“Because I keep your backwater mind propped open?”
A smile quirked up one corner of Emmett’s mouth. “That’d be it.”
“Thing is, we need to find Baptiste,” Merri said, leaning back on the bed and resting on her elbows. “Maybe he headed home to New Orleans, maybe not. Galiana’s looking into it.”
Emmett opened his mouth, but whatever he was about to say was preempted by sudden rhythmic thuds shaking the wall, accompanied by a woman’s bored and toneless moans—“Yeah, that’s it. Uh-huh. Oh. Oh. Oh.”—and enthusiastic male grunts.
Again. One of the hazards of refuge by the hour.
Emmett glanced at his watch. “I’m gonna bet twenty this one’s done and snoozing in five minutes.”
“I’ve got your twenty. Three minutes, then out the door.”
Three minutes later, the steady thumping slowed, then stopped. Two minutes after that a faint snore buzzed through the wall.
A triumphant grin parted Emmett’s lips. “Given that we need our cash, I’ll take an IOU.”
“Generous. Just add it to my tab.”
“Roger that.” Emmett’s expression sobered. “Okay, before I was so noisily interrupted, I was gonna say, even if we find Baptiste, what’s to stop him from just flat-out killing us?” He jerked his head at the laptop resting on the ink-graffitied desk. “You saw what Bad Seed did to him, what he was twisted into. Hell, we even studied his handiwork in Seattle.”
Rodriguez stares up at the glass-domed ceiling light with half-lidded, milky eyes. His throat looks shredded, savaged …
“I’ve got a feeling that what we saw in Seattle was a case of Baptiste being used, his programming triggered,” Merri said. “Someone wanted Rodriguez dead, and they used Baptiste to do it.”
“Could be, yeah. And that someone could still be controlling Baptiste.”
“True,” Merri sighed. “That’s what we’ll have to figure out when we find him.”
“Like I said, what’s to stop him from flat-out killing us?”
“We’ve got something he’s going to want,” Merri replied. “You saw what those motherfuckers did to his memory.”
Emmett nodded, face grim. “Bastards tore it apart—more than once.”
“We can give him his past. Contained in a flash drive.”
“Would you be doing this if he wasn’t a True Blood?” Emmett asked quietly.
Merri sat back up, planted her elbows on her knees, and rested her chin in the cup of her hands. She met her partner’s steady gaze. “I’d like to think so,” she replied, “but I don’t know. His being a True Blood is a major factor for me. So is the fact that he was just a baby, a toddler, a child handed over to fuckedup people with fucked-to-shit agendas—just to see what would happen.”
“I hear you. I think of my kids and …” A muscle jumped in Emmett’s jaw. “But Baptiste isn’t a kid anymore, he’s twenty-three. He’s a killer. He’s proven that time and again. Bad Seed succeeded with him.”
“Did they? I’m not so sure. He protected the other kids in his foster homes, he loved—” She stopped talking, lifted her head, and held up a just-a-second hand as her mère de sang’s welcome sending brushed across her thoughts.
Galiana al-Qibtiyah greeted.
Galiana admitted.
Merri frowned.
A mental snort resonated through Merri’s mind.
Galiana’s thoughts stilled, a mental sigh.
Galiana sent.
Merri felt a smile curve her lips.
For a second, Merri felt Galiana’s cool, satin-smooth arms wrapped around her, smelled her clean sweet oranges and almonds scent, then the sensations wisped away as her mère de sang withdrew, their conversation finished.
“Baptiste is in New Orleans,” Merri said, shifting her attention outward and meeting Emmett’s gaze once more. “A car and essentials will be here soon.”
“How is Galiana, anyway?” Emmett asked. “Must be nice to speak to your family, let them know that you’re okay and where you are.”
Merri felt a double pinch of guilt and sympathy. “Look, if I couldn’t send to Galiana, she wouldn’t know any more than Mark does.”
“Which is nothing,” Emmett growled. He jumped to his feet and started pacing. “Mark doesn’t know what’s going on. Doesn’t know I ain’t coming home any time soon. Doesn’t know I’d like him to pack the kids up and go stay with my folks for a while.”
“Em, no. If Mark suddenly ups and takes off, the SB will know you’re in contact with him. He’ll be safer if he knows nothing. Your house landline will be tapped and his cell phone will be monitored.” Merri shook her head. “No contact. Let the SB think we’ve gone completely underground.”
“Shit, I don’t know if I can do that. Leave him and the kids high and dry with no idea what’s happened. Or what danger they might be in.”
“Mark’s in no danger,” Merri said, watching her partner figure-eight the room. “They’ll just keep surveillance on him and the kids and wait for you to make contact.”
Emmett stopped pacing. He looked at Merri. “And what happens when they get tired of waiting?”
“We’ll worry about that when and if.”
Emmett shook his head and folded his arms over his chest. “Not good enough, Merri. Not by half. You don’t have a partner or kids. You don’t know—”
Merri moved, blurring off the bed and onto her booted feet. She poked a finger into Emmett’s chest, cutting off his words. He looked down at her from his lordly six-three, face startled.
“How the hell would you know, Thibodaux?” she demanded, voice harsh. “I was mortal once. A slave, remember? Nothing belonged to us.” Resurrected wails echoed through her memory, cries she thought she’d buried two centuries ago.
Mama! Mama! Mama! MAAAAMAAAA … !
Hold on, baby. Mama’s comin’. Give me my child! Master, pl
ease!
Throat so tight, she could barely breathe, Merri gave Emmett’s chest another hard jab. He staggered back a step. “You have no motherfucking idea what I’ve been forced to give up. You think you’re the only one? You can just go to hell, Emmett Thibodaux.”
“Aw, Christ.” Emmett’s strong arms wrapped around Merri and folded her into a tight embrace. His heart pulsed hard and fast beneath her cheek. She breathed in his sharp anise-over-ice scent. “I’m an idiot, Merri,” he murmured.
“No argument here.”
“I’m truly sorry—”
“Forget it,” Merri replied, stepping back and tilting her head back to meet her partner’s shadowed gaze. “What you need to remember is that your family will be in very real danger if you contact them in any way. Trust me on that.”
Emmett released his breath in a long, slow exhale, then nodded. “I’ve trusted you every step of the way, I ain’t about to quit now.” His hands slid up from their embrace to squeeze her shoulders once before releasing her. “New Orleans, huh? So we’re gonna visit the bad mofo on his own turf?”
“The bad and beautiful mofo.”
A smile flickered across Emmett’s lips. “Truth, sistah.”
Merri tilted her head and listened as a car pulled into the motel’s drive, tires splashing through rain puddles on the blacktop, then parked; listened to its door creak open. “Wyatt’s here,” she said, a bare second ahead of the quiet knock on the door.
Emmett whipped his Colt from its holster, his karate-trained instincts sharp as a razor-edged switchblade, his finger curled around the trigger. “Let’s be positive,” he murmured.
On the other side of the door, Merri heard the strong, slow rhythm of a vampire heart, felt his banked and controlled energy. Striding to the door, she unchained and unlocked it, then eased it open.
“Hey,” Wyatt greeted, his eyes gleaming with streetlight. A smile curved his lips, giving his handsome face with its hazel eyes and coffee-brown curls a look of mischief. “Got a care package for y’all.”
“Hey back, and thanks.”
“Got something special just for you too, sugar,” Wyatt drawled, his voice all smooth Savannah charm.
Merri drew in a deep breath of rain-chilled air laced with the sharp snap of spearmint, the latter Wyatt’s scent, and allowed her hunger to unwind in anticipation. “Bagged?” she asked.
Wyatt’s mischievous smile deepened, dimpled his cheeks. “Nah. Volunteer.”
“I’ll be right out,” Merri said.
“All right.” Glancing past her and into the room, Wyatt nodded, then added an amiable, “Emmett.”
“Wyatt. Easy drive?” Emmett lowered his Colt.
“Yup. All my drives been easy since I gave up riding.”
Emmett cocked an eyebrow. “Only horses, I hope.”
Wyatt laughed. “Hell, yeah. Only horses.” Chuckling, he turned and walked back to the car, a rain-glistening SUV.
Merri swiveled around to face her partner. “I’ll be back in a few,” she said. She glanced at the grease-spotted bag sitting beside his laptop. The bag was still rolled shut. She frowned. “It doesn’t look like you ever touched your Quarter Pounder and fries.”
“Nope,” Emmett said, reholstering his gun, then slouching into the metal folding chair again. He looked at the laptop. “Kinda lost my appetite.”
“I told you to eat before you looked at the Bad Seed flash drive, Em.”
“You did,” Emmett said. “Wish to hell I’d listened.” He trailed both hands through his hair. “You believe in karma, Merri?”
“To some extent, yeah. But I’ve lived long enough to know that some people never get what they have coming—good or bad.”
“I’ve been wondering if losing those memories was a little bit of karma.”
Merri shook her head. “You never wiped anyone’s memory, so how could it be?”
“I’m responsible for people getting their minds scrubbed.”
“No, we are. Everything we’ve done, we’ve done together. And that means any karma earned would hit us both,” Merri said. “What happened to you wasn’t karma, it was betrayal.”
Emmett looked unconvinced, but he waved her out the door. “Go on with your bad self. I’m good. Maybe I’ll see if I can get a little shut-eye before we hit the road.”
“Good. You could use it, partner,” Merri said, slipping outside. But as she turned to pull the door shut, she saw Emmett awaken his laptop monitor and click open the Bad Seed file again.
Shaking her head, Merri quietly shut the door.
10
AIN’T STAYING
GEHENNA,
THE ROYAL AERIE
The Night of March 27–28
THE TRUMPET BLAST FADED, rumbling across the horizon like long-rolling thunder.
Fear traced an icy hand down Heather’s spine. Bible stories full of lion-faced angels, flaming swords, pillars of salt, and random fiery destruction wheeled through her memory, along with the image of the small serpentine creatures that had fluttered around Dante, De Noir, and the Morningstar in the sulfur-reeking pit, the soft orange glow of embers twinkling from scales and their impossible and delicate dragonfly wings.
Gehenna. Fallen angels. Little winged pit-demons.
A strange and beautiful place. A world both alien and Sunday-school familiar.
Heart pounding, Heather stared into a night sky that looked scraped thin, a threadbare black curtain pocked with pale stars. Even the undulating aurora borealis at its center seemed dimmed, its colors mere ghosts of blue, purple, and green.
After enduring thousands of years without an infusion of energy from a creawdwr, Gehenna is fading away. Without you … Gehenna will vanish.
Even though she wondered how such a thing could be possible, she sensed the truth behind the Morningstar’s words. Gehenna felt somehow off to her, an orange just beginning to go soft underneath the skin.
Heather’s fingers white-knuckled around the Browning’s grip. After a wait spanning millennia, the Fallen finally had a new Maker—Dante. Whether he liked it or not. Whether he wanted it or not. And the last thing he needed was someone else determined to control him, manipulate him, use him. Someone else to deny him the right to live his own life.
Another trumpet blast pealed through the night. A massive wheel of light appeared in the sky above them, blotting out the aurora borealis’s vivid bands of color and bleaching the night with spinning spokes of brilliant white radiance.
Icy tendrils of fear twisted through Heather’s insides. Her pulse pounded hard through her veins. What is that? Squinting against the blazing light display, she shaded her eyes with the edge of her hand.
The Morningstar muttered something under his breath in a musical language Heather didn’t understand, a language she’d heard spoken by the Fallen who’d stood beside her at the pit’s mouth, then he added, “Show-offs.”
“Is that them?” she asked, dropping her gaze from the blazing sky. “The Seven?”
“Yes, but not all of them,” De Noir answered, his voice coming from behind her.
“Two seem to be absent, and I know at least one was turned to stone down in Damascus,” the Morningstar said, shading his face with the edge of one white wing.
“Lilith,” De Noir murmured.
The Morningstar nodded. “Yes.”
A memory sparked in Heather’s mind.
“Liar,” Dante whispers. “Lucien warned me …”
A rope of blue fire snakes around the black-haired woman. Her wings curve forward and she closes her eyes, her hands clenched in her lap. Caught within glimmering blue coils, she morphs from flesh to stone, her long hair a white curtain framing her bowed head.
The Morningstar sauntered to the ivy and jasmine-draped balustrade, pretending it wasn’t a retreat, but Heather saw how he kept glancing at Dante’s blue-lit hands and knew better. Not that she blamed him. But she also knew that distance alone didn’t equal safety.
Blue rays spike into the fle
eing Fallen, one by one. And turn them to stone.
“Christ.” Dante fumbled a pair of blood-flecked and battered sunglasses free from his metal-studded belt, sliding them on over his eyes. “What the fuck is that?”
“Think of it as the Seven’s version of a stretch limo—all dazzle and bling,” the Morningstar replied. “Uriel’s work. And a display no doubt meant to impress our new creawdwr.”
“Yeah, ain’t feelin’ it.” Dante’s left hand blurred through a mock jack-off session.
But despite his dry tone, Heather heard strain beneath Dante’s drawled words.
Blue flames crackled around Dante’s hands. Tension and pain drew his gorgeous features tight. Sweat glistened on his forehead and blood still trickled from his nose, stark against his white skin.
Von’s words whispered through Heather’s memory.
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 …
But chance and time were working against them. Again.
Glancing across the light-and-shadow-striped terrace to the arched entry leading back inside the Royal Aerie, Heather mentally measured the distance. The fallen angels gathered on the terrace had silently melted away from Dante and his glowing hands like winter frost in the path of a rolling red-embered coal, their handsome faces wary, leaving the way clear.
Heather touched Dante’s shoulder, careful to avoid his flame-swallowed hands and their cool, transforming fire. “Your gate. I think we can still make it.”
“Did you say his gate?” De Noir questioned.
“Your son created a gate of his own,” the Morningstar said.
Considering that Dante had literally punched his way into another world, transforming a tomb into a flame-embered doorway, and destroying a cemetery with a shock wave of blue light in the process—a fact she still struggled to wrap her mind around—Heather felt that created a gate was one hell of an inadequate description.
“I severed our bond to keep you safe, to keep you out of Fallen hands,” De Noir said slowly, staring at his son. Despair lined his face. “But I drew you straight to Gehenna instead. A gate of his own …”