Etched in Bone (Maker''s Song #4)

  Music thump-thump-thumped up from two stories below as the band inside the Cage launched into a practice song before the actual set. The hard-pounding beat vibrated through the floor, into the soles of Heather’s Skechers, and into her feet. The empty absinthe bottle rattled on the bureau.

  A woman’s microphone-amplified voice shouted, “Don’t turn on the fog machine yet!” before dropping into song.

  Dante looked up, surprise on his face. “That’s Saints of Ruin. Shit. I was supposed to join in on a couple of songs. I didn’t realize they were playing tonight.” He trailed a hand through his hair, his pale fingers gliding through the glossy black. “I’ll hafta make it up to them.”

  “I’ll be honest,” Heather said. “I’m surprised the club’s going to be open tonight. You told Mauvais that things weren’t finished. He might decide to attack first—a preemptive strike or another fire.”

  “Mauvais’s an arrogant fi’ de garce, but he tends to play by the rules—even if I don’t. He won’t use fire. Not in the Quarter.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ain’t allowed. Local nightkind law going back to the city’s first big blaze. Torch one building and everything in the Quarter burns. Huge no-no. Fatal consequences for the asshole responsible, et cetera, et cetera. The club’s safe, chйrie.”

  “Okay, maybe so,” Heather agreed. “But this rendezvous of Mauvais’s to pick up his minions could be a setup.”

  Dante snorted. “Minions. I like that. But yeah, a setup was my concern too.”

  Heather frowned. “Was? What changed your mind?”

  Dante rose to his feet and went to the dresser. His fingers blurred through the stack of clothes, then plucked a shirt free—fishnet and PVC and metal straps. He tugged it on.

  “According to Vincent, Mauvais’s cruising Lake Pontchartrain on his yacht, laying low and playing with some new treasure he picked up. He ain’t even thinking about me.”

  Heather frowned. “A treasure? What kind of treasure?”

  Dante finished buckling the straps on his shirt and turned around. Like claw marks from some monstrous beast, five slashes cut across the shirt’s left side from above the pec to the hip, revealing glimpses of the fishnet-covered white skin underneath.

  His dark eyes held hers. “Something he picked up in a cemetery. A stone statue.”

  Heather stared at him. “Holy shit. Loki.”

  “That’d be my guess.”

  “What happens if Mauvais frees him?”

  Dante shook his head. “No idea. Don’t know if he can. Depends on how much I weakened Lucien’s spell. And maybe it doesn’t matter, since I ain’t hiding from the Fallen—” His words trailed away and his gaze unfocused, the pupils swallowing up the brown in his eyes until only a thin ring remained.

  Heather’s heart constricted. “Dante?” She hastily tightened her shields, adding another protective layer of visual steel, then stood up and went to him.

  “Penance,” he whispered.

  Blue fire crackled around Dante’s hands. The smell of ozone thickened the air.

  Heart thudding against her chest, Heather jumped back out of easy reach.

  Dante squeezed his eyes shut, twisted his knuckles into his temples. Blue light gleamed against his skin, glinted in his hair. Blood trickled from one nostril. “Focus,” he muttered. “Shove it below and fucking focus.”

  Keeping a wary gaze on his glowing hands, Heather funneled cool, white silence through their bond. “Baptiste, can you hear me?”

  A spasm shuddered the length of Dante’s body, his muscles snapping taut. He stumbled backwards, hitting the wall shoulder-first. The plaster cracked behind him.

  Panic iced Heather’s blood as she realized that, if he had a seizure, she’d need to spike him full of morphine while dodging his flame-swallowed hands.

  Dante slid to the floor, one burning blue hand sweeping against the absinthe bottle. It tunked to the floor, but instead of rolling away across the hardwood, it flitted into the air on pale green wings, no longer a bottle, but something else altogether.

  Heather watched it fly up to the ceiling and bat itself against the overhead light’s white dome—tink-tink-tink. She squinted. Green skin. Dark hair in a pixie bob. Tiny green, glittering boobs.

  Is that a fairy? And should I let it—whatever it is—out before it splatters its little green brains all over the ceiling?

  Heather dashed over to the French windows, yanked the heavy curtains aside, and flung open the doors. Cool night air smelling of the Mississippi and sizzling cayenne shrimp poured into the room.

  The green fairy continued to batter itself against the light. Tink-tink-tink.

  “Christ,” Heather muttered.

  She sprinted to the switch and flipped the overhead off. The only light in the room radiated from Dante’s hands, bathing everything in a soft, flickering blue glow. The fairy zipped down from the dome, fluttered anxiously around Dante’s hands for a few seconds, then buzzed out the French doors, trailing dust smelling of bitter wormwood into the night.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, Heather closed the windows again and locked them. The blue nightlight created by Dante’s hands vanished, leaving her blinking in the darkness until her eyes adjusted to the street light filtering in from outside. Switching on the bedside lamp, she knelt on the floor in front of him.

  Dante had drawn his legs up, wrapped his arms around them, and rested his forehead against his knees. He looked folded-in on himself. Shut off. Worn out.

  “Baptiste?” Heather brushed her fingers against his silky hair. “Let me help. Burdens are easier when they’re shared. You don’t need to carry anything alone, cher. Maybe together . . .”

  “Don’t know how to do it any other way, catin. Зa va . . .” His breath caught in his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was rough, raw. “No, that ain’t right. Зa va pas du tout. I think . . . I feel . . . I’m losing ground bigtime.”

  Fear coiled around Heather’s heart. “You need time,” she said. “You need to heal, you need to grieve, and you need to be left alone, dammit. Forget about Mauvais for tonight. You’re not ready to face him. Wait until you are.”

  Dante lifted his head. Blood was smeared beneath his nose, and his pale, beautiful face was luminescent with loss layered upon loss—Chloe, Gina, Jay, Simone, even his relationship with his father—his heart a funeral pyre.

  “I can’t. I’ll lose Trey.”

  A sharp pang of sympathy pierced Heather. “Let someone else go.”

  “I got Simone killed, cherie, I can’t just sit on the fucking sidelines. Can’t let my friends risk themselves.”

  “No. Sorry. You’re not allowed to risk yourself either.”

  “Ain’t asking permission.”

  “You’re not ready, Baptiste. Give yourself some time.”

  “Gorgeous and pigheaded,” Dante murmured.

  “Well, there’s the pot calling the kettle black. You’re the captain, the king, the goddamned maestro of pigheaded.”

  Dante laughed. “God damn, catin. Tell me what you really feel.”

  Opening his knees, he looped his strong arms around her and pulled her between his legs and up against his fevered heat and hard muscles, into his scent of burning leaves and deep, dark earth.

  Heather knuckled her fist into his shoulder hard enough to make him grunt. “You’re not ready,” she repeated.

  “Je connais,” Dante whispered, his voice stark. “But I gotta do this. I feel like I’m running out of time.”

  His words filled Heather with dread. “I refuse to lose you.” She slipped her arms around his waist.

  “I refuse to lose you too, catin. Ain’t adding your name—”

  “You won’t,” Heather promised, her throat almost too tight for words.

  “I’m gonna make sure,” Dante said. “I wanna get the FBI and SB off your ass. You have any contacts in the Bureau you can reach out to?”

  Heather pulled back within his tight embrace so she could see his face,
study it. Uneasiness prickled against her spine. “Yeah, I do,” she said. “But why?”

  Dante met her gaze, his deep brown eyes steady, his expression resolute. Her pigheaded alert sounded a klaxon inside her head.

  He’s about to prove me right on the captain, king, and maestro comment, dammit.

  Even knowing that, she still wasn’t prepared for his next words.

  “I want to set up a meeting with the FBI and SB so I can make my position on the matter of your continued well-being real fucking clear.”

  Heather stared at him. “Are you nuts? Have you lost your goddamned mind?” She twisted free of his embrace. “They’ll say yes, then trank the shit out of you when you arrive.”

  “Yup. Which is why I won’t be going alone, catin. I’ll be doing something I’ve never done—take a fucking rock star entourage with me. But it won’t be roadies, groupies, and self-appointed ass-kissers, it’ll be nightkind Elders and Fallen muckymucks.” He shrugged, a dark smile tilting his lips. “D’accord, so it is roadies, groupies, and self-appointed ass-kissers.”

  “Holy shit,” Heather breathed, hope and possibility blossoming with her like late-blooming roses. “With those kinds of witnesses, that could work. You’d have the Bureau and the SB by the short hairs.”

  “Oui. At least I hope so.”

  “One thing worries me—you could still be triggered. One quick word and you might be transforming your allies into buttercups.”

  Dante nodded. “Ain’t allies. I can’t trust them either, ’cuz they’ll have their own agendas. But yeah, I’ve been thinking about that. That’s where you come in.”

  Realization sparked. It was the only thing that made sense. “If they trigger you, or attempt to trigger you, then I trank you, so you can’t be used.”

  “Exactement.” Dante touched his forehead to hers. “And then we make sure those fuckers don’t live long enough to trigger anyone ever again.”

  “This just might work, Baptiste.”

  “Fingers crossed, catin.”

  Dante’s lips closed over hers in a deep and tender kiss, and she kissed him back, tasting the sharp tang of his blood, her hands sliding into his hair. The touch of his tongue flooded her with desire, transforming the kiss into an unspoken promise.

  This isn’t all. There’s more. J’su ici—always. Ain’t losing you.

  When the kiss finally ended, Dante reluctantly released her, then rose to his feet, pulling her up with him. A smile tilted his lips. “Time for my coming out.”

  “My boyfriend, the debutante. Who knew?” Heather teased. “I’ll catch up with you in a bit.”

  Laughing, Dante walked from the room and Heather watched him go, his autumn scent lingering in the room, his words sitting uneasily in her mind—I feel like I’m running out of time—and wracking her brain for a way to make a liar out of him.

  34

  NEVER BETTER

  NEW ORLEANS

  CLUB HELL

  March 28

  ANNIE ENDED THE CALL, then slipped the cell phone luscious Lucien had given her into her jeans pocket. She sat on the floor in the darkened entrance hall, her back against the black-painted wall, her knees drawn up to her chest. Red light from the neon BURN sign jittered against all the black like electric blood. She sucked in a lungful of smoke, cigarette crackling as it burned.

  Fucking Dad.

  She’d been an idiot to even think that he might’ve been worried about them. No. Correction. He’d been concerned plenty. About Heather. And about his career and how Heather’s little joyride with Dante had damaged his reputation at the mother-fucking Bureau.

  As for herself? Not so much.

  Annie, I’m so glad you called. I’ve been worried sick. You need to tell me where you are so I can get help to your sister.

  It’s no secret we’re in New Orleans, Dad. And you’re a lying sack of shit.

  You quit taking your meds again, didn’t you?

  My fucking meds or the lack of my fucking meds have nothing to do with the fact that you’re a lying sack of shit who took something I shared in confidence. You remember me telling you how Gorgeous-but-Dea . . . I mean . . . Dante healed Heather when she got shot?

  I remember, Annie. I also remember that I was grateful.

  Yeah. In fact, you were so grateful that you went and spilled that little secret to one of those motherfucking federal agencies. And now they’re hunting Heather. They want to dissect her like some fucking biology lab frog. And it’s all my fucking fault because I fucking trusted you. Daddy.

  A long pause, then: You are off your meds.

  That doesn’t change the fact that you’re a lying sack of shit.

  Maybe not. But you need to believe me when I tell you I never betrayed your confidence, sweet pea. Maybe my phone was tapped. Maybe there was a bug in the house. But I’m just as much a victim of all this as you are.

  Somehow Annie doubted that.

  Welcome to Annie’s list of Most Annoying Shit Ever. Number one on the list? James William Wallace and his “I’m just as much a victim of all this as you are” speech. And just underneath it at the number two position—Heather Wallace and her “we’re linked and we don’t know exactly how it happened” ditty.

  Annie blew blue-gray smoke rings into the neon-lit air. She watched the smoky circles expand, then thin, then fall apart. From beyond the club’s entrance, she heard the eager voices of people lining up, waiting for the club to open.

  She wondered if any of them had any dope to sell. A little something-something would clear her fucking father’s voice from her mind.

  That bloodsucker has your sister under his control. We need to get her free. He’s ruined her career, her life. She isn’t thinking straight.

  Then you’re gonna love learning that she’s now mentally linked to him. He’s inside her head twenty-four seven.

  Linked? Are you sure?

  That’s what she said. How do you know this bloodsucker, this fucking beautiful vampire, isn’t doing stuff to me too? Maybe he’s drinking my blood. Fucking me. Maybe he’s pimping me and Heather out to other nightkind and we have nightly orgies of fangs and hot vampire dicks.

  Annie . . .

  No, really. How do you know?

  Is he?

  I wish. Wow. Looks like the lying sack of shit doesn’t fall far from the tree.

  Listen to me closely, sweet pea, so I can get you and your sister out of there, safe and sound, and back home again.

  Oh, so we can be a family again, Dad? A family like we never were?

  Annie, listen now. I need you to make sure the doors are unlocked during the day. Can you do that for me, sweetie?

  Sure. But I won’t. So fuck you.

  Annie finished her cigarette, stubbing it out against the hallway’s black-painted concrete floor in a little shower of sparks. As she studied the fluorescent graffiti spray-painted on the wall across from her—INFERNO RULES! RANDY SUKS DIK (Go, Randy!) and WE DIE YOUNG—she heard the sound of footsteps heading into the hall. She turned her head and saw her sister walking toward her. Red neon flickered like flames across Heather’s face.

  “Hey, there you are,” Heather said, stopping beside her.

  “Yup. Here I am.”

  “I heard that you’re going to help with soundcheck for the band.”

  Annie nodded. “Yeah, I get to play roadie for a night.”

  Heather sat down on the floor beside her and rested her head against the wall. She looked at Annie. “Just wanted to make sure you were okay,” she said. “You seemed upset earlier, and with the fire and everything . . .”

  For a moment, Annie considered telling Heather about her conversation with Dad, then remembered all the secret conversations her sister shared with Dante and decided to keep this one to herself.

  Annie shook another cigarette from her diminishing pack and slipped it between her lips. She struck a match, the flame dazzling her sight in the darkened hall.

  “I’m good,” she lied. “Never better.??
?

  35

  SOMETHING HIDDEN

  NEW ORLEANS,

  CLUB HELL

  March 28

  “HEY, DANTE! HEATHER!”

  Dante swiveled around at the sound of Antoine’s voice. The bass player trotted down the Cage’s steps, his arm stretched behind him as he led a chick across the dance floor by the hand, his fingers entwined with hers.

  “Who’s that with Antoine?” Heather asked. “She’s beautiful.”

  “Betcha it’s his baby-to-be’s mama.”

  “Given her belly, I’m betting you’re right.”

  Antoine stopped in front of them, a grin on his lips. A chick with loose black curls and skin just a shade lighter than Antoine’s dark brown stepped up beside him.

  She stared at Dante with eyes the color of melted dark chocolate, a shy smile on her full lips. Her pregnant belly was so round that it looked like she’d swallowed a basketball. Or two.

  And her scent—warm caramel and coffee, with a heady brew of pregnancy hormones bubbling beneath it—reminded him of someone else. But he wasn’t sure who. He tried to trace the olfactory memory, but it eluded him.

  “Hey back, you,” Dante said to Antoine with a smile. “This must be Sharika, yeah?”

  Antoine nodded, black curls swaying, toffee-colored eyes alight. He made introductions, and Heather shook Sharika’s hand, a welcoming smile on her lips.

  “A pleasure, chиre,” Dante said, brushing his lips against hers in greeting. “You here for the Saints of Ruin gig?”

  “No, I just came by to say good-bye to Toine,” Sharika replied shyly, her voice a silky alto.

  “Yup,” Antoine agreed. “She’s on her way to Houston to spend time with her mama before the baby’s born. Since Annie’s helping set up, I thought I’d go to the Amtrak station and keep her company.”

  And that’s when the memory hit—who Sharika’s scent reminded him of—and Dante’s eyes widened in disbelief. Holy shit.

  Sharika glanced at Antoine from beneath her lashes. “And we should get going or I’ll be late for the train. It’s been nice to meet both of you.”

  “Same here,” Heather said. “Have a safe trip.”