“You’re right. They are the Dominions,” the Morningstar replied. “Princes of the Elohim and the leading members of Gehenna’s senate.”
“Politicians, yeah? So why the concern?”
“They’re much more than that, but never underestimate a politician, boy. It never ends well—for anyone.” Having closed the distance between them and Lucien and Hekate, the Morningstar leveled his wings and glided in the slipstream created by the pair. “The Seven are charismatic, charming, and treacherous egomaniacs hungry for power and glory.”
Dante snorted. “There’s a surprise.”
“And what does that mean for us?” Heather asked. “For Dante?”
“Whoever can claim and bind the creawdwr will be exalted above all others,” the Morningstar replied. He turned his head to look at Dante. Moonlight gilded his blue eyes silver. “They will never allow you to leave Gehenna, not unbound.”
6
ЗA FINI PAS
GEHENNA,
IN THE AIR
Night of March 27–28
“Allow? IT AIN’T UP to them,” Dante said, voice low and tight. “I’m leaving, un-fucking-bound.”
“Perhaps a compromise could be worked out,” the Morning-star said. “We’ve—”
“A compromise requires trust, yeah?” Dante cut in. “And trust needs to be earned. Over time. We ain’t anywhere near there yet. So fuck the compromise.”
“Ah, cranky. Must be getting close to your bedtime,” the Morningstar murmured. “Well, let’s see if we can get you home. And, yes, I know—I can go fuck myself.”
Heather laughed. “He’s got your number.”
Dante couldn’t help the grin that slid across his lips. “Must be psychic.”
“More like a glutton for punishment,” the Morningstar said, dipping his right wing and following as Lucien and Hekate descended in graceful swoops to the crowded terrace.
Lucien landed first, stumbling a little as his sandaled feet hit the marble, but recovering quickly. His belted black kilt swirled around his legs. Folding his wings behind him, he drew himself to his full six-eight, shoulders back, an arrogant tilt to his chin, as he put his back to the balustrade.
The gathered Fallen bristled at Lucien’s presence, tension prickling through the crowd like a thorned blackberry cane. Expressions darkened. Taloned hands fisted. The scorched rubber smell of anger threaded into the air.
“Looks like they’re ready to put Lucien right back on those hooks, Baptiste,” Heather commented.
“Of course they are,” the Morningstar said. “He murdered Yahweh and we’ve been forced to live without a creawdwr ever since. They don’t want to risk their new Maker’s safety.”
“Do they know he’s my father?” Dante asked.
“No one did, until you named him as such to Gabriel,” the Morningstar replied. “Although I imagine rumors are winging through Gehenna even now.”
White wings fluttering, the Morningstar’s daughter, Hekate, landed on the marble landing terrace with grace. She smoothed her pale tresses with one elegant hand, then moved to stand beside Lucien.
The Morningstar descended to the terrace with powerful sweeps of his wings, fanning the scent of wing-musk and bitter orange into the perfumed air. He touched his sandaled feet to the marble floor, landing with ease and precision, despite his passengers.
Wybrcathl chimed and trilled into the air, hundreds of voices, the earlier tsunami’s intense second surge. Instructing. Praising. Suggesting.
Welcome home, young Maker! Take your place upon the Chaos seat.
Holy, holy, holy!
We shall love and serve you and you shall feed Gehenna.
But underneath the crystalline multiple-voiced choir battering at Dante’s shields, he detected a quiet, desperate vibrato, a warning song.
Don’t listen, little creawdwr. They will enslave you, just like they have us.
Pain rapped brass knuckles against Dante’s temples.
The Morningstar released Dante from his hold. His silver brows knitted in concern. “Your nose is still bleeding and you look like you’re about to drop. I could ease your pain and clear your head, if you’d only allow it. Just say the word, child.”
“Зa va bien. Ain’t your worry.” Dante unlooped his arm from around the Morningstar’s neck. He wiped at his nose with the back of his hand. Blood glistened on his skin. “And don’t call me child. I don’t care if you’re older than the fucking pyramids, you ain’t got the right.”
Frustration shadowed the Morningstar’s handsome face, thinned his lips. He regarded Dante through hooded, silver-lashed eyes. “You truly are a pain in the ass,” he muttered. Nodding at the fallen angels gathered on the terrace, he asked, “What shall I tell them? And the thousands who haven’t yet arrived?”
“Tell ’em we’re gonna hafta schedule a meet-and-greet some other time.” Dante crooked a c’mere finger at Lucien—who seemed to be in a heated conversation with the Morningstar’s silver-haired daughter. “We ain’t sticking around.”
Heather slipped past the Morningstar and joined Dante. She pulled her Browning free of its pocket. “Ready when you are,” she said, her twilight gaze meeting his.
“I’m ready, catin.”
As Lucien started across the terrace, a frowning Hekate padding in his wake, several golden-winged Fallen stepped into his path, taloned fingers resting on the Celtic-scrolled hilts of the long knives sheathed at their sides. Lucien stopped, and a cold smile brushed his lips.
“Creawdwr-slayer!” someone shouted.
Mutters rose from the gathered Fallen, droned like wasps. The sound burrowed behind Dante’s eyes, beneath his skin. White light flickered at the edges of his vision. The terrace blurred into a white-padded room from whose ceiling a light-slicked hook hung. Dante’s heart kicked against his ribs.
Ready for business.
No escape for you, sweetie.
Heather’s thought wriggled past Dante’s stressed shields. Her sage and lilacs-in-the-rain scent curled around him. White silence poured into him in a honey-thick rush, swallowing the voices, hushing the noise.
The terrace returned. Steadied. Blinking, Dante focused on Heather’s worried gaze, suddenly aware that she was holding his hand and squeezing it with everything she had. Sweat trickled along Dante’s temple. “J’su ici, chйrie,” he whispered.
“Your shields are slipping,” she whispered. Sweat beaded her forehead. Pain—his pain—had dilated her eyes to blue-rimmed pools of black/night. “We’ve got to get you out of here.”
Dante nodded and the terrace tilted. He sucked in a breath. Focus. “We’re going. I just gotta set them straight about Lucien first.”
“Hurry, then.” Heather squeezed his hand one more time, then her warm touch vanished.
Dante stepped forward, intending to shove his way through the towering Fallen blocking Lucien’s path, but the angry rumblings died at Dante’s approach. A Fallen male in a silken green kilt dropped to his knees on the marble and, like nudged dominos, the others knelt as well.
“Terrific.” Pain prickled at Dante’s temples. “Ya’ll need to stand the hell up,” he growled. “Knock this kneeling shit off.”
One musical voice lifted into the air. “But you are the creawdwr . . .”
Dante raked a hand through his hair. Something dark and weary curled through him. Зa fini pas. “Yeah, yeah. Still. Stand up.”
One by one, the fallen angels complied, their movements awkward and unsure, their rapt faces—all gleaming eyes and parted lips—fixed on Dante. He felt their heated, hungry gazes nibbling at him, seizing whatever they could grab—whatever he allowed them to grab—just like the Cage-climbing audiences at Inferno gigs.
He pictured the fallen angels offering him CDs, clothing, and bared flesh to sign. Sign just above my boob. A coy flutter of wings. I plan to get it tattooed on permanently.
Dante smiled at the image and a measure of calm stole through him, easing some of
the tension from his muscles. Stabbing a finger in Lucien’s direction, he said, “No matter what he has or hasn’t done, he’s mon pиre, my father.”
A hundred pairs of eyes shifted their attention to Lucien—most wide with shock or surprise, even disbelief. Dante heard the scrape of Lucien’s sandals against the marble as he straightened and folded his arms over his blood-streaked chest, looking uncomfortable.
“And,” Dante continued, “no one here is going to lay—”
Trumpets bellowed, shattering the night, a deep, resonating, and unnerving primal blast of sound that vibrated up Dante’s spine and into the back of his aching skull.
“So much for slipping away,” the Morningstar said, voice grim. “The Seven have arrived to greet your return from the pit and to escort you to your place upon the Chaos Seat.”
Dante’s song, dark and savage and hungry, slashed out from his heart, a primal and furious aria slicing through the night. Energy prickled along his fingers, pooled blue in the palms of his hands. Pain throbbed at his temples.
“That’s what they think,” he said, voice tight.
7
TO DIE AS SAMURAI
ALEXANDRIA, VA,
OLD TOWN
Night of March 27–28
NIGHT-VISION GOGGLES DRAPED AROUND her neck, Caterina Cortini slipped out of the stolen van and into the quiet residential street, looping a small knapsack containing her B-and-E gear over one shoulder. Her Sig P220 was tucked into the shoulder holster she wore beneath her black workman’s jacket and over her black T-shirt, its weight nestled comfortably against her ribs.
Avoiding the cone of pale light radiating from the street light, she crossed the road in an unhurried stride, her black-soled Air-walk sneakers silent against the pavement.
Three a.m. And all was still, the neighborhood asleep—including Epstein.
Caterina had been in place and watching when her boss/handler had returned from his nightly workout at the dojo, gym bag in hand, around seven P.M. The lights in his house had switched off near midnight and Caterina had waited inside the stuffy van for the next three hours, studying every shadow slanting in the driveway, inspecting every branch of the evergreens growing in front of Epstein’s dark and curtained living room window.
She gave the man plenty of time to fall asleep. Gave him time to stay that way.
She couldn’t take chances, didn’t dare assume—not with Joseph Epstein. Not with the man who’d taught her everything she knew about wetwork, the man who’d mentored her career in Shadow Branch black ops; a kindred spirit.
Not if she hoped to see another dawn.
Words Epstein had said less than forty-eight hours ago as they’d stood together in front of the filing cabinet in his office, audio jammer burbling away to guarantee that their words remained secret, burned bright in Caterina’s mind—a torch carried by a solitary runner.
With each life we end, we alter the future, end possibilities. We become agents of destiny. Severing some, fulfilling others. A hard and honorable duty.
Words she believed in. Words she’d always followed. Even now.
Caterina’s chest muscles cinched tight. Her hands knotted into fists, leather gloves creaking. Especially now.
She drew in a slow, deep breath of frost-crackling air and forced her muscles to relax. Once they had, she padded down Epstein’s hedge-shadowed driveway, past his Crown Victoria, and to his front porch.
A quick peek through the glass panes inset in the mahogany door revealed an alarm keypad set into the foyer wall. Its green all-systems-armed-and-functioning light glinted in the darkness, matching the green pinpoint light winking from the door’s lockbox.
Just as Caterina had expected. No secondary system. None was necessary. She knew Epstein well enough to know that he considered himself his home’s secondary security system. And for good reason.
She’d sparred with him often during training sessions and knew from painful experience how quick, deadly, and ruthless he could be. Several tours of combat duty in Iraq, then Pakistan, had honed the man’s reflexes guillotine-sharp.
Agents of destiny. Epstein’s words haunted her.
Unlike almost every other operative under my command, you’ve always known, always understood, what we did and why.
She understood all too well.
Caterina crouched and shrugged off her knapsack. She reached into it, her gloved fingers seeking and finding the EMP minibomb’s smooth shape—the B-and-E pro’s new all-purpose crowbar for gigs in the electronic world. She slid the minibomb onto the lockbox and thumbed in a ten-second countdown.
Swiveling around on her heels and turning her hunched back to the door, Caterina pulled her goggles up and over her eyes. The night shifted into shades of gray and ghost-green. She unholstered her Sig, then, with the silent countdown ticking away in her mind, she pulled her oil-cloth wrapped silencer from the knapsack. She screwed the silencer onto the barrel with quick and efficient twists, and chambered a round.
Her pulse threaded through her veins hard and fast. Her palms sweated inside her gloves. In the past, she’d always viewed her termination assignments as marks, targets. Her sworn duty.
But this time she would be executing a man she knew and respected.
With each life we end, we alter the future, end possibilities. We become agents of destiny. Severing some, fulfilling others. A hard and honorable duty.
Epstein had altered his future the moment he’d assigned Caterina to end Dante Baptiste’s life, handing her a folder with instructions on how to kill a True Blood, never suspecting she’d already altered her own destiny.
Caterina kneels and places her borrowed gun at Dante’s pale bare feet. He stares at her, disbelief flashing across his beautiful face . . .
A soft beep. Countdown achieved. The porch light vanished.
Caterina swung back around. The light on the lockbox had gone dark as well. The mini had done its job in complete silence, hitting the house and yard with a wave of EMP energy. A faint whiff of ozone curled into the air.
Rising to her feet, Caterina eased the door open just enough to slip inside, her sneakers squeaking against the hardwood floor. She winced, hoping against goddamned hope that the slide of rubber against wood hadn’t been heard upstairs. She pushed the door closed, but didn’t shut it—not all the way.
Sig in hand, Caterina hastily toed off her Airwalks. She listened. Adrenaline pumped through her veins with each rapid pulse of her heart, fine-tuning her senses.
Refrigerator hum. The ticking of the pendulum clock. A gurgle from the toilet. And silence from the bedrooms upstairs.
Caterina drew a breath in through her nose. The faint odor of Epstein’s cherry cordial pipe tobacco. The fishy scent of broiled salmon.
She padded along the foyer’s polished floor in her stocking feet, her shoulder against one wall, her Sig secured in both hands. She paused at the mouth of the dark living room. Her night-vision goggles painted the room in pale shades of green as light from outside—light beyond the limited reach of her mini-bomb—filtered in through the blinds, outlining the shadowed humps of furniture.
Locating the staircase, Caterina strode across the room and up the stairs, her socks whispering against the runner. She moved along the outer edge to avoid creaks, her gait swift and light. On the landing, she paused for a moment as she considered the shadowed mouths of three rooms.
Guest room. Bathroom. Master bedroom. One room on the right-hand side of the hall, one dead ahead—the bathroom, in all likelihood—one room on the left-hand side.
Caterina held her breath and listened. A low, almost inaudible snore drifted down the hall from the right. She swung to the right and followed the carpet runner stretching the length of the narrow hall to the doorway, her footsteps as light as meringue.
Pressing her back against the wall, Caterina stopped and listened again. Now she could hear Epstein’s breathing. Steady, rhythmic, the quiet snore buzzing into the air like a bumblebee every few breaths.
>
A hard and honorable duty. No, make that just a hard duty. No honor in shooting a sleeping man, no matter how necessary. She owed Epstein—mentor, hard-nosed boss, fellow samurai—more than that. But she couldn’t afford to give him more. Couldn’t afford to satisfy her own sense of honor. If she lost, Epstein would send someone else after Dante, maybe even himself. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, risk Dante’s life.
The future pumps within Dante’s heart and flows through his veins. The future for all of us: mortal, vampire, and Fallen. If Dante falls, the world and all it holds will fall with him.
Caterina rolled her shoulders, attempting to siphon some of the tension from her muscles, then she stepped into the room, lifted her gun, and fired twice at the figure curled on its side beneath the blankets. The body jumped with each hushed thwip.
Sorry, Ep. Nothing personal.
But even as her finger was squeezing the trigger, warning prickled along her spine. Instinct slammed into high gear. Pure adrenaline flooded her veins. She caught a faint whiff of cherry tobacco.
A motherfucking dummy in the bed.
Caterina ducked and whirled to the left, another gun’s muted thwip hot on her heels. She swung the Sig up for a return shot. But Epstein had anticipated her action and had stepped in even as she’d spun away, closing the distance between them in a single long-legged stride.
A gun barrel—well, the silencer, actually—jammed hard against Caterina’s forehead, its heated mouth burning against her skin. She went still. He yanked the Sig from her grip and tucked it into the back of his khakis.
The night-vision goggles stole the blue ice color from Epstein’s eyes, made them luminous with captured light. But the winter in his gaze chilled Caterina to the bone.
He wasn’t expecting just anyone. He was waiting for me.
“Goddammit, Cortini,” he said, mingled disappointment and ice in his voice. His white hair, cut high and tight military-style, was a ghostly gleam in her goggles. “I was hoping to hell the evidence was wrong.”
“Evidence?” she asked, then a dark possibility occurred to her. “You found my gun. In Damascus.”