“No. Mostly. No. I’m not sure, and that’s good,” Lucien replied in answer to his questions. “I do need you to get in the driver’s seat and be ready to take off as soon as I have everyone inside. I want you out of here before the police arrive.”
Sirens rose and fell in the distance, a nerve-tingling banshee’s wail. Death. Disaster. Loss.
“Oui, sure.” Jack scooted over to the driver’s seat, looking relieved to be doing something. “Where will I be taking ’em, me?”
Lucien blinked. Good question. A hotel offered too little privacy or security, and it would take a while to locate a house or apartment to rent.
“My place is in Slidell,” Jack offered.
“Then that’s where you’ll be taking them,” Lucien said, with a relieved smile. “I appreciate that, Jack.”
“Зa fait pas rien.”
“I’ll join you after I deal with the police.”
Lucien moved, racing back up to the third floor. Von’s door was also wide open and the nomad was sprawled belly-down on his bed, the back of his skull a bloody mess. As Lucien covered him with a wine-dark comforter, he caught a faint, but unusual odor, like tree sap or amber—an odor that tickled the underside of his memory.
Can’t quite place it.
Once he had Von safely stowed in the van with Annie and Silver, he hurried back upstairs for Dante and Heather, yelling for Thibodaux to get in the van.
Lucien slowed to a stop a few feet from Dante and Heather’s room, the water-soaked Persian carpet squishing beneath his feet, as he absorbed the scene in front of their open door.
Sunlight shafted in from the shoved-aside curtains on the French window at the hall’s end, glittering on shards of glass near the broken window and glinting from shell casings littered around a large, dark, and ragged circle staining the carpet.
Blood speckled the lower right-hand wall in a high-velocity spray. Lucien crouched in front of the bloodied carpet, pulse winging through his veins. The blood scent was Dante’s—and laced heavily with that tree sap or amber odor he couldn’t quite identify. He picked up and counted the shell casings—six. Lifting them to his nose, he sniffed. More of that odd odor and maybe even its source.
What had been in the bullets?
The amount of Dante’s blood soaked into the now waterlogged carpet alarmed Lucien. Even with six bullets—and the amount of times his Sleeping son had been shot deepened Lucien’s fury—the wounds would’ve closed long before Dante could’ve lost this much blood.
And why had Dante been shot out here in the hall while the others had been shot in their beds?
Something was very wrong with this picture.
Lucien drew in a deep breath; he smelled Dante and Annie and Eerie; a lingering trace of Brut—the cologne the man in the tan trench coat had been wearing—mingling with another cologne composed of ginger and green tea; cordite; mortal sweat and fear.
He counted three mortal scents and one nightkind in front of this room; Heather’s scent was over an hour old. Which again begged the question—where was she?
A gleam of metal in the sprinkler-soaked carpet on the opposite side of the hall caught Lucien’s eye. He reached over and picked up the bit of metal. It was a small dart. Annie’s condition suddenly made sense.
She’d been tranked. Maybe Heather had been as well, but downstairs perhaps.
Lucien straightened, slipping shell casings and dart into his trouser pocket, then went into the bedroom, but found it empty, the comforter gone from the bed. His blood chilled as the meaning of the missing comforter sank in. Had someone wrapped Dante in it to protect him from the sun, just like he’d done with Von and Silver?
After shooting him six times and setting the club on fire?
That made no sense.
And where was Heather? If Annie had been tranked, then carried outside by the Brut team, maybe Heather had already been tucked inside the van. Dante too.
Lucien went back into the hall. He followed the thick scent of Dante’s blood to the end of the hall and the broken French window. Glass crunched beneath his shoes. Beneath the blood smell, he detected a faint whiff of ginger and green tea cologne.
Had one party taken Heather, while a second had nabbed Dante?
Dread sank talons into Lucien’s heart as he stepped out onto the fire escape and noticed several red threads clinging to the iron railing, fluttering in the breeze. The comforter on Dante and Heather’s bed was red.
And below, the courtyard gate yawned open against the ivy-draped wall.
Lucien’s pulse pounded at his temples. His fingers curled around the iron railing.
He reached for Dante’s mind, expecting to brush against the shields guarding his son’s Sleeping mind, but feeling . . . nothing, instead.
Panic blazed up Lucien’s spine. Torched his thoughts.
Even shielded or morphine-drugged, he should be able to hear static at the very least. What he’d just experienced was a psionic flatline.
Meaning Dante was either dead or close to it.
No. Not possible. A mistake, because we’re no longer bonded.
And since they were no longer bonded, Lucien couldn’t trace Dante that way, but he could send to him, find out where he was and who’d taken him and Heather, then go after them. Lucien groaned in frustration. Dante had been Sleeping. He wouldn’t know. Not until he awakened.
If he awakened.
No.
Lucien reached out to Dante’s mind again, and this time he detected a low, but ebbing life force, one lacking the energetic spark of healing. Fear knifed his heart.
Watch over our son, my Genevieve, ma belle ange. Keep him safe until I can find him. In my desire to protect him from the Fallen, I have forgotten to guard him from the treachery of mortals.
I have failed you both. Again.
Lucien curled his fingers around the fire escape’s railing and stared into the shaded courtyard. Dante and Heather were gone and he had no idea where to look for them except, perhaps, in Annie’s tranked mind.
Or he could go to Gehenna and ask the Morningstar for his help.
The iron railing groaned and screeked beneath his hands.
48
VIOLET’S ANGEL
BATON ROUGE
THE DOUCET-BAINBRIDGE SANITARIUM
March 30
VIOLET WAS COLORING THE pretty balloon she’d drawn on the white padded wall purple—they said she could!—when she heard excited voices from out in the hall. Just as she turned around from the wall and her picture, she heard the door schunk open in the room next to hers.
Her heart fluttered like a happy fairy in her chest.
He was here! Her angel was here.
The man with the blond hair—Mr. Purcell, Violet remembered—who’d picked her up at the airport and driven her here (while sneaking glances at her and pretending not to) had told her that her angel would be living in the room next to hers.
Mr. Purcell had never said so, but Violet could tell he didn’t like her nighttime angel. His lips would twist like he tasted something pickle-sour every time he said the word angel. The little voice in her tummy told her that Mr. Purcell was not a nice man. He stared too much. And kept making the sour-pickle face. She’d been happy to see him leave.
And even though she missed her mommy very, very much, she looked forward to seeing her pretty angel with the gold eyes and black wings again.
Violet carefully put her crayon back in the box, then hurried across the room to her bed so she could climb on it and look through the window into the next room.
A special room, the nice doctors in their white lab coats had told Violet. So you and your angel can see each other any time you want. Once her angel had arrived, they promised to take good care of him and make him happy. Just like they were making her happy in her little room with the soft white walls and the TV and coloring books and Wii games.
Violet just wished her mom was here too. But she was still sick in the hospital deep underground.
Bouncing onto the bed, Violet pressed her hands against the window, and looked into the other room. A doctor in a white coat and a nurse in green scrubbies stood in the center of the room along with Mr. Purcell. It looked like they were arguing.
A big red blanket—no, it was thick, silly, so it was a comforter—was piled on the concrete floor. Violet noticed a tendril of black hair peeking out of the comforter, and one white hand. Violet smiled. The fingernails were painted black. It was her angel.
Her smile faded as she watched. Why was he in the blanket? Was he asleep? And why was everyone waving their hands around and looking upset? Their voices were muffled through the thick-paned window, but Violet held her breath and listened.
But the words she heard made her heart beat fast, fast, fast in her chest.
Shot. Won’t stop bleeding. Not healing.
The nurse in his scrubbies knelt beside Violet’s angel and pulled back the comforter. His white skin was covered in red stuff, his face and hair too, like someone had splashed him with a bucket of ketchup. She could only see to his tummy, but everything she saw was wet and red.
Violet’s breath whooshed out, and her tummy did a strange, twisting roll. Her heart beat faster and faster.
Blood, her little voice said. That’s blood and he’s dying.
But he can’t die. He’s an angel.
He can if the bad people get to him.
Oh. I didn’t know that. How do I help him?
Be his angel.
“Okay,” Violet whispered.
The nurse flipped the comforter back over Violet’s angel and shook his head. He looked at the doctor in her white coat and they talked about surgery and feeding. Mr. Purcell just paced back and forth, looking like his face had turned into a storm cloud.
Another nurse in scrubbies wheeled in one of those little beds that roll around—a gurney, that’s it!—and they picked Violet’s angel up, comforter and all, and rolled him out of the room, the doctor and nurse following.
Violet stared at all the blood gleaming on the floor. Big wet smears. Her tummy did another flip-flop. She swallowed hard.
Mr. Purcell stopped pacing. He turned and looked at her, his eyes widening as though surprised, then he shook his head. Violet looked back, wondering if he was the one who had hurt her angel and made him bleed.
She heard him laugh, then say something like: Not Chloe. Then: It might be your lucky day, kiddo.
He walked out of the room and, after a moment, Violet jumped off the bed and ran to her coloring table and grabbed the black crayon from her box. Going to the white wall, she started drawing a pair of wings while she waited for her angel to return.
If she was to be his angel, then she would need wings.
49
ECLIPSE
DALLAS, TX
THE STRICKLAND INSTITUTE
March 30
HEATHER OPENED HER EYES, blinking until her vision cleared. A ceiling dotted with soft, recessed lights met her gaze. She blinked again. Where am I? A tiny ribbon of icy fear curled through her when she realized that she didn’t know. She tried to think, to push her mind back to before she’d fallen asleep, but drew a blank. Cotton seemed to muffle her thoughts.
Her father. Something about her father. And Dante.
Heather tried to sit up, but the restraints strapped around her wrists pulled her back down onto the mattress with a metallic tunk-tunk. Looking down, she saw restraints also looped around her ankles.
Her icy ribbon of fear twisted into a waterfall of pure dread.
A quick glance around the room—yellow roses in a vase, bed table, metal railings, visitor chairs—suggested she was in a hospital. But why was she restrained?
Her sending skipped away like a rock tossed along the surface of a endless lake, vanishing into forever. It hadn’t bounced back, unheard. It was simply gone as though nothing had been in its path to receive it or stop it.
No shields. No mind. No Dante.
Pulse pounding, a cold sweat beading her forehead, Heather closed her eyes and focused on their bond. Ripped and tore through the cotton shrouding her mind, finally unburying the light that was Dante’s presence.
Relief flooded through Heather in a heated rush, but quickly cooled as she realized that something was very wrong—instead of burning bright and steady as usual, Dante’s flame was guttering, a dim and ghostly flicker.
Fear closed cold fingers around her heart. She was losing him.
She had a feeling—no, more than that—a realization that Dante was not only badly hurt, he might actually be dying—or close to it.
I feel like I’m running outta time.
I refuse to lose you.
But she was.
“No, no, no,” she whispered. “Hold on, Baptiste.” She tried funneling energy into their bond, but the cotton surrounding her mind soaked it up instead.
But she kept trying, pouring everything she had into their bond, or trying to, anyway. Hold on, Baptiste. Hold on, please. Don’t leave me.
“Pumpkin.”
With that one word, the morning’s events—was it still the same day?—rushed back into Heather’s mind, sieving through the cotton.
You’re lying to yourself, Pumpkin, you’ve chosen nothing. That’s just what Prejean or Baptiste or whatever name the blood-sucking bastard goes by, wants you to think. But I’m going to put an end to that.
Get out of here, Annie! Find Jack . . .
Heather opened her eyes.
James Wallace stood in the doorway of her room, his care-worn face concerned, his eyes hidden behind the reflections glimmering on the lenses of his glasses.
In that moment, she knew she would never call him Dad again.
“What have you done to Dante?” she asked, her voice tight. “And Annie? Where’s Annie?”
Regret flickered across James’s face. He shook his head. “I was forced to leave your sister behind. But I plan to go back for her. As for Prejean, what was done to him was nothing that he didn’t deserve,” James replied, walking into the room, the warm scent of his aftershave preceding him. “But he’s no longer your concern, Pumpkin. He never will be again.”
“Go to hell, you sonuvabitch,” Heather snarled. “Where is he?”
“You need to focus on your own life, Heather. You need to reclaim it. And once we’ve freed you of that damned bloodsucker’s influence, once we’ve scrubbed the taint of his touch off you, you’ll be my daughter again, the brilliant FBI agent.”
Heather stared at him. “What are you talking about?”
A nurse in blue scrubs padded into the room behind James, carrying an IV bag, which she started to connect to the stand positioned beside the bed.
“You’ll feel much better once the drugs start to work,” the nurse assured Heather. “It’ll make the therapy easier, as well.”
“Welcome to the Strickland Deprogramming Institute,” James Wallace said, his lips parting in a warm and reassuring smile.
“Keep away from me,” Heather warned the nurse. “I’m here against my will. You need to release me and let me up right now.”
“Oh, honey,” the nurse chuckled good-naturedly. “That’s what they all say.”
“Let me up and I won’t file any criminal charges against the institute,” Heather said, yanking at her restraints and keeping a wary eye on the nurse, flinching away whenever she approached. “Or you,” she added.
“That’s all right, honey. I know you don’t mean it.”
“Let me up!” Heather screamed, jerking against her restraints in an adrenaline-pumped frenzy of motion, slamming them against the bed rails. Tunk-tunk-tunk. Tunk-tunk-tunk-tunk.
She screamed until she was hoarse and wrenched at her restraints until she fell back, exhausted and panting, her heart drumming against her ribs.
And, in the end, a beefy orderly with a pleasant smile whisked into the room and held her down while the nurse threaded the IV into the vein on the back of Heather’s hand and spun o
pen the dial.
As Heather’s vision tunneled down, her father’s smiling face was the last thing she saw before the darkness swallowed her.
50
HOME
BATON ROUGE
THE DOUCET-BAINBRIDGE SANITARIUM
March 30
PAIN ICICLED DANTE’S MIND, prickled thorns of frost behind his eyes, his temples, shivved his heart with ice. He shivered, chills wracking his body, spasming his muscles. He coughed, and fresh pain ripped through his chest.
He slivered open his eyes. Light needled into them and he snapped them shut again. But he’d seen enough to know that he lay sprawled on an institution-style mattress in a white padded room, his hands cuffed behind his back.
A room that looked beaucoup familiar.
Wasps droned. Crawled sluggishly beneath his frozen skin. His pulse throbbed at his temples. Each breath slivered ice into his heart.
He struggled to remember before Sleep. Struggled to remember his name.
Dante, yeah? Dante . . .
A woman’s voice, low and warm, whispered through his memory. Baptiste.
His eyes flew open again and he ignored the pain.
Heather.
Annie’s frantic words raced through his memory, Heather’s in trouble.
But pain exploded through Dante’s head as the sending reverberated through his skull, unsent, drumming additional hurt through his aching mind. “Shit.” He squeezed his eyes shut again.
He couldn’t send, his mind felt as through endless shards of glass impaled it and every thought was snagged and shredded like stray threads on the sharp points.
Dante tried to shove the pain below and focus, but the pain shoved back, stealing his breath with its intensity.
Consciousness spun away.
Dreams of Heather brought him back, her rainstorm scent of lilac and sage deep in his lungs. In that quiet moment, Dante felt her presence in his mind, but it was distant, foggy, as though her end of their bond was sandwiched in an institution-style mattress just like the one he was lying on.