your power. And you and me, we’re going to work on piecing together your broken past, so you can stay in the here-and-now.”
Dante shook his head, a denial forming on his lips, so Heather touched her other hand to his chest, resting her palm against the fever-hot skin above his heart.
“This is why,” she said softly. “Your heart won me, cher. Won me completely. So I’m not taking no for an answer. Got that?”
“Pigheaded woman,” Dante murmured, kissing her fingers. “T’es sûr de sa?”
“Pigheaded man,” Heather replied, removing her hand and kissing his lips. “And yes, I’m sure.”
Dante wrapped her up in his arms and carried her down to the courtyard’s stone floor. He stole her breath away with hot kisses and hungry hands and his hard body.
After the first time they made love among the dirt and rose petals and cool stone, Heather curled a lock of Dante’s silky hair behind his hoop-rimmed ear, then whispered into it, telling him about Merri Goodnight and Emmett Thibodaux and the gift they planned to give him the next night.
And shared in the buoyant hope she felt rising in his heart.
46
WILD CARD
NEW ORLEANS
CLUB HELL
March 30
JAMES WALLACE WATCHED AS Stevenson, black ski mask bunched on top of his head, bent and went to work on the lock on the club’s green-shuttered door. The man was a pro, less than sixty seconds—his skill learned during his stint in Special Forces.
Stevenson straightened and pocketed his picks. He glanced at James as he stepped back from the door. “It’s all yours.” He touched a finger to the com set curving against his jaw. “Barr’s confirmed that we successfully accessed the security company’s computers and switched off the alarm.”
James nodded. His leather gloves creaked as he flexed his fingers. “Wait here for my go-ahead,” he said.
“Will do.”
Easing the door open, James stepped inside. Fluorescent graffiti was scrawled on the hall’s black walls, and the air reeked of cigarettes and spilled beer. Neon buzzed at the entrance’s mouth, red light squiggling along the floor. A quick stroll down the dark hall, then he found himself standing beneath a sign commanding BURN.
* * *
“YOU WANT ANYTHING TO eat?” Heather asked when Annie slid onto a bar stool. Her sister’s hair stuck out at all angles in blue/black/purple spikes, and shadows bruised the skin beneath her eyes. Heather studied her, worried by her pallor.
Is her lack of color due to the pregnancy, or is Silver feeding on her?
“Sure,” Annie replied. “Do we have bagels? I’d murder and maim for a bagel and cream cheese.”
“You’re in luck. We happen to have both. No murdering or maiming required.”
“You say that like it’s a good thing,” Annie muttered, rubbing her face.
“Lah-lah-lah. Can’t hear you saying potentially criminal things.”
Annie smoked a cigarette in moody silence, one finger twisting a lock of purple hair, while Heather prepared breakfast—toasting a bagel, scooping seeds out of a cantaloupe she’d halved, brewing coffee.
Once a plate holding a cream cheese–slathered bagel had been parked in front of her, she stubbed out her cigarette and said, “I don’t know whether Dante has said anything or not, but it looks like I’m pregnant. Knocked up. With child. Expecting.”
“I’m familiar with the word pregnant, but thanks for all the synonyms,” Heather said, a smile curving her lips. “He’d mentioned that he suspected it, and I knew he’d picked up a pregnancy test kit for you, but he left it for
you to tell me.” She leaned her hip against the counter. “So how are you feeling?”
“I don’t know,” Annie admitted quietly. “It seems unreal—except for all the puking.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how I feel.”
“We need to get you to a doctor. Verify the results and go over your options if you really are pregnant.” Heather finished her raspberry jam and toast and carried her plate over to the sink. “You don’t need to make any decisions now.”
Turning on the faucet, Heather had just started rinsing her plate off when a voice sounded from the club entrance, a voice she hadn’t expected, not here and not now, a voice that, with two simple words, managed to ice her spine.
“Hey, Pumpkin.”
PURCELL WAS HUNKERED ON the fire escape in the jasmine and honeysuckle-perfumed courtyard behind Club Hell, preparing to break into the building through a pair of French windows, when the authoritative screech of brakes from out front propelled him back up the iron stairs and to the roof.
Crawling across the roof to the other side of the building, Purcell peered down into the sunlit, lightly trafficked street and saw two white vans with NOPD decals on the sides parked at law enforcement angles in front of the club.
But the scene felt hinky to Purcell. For one thing, the license plates weren’t government issue and the NOPD lettering on the vans seemed cheap and hasty.
A man wearing glasses and a tan trench coat climbed out of one and strode for the club’s green-shuttered front door, a guy in a black uniform hot on his heels. After the door’s lock had been picked—not standard law enforcement procedure, a battering ram was more likely—Tan Trench Coat had gone inside the club alone, his squad of black-uniformed goons/agents/mercs waiting near the door for his summons.
Before Tan Trench Coat disappeared from view, Purcell realized he’d seen the man’s face before—in Heather Wallace’s file—and recognized him as her father, FBI agent James Wallace.
Of all the things Purcell had envisioned possibly going wrong with the grab, of all the scenarios he’d played out in his head—someone walks in unexpectedly, S wakes from Sleep or worse, is waiting for him, a smile on his lips—he’d never imagined Wallace’s displeased father showing up and beating him to the punch and dragging his wayward daughter home.
If, indeed, that was what James Wallace had come to do. But considering the armed goons and the vehicles, Purcell felt pretty damned confident that was exactly why the fed was in New Orleans and inside Club Hell.
Talk about a goddamned wild card.
Pulling his cell phone free from his trousers pocket, Purcell punched in Díon’s number and, once the interrogator had answered, filled him in on the glitch in their plans.
“Follow Wallace if he removes his daughter from the club, then confiscate her and proceed with the plan,” Díon said.
“What if Papa Wallace gets in the way of said confiscation?”
“Whatever it takes, Purcell. Wallace’s daughter is intrinsic to our plan.”
“We’ve still got the kid. She might be enough.”
“Might be is not acceptable. We need Heather Wallace. Understood?”
“Yeah, understood,” Purcell grumbled, ending the call. He tucked his cell phone back into his pocket, then peered over the roof’s edge down into the street again.
What he saw sent his pulse skyrocketing through his veins. Two of Wallace’s goons were carrying Heather out of the club on a gurney. Her wrists were flex-cuffed and she appeared to be unconscious, her head turned to the side, her hair a spill of sunlight-sparked orange across her face. They loaded her into the back of one of the vans, then climbed inside the vehicle. It drove away, heading west down Saint Peter.
Purcell fumbled a pen from his jacket pocket and jotted down the van’s license plate number on the inside of his wrist.
Shit, shit, shit.
Things were going south fast and in a big way. He rubbed a gloved hand over his face, wondering if there was still a way to salvage the situation. By the time he climbed down from the roof of Club Hell and sprinted to his car, the van would be long gone and impossible to follow.
But he could always pull up the license plate number and track the vehicle back to its registered owner and, hopefully, to Heather Wallace. He had no doubt Wallace planned to take his daughter somewhere other than home. The man had to be worried about S hunting him down and reclaiming her.
Or not, Purcell reflected as muffled gun cracks echoed from within the building. He counted six shots. Sounded like payback was on Wallace’s agenda and the man was spreading a little bullet love around.
Good luck with that, man.
Purcell shook his head, a smile playing across his lips. He couldn’t blame the man, but it wouldn’t do him much good unless he knew how to kill a True Blood.
Purcell watched as James Wallace—followed by his two remaining henchmen—strode out of the club, his other daughter, Annie, slung like a rag doll over his shoulder. But as Wallace crossed the sidewalk, headed for the remaining van, an outraged shout echoed from down the street.
“Hey! What the hell y’all doing? Put her down, you!”
Hot coffee steamed on the sidewalk as two men tossed aside their to-go cups and raced toward the van, both with guns in hand. One was the heavy-muscled drummer, Jack Cheramie, and the other—Purcell felt a cold shock as recognized the drummer’s tall, ginger-haired companion.
AWOL field agent Emmett Thibodaux.
Well, well, well. What do you know? Wonder if HQ knows this is where their rogue agents landed?
Thibodaux halted, snapped his gun up, and squeezed off a round. The gunshot cracked through the quiet morning like an anvil dropping on glass. The smell of cordite wafted into the air.
James Wallace unceremoniously dropped his daughter onto the pavement and returned fire. From behind the van’s opened doors, Wallace’s uniformed henchmen did the same. Thibodaux shoved Cheramie into the doorway of a pizza parlor, then ducked down behind a rust-pocked old Crown Vic parked on the street.
A heart-pounding possibility lit up Purcell’s mind. Maybe the situation could still be salvaged. Without Heather Wallace, there was no guarantee that S would pay the sanitarium a visit—provided he was still breathing.
And if the little psycho was still breathing, why not just cart his bloodsucker ass to Doucet-Bainbridge and toss him inside instead of trying to lure him to the sanitarium? Bring Mohammed to the mountain, as it were. Or however that saying goes.
Adrenaline pulsed into Purcell’s veins. He liked that idea. Liked it much better than the thought of leaving a Sleeping and wonderfully unguarded S behind while he searched for a woman he might never find.
Everyone seems to be busy, so it’s now or never.
Rising to his feet in a half-crouch, Purcell hurried back across the roof to the fire escape and climbed down to the third floor again. He paused in front of the French windows, deciding there was no need for stealth since everyone still inside was either Sleeping or dead. No need to worry about noise.
Purcell broke one of the window’s panes with his Glock, shattered glass tinkling against the iron stairs, then reached in and unlocked it. He pulled the window open and stepped inside, his gaze riveted by a white figure lying on the floor halfway down the dim hallway.
The pungent smell of gasoline saturated the air. Acrid smoke drifted along the hallway, twisting up from the floors below. James Wallace had apparently ordered the place, and all the bloodsuckers it contained, put to the torch.
Good man. But lousy timing.
Coughing, Purcell hurried down the hall to the white form lying half on his side on the Persian carpet, blood glistening on chest and face, drenching his black hair. A helluva lot of blood.
S. And it looked like he’d taken more than one bullet.
Purcell stepped into the bedroom and grabbed the red velvet comforter from the bed. Something hissed at him, launching his heart into his throat, then an orange streak of fur raced out from underneath the bed
and into the hall.
With a twitch of self-disgust, Purcell realized that the orange lightning bolt had been a cat. Just a goddamned cat. Scooping up some clothing scattered on the floor—shirt, pants, boots—Purcell carried everything into the hall.
The smoke was thickening. Purcell drew in careful and shallow breaths, but even those seemed to squeeze the oxygen from his lungs. Pulling handcuffs from his jacket pocket, he knelt, cuffed S’s wrists, then rolled his limp, blood-smeared body into the comforter along with the clothes.
Sweat streaked Purcell’s face, trickled down his temples and into his eyes. Grunting and sweating and coughing, he finally managed to get S draped over his shoulder. He rose to his feet, grateful that the fucking little psycho wasn’t six-three and two-twenty. Small favors.
Once out the window and into the cool, fresh air, negotiating the fire escape with dead weight slung over his shoulder was tricky as hell, but the adrenaline pumping through his veins gifted him with a dexterity he normally lacked.
Slipping out of the courtyard gate with his burden, Purcell carried S to his car, rolled him into the trunk, then slammed it shut. He slipped behind the steering wheel, blood thrumming with adrenaline and exhilaration.
At long last, S would soon be where he belonged.
The Doucet-Bainbridge Sanitarium in Baton Rouge.
Purcell keyed on the engine, pulled the car out of the alley and into the street. As he circled around past the club, he saw De Noir’s black van screech to a slanted halt behind Wallace’s van, blocking it in—at least partially.
Purcell wished James Wallace luck.
47
IN THE CARE OF MONSTERS
NEW ORLEANS
CLUB HELL
March 30
LUCIEN ABSORBED THE SCENE beyond the windshield, numbering the combatants and their positions in one quick glance as he brought the van to a rubber-smoking stop behind the white NOPD-marked van angled in front of the club.