Authors: Adrian Phoenix
Then, when Dante awakened at twilight, he would find her beside him. Now that she’d found him again, she wouldn’t leave him. Not even to save her own ass. Which would piss Dante off if he knew.
So let him get pissed off. We’re in this together. Side by side and back to back.
Tucking the cell phone back into her pocket, Heather was preparing to rise to her feet to begin her search for blankets when a familiar and totally unexpected voice drawled, “I go to fetch my heart and put it back where it belongs—an action only necessary due to my regretful underestimation of the
creawdwr
’s paranoia—and lo and behold, who do I find waiting upon my return but the lovely Heather Wallace.”
Hair prickling at the back of her neck, Heather looked up. Von stood across the corridor, arms folded over his chest, a grin parting his mustache-framed lips. But Von’s green gaze had never been that darkly gleeful, never that calculating, his words never so formal.
“I don’t know who you are,” she stated quietly, “but I
do
know you’re not Von.”
The grin widened. “Well, shit. So far this shape has fooled no one.” The imposter rubbed his chest, a rueful expression on his face as he glanced at Dante. “Call me Loki. Yes”—he sighed, clearly anticipating the question—“
that
Loki.”
Heather swung one knee over Dante’s body, protectively straddling his Sleeping form, as she pulled the Glock from beneath her sweater and lifted it in one smooth motion. She knew that bullets of any caliber were practically worthless against the Fallen, even as a distraction, but still wanted the reassuring grip of the gun in her hand, no matter how illusory that reassurance might be.
Loki grinned, approval gleaming in his eyes. “What a fierce little guard dog. Loyal. Protective. A one-woman rescue team. No wonder the
creawdwr
bonded you.”
Heather kept her face still.
He doesn’t know what Dante’s done. And I think I just discovered one of the reasons he found it necessary
.
“You have no business wearing Von’s face. Afraid to show your own?”
Loki laughed, as delighted as though she were a dancing hamster in a pink tutu.
She took that as a
no
.
I know from my Norse mythology classes in college that Loki was a shape-shifter, but can all Fallen change shapes?
“No,” came the drawled reply. A disquieting reply in Von’s familiar voice. “Only a special few of us possess that particular talent . . . darlin’.”
Heather tightened her shields. Her lips compressed into a grim line. Bastard had read her thoughts. She needed to make sure that she kept her shields up and reinforced at all times. Her life—and Dante’s—might depend on it.
“And speaking of special talents”—Loki tilted his head and studied her with Von’s green eyes, now crow-bright—“how did you get past my spells?”
“Without a bit of difficulty,” she retorted, keeping the
Glock aimed at the heart beating beneath Loki’s idly rubbing fingertips. “Others are on their way,” she lied—well, a partial lie. She had no idea when or if Lucien would show up, but fervently wished it would be sooner rather than later—“An entire army of nightkind, Fallen, and mortals. You still have time to escape. Just leave Dante and go.”
The green eyes flicked down at Dante. Mingled fear and excitement danced there for a split second, bright embers, there and gone so quickly Heather wasn’t even sure she’d seen anything at all.
“You think I want to
escape
?” he whispered, lifting his gaze to hers. No fear, no excitement, no bright embers.
“If you’re smart, yes.”
Loki chuckled, a sound lacking warmth or humor. “And what would one little mortal know of ‘smart’? Or of Elohim desires?” He offered her a mock sympathetic smile. “No doubt you even think you
understand
Dante.”
Heather’s chin lifted as she held his gaze. But she kept silent, deciding to save her breath. Nothing she said would make any difference to this shape-shifting, egotistical bastard anyway.
Despite the slaughter surrounding her, she knew who Dante was, knew his heart.
But even the strongest heart can break.
Heather’s throat constricted.
Yes. Oh, yes.
And that was why she needed to get him out of here and somewhere safe before that happened.
And if it already has?
Heather shoved the disquieting thought aside.
Not now.
“I’m betting you think that when Dante awakens, he’s going to be the vampire—excuse me, apologies—
nightkind
he was when he went to Sleep, broken and haunted and full of suppressed rage, am I right?” Loki asked, a slow grin parting his lips. He continued without waiting for Heather’s reply; his knowing, arrogant words had her tightening her grip on the Glock. “If so, you’d be wrong. Very,
very
wrong.”
“I don’t think so, you son of a bitch,” Heather replied, her voice Arctic ice. “I
know
Dante.”
“And that will be the death of you,” Loki said, voice flat, his grin gone. His form rippled, like wind-stirred water, became fluid. When he spoke, his voice flowed from masculine tones to feminine and all registers in between. “It won’t be your Dante who awakens—not at all.”
I feel like I’m running out of time,
catin.
I think he’s had all he can take, doll.
“Bullshit,” Heather declared, her voice rough and low, unsure who she was trying to convince—Loki or herself.
Liquid, musical laughter filled the corridor, followed by words Heather suspected had been stolen from Dante’s mind. “Keep telling yourself that.”
“Bastard.” She glanced down, unsettled by the sudden fluidity of Loki’s shape. After a moment, she risked a look up and her heart lodged in her throat at
who
Loki had become. Dark brown eyes full of mischief, milk-white face framed by silken black hair, cupid’s-bow lips curved into a wicked and knowing grin. His frost and burning leaves scent perfumed the air.
Dante—but minus his heart, his warmth.
“Hey,
catin
.”
“You need to work on your Cajun accent. You sound
nothing
like him,” Heather lied, chilled by just how much he
did
sound like Dante.
The grin widened, revealed fangs. “I believe he would say ‘bullshit’ to that.”
“
I
believe he’d tear your heart out again, play a little kickball with it.”
“Not quite twilight,
chèrie
. Looks like we have a little time. Whaddaya say we get to know each other a little better?”
Heather’s hands tightened around the Glock, desperation and despair pouring through her in equal measure.
How the hell do I keep a fallen angel away?
“You’re not going to win any points with Dante—”
Heather’s words died in her throat as Loki dissolved into a blur of motion that ended with him bending over her, his face—Dante’s face—three inches from her own.
“I think he’s going to be too busy unraveling the world to worry about me,” he whispered. A golden fire lit his eyes. “Besides, I’m not exactly interested in winning points.”
Heather squeezed the Glock’s trigger and kept squeezing, emptying the magazine of its ten remaining rounds. The gunshots boomed and roared in the close confines, echoing like cannon fire down the corridor, and leaving her ears ringing. Dark blood bloomed in a tightly spaced circle of wounds just beneath Loki-as-Dante’s pale sternum. Wounds already healing.
The dark brows slanted down. “Ow,” he growled, wrenching the Glock from Heather’s grip and tossing it down the corridor to clatter against the floor tiles. “That actually hurt.”
“Good. It’ll hurt even more when Dante—”
Loki-as-Dante pressed taloned fingertips against Heather’s temples. The lightning storm scent of ozone crackled into the air. The hair lifted on her arms, the back of her neck. Her skin tingled beneath his talons. Fear iced her spine, stole her breath. A smile tilted the oh-so familiar lips.
“I like a good fight,
catin
. So keep it going,” Loki murmured in Dante’s voice. “I hope you’re telling the truth about others being on their way—especially the Elohim. I feel in a mood for a little chat with my brethren. But first, let’s learn all about you.”
Let me in
, chère.
Let me in
.
Electricity surged through Heather’s mind, a mushroom cloud of devastating white light. Her shields blew apart, Tinker-toys caught in a nuclear wind, and darkness—eager and gleeful—rushed inside. She felt her body convulse, no longer under her control. She couldn’t even scream.
But she tried. Again and again.
“W
HERE ARE YOU GOING
?” the Morningstar called from behind Lucien. “Dante is
behind
us.”
The spell’s repelling force—like hands shoving at his chest, like a frantic voice endlessly yelling,
Darkness comes and death, flee-flee-flee!
—vanished as soon as Lucien had flown beyond its range.
“Lucien, wait!” Hekate’s concerned voice. “Your son is in that sanitarium.”
Wings slashing the air like knife blades, Lucien wheeled around to face Hekate and the Morningstar. “Don’t you think I know that?” he answered, his voice harsh even to his own ears. “Dante is Sleeping inside a sanitarium sealed with Elohim blood sigils, alone with whoever put them there. And I couldn’t
think
, let alone
act
, because of that damned spell. I had to pull free of its influence.”
“How very odd,” the Morningstar murmured. Late afternoon sunlight transformed the ice melting from the edges of his alabaster wings into hundreds of tiny, fiery prisms. He tilted his head, curious, cataloguing potential weaknesses for future use. “We need to figure out why you were affected and we weren’t.”
Lucien already knew why. The answer burned like bitter acid at the back of his throat. “My protection sigils are gone. Have been for nearly twenty-four years.”
Comprehension blossomed in Hekate’s hyacinth eyes. “The story you told me earlier while we waited for my father.”
Swallowing back the questions she no doubt yearned to ask, she touched the small leather bag looped through the belt around her waist and said, “We must remedy that, then.”
“T
HERE.
A
LL PROTECTED
,” H
EKATE
said, wiping silver ink from her opalescent talons with a napkin. The ink’s wild mint aroma scented the air, cutting through the smell of spicy fried chicken.
“Thank you.” Lucien studied Hekate’s handiwork. The protection sigils inked into his chest, above his heart and solar plexus, glimmered like moonlit winter ice and tingled cool against his skin like camphor, a sensation already fading.
They sat at a small table inside a Popeye’s restaurant, hidden behind an illusion woven by the Morningstar that showed a table occupied by plump fast-food aficionados instead of a trio of fallen angels engaged in a tattoo session.
“It was because you couldn’t return to Gehenna,” the Morningstar mumbled around a mouthful of red beans and rice. “At least, you couldn’t until just recently.”
Lucien glanced at him, frowning. “What was?” he asked, ignoring the Morningstar’s aggrieved
why-aren’t-you-keeping-up-with-my-train-of-thought
expression.
“Why you’ve remained without protective sigils for the last twenty-four years,” he sighed, pushing back from the table, his meal of red beans and rice, plus biscuits finished. “No mortal possesses the secret of our protective spells.”
“True enough,” Lucien admitted.
“How
did
you lose your original sigils?” Hekate asked. “I thought they were permanent, to protect us from mortal and vampire summoning spells.”
Lucien’s thoughts traveled back to Lincoln City and the tiny tattoo shop perched above the cliff-lashing Pacific, back to the woman he’d hunted, only to end up as prey himself.
With one twist of her hand, Paloma summons the ink out of Lucien’s skin, siphoning it through his pores, and unraveling his
protection sigils. The silvery ink spatters to the floor, tiny beads of mercury. A heartbeat later, he finds himself trapped inside a magicked circle in a windowless room etched with powerful sigils and angelic script from wall to wall and floor to ceiling.
“They are,” Lucien finally answered, rising to his feet. “But it’s a long story and we don’t have the time. We need to get back to Dante.”
As the three of them walked out into the Popeye’s parking lot, the Morningstar commented, “Not really much need for the protection sigils anymore. Very little summoning going on these days—unlike the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Not with the Internet gods holding mortal attention.”
“True,” Lucien agreed. “And I, for one, don’t miss it.” Unfurling his wings, he leaped into the sky.
L
ANDING ONCE MORE IN
the sanitarium’s car-dotted parking lot, Lucien folded his wings behind him, flicking beads of moisture into air smelling of distant wood smoke and dew. For a moment, he thought he caught a faint whiff of Heather’s scent, but dismissed it. Even if she had escaped and made her way to Baton Rouge, the spell would’ve turned her around and sent her home.
No, just wishful thinking.
He studied the silent and sigil-painted building, feeling an electric tingle as his protective glyphs shielded his mind from the repelling spell’s
flee-flee-flee
command.
All Fallen magic, whether offensive or defensive, was dark, but—he felt a fierce smile curve his lips—not half as dark or deadly or determined as a father seeking his stolen child.
Lucien arrowed a thought into Dante’s Sleeping mind: <
I’m here and I’m not leaving without you
.> The sending vanished like a coin into the black depths of a wishing well, yet still he hoped it had buried itself deep into his son’s dreaming subconscious.
As for whoever held him—Lucien strode straight for the sigil-tattooed doors, voicing a
wybrcathl
of challenge, of sharp-taloned promise, into the evening air as he approached the sanitarium.