Authors: Adrian Phoenix
Chloe stopped short with a frustrated sigh that sounded decades older than the both of them put together. Dante flapped another
vite-vite
hand at her. Not waiting on her, he turned around, steadying himself with a hand to the wall, and made his careful way to the thick gotta-keep-the-monsters-inside door—and the steel handle welded to its surface.
He hoped it would be strong enough.
Even though Chloe turned and went to the opposite side of the room, the hypnotic rush of the blood through her veins plucked at Dante, as did her scent—strawberries and soap—and the flush of her freckled skin.
Her blood spills hot and fragrant and crimson over his fingers
. . .
Throat tight, eyes burning, Dante refused the image and kept moving.
Hunger kept insisting that he was going the wrong way, that he needed to turn his ass around and follow his nose to the appetizer now sitting glumly in the far corner with her arms wrapped around her purple corduroy–clad legs.
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Ain’t listening. And we ain’t feasting until some curious asshole opens that door and saunters inside.
Laughter, dark and knowing, sounded from the depths below. Jaw tight, Dante blocked it out, stubbornly adhering to his
ain’t listening
declaration.
Just as Dante reached the door, the room took a gleeful, stomach-dropping plunge, before spinning around him again with wild Tilt-A-Whirl abandon. Stumbling, he slammed against the door shoulder-first, before falling to his knees on the concrete. A high-pitched humming filled his ears. Darkness oozed like oil across his sight.
“Pas encore,”
he said, his voice a barely audible growl, “
pas
fucking
encore.”
Fumbling the open cuff around the door’s steel handle, he snapped it shut with a shaking hand. The cuff
tunk
ed as he sat back on his heels. Then he sagged against the door, his captive right arm bent at the elbow and stretched up alongside him. Dante shivered, the door’s steel like ice against the bare skin of his shoulder and side.
“Dante-angel?” A worry-thick whisper.
Dante’s vision was tunneling down, swallowed by deepening shadows, as he focused on Chloe. He held a finger against his lips, reminding her. She mirrored his motion, a finger to her own lips, freckles and dismay stark upon her face. He tried to offer her a reassuring smile, but given her unaltered expression, he had a feeling he hadn’t pulled it off.
Behind her, he saw the cheerful red balloon she’d drawn on the padded wall. A small stick figure with black wings held the balloon’s string.
You saved me when I died and floated away from my mommy.
Creawdwr
. . .
The word and its meaning itched at the back of his mind; hidden beneath miles of cotton, an itch he couldn’t reach. Dante dragged in another gurgling breath of air, then coughed,
lungs spasming. Choking. A heavy weight crushed down on him as though the sky had fallen on his chest, bringing the moon with it. He couldn’t breathe.
But he
could
drown.
Could
suffocate on his own blood. Even sitting up. Sinking into cold and darkness and high-pitched humming, Dante fought to suck in one more breath.
And failed.
R
ICHARD
P
URCELL
’
S GAZE SKIPPED
along the patient room monitors set into the wall above the observation booth’s control panel until it came to rest once more on the only monitor that interested him, the only monitor that also happened to be blank—blindfolded by a goddamned T-shirt.
Smug little bloodsucking bastard.
No visual, but the audio worked just fine, and at the moment Purcell was listening to wet choking sounds as someone quietly drowned in their own blood. Sweet music—damned sweet—given it was S doing all that quiet drowning.
A little less sweet were Violet’s frantic cries for help, her words punctuated by fists banging against the steel door, but hey, you couldn’t have everything. Such as a working camera feed when it mattered most. Such as watching a certain smug little bloodsucking bastard go down for the count. Even if it was only temporary.
“We need a doctor! Please, Mr. Purcell! Please, please, please! Open the door!”
The wet choking sounds slowed, then stopped.
For a second, nothing but silence crackled through the speakers. A slight pause, just long enough for someone to suck in a shocked breath, then Violet intensified both her fist assault against the door and the decibel level of her shouts.
“Mr. Purcell, please, pretty please, open the door! Tyler! Joe! Help!”
With a grimace of annoyance, Purcell lowered the volume, reducing Violet’s distraught cries to faint background noise. “Christ.”
“I knew this wouldn’t work. We need the Wallace woman,” Teodoro Díon said, a faint European accent giving his words a sophisticated flow that almost hid the accusation beneath them—you
fucked up and wasted
my
time
.
A quiet fury curdled in Purcell’s belly and he tasted bile, bitter and hot, at the back of his throat. In an effort to keep his anger in check, he stared at the green telltales winking and glowing on the control panel.
No one could’ve predicted that James Wallace would show up at the club—and on the same goddamned day, no less—with hired assault-rifle wielding thugs to snatch his daughter before Purcell could grab her. He’d been given no choice but to make the best of a bad situation, which had meant improvising.
And that’s exactly what he’d done.
Purcell had snatched an unconscious S—already pumped full of bullets and bleeding like a motherfucker—from the burning club, instead of doing as Díon had insisted and chasing after the van carrying Heather Wallace, a van burning rubber all the way to the interstate. No. Instead, he’d brought S here. Where he belonged.
Much to Teodoro Díon’s displeasure.
Fuck
Teodoro Díon.
This unofficial and unsanctioned little mission had originally been Special Operations Director Celeste Underwood’s baby, a mission she’d entrusted to Purcell alone, a mission he’d accepted without hesitation, even though he knew it would mean the end of their careers—hell, the end of their lives—if discovered.
Both he and SOD Underwood viewed themselves as loyal SB agents, even though they hadn’t always agreed with
certain policies—such as allowing a dangerous killer like S to roam free. Both agreed the world would be a better, safer place with S turned to ash.
The plan had been for Purcell to quietly see it done.
But then SOD Underwood’s socialite daughter-in-law had been acquitted of the murder-for-hire death of Underwood’s only son, Stephen. Not unusual when the bastard charged with the actual killing conveniently hangs himself in his jail cell (with shoelaces he wasn’t supposed to have), leaving an equally convenient note behind proclaiming he’d acted alone and the death was the result of a robbery gone wrong, that no one had hired him to murder Stephen Underwood, let alone his wife, Valerie.
So the plan had changed slightly. Underwood decided to employ S one last time, a fanged vehicle for much-delayed justice. Purcell’s job had been to travel to New Orleans, activate S’s programming, and sic him on the daughter-in-law.
Then permanently retire S afterward.
It was the least Purcell could do for the woman who’d mentored his career from the very beginning and who’d always entrusted him with her secrets.
But all that had changed four days ago when Díon called him in New Orleans to inform him of SOD Underwood’s sudden and unexpected death by stroke.
So how come
you’re
breaking the news?
So we could discuss mutual concerns.
Those being . . .?
Terminating Prejean and fulfilling Underwood’s last request. She told me about the gift for her daughter-in-law you were set to deliver.
Prejean—the name given to S by his final set of foster parents. He’d thanked them by making sure they were deader than doornails before torching their house.
Dante Baptiste—S’s true full name, according to Díon.
S—the Bad Seed designation that Purcell preferred, a
reminder of what the bloodsucker truly was, a programmed True Blood sociopath that had been allowed to slip his leash.
Keep talking.
We’re not going to kill S, we’re going to
break
him
.
Díon believed Heather Wallace to be an intrinsic component of that goal and had built his plan around her. A simple plan, really. Since he was already in New Orleans on Underwood’s behalf, Purcell was supposed to grab the redhead at the first opportunity, transport her to the SB-operated sanitarium/study lab—S’s old training grounds as a kid—and then make sure the bloodsucking psycho knew right where to find her.
So he could watch her die. Hard and ugly.
But then James Wallace and his ill-timed paternal outrage had showed up . . .
Purcell nodded at the T-shirt-blanked monitor. “Heather Wallace, my ass. Maybe if the bastard could’ve focused on his hunger instead of his next goddamned breath, he might’ve drained the kid like he was supposed to.”
“The resin keeps him from healing,” Díon explained patiently. “Slows him down, and the continued blood loss keeps his hunger sharp. Hopefully it short-circuits his telepathy as well. Perhaps even his other gifts.”
Purcell frowned. “Other gifts?” He swiveled his chair around so he could see Díon. “What other gifts?”
The SB interrogator regarded Purcell with amused purple eyes from where he leaned against the wall, hands tucked into the pockets of his trousers. Toffee-colored hair and short, stylish sideburns framed his face, making him look younger than the forty-two or forty-three Purcell pegged him at, as did his tall, athletic build.
“He’s a True Blood and it varies, but you can bet he’s full of surprises,” Díon said, shrugging one shoulder.
“Surprises like what?”
“Flying. Fire. Shape-shifting. Telekinesis.”
“How about making little girls look like someone else?”
Another very European shrug—from a man Purcell suspected wasn’t even completely human. “With True Bloods, you never know.”
Whatever Díon was, it wasn’t vamp. Not with his tanned olive skin and regular daytime hours. But given his ability to alter and wipe memories, to extract information from even the most reluctant mind with a soft word and a deft touch, he couldn’t be human either.
“But
you
seem to be in the know,” Purcell pointed out. “Sounds like you stumbled across a copy of
True Blood Psychos for Dummies
in the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble. Care to share?”
“Psycho,” Díon rolled the word slowly as though tasting it. “Given that the whole purpose behind Bad Seed was to create sociopaths, I’d think that you’d be proud of S. But it sounds like you resent him for being what he was conditioned to be. Did you feel the same contempt for the human members of Bad Seed—before they were permanently retired?”
Folding his arms over his chest, Purcell shook his head. “See . . . I always thought Bad Seed was one huge fucking mistake—not that my input was sought, needed, or welcomed. Creating sociopaths to study them? What bullshit. That was
never
the plan.”
“But creating them to use and control was?”
“Bingo. The day that I transferred out of the project to become Underwood’s assistant was a good day. But I never forgot S. Never forgot what he was capable of. Or what he was programmed to do. Fucking little psycho.”
Díon shrugged. “I’m not convinced that term applies to Baptiste. He did everything he could to keep away from Violet, despite his hunger and blood loss. Hardly the actions of a psycho.”
“That’s what he wants you to think. S is just playing games with us. You don’t know him the way I do. Let your guard down and I promise you, that fucking psycho you’re so busy defending will tear your heart out and eat it.”
“Hence the resin,” Díon pointed out. “I have no intention
of letting my guard down. And I’m not defending, merely trying to understand. Know thy enemy, yes?”
“Definitely,” Purcell agreed, holding the interrogator’s gaze. “Always wise.” But S wasn’t the enemy as far as Purcell was concerned, only an evil in need of eradication. Díon, on the other hand, was another story entirely—especially since Purcell had an ever-deepening suspicion that Díon had somehow caused Underwood’s fatal stroke.
She never would’ve told Díon about our plans. Never would’ve included anyone else. Not when our lives depended on no one ever finding out we were behind it.
“Looks like we’re going to have to try something else where Baptiste is concerned,” Díon said. “This bit with ‘Chloe’ didn’t work.”
Purcell glanced sourly at the blank monitor. “Even if the bastard
had
killed the kid, I never thought it would break him. He survived Chloe’s loss the first time he murdered her.”
“Which is why I wanted Heather Wallace,” Díon said. “For now, let’s get Violet out of that room, then send a medic to clear Baptiste’s lungs.”
Activating the com set hooked around his ear with a touch, Purcell issued the orders, making certain his men understood that restraining S was their first order of business. “Don’t hesitate to put another bullet in his skull, if necessary. And get that goddamned T-shirt off the camera.”
Purcell caught a whiff of Díon’s cologne—a hint of vanilla spice and dandelions—when the interrogator moved from the wall to rest one hip against the edge of the control panel. “Have you heard anything yet from your Bureau contacts about where James Wallace might’ve taken his daughter?” he asked.
“The Bureau’s official line is that Special Agent James Wallace is on leave while he tends to personal matters,” Purcell replied. “Wallace didn’t say where he was going or what he was doing, and his SAC probably didn’t ask, but whether it was by GPS tag or a tail, you can bet your well-tailored ass he knows.”