Authors: Adrian Phoenix
Lucien exhaled, releasing his power. “We do.”
“But we also need to discuss what we plan to do if his sanity has been broken. I know all about Bad Seed and what was done to Dante. And no,” the Morningstar added, giving Lucien a knowing look from beneath pale lashes, “I haven’t told anyone else.”
“And you won’t,” Lucien stressed, holding the Morningstar’s wintery blue gaze.
“Of all the many things I am, fool is not among them.”
“Yet.”
“Your faith in me is quite touching, brother,” the Morningstar said in a voice as dry as a desert wind. “Now, Dante—his sanity?”
“Dante’s bond with Heather has kept him balanced. Once we’ve located him, we can keep him sedated and safe until we find her.”
“And if we
don’t
find her?”
“We will,” Lucien replied. Stepping to the cliff’s edge, he studied the whitecapped waves crashing against the rocks below. “We must.”
“While I applaud your optimism, I don’t share it,” the Morningstar said. “Do you remember the device created by that nephilim scientist? The one designed to preserve what was left of Yahweh’s sanity, maybe even restore it?”
“
An Banna Cruach
,” Lucien said slowly, as a memory awakened, one buried long centuries before. “The Steel Bond.”
“The bond that cannot be severed, yes,” the Morningstar mused. “That’s it.”
“It was an invention of pure desperation,” Lucien said, turning to look at the Morningstar, “a last ditch effort. An effort finished too late, at that.”
“It was meant to be implanted within Yahweh, am I right?” the Morningstar asked. “To rechannel the
creu tân
in some fashion in order to safeguard his sanity?”
“Yes, but it was never tested, so we’ll never know if it would’ve worked. It might not have,” Lucien replied, impatience sharpening his tone. “In any case, it was built with a full-blooded Elohim
creawdwr
in mind, not a mixed-blood Maker.”
“If Dante’s sanity has broken and Heather isn’t found, we may have no other choice—aside from killing him, that is.”
Lucien laughed. “You talk as if the damned thing still existed. Loki destroyed—”
“No, he didn’t,” the Morningstar cut in. “He killed the
nephilim who invented it, oh yes. Loki wanted Yahweh to become the Great Destroyer. He thought that would be fun beyond measure. But he never had a chance to destroy the Bond. Someone stole it from him before he could.”
“And who was that?”
A smile brushed the Morningstar’s lips. “Michael.”
Hope sparked. If the Steel Bond still existed, it might save Dante when nothing else could. “And where is it now?”
“Keeping Michael company inside his tomb—in theory, anyway. Besides, as you said, it may not even work on a True Blood–Fallen
creawdwr
at all. A
creawdwr
we still need to find.”
“That we do,” Lucien agreed. “So name your damned price.”
“Let’s think of it as a penalty, not a price. A penalty in two parts.”
“You can call it whatever you want, just name it.”
“First, I want Lilith back, restored once more to flesh.”
Lucien nodded, surprised, but not unpleasantly so. For a deal with the devil, that particular request/penalty was more difficult than morally challenging. “I’ll do my best to convince Dante. But no guarantees. He’s stubborn under the best of circumstances.”
“I’ve noticed,” the Morningstar said dryly.
“And the second part?”
“To ensure a lasting alliance between our houses, I want a hostage.”
And there it was, the moral compromise, the true deal with the devil.
Lucien regarded the Morningstar for a long, silent moment. He caught a flash of white in his peripheral vision, heard the rush of wings beneath the wind. Hekate.
“Dante will never give up Heather,” Lucien warned.
“Of course not,” the Morningstar said. “She’s bondmate and
cydymaith
both. I had no intention of asking for her.”
“Who, then?”
“Her sister, Annie. The mortal you were so busy rescuing.”
“No. Impossible. She’s pregnant. Choose another. Choose me.”
“Pregnant?” The Morningstar’s eyes shone with a speculative light. “Truly? Well, that changes everything. Annie no longer interests me as a hostage.”
Relief flooded through Lucien. He was just about to offer himself again as hostage, when the Morningstar’s next words stole the air from his lungs.
“I want the child in her womb, once born.”
“Are you mad?” Lucien asked, voice flat, disbelieving. “This is no longer the ancient world. You can’t lay claim to newborns. No.”
The Morningstar shrugged. “As you wish. I shall find and free Dante without you, then. And I will do whatever I deem necessary to stabilize his sanity.” His alabaster wings unfurled, sweeping through the air. He lifted into the brine-and storm-scented night.
“Damn you, wait!”
The Morningstar paused, hovering, his wings beating through the air. He tilted his head, regarding Lucien with shadowed eyes. “I’m waiting, but not for long. I have a
creawdwr
to salvage. And please keep in mind that any promise you make will be sealed in blood—unbreakable.”
Lucien tasted something dark and bitter at the back of his throat. He knew Dante would never forgive him for the vow he was about to make. Suspected he would never forgive himself.
I would lay the world to waste for my son. What is one mortal infant?
Lucien realized in that moment that he and Leviathan weren’t so very different.
For I shall claim your firstborn as my own—to kill or to love, as I deem fit.
Eyes burning, Lucien slashed a talon across his palm. Blood welled up, dark and fragrant, binding him to the words
he now spoke in a low voice. “The child shall be yours. Now take me to my son.”
The Morningstar revealed his sharp teeth in a dark and wolfish grin. “With plea—”
“Father!”
Hekate landed on the cliff in a frantic flurry of wings. As she swiveled to face them, Lucien’s gut knotted at the panic and uncertainty he saw darkening her eyes and leaching color from her face. From above and all around, cries sounded through the rain-lashed night like frightened sea gulls. As Lucien listened, he closed his eyes, pulse pounding at his temples.
“They’re gone,” the Morningstar said, voice stunned, a man learning his cancer is terminal. “The skygates have unraveled.”
B
ATON
R
OUGE
D
OUCET
-B
AINBRIDGE
S
ANITARIUM
T
HE AIR REEKED OF
blood and pissed-pants death.
Blood glistened on the walls.
Slicked the tile floor in long, dark smears.
And on the alarm panel ripped from the wall beside the security desk—a bloody left handprint that Dante studied like a stark and mysterious paleolithic cave painting from where he lay sprawled on the floor. He lifted his bloodstained left hand. Compared.
Probably mine.
Lowering his hand, Dante wearily closed his eyes. His head pulsed with pain, a never-relenting, white-hot pressure as though his head was caught between tons of shifting rock. Trapped beneath the rubble of a cataclysmic internal earthquake, despite having escaped the shattered depths—for now, anyway—when a seizure had knocked S’s ass to the blood-smeared floor.
Just taking a time-out. Catching my breath.
Got a full schedule of killing ahead.
A chill touched Dante soul-deep. He no longer knew if his thoughts were his alone or belonged to S. Figured it no longer mattered at this point. Words Lucien had said to him in the back of the Perv’s van popped into his aching head.
S doesn’t exist. Only Dante. S is a part of you, child. The rage you deny, the pain you ignore. You are Dante Baptiste, son of Lucien and Genevieve. Not S. Not the child of monsters.
Dante had a feeling the fucking FBI and SB—not to mention everyone cooling on the floor—would heartily disagree.
Opening his eyes and wishing for a pair of shades, Dante squinted as light from the overheads needled into them. He rolled up onto his hands and knees. He needed to haul ass. Needed to find an exit, then Heather.
Sure about that?
Memory coughed up an ugly image.
His finger squeezes the trigger. Her head rocks forward with the first bullet, then snaps back with the second, tendrils of red hair whipping through the air.
Dante shivered, suddenly cold, the nightmare image refusing to fade. Sweat beaded his forehead, dampened the hair at the nape of his neck. White light strobed furiously at the edges of his vision. He needed to warn Heather away. He couldn’t trust himself—and neither should she. Until he had himself—including the part of him that was S—under control, she wouldn’t be safe.
No one would be.
Hoping the blood he’d gulped down (Nah, make that S. Credit where credit’s due, yeah?) during the sanitarium slaughter had diluted the drugs in his system enough to keep his sending from bouncing around the inside of his skull like a rubber bullet, Dante reached for Heather through their bond.
Catin,
keep away. Run from me. Run as far—
The floor tilted beneath his knees, interrupting his sending,
and scattering black flecks across his graying field of vision. An intense spinning sensation pureed his thoughts. Blanked his mind. Pain needled his temples, blowback from the sending.
“Boy, you need to get your ass down to the basement and now,” Papa said, his voice bayou bred and two-packs-of-Winstons-a-day gravelly. “Enough with dat school nonsense. Someone coming to see you. And trust me, he ain’t interested in whether or not you know yo’ ABCs.” The
fi’ de garce
’s raspy laughter ended in a cough. “Waste o’ time, anyway. Chloe should be doing her homework insteada teaching you dat bullshit.”
Hands curling automatically into fists at the sound of Papa’s voice, Dante blinked until his vision cleared. For a moment, he thought he saw a gore-splashed corridor graffitied with a primitive and bloody handprint—then it was gone.
A dream, maybe. A really fucked up dream. But no more fucked up than Papa Prejean and his motherfucking basement-prison bordello.
“Fuck you,” Dante said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
He was kneeling beside Chloe’s bed, facing Papa who stood in the doorway in jeans and a fresh, white wifebeater bracketed by suspenders. Despite a liberal dosing of Florida Water, Dante still smelled Papa’s sweat underneath the cologne’s sweet orange, cloves, and lavender fragrance.
Papa frowned, deep lines furrowing his forehead. “Dere you go, running dat foul mouth o’ yours again. Sounds like I should rinse it out with somet’ing stronger dan soap. Mebbe dat gasoline out in the garage’ll do the trick.”
“Leave him alone,” Chloe said from behind Dante. He heard her heart beating hard and fast, speaking up despite her fear, and with each frantic, hummingbird beat, Dante heard the rhythm of her courage.
Papa slanted a sour look at her over the top of Dante’s head. “Hush, you. Or I’ll put my hand upside your head.”
Reaching back, Dante squeezed Chloe’s knee, then rose
to his feet. The room wobbled, became a corridor dotted with crumpled bodies, a trail of bloodied bread crumbs underscored by a steady and muffled
whomp-whomp-whomp
and leading to—
Chloe’s room. Papa in the doorway, a Winston smoldering between his fingers and curling pale smoke into the air to battle it out with sweat and Florida Water.
Dante swayed on his feet, pain a sledgehammer pounding against the inside of his skull. “You’re gonna need more than handcuffs—”
Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!
The sound reverberated through Dante’s aching head. The booming heartbeat of a giant or the smack of furious fists into a punching bag or—
The room wobbled again and Dante stumbled, thumping shoulder-first into the wall.
—or the thud of feet kicking in desperation against a thick, steel door.
Dante blinked. Chloe’s room vanished. A corridor replaced it, one full of bodies and blood and the stink of death and cordite. A paleolithic handprint. The SB sanitarium. He sucked in a breath, concentrated on remaining in the here-and-now.
Guns were scattered across the tile. Medical staff in white-and mint-green scrubs lay entangled among the bodies of black-suited agents. Whether S’s work or his own, and pretty sure it didn’t fucking matter in the long run, Dante felt no regret. Not when he thought of little girls in Winnie-the-Pooh sweaters deliberately locked into rooms with wounded and starving nightkind.
I’ve got promises to keep.
Wiping blood from his nose with the back of his hand, Dante pushed himself away from the wall.
From within their locked rooms, inmates pounded against the steel doors with fists and feet and anything not bolted to the concrete, their violent and desperate drumming an aural
gauntlet that Dante passed as he staggered unsteadily down the corridor, looking for an exit sign and hoping against hope he found one before the past played python and swallowed him down its dark gullet again.
I could unlock the doors.
I could let them all go.
I could play with them.
Until Purcell returns.
“No,” Dante whispered. “Ain’t stopping. I’m getting the hell out of here.” Pain pounded and drummed in his head, keeping time with all the thumping fists and feet.
Wantitneeditkillitburnitburnburnburn . . .
Darkness nibbling at his vision like a hungry mouse, Dante stumbled to a stop. He leaned against the wall and rubbed his temples with trembling fingers. He struggled to shut out the fucking noise, to dampen the pain. To think.
Send it below or fucking use it.
Problem was,
below
was full to the brim and hands crawling with wasps were locked around his ankles, fingers digging in to yank him down again.