Authors: Adrian Phoenix
“Almost there,” she encouraged as they hurried down the stairs to the first floor landing and the emergency exit at the bottom.
Dante nodded, flashing her a tilted and bloodied smile, saving his breath.
Heather shoved on the push bar and grinned in relief when the door swung open, admitting the cool night beyond along with the smells of wet grass and cooling concrete. She stepped outside, holding the door open. “Hurry,” she whispered.
Dante took a step forward, then doubled-over, arms hugging his chest, teeth gritted in pain. He fell to his knees, then curled up on his side, every muscle knotted and taut.
Panic burned through Heather. She grabbed Dante by the shoulders and tried to haul his ass over the threshold and outside, but it was like trying to pull a two-ton bull or Mount Rushmore—a groaning, agonized Mount Rushmore. He had become impossibly, inexplicably heavy. Her muscles strained. Sweat trickled between her breasts.
Then, exhausted, she reversed course and dragged him back inside. The door swung shut behind her. Dante went still and fear knifed her heart. She dropped on her knees beside him. “Baptiste?”
“It stopped,” he said, wonder and relief in his hoarse voice. “Like a motherfucking switch had been flipped. It just stopped.” Dante uncurled from the floor and sat up, leaning his back against the wall. He scowled at the door. “What the fuck was that?”
Heather sighed, sat down beside him. His earthy, autumn scent filled the landing. “The sigils. I think it was the goddamned sigils. They must work both ways. Shit.”
“Look, they don’t affect you, so go. Get out. Don’t worry about me. I’ll find another way. What’s your name, anyway?”
Heather felt a smile flicker across her lips. <
Heather
.> Her smile faded as she watched Dante’s face blank. She wondered if her name or the blood link had just pinwheeled his memory open, spun him back to the here-and-now.
He looked at her and Heather saw recognition ignite in his eyes.
“Catin,”
he breathed. “I knew severing the bond wouldn’t stop you. You found me—like I knew you would, cuz I woulda done the same. I just don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.”
Heather laughed. “It’s a good thing, you stubborn sonuvabitch.”
But Dante’s face blanked again. His hands knotted into fists. Pounded knuckled blows to his leather-clad thighs. As though he were fighting against himself.
“Dante, what is it? Talk to me,
cher
.”
<
Stay here with me
.>
“
T’es sûr de ça, catin?”
Dante licked blood from his lips. A dark light burned in his eyes. “Yours, yeah? Yum. Wouldn’t mind some more.”
Heather’s mouth dried as she realized she wasn’t looking at Dante, but S or maybe even the Great Destroyer.
He is
becoming . . .
No and no and no.
Fear coursed through Heather, bright and cold. Dante wasn’t just shifting between the past and the here-and-now, but between the man she knew and one he’d been programmed to be.
“Fun, yeah?” His head tilted. His gaze fixed on the pulse in her throat.
“You with me, Baptiste?” she said through a mouth that felt full of ashes.
“Run,” S said.
Heather didn’t hesitate. She jumped to her feet and slammed out through the door, grateful he couldn’t follow. She had no doubt Dante was the source of the “run.” She also had no doubt that he’d just saved her life.
R
EALITY WHEELED
. D
ANTE GRABBED
ahold with both hands. But the here-and-now was damned slippery and he didn’t know how long he could hang on.
Stubborn-ass woman. All heart and steel,
ma chèrie.
Gotta get her the fuck out of here. Gotta see her safe.
Images of sapphire flames, of plucked hearts, unmade hearts, of his finger curling around the trigger of a gun filled his aching mind.
J’su ici, catin.
Run from me. Run as far as you can.
Nothing like a good chase, yeah?
Dante drew in a ragged breath. He shivered, so cold that he expected his breath to plume the air white. He had to end this.
You ain’t gonna save her, y’know. Shit, you can’t even save yourself.
Watch me.
Planning on it, bro.
Laughter. Low and amused. Happy.
Fi’ de garce.
You should know, yeah?
Voices whispered. Wasps droned and burrowed. Dante squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to silence the internal aural storm. Stomping everything down below and kicking the door shut was no longer an option.
There was no more below. No more door to kick shut.
As the din gradually quieted, Dante realized one faint whisper didn’t come from within. He opened his eyes, gaze following the sound to the ceiling. Upstairs. Someone was upstairs still alive, still breathing and talking in a low, steady murmur. A brief silence, followed by the raspy cough of a longtime smoker.
Like maybe two packs of Winstons a day, yeah?
Time to take yo’ medicine,
p’tit.
A dark smile tilted Dante’s lips. He opened his eyes.
Gotcha, Papa. Time to take your own damned medicine.
Staggering up to his feet, he
moved
. When he hit the third floor landing and breezed through the door, he spotted something lying on the floor, a dull metallic gleam.
A gun.
Dante stared at it, winter descending upon his heart. Unaware that he’d even moved, he found himself picking it up. His fingers curled around the rubber grip as naturally as if he’d always held a gun, been born with one in his hand. He felt the cold trickle of sweat along his temples.
Put it down. Or go back and toss it out to Heather. She’s gonna—
Low murmurs from above snagged Dante’s attention. He tilted his head, tucking the gun into the back of his leather pants, then he headed back to the landing. As he raced up the stairs, he felt a little girl’s weight in his arms, heard her black paper wings rustling, caught a glimpse of red hair. Then he was blurring through a crowded club, a woman smelling of lilac and sage, of evening rain, a woman of heart and steel, hugged tight against his side, a woman who disappeared as another little girl, red-haired and freckled, took her place as they ran through a park in the rain, trying to outrace their fates.
Laughter.
You kidding me? You
are
their fates.
Reality wheeled, reminding him of promises made.
Make them pay so I can be warm again.
Make the world burn,
mon cher ami, mon ange,
and set me free.
Set things to rights,
cher.
Make them pay in blood and fire.
Reality wheeled yet again.
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.
That’s my boy,
a woman’s voice, Johanna Moore’s voice, whispered in the unlit, broken alleys of his mind.
No one can ever be used against you if you are willing to kill them first.
Don’t listen to her, Dante-angel.
Blurring past landing after landing as he raced up the stairs following Papa’s distant voice, he whispered, “I ain’t. Don’t worry.”
But deep down, he wasn’t so sure.
And that scared him to his core.
H
EATHER LEANED AGAINST THE
metal exit door, afraid if she didn’t her trembling legs would dump her onto the sidewalk. She sucked in cool, moist air until her hammering heart slowed its frantic pace.
“Shit,” she breathed, closing her eyes and thumping the back of her head lightly against the door. “Shit, shit, shit.”
She’d never been frightened of Dante before—
for
him, yes. But never
of
him. That had just changed.
What have those bastards done to you
, cher?
He’s had as much as he can take, doll
. . .
Von
, she despaired.
Wish you were here
.
No way she was leaving Dante alone with Loki. No way she was leaving him, period. Maybe she could find some tranks inside or a heavy dose of morphine, something that would knock him out. Maybe the sigils wouldn’t affect him if he were unconscious. Maybe—
“Heather?” A deep, incredulous rumble. A familiar and oh-so welcome voice.
Heather opened her eyes and confirmed the information her ears had just given her. Relief almost dropped her on the sidewalk despite the door’s support. “Lucien!”
Two other Fallen stood with him—the Morningstar and his daughter.
Heather frowned. Was Lucien holding a bucket? Filled with dark paint or—
A thick, coppery odor curled into her nostrils. Her throat constricted.
—blood.
“Do you have a plan,” Heather asked, nodding at the bucket in Lucien’s hand. “Or are you making it up as you go?”
A wry smile tugged at the corners of Lucien’s mouth. “I believe it’s the latter.”
Heather pushed away from the sigil-marked door. “That’s good,” she said, voice rough. “And here’s why: Dante has severed our bond and he’s falling hard and fast. We don’t have time for plans.”
D
ANTE WALKED DOWN THE
fifth-floor corridor in his stocking feet, idly trailing the fingers of his left hand along the wall as he followed the whispers to their source: last door on the left.
Yanking it open, he stepped into the padded room’s red-lit interior, attention fixed on the figure kneeling in one corner, facing in, hands clasped at chest level. Incense curled sweet and smoky into the air, but didn’t mask the smell of piss. Another figure, tall and winged, stood in one corner. Dante ignored him.
“Hey, Papa,” Dante said. “
Comment ça va,
you sonuvabitch?”
The soft, monotonous whispers stopped. The praying man swiveled around on his knees to face Dante, blood symbols flaking from his face. Dante grinned. Motherfucking Purcell—but he wore a priest’s purple satin stole over his charcoal gray suit. Something dangled from his hand, something Dante recognized from another time, another place—a rosary. He met Dante’s gaze with frightened olive green eyes.
“Don’t forget your lines,” the fallen angel in the corner admonished with a snap of his fingers. “Really. After all the drilling we did.”
Swallowing hard, Purcell said, “It’s time to bring forth your light.”
Dante stumbled back against the doorway as reality wheeled yet again. His vision splintered as a memory sheared up from below, a memory born here, in this place.
Facedown on a bare mattress, the smell of his own blood thick in his nostrils. The air’s cool breath paints searing pain across Dante’s back. His heart thunders in his ears.
“No one lights a lamp to cover it with a bowl or to put it under the bed,” a man’s low voice says, his words both instruction and prayer. “No, he puts it on a lampstand so that people may see the light when they come in.”
“Ain’t hiding an angel inside me, asshole,” Dante whispers for the millionth time. But Father Michael Moses—former Jesuit, current psycho—ain’t listening.
Another cut and fresh blood spills hot down Dante’s side, soaking into the mattress beneath him. He bites into his constantly healing lower lip. Black flecks whirl through his vision. He twists his wrists again and again, hoping that the cuffs have somehow weakened.
But they haven’t. And his strength is draining away along with his blood.
“For nothing is hidden but will be made clear, nothing secret but that it will be known and brought to light.” Warm breath touches the cup of Dante’s ear. “I see your light within. I shall bring it forth,” Moses promises. “As God commands.”
His fingers grasp the edges of Dante’s cut skin and yank, peeling it back to reveal the wings that aren’t there.
Dante screams . . .
R
EALITY WHEELED
.
My turn.
S stood in the doorway, one pale, blood-smeared hand braced at either side. A thin trickle of blood trailed from one
nostril. Pain pulsed behind his eyes. But it had nothing on the rage pulsing inside his heart. He studied the figure kneeling inside, stinking of fear and piss.
Michael Moses. Former Jesuit priest. Current penitent monster.
No, that’s Purcell. SB agent. Current maybe-penitent monster
.
Who gives a fuck
?
S stepped inside. Blue flames crackled to life around his hands, filling the room with an eldritch light. “I know you, motherfucker,” he said, his voice holding just a dash of dark wonder. “You ain’t Papa. But I know you.”
I
know
you
.
I
remember.
“My gift to you,” the fallen angel said.
“And who the hell are you?”
“Loki, little
creawdwr
. And your gift is Moses and Purcell, Wells and Moore, Papa and Mama Prejean—anyone you wish him to be. He’s ground zero for your night of reckoning.” Loki stepped from the corner his tall, lean-muscled body clad in a suit tailored for the black wings folded behind him.
Tall as the Nightbringer. Short, red hair. Familiar.
Like one of those Russian nesting dolls
.
Gotcha, Papa
.
“And what do you get out of it?” S asked.
“The right to stand at your side,” Loki replied. “Not to bring forth light, but the darkness hidden within. I shall guide you on your path. I shall be a pillar of fire by night and a column of smoke by day.”
S felt a cynical smile tilt his lips. “As God commands, yeah?”
The fallen angel lifted nearly incandescent eyes to S’s. “The only God here is you. A dark and bloody God. An Old Testament God. A God for whom an eye for an eye should never be enough.”