Authors: Adrian Phoenix
Sleep washed over Dante in a numbing, narcotic tide and he stumbled back a step, shaking it off—or trying to, anyway—like a dog from a leash. He had one crucial thing to do yet before Sleep claimed him, one crucial thing to protect his woman of heart and steel.
Before he forgot who she was.
Papa in his now heartless skin suit had been both right and wrong. Closing the bond wouldn’t stop Heather, but
severing
it would.
Don’t chase her away. Lure her in. We’ll play. It’ll be fun
, je te promets.
Before he forgot why it mattered.
A cold sweat beaded Dante’s forehead. Knotting his hands into fists, he fought Sleep’s relentless surge with everything he had—scared to his fucking bones it wouldn’t be enough. Darkness pinpricked his vision. He sent to Heather, not knowing if it would reach her or not. Then he imagined slicing through the bond tethering them together with a red-hot knife. Both ends whipped away like fallen power lines.
The northward tug vanished. And the blue-white star of Heather’s presence, anchor and beacon both, and still buried beneath miles of dark glass, went with it. Pain pierced Dante’s heart. His breath caught rough and raw in his throat. Fiery sparks snapped in the darkness behind his eyes. His mind sizzled, a bonfire of agony. Electricity thrummed down his spine as the severed bond jump-started another seizure. His muscles locked.
Now she’s safe
.
Dante closed his stinging eyes in relief, lashes wet against his skin, as the seizure continued to kick his ass. He felt himself hit the floor beside Papa’s body. Felt his skull bounce off the tile. The sparks became a super nova.
Sleep wrapped Dante up in thick, narcotic chains, shoved
him under. He sank like an anchor into the subterranean depths of the past. Reality wheeled and wheeled and wheeled.
—He hides Boo underneath the stained mattress when he hears his foster daddy’s heavy footsteps tromping on down the hallway. The plushie turtle doesn’t seem to mind being squashed flat. Boo understands. Better squashed than all burned up, for true.
—Hidden in the shed behind Papa’s house, breathing in the aromas of gasoline and old motor oil and skin fragrant with soap and sweat, he and Jeannette and Mark take turns kissing each other, feeling each other up, exploring with eager hands and heated mouths. Neither one minds the touch of his fangs.
—Carved into the insides of Gina’s pale thighs, the anarchy symbol. Smeared in her own blood on the wall above her body: WAKE UP S.
Make them pay. Burn the world. Make them pay. Burn the world.
In his dreams, Dante walked the path he’d been born to walk.
And it was dark.
C
RAWLING UP THE LONG
concrete steps to the sanitarium entrance, Heather stared, dazed, at the door. The lock plate appeared scorched, melted. She fumbled the door open with a drunk’s palsied hands.
The pain in her head was a white-hot sledgehammer and it just wouldn’t stop. It kept pounding and pounding and pounding. She felt the hot trickle of blood from her nose. Tasted it at the back of her throat.
Grabbing onto the cold metal of the threshold, she hauled herself into the red-lit corridor, panting. The door slammed shut behind her. Lacking the strength to sit up, she rested her cheek against the floor’s cool tile.
Despair rolled through her, dark and thick, endless.
The bond was gone. Her North Star had winked out.
And she was scared to her core that it’s loss meant Dante had died. The only thing giving her hope that he still breathed was the abrupt sending she’d received just before the internal GPS went dark.
Catin. Pardonne-moi
.
Three words, there and gone in a split second; words she refused to accept.
“Not letting you go, Baptiste,” Heather whispered in a voice that sounded broken and raw even to herself, each word a hot coal searing her throat. “Not giving up. If you want to say you’re sorry, if you want me to forgive you, then you’re going to have to ask me face to face.”
She closed her burning eyes and prayed with everything she had that when she found Dante, he would be able to do just that.
Heather felt one more sledgehammer blow, white-hot pain—
—then nothing.
I
NTERSTATE
55 N
ORTH
A
NNIE STEERED THE VAN
down I-10, the tires humming along the blacktop, C.C. Adcock’s sexy swamp-rock/bluesy voice curling from the iPod Jack had docked into the van’s system, singing about a woman who just doesn’t know how to be good to her hard-working man.
Maybe that hard-working man needed to learn how to load a dishwasher or cook a three-course meal or fold up a basketful of clean laundry if he wanted his woman to remain thrilled about
being
his woman.
Just saying, y’know. A word to the wise—don’t be a self-entitled douchebag
.
Beyond the windshield, dawn stretched fingers of rose, peach, and orange into the brightening sky, a color combination that made Annie think of raspberry sorbet and orange sherbet—a thought she quickly regretted as her stomach knotted. Nausea rolled through her in a throat-burning acid wave. Cold sweat beaded on her forehead.
One minute I’m devouring anything that doesn’t fucking scurry away fast enough, the next I never want to hear, see, smell, or think about food again. Ever
.
“Pregnancy sucks,” Annie muttered through clenched teeth.
“Sorry to hear that, sugar. Peach?” Jack asked, offering her a juicy slice from the tip of his pocket knife.
Annie shook her head, swallowed hard, then fumbled at the window control button. Cool air smelling faintly of exhaust and wild grass wet with dew poured inside as the window hummed down.
The nausea gradually subsided and Annie breathed a little easier. She glanced at Jack. The drummer sat slouched in the passenger seat, one booted foot up on the dash, contentedly thumbing peach slices into his mouth. The aroma, sweet and sunny, did nothing to improve her mood or her nausea.
“If I puke, I plan to puke on you,” Annie announced darkly. “Repeatedly.”
“Hey, now. No need for vomiting, targeted or otherwise.”
“Says you,” Annie muttered.
“Hey, podna,” Emmett called from the back, “I’ll take more of that jerky, if you have any left.”
As Jack handed what remained of the bag of jerky back to Emmett, Annie found herself wishing Silver and Merri had left both men behind at Jack’s sister’s house when they’d dropped off Eerie along with a bag of tuna-flavored kibble, wishing that she was driving in non-food scented, blissful, silence.
They’re mortal, Annie. And Jack is a part of our family. He’s my responsibility, just like Thibodaux is Merri’s. We need to keep our family safe.
But who was keeping her sister safe? She was mortal too. And alone.
I wish you would wait
. . .
I can’t
.
Tension thrummed through Annie’s body, whitened her knuckles against the steering wheel. She wanted to get to
Memphis as quickly as possible, find Von, grab him, then haul ass to join Heather in Baton Rouge, even though in her heart of hearts, she knew that whatever was going to happen would have happened and been long done by the time she arrived. Hell, probably before she even hit Memphis.
A quick glance at the speedometer hovering at 80 mph had Annie easing her foot just slightly off the gas pedal.
Christ! Slow down. The last thing you need is a fucking ticket.
Another thing she didn’t need was having to explain why the people in the back refused to wake up and fetch their identification. And she sure as shit didn’t want to screw up her chance to make things right.
Annie’s foot dropped down on the accelerator again, her lips compressed into a thin white line. The van surged ahead, a stallion under spurs.
P
INE
B
LUFF
, A
RKANSAS
C
ATERINA
’
S HEAD WAS TURNED
to one side on the pillow, eyes closed, her hair a spill of dark coffee across the white satin case. Giovanni studied her as Sleep crept into his veins, deeply troubled by her unhealthy pallor, by the shadows bruising the skin beneath her dark lashes, by the far from peaceful expression on her face.
“Keep her sedated until I awake,” Giovanni instructed. “I think the dose we gave her should keep her under until twilight, but”—he shrugged one shoulder—“she’s strong-willed.”
“Of course,
signor
,” Sondra murmured. A mortal friend of the Cercle de Druide, she kept a day-house, a vampire bed-and-dinner, for members traveling in the area.
Giovanni double-checked Caterina’s restraints, making sure she was safe and secure and couldn’t escape while he Slept. Finally satisfied that she wouldn’t be able to work her
way free, despite her training and deadly skills, he sighed and raked a hand through his hair, leaving it in disarray.
Caterina’s mind had been tampered with, of that Giovanni had no doubt. Detecting the alterations within her unshielded mind had been easy enough.
From the moment Renata had first carried Caterina into their home, the toddler’s chubby arms wrapped around her graceful neck—
Look, Vanni
mio,
we have been given a gift
—he’d quickly grown to understand Caterina’s mind, comprehending how she thought and dreamed and schemed, this little mortal,
our
little mortal, dancing among vampires.
She’d been an annoying nuisance, at first,
sì
, one he’d resented—no denying it. But over time, and almost without his knowing when or how, Caterina had transformed from nuisance to family, his
soeur de coeur
—a true sister of the heart.
And whoever had tampered with her had damaged her, perhaps permanently.
Giovanni’s jaw tightened, his gaze never wavering from his sister’s pale, vulnerable face.
“Qualcuno pagherà,
Caterina
mia,”
he vowed.
“Qualcuno pagherà a cara prezzo.”
Someone would most definitely pay.
Questions remained: Who? Why? Could the damage be healed, the tampering undone? He wished he could contact Renata, but given that it was early afternoon in Rome, his
mère de sang
still Slept, safe and secure behind cool marble walls.
Sleep surged through his veins, narcotic and inescapable. His eyelids drooped. A hand lightly touched his arm.
“This way,
signor
,” Sondra urged, slacks whispering as she stepped into the doorway.
Giovanni allowed the redhead with a matronly shelf of bosom to lead him to the room next to Caterina’s, then thanked her for her hospitality. Once she’d left the room, shutting the door behind her, he stripped down to his boxer briefs before collapsing drunkenly onto the pale rose silk sheets.
He sank into the fathomless waters of Sleep like an iceberg-gouged ship, chased into the dark by a single, chilling thought: Where had Loki flown off to in such a rush?
T
HE
F
RENCH
Q
UARTER
I
N A SMALL POWER
boat on the Mississippi, Edmond gently swaddled his master’s burned body in fresh water-soaked blankets, covering him from now-bald head to blackened and curled toes.
Swallowing hard against the meaty stench of seared flesh, Edmond sat down beside Mauvais, then uttered one terse word: “Go.”
Phaedra opened the throttle and steered the boat away from the flame-engulfed
Winter Rose
. With a hollow heart, Edmond watched as the fire department geysered water on the blazing riverboat from several high-powered hoses.
With a sharp, splintering crack that boomed into the night like ancient cannon fire, the
Winter Rose
snapped in half. One half, still burning, slipped—foot by foot—into the inky waters. Distant voices shouted. Blue and red and white lights strobed through the graying night.
The majordomo blinked stinging eyes. The smoke, of course. The gritty ashes.
He didn’t know how the fire had started—not for certain, but given its swiftness, the reek of kerosene, and the death of the
apprenti
he’d left in charge of refueling and relighting the lanterns, he believed an accident with one of the lanterns must’ve occurred.
But hadn’t he also caught a faint whiff of ozone as he’d pelted up from belowdecks at his master’s agonized screams?
You got an angry
loa
on dis here boat . . .
Edmond had no idea how long it would take his master to heal from his devastating injuries or how much blood would
be required during the process, but Mauvais would have all he needed and more.
The
Winter Rose
may be gone, but the majority of my master’s household has survived the fire. At least I can give him that good news.
Pale tendrils of peach and hyacinth curled across the brightening horizon. Gaze still on the burning, foundering
Winter Rose
, Edmond said, “Faster.”
“No shit,” Phaedra muttered, pushing the speedboat as hard as it could go.
Racing the dawn.
D
ALLAS
, T
EXAS
J
AMES
W
ALLACE WATCHED AS
the big rig and its friendly driver pulled away from the curb with a deep, concrete-vibrating rumble, exhaust belching black smoke stinking of scorched oil into the air.
The driver had talked nonstop all the way into Dallas, but James had thought the one-sided conversation a very small price to pay, considering he could still be standing on the highway with his thumb out.
Once the truck had merged—more like bulldozed—into traffic, disappearing from sight, James turned around and studied the building across the sidewalk from him, his requested stop.