Authors: Adrian Phoenix
VISION CONSULTING
International Accounting & Financial Planning
James had no doubt that talented accountants did indeed work at Vision Consulting. An effective front needed to be a functioning one. But, thanks to interagency contacts carefully cultivated throughout his long career with the FBI, he knew
Vision Consulting for what it truly was—a hidden division of the Shadow Branch.
And he also knew that the moment he walked through those black-tinted glass doors, there would be no turning back.
James brushed road dust from his slacks, noting the four tiny bloodstained punctures marring the fabric. The wound beneath throbbed.
A fork. A goddamned fork. Clever girl, his daughter.
But a daughter now lost to him forever.
The image of Heather aiming his own damned gun at his forehead was burned into his brain. He hadn’t seen one iota of bluff in her blue eyes, only grim determination.
She would’ve pulled the trigger without blinking.
James’s anger was a glacier encasing his heart. Deep down, he suspected he was grieving. Heather,
his
Heather, had died the moment she’d met Dante Prejean-Baptiste. Yes, the godforsaken bloodsucker had saved her life when she’d been shot in D.C., but at what price?
Heather had returned to Seattle a different woman and had chosen a vampire over her own father, throwing away everything she’d ever worked for—including her humanity.
James remembered a twelve-year-old Heather throwing her arms around him and hugging him after she’d learned of her mother’s death. She’d held on with a quiet desperation, her face buried against his chest. Given her lack of tears at the time, he’d had the strangest feeling that this was a loss she could live with. Her words had proved him right.
It’s just us now, pumpkin,
he’d said.
You, me, Kevin, and Annie.
Daddy, that’s all it’s ever been.
James felt a pang of sorrow, of regret. He blinked burning eyes.
She’s gone. My Heather. Gone.
And the FBI, the Bureau he’d devoted his life to, had played a hand in that heart-hollowing loss. They had betrayed
him also. His SAC had promised he would be allowed to get Heather the treatment she so desperately needed to free her of Baptiste’s deadly influence, so she could be restored to them all—a daughter to James, a skilled and talented agent to the Bureau.
They’d lied.
The Bureau had used him to track Heather. Without their plan to move her, he never would’ve signed her out of the facility. Never would’ve lost her on a dark and lonely Texas highway. Never would’ve watched her aim a gun at his face.
The Bureau had stolen Heather’s single chance at redemption. They were as responsible for her death—for he had buried her in his heart—as Baptiste was.
Straightening his jacket, James drew himself erect, crossed the sidewalk to those black-tinted doors, pushed them open, and strode inside.
One good betrayal deserved another.
“I need to see your superior,” James said to the young man in the black-framed hipster glasses sitting behind the front desk. “Tell them that James William Wallace is here.”
He would give the SB everything. Including the woman who had once been his daughter.
G
EHENNA
W
ITH THE
M
ORNINGSTAR AND
Hekate on either side of him, Lucien strode down the Royal Aerie’s main corridor, past the line of blue-bladed shovels branching from the marble walls on other side, mute evidence of Dante’s inability to control his power.
Mute evidence of his brutal, but hidden, childhood, as well.
A bitter truth burrowed into Lucien’s heart. Until Dante was whole, his past exhumed, examined, and integrated, he would never be able to control the
creu tân
.
I had hoped to spare him those memories
. A desperate hope, and impossible.
In New Orleans, the sun was rising. Dante, wherever he was, would be Sleeping now. A fact for which Lucien was grateful. Once the Morningstar led him to Dante, he planned to take his son back to Jack’s house, where Hekate could heal Dante of any lingering damage from James Wallace’s special rounds.
As for Dante’s mind . . .
Lucien looked over at Hekate. She walked at his left with chin held high, lamplight gilding her moon-silver tresses. What she had told him as they’d flown from the cliff side circled through his mind, each word a bead on a rosary, a prayer of hope.
It’s possible I might be able to shore up your son’s mind. Wall up his past, hide it from him, until he can stabilize.
For how long?
Not long, it’ll be only temporary. But it’ll give you the time to help him learn about his past, to accept it
.
And if he doesn’t?
Then his psyche won’t survive when the wall comes down again
.
Grim hope, but hope, nonetheless.
An unwelcome entourage in the form of Gabriel and the remainder of the Celestial Seven followed Lucien and his companions in tense silence down the Aerie’s main corridor to Dante’s gate, the fast-paced clatter of sandals and boot soles loud against marble.
From within the Aerie’s depths, cries and wails and anxious
chalkydri
flutings filled the sandalwood-and-hyacinth-scented air, a Greek chorus of despair. The skygates had vanished. What part of their world would unravel next? Where was the
creawdwr
?
Good question
, Lucien thought grimly.
One I hope to answer very soon
.
“Tell your son that his human bondmate is welcome also,” Astarte said as they reached the gate Dante had created, literally punched his way in from one world to the next. “I have servants preparing chambers for them both.”
“I’ll let him know,” Lucien replied, pausing in front of the smooth-edged hole marring the corridor’s south wall.
“Perhaps an honor guard—”
The Morningstar laughed. “By all means—if you want Dante to refuse. Have you forgotten his disdain for authority?” His gaze settled on Gabriel. “I imagine you haven’t—
brother
.”
Gabriel folded his arms over his bare chest and leveled a cool, green gaze on the Morningstar. Lamp light glinted from the braided silver torc curled around his throat. “No, I haven’t, indeed.”
“We don’t wish to antagonize the boy,” Uriel said to Lucien. “All we ask is that you impress the urgency of the situation upon him.”
“Of course,” Lucien said, promising nothing.
Dante’s well-being came first, as far as he was concerned. Even at the expense of Gehenna’s existence.
Gabriel stepped forward, his unbound hair—a rich, warm caramel—brushing against his narrow hips and the scarlet kilt belted over them. “How can we trust you?” he asked. His gaze skipped from Lucien, to Hekate, to the Morningstar. “Any of you?”
Lucien met and held his gaze. “What choice do you have?”
Without waiting for an answer, Lucien ducked through the gate, folded wing tips scraping the top rim, and stepped into the
creawdwr
-shattered cemetery. St. Louis No. 3 should’ve smelled of dewed grass and young cherry blossoms, of the dawn. Should’ve, yes.
If
it were dawn.
But it wasn’t.
Instead the sun was hanging over the western horizon and the warm, late afternoon air vibrated with the rush of heavy traffic on the street beyond the cemetery’s broken walls. The
faint, sun-warmed fragrance of cherry blossoms wasn’t enough to mask the odor of decay and old death released from tombs that Dante had unintentionally cracked open like eggs with his power.
Fear spiked through Lucien.
Time was stalling in Gehenna, unraveling like its skygates.
The Morningstar’s grim voice echoed Lucien’s realization, “It’s worse than we thought.”
“It is,” Lucien agreed, turning to see Hekate and her father standing beside him amongst the crumbled crypts and broken cypress and oak trees that gave mute testimony to a
creawdwr
’s power and a son’s desperate determination.
Found you,
mon cher ami, mon père,
and I ain’t losing you again
.
Unfurling his white wings, the Morningstar took to the sky. The lowering sun chiseled radiant diamond dazzles from his wings as he soared ever upward. Lucien followed, Hekate at his left wing.
Now I will find
you, mon cher fils.
And no one will ever take you again
.
Not even if it meant the end of Gehenna.
R
OME
, I
TALY
R
ENATA
A
LESSA
C
ORTINI STIRRED
on her bed, suddenly restless beneath her cool linen sheets. Even locked in Sleep’s iron grip, she knew she was no longer dreaming; she was Witnessing, her inner vision unfurling images that chilled her to the bone, quick flashes of nightmare, glimpses into that-which-may-be.
In a hallway gleaming with faint red light, a fallen angel with black wings and short, ginger locks lounges upon a throne composed of dead and stiffening bodies
. . .
The night burns, the sky on fire from horizon to horizon
. . .
Dante Baptiste uncoils from a bloodied tile floor, his pale, breathtaking face smeared with blood, his eyes dark wells of madness, loss, and simmering rage
. . .
A tattoo of a running black wolf inked beneath a desperate green eye
. . .
Pale blue flames explode out from around the Great Destroyer’s lean body in transforming tongues of cool fire. His kohl-rimmed eyes open as his song rakes the burning night
. . .
A sign emblazoned with the words:
Doucet-Bainbridge Sanitarium
; Fallen sigils painted in blood upon glass
. . .
A woman’s voice:
I’m here, I’m here. Stay with me,
cher
.
She is all that stands between the
creawdwr
and the end of the world, all that stands between the Great Destroyer and the never-ending Road
. . .
A hand wreathed in sapphire flames, blue light glinting from the rings encircling thumbs and fingers, touches the rough surface of a parking lot. A frost-rimmed hole opens beneath that burning hand, an emptiness, a void that devours the parking lot, then spreads . . .
I have promises to keep,
Dante whispers, blood trickling from one nostril. Then he puts out the world’s light.
Darkness and screams filled Renata’s mind, followed by utter silence. Her pulse thundered in her ears, keeping time with her frantic heart.
She had never felt so cold.
Something had befallen Dante Baptiste, of that she had no doubt. She was less sure if he’d been seized by mortals or the Elohim or both. And, whether on purpose or accidentally, whoever had Dante would twist him into the Great Destroyer.
He is
ours
, not theirs. They cannot have him. This beautiful and deadly young
creawdwr
belongs to the vampire race; he is
our
s to train and guide and love.
But what frightened Renata even more than the very real possibility of Dante becoming the Great Destroyer was the fact that Dante’s mortal bondmate might hold the key to the world’s
continued existence, along with everything and everyone it contained.
A fragile mortal with a butterfly’s lifespan.
Heather Wallace needs to be safeguarded at all costs. If she dies, so do we all.
Renata needed to get to New Orleans. She needed to contact Giovanni and Caterina, find out what they knew. Much needed to be set into motion and immediately. Yet no matter how aware she was, Sleep still held her body a prisoner until dusk.
But
only
her body.
By feeding small amounts of her blood every night to her personal
domestica
, she could awaken the girl with a touch of her mind through their temporary blood bond and issue orders to be carried out.
Renata did so now.
She sent to the girl curled sleeping in a cot at the foot of her bed, brushing her dreams aside like cobwebs and touching her drowsing consciousness.
<
Flavia, awaken.
>
Through her inner eye, Renata saw the girl stir, her dark brown eyes opening wide, all trace of sleepiness gone. Flavia raised up on her elbows, ebony locks tumbling past her slim shoulders, and gave her attention to her mistress’s Slumbering form.
“
Signora?
”
Renata began telling her of all the things that needed to be done or set into motion before she rose with the twilight. When she finished, Flavia threw back her quilt and rose quickly from her cot. And set about her mistress’s work.
A
LEXANDRIA
, V
IRGINIA
S
HADOW
B
RANCH
HQ
A
PRIL
1
D
ESPITE
H
EATHER
W
ALLACE
’
S ESCAPE
from custody in Little Rock, using a coffee carafe and a field agent’s own Taser, embarrassing facts which that particular agent wouldn’t be living down anytime soon, Teodoro’s vacation remained on hold.
Only temporarily, the SB brass had reassured him. The red-haired FBI agent had vanished into the night, true. But they expected her to be quickly reapprehended once she popped up on their grid again.
And she would pop up again, but not alive.
Teodoro’s deadly little puppet would make sure of that.
Teodoro glanced at his cell phone again as he rode the elevator down to the eighth floor and frowned. Soft Muzak floated from the elevator audio panels, bland and cheerful, a neutered version of a popular rock song.
It’d been hours since he’d received a text from Caterina, a single-word message—
acquired
—telling him that the assassin had found Wallace. He’d received nothing from her since.