Authors: Adrian Phoenix
“No doubt.”
“But the only way we’re going to find out where Wallace went is for you to fly to the Portland field office and extract the information directly from the SAC’s mind.” Purcell shook his head. “Forget Heather Wallace.”
“No, she’s key to breaking Baptiste.”
“You’re wrong,” Purcell stated matter-of-factly. “I doubt Heather Wallace is anything more than a piece of ass to S. Just a way of literally fucking authority.”
Díon folded his arms over his chest. “No, she’s more than that to him. I have reason to believe he loves her. His hold on reality is slipping and Heather Wallace balances him, anchors him. If he loses her, he loses everything.”
Purcell regarded the interrogator skeptically. “Loves her? Anchors him? How the hell do you know any of that? Sounds like bullshit to me.”
“A reliable source, one close to Baptiste.”
Meaning Díon plucked the information from someone’s mind, someone in the know where S was concerned. But that didn’t make it true. Didn’t make it stink any less of bullshit. S could’ve easily fooled the unintentional informant into believing that he actually gave a rat’s ass about Heather Wallace.
But, devil’s advocate and all, what if it was true?
“Why the hell is it so important to break him, anyway? I don’t understand what your goal is here. If you succeed, then what? What’s in it for you?”
All expression vanished from Díon’s face. His gaze turned inward. “I get to fulfill a promise I made a very long time ago.”
Purcell frowned. “Not good enough. Not this time. I need you to be a little less cryptic for a change. What promise? To who?”
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to erase it from your memory after I did. Are you sure you want those answers?”
A chill rippled down Purcell’s spine. Despite Díon’s teasing smile, he suspected the interrogator meant every word.
Díon
would
tell him, and then he’d take the knowledge away again. “Think I’ll pass,” he managed to say through a mouth gone dry. “Thanks, anyway.”
Díon shrugged as if he didn’t care either way. Bastard probably didn’t either. Purcell twitched upright in his chair when a voice buzzed into his ear over the com set. Holding up a wait-a-moment finger, he listened as Bronson reported in, then repeated the information being relayed to Díon.
“They’re in. And you were right—S cuffed himself to the door handle. The kid is quiet at the moment, coloring on the wall.” Purcell directed his gaze to the empty monitor and increased the volume on the audio. “Camera should be working in—ah, there it is.”
Images sprang to life on the monitor as a black-suited man with a blond buzz-cut—FA Bronson—tossed S’s T-shirt onto the concrete floor. Behind him, S was sprawled on his side on the floor, one arm stretched up above him, wrist cuffed to the door handle. A small puddle of bright blood encircled his pale face, stained his lips, like water forced from the lungs of a drowning victim.
Bronson’s partner, a tall and rangy black man named Holland, was bent over the handle, trying to unlock the cuff. Across the room, Violet watched silently with red-rimmed eyes, her box of crayons clutched in her hands.
Bronson stepped away from the camera, touching a finger to the com set hooked around one ear. “You receiving the feed now?” he asked, the monitor’s audio echoing the words Purcell heard directly in his ear.
“Yes, and you need to secure—” A sudden movement near the door caught Purcell’s eye and stopped his words cold. It hit him then—
like water forced from the lungs of a drowning victim
. His heart leapt into his throat.
It was already too late.
S
moved
. Twisting up from the concrete floor with deadly grace and speed, his fangs slashed into Holland’s throat with
all the unerring accuracy of a preternatural predator—a true, natural-born killer.
Blood sprayed the air in a glistening crimson arc as S ripped his fangs free of Holland’s throat, then shoved him away. Eyes wide, mouth a stretched and silent O, Holland was still crumpling to the floor, one hand futilely clutching his ruined throat, when S curled his cuffed arm, hard biceps bunching, and yanked.
With a screech of metal, the steel handle wrenched free of the door to dangle like a charm from the cuff still encircling the bloodsucker’s wrist.
The handcuffs were vampire-proof. The door handle, not so much.
S was on his feet. He blurred up behind Bronson in a streak of leather and blood-smeared white skin, just as the agent, a frown pinching the skin between his eyes, was starting to whirl around, his hand reaching inside his jacket for his gun.
“J’ai faim.”
S buried his fangs in the man’s throat.
Bronson never even had the chance to fire a single shot.
“Madre de Dios,”
Díon breathed, stunned. “Even with the resin . . .”
“No, he’s slower than usual. You were right about that, anyway.”
“
That’s
slower?”
Purcell didn’t waste time on words like
I told you so
. Not now. Instead, he sounded the alarm and tersely issued kill orders through his com set while he watched S turn a human being into a meal. Again.
“No more attempts to break the psychotic little bastard,” Purcell snapped when Díon started to protest. “Those were my men he killed. S dies. He’s too goddamned dangerous.”
“I’m sorry, truly,” Díon said quietly.
Before Purcell could decide if the interrogator was referring to the idiocy of his plan or apologizing for the men who’d
just died needlessly because of it, he felt warm fingers brush against his temple. Panic surged through him, only to vanish as his mind blanked like a T-shirt-blocked monitor. A request, quiet and reasonable, and made in a faintly European-accented voice, dominated his awareness.
“You need to rescind that order.”
“T
HEY
’
RE COMING.
W
E NEED
to
hurry
.”
The voice, small and tremulous but insistent, tugged at Dante, drew him up from his unfinished feast, from the coppery, adrenaline-peppered taste of the blood flooding into his mouth and pouring strength and energy into his veins. The cold icing him from the inside melted away. The liquid weight eased from his lungs—not gone, no, but less.
Pulling his fangs free of the warm, whisker-stubbled flesh beneath, Dante lifted his head. He swiveled around on his knees, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, then—
her blood spills hot and fragrant and crimson over his fingers . . .
—reality shifted and a cold hand squeezed around his heart.
She lies on the concrete floor, staring up at the hook, her blue eyes as wide and empty as a doll’s. The blood from her slashed throat stains her hair a deep red.
Dante sucked in a sharp, painful breath and squeezed his eyes shut. Pressing his fingers against his temples, he desperately scrubbed the image from his mind.
“They’re coming,” the dead girl repeated. “What do we do?”
His answer came without hesitation, a rough whisper. “Make ’em pay.”
“Or run. We could try running. I think that’d be better.”
“Yeah?”
Dante opened his eyes. Relief flooded through him at what he saw, knocked him back on his heels.
Not dead.
Chloe stood a few feet away, freckles stark on her pale face, her blue eyes huge, red-rimmed as though she’d been crying. She hugged the box of crayons tightly against her chest instead of Orem.
“Dante-angel? You . . . um . . . okay?”
“
Oui. Ça va bien.
Now. But where’s—” Dante looked down for the plushie orca and his words jammed up in his throat. A man in a blood-soaked black suit lay sprawled on the floor, throat savaged, a cooling and unfinished not-so-happy meal. “Shit.”
He remembered taking the asshole down as he reached for his gun, remembered tearing into his throat with ravenous relish. Remembered the panicked, fire hose intensity of the blood pulsing between his lips.
All while Chloe watched.
“Shit,” Dante repeated, shifting his gaze to Chloe. “Did you close your eyes?” he asked, hoping against hope.
“I did,” she confessed in a tiny voice. “But I could still hear . . .”
Dante sighed. “
Merde.
Sorry, princess.”
“That’s why you cuffed yourself to the door, huh?” Chloe said. “Why you told me to keep away from you. So you wouldn’t”—she looked at the dead man sprawled on the concrete, then swallowed hard before returning her gaze to Dante—“do
that
.”
Dante rose to his feet. Pain jabbed his skull, dizzying him for one brief moment. Even though he felt better after the gulped infusion of hot and heady blood, he definitely wasn’t at
one hundred percent. Not even close. But it would have to be enough.
Survival for both of them depended on it.
“
Oui, chère.
That’s why,” he replied.
Out in the hall, Dante heard the thunder of multiple pairs of running feet. Still a fair distance away, but getting closer with each passing second. He glanced at Chloe. Wondered if she was safe with him or not. Although his hunger was currently under control, it was far from sated, leaving his control unreliable at best.
But one quick look at the hook hanging from the ceiling, at the merciless slice of curving metal, told him that Chloe was safer
with
him than without. Besides, safe or not, he could never leave her behind. Never leave her alone. He’d made a promise: You and me, princess. Forever and ever.
Dante shifted his gaze back to Chloe. “They’re coming like you said, princess, so we need to haul ass.” He reached for her, but she took a hesitant step away from his blood-smeared hand. The fear in her eyes was an ice pick to his heart.
“You said to keep away.”
“I did, yeah. Because I couldn’t control my hunger. I’ve got a grip on it now, thanks to him”—Dante nodded at the black-suited body cooling on the floor—“but before that, with all the blood loss and the—”
“And the owies,” Chloe finished, the fear fading from her eyes. “They made you even hungrier, huh?”
“Yup. And I’m damned fucking sure that’s why they put me in here with you in the first place. They wanted me to . . .” Dante shook his head, unwilling to finish the sentence.
But Chloe finished it for him. “Drink me all up. Monsters and fairy tales and poisoned apples.”
“ ’Fraid so,
p’tite
.”
Footsteps pounded ever closer. Dante heard the hummingbird-pulse of mortal hearts. Heard the slide of rounds being chambered. “We need to go, princess. Now. Even if you say no, I’m taking you with me. I ain’t leaving you for them.”
Chloe nodded, her tangled red tresses dancing against her purple Winnie-the-Pooh sweater. “Okay,” she said, “here”—she extended her hand, the fingers uncurling to reveal the key resting on her palm—“I kept it.”
Dante accepted the key with a quick smile and unlocked the cuff with its dangling door handle charm from around his wrist. Cuffs, key, and door handle hit the concrete, the room’s padded walls swallowing the musical clang.
Chloe’s paper wings rustled and her sweet strawberry-and-soap scent washed over Dante as he snugged her securely against his side. She looped an arm around his waist, instinctively tucking her fingers through his belt. Anchoring herself.
He frowned, wondering when he’d grown so much taller than her and, taking in the leather pants and boots he wore, he also wondered where his jeans and duct-taped Converse sneakers had vanished to. Not that he was complaining, but . . .
Wrong. This is still all wrong. Wake the fuck up.
Dante shoved the troubling thought aside. It would have to wait.
“Hold on tight,
chère
,” he warned, snugging her even closer.
“ ’Kay.”
After aiming a dark and savage fuck-you smile at the camera, Dante
moved
. He sped out into the hall, streaking past rows of closed steel doors and security/medical monitoring stations, and bewildered faces as he blurred past, a cool and unexpected gust of wind—one most likely smelling of fresh blood, death, and strawberries.
“It feels like we’re flying,” Chloe said happily. “Even without your wings.”
Dante was about to remind her that he wasn’t an angel and therefore lacked wings in the first place, when he heard determined shouts behind them, followed by muted
thwip
s as bullets or trank darts breezed past. Whatever they were—bullets or darts—one breezed through his hair. Then pain burned
across the top of his shoulder as another grazed his flesh. Blood trickled hot down his back.
“No bullets!” someone shouted, voice tight and furious. “You might hit the girl.”
Surprised that anyone gave a damn, but still not risking a glance over his shoulder to see who, Dante tightened his grip on Chloe and kept moving.
He’d survive a bullet. Chloe wouldn’t.
He surged forward, pushing for more speed, and hung a left at the next corridor T. More doors and surprised/puzzled faces blurred past. The shouts and sounds of pursuit faded, then vanished.
A glowing red
EXIT–STAIRS
sign appeared on the right and instinct insisted he take the stairs even while a more rational part of his mind warned him he’d have nowhere to go but down—the hard way—if he did.
Grabbing the handle, Dante yanked the door open and followed his instincts. An alarm blared and he winced as the steady shriek pierced his eardrums and his aching head. By the time the steel door thunked shut behind them, thankfully muffling the alarm, he’d already vaulted up the first flight of stairs.
He’d just rounded the fourth flight of concrete stairs when he heard the door bang open again below.
“Baptiste!”
The same determined voice from before. How was the fucker keeping up? Frowning, Dante mulled over the name said fucker had used—not Prejean, not goddamned S, but Baptiste. . . .
“There’s no way out, Baptiste. You’re boxing yourself in.” Closer, the voice.