Etched in Bone (13 page)

Gehenna. Fallen angels. Little winged pit-demons.

A strange and beautiful place. A world both alien and Sunday-school familiar.

Heart pounding, Heather stared into a night sky that looked scraped thin, a threadbare black curtain pocked with pale stars. Even the undulating aurora borealis at its center seemed dimmed, its colors mere ghosts of blue, purple, and green.

After enduring thousands of years without an infusion of energy from a
creawdwr,
Gehenna is fading away. Without you . . . Gehenna will vanish.

Even though she wondered how such a thing could be possible, she sensed the truth behind the Morningstar’s words. Gehenna felt somehow
off
to her, an orange just beginning to go soft underneath the skin.

Heather’s fingers white-knuckled around the Browning’s grip. After a wait spanning millennia, the Fallen finally had a new Maker—Dante. Whether he liked it or not. Whether he wanted it or not. And the last thing he needed was someone else determined to control him, manipulate him, use him. Someone else to deny him the right to live his own life.

Another trumpet blast pealed through the night. A massive wheel of light appeared in the sky above them, blotting out the aurora borealis’s vivid bands of color and bleaching the night with spinning spokes of brilliant white radiance.

Icy tendrils of fear twisted through Heather’s insides. Her pulse pounded hard through her veins.
What is
that? Squinting against the blazing light display, she shaded her eyes with the edge of her hand.

The Morningstar muttered something under his breath in a musical language Heather didn’t understand, a language she’d heard spoken by the Fallen who’d stood beside her at the pit’s mouth, then he added, “Show-offs.”

“Is that them?” she asked, dropping her gaze from the blazing sky. “The Seven?”

“Yes, but not all of them,” De Noir answered, his voice coming from behind her.

“Two seem to be absent, and I know at least one was turned to stone down in Damascus,” the Morningstar said, shading his face with the edge of one white wing.

“Lilith,” De Noir murmured.

The Morningstar nodded. “Yes.”

A memory sparked in Heather’s mind.

“Liar,” Dante whispers. “Lucien warned me . . .”

A rope of blue fire snakes around the black-haired woman. Her wings curve forward and she closes her eyes, her hands clenched in
her lap. Caught within glimmering blue coils, she morphs from flesh to stone, her long hair a white curtain framing her bowed head.

The Morningstar sauntered to the ivy and jasmine-draped balustrade, pretending it wasn’t a retreat, but Heather saw how he kept glancing at Dante’s blue-lit hands and knew better. Not that she blamed him. But she also knew that distance alone didn’t equal safety.

Blue rays spike into the fleeing Fallen, one by one. And turn them to stone.

“Christ.” Dante fumbled a pair of blood-flecked and battered sunglasses free from his metal-studded belt, sliding them on over his eyes. “What the fuck
is
that?”

“Think of it as the Seven’s version of a stretch limo—all dazzle and bling,” the Morningstar replied. “Uriel’s work. And a display no doubt meant to impress our new
creawdwr
.”

“Yeah, ain’t feelin’ it.” Dante’s left hand blurred through a mock jack-off session.

But despite his dry tone, Heather heard strain beneath Dante’s drawled words.

Blue flames crackled around Dante’s hands. Tension and pain drew his gorgeous features tight. Sweat glistened on his forehead and blood still trickled from his nose, stark against his white skin.

Von’s words whispered through Heather’s memory.

I think he’s had all he can take, doll. Heart and mind. If I knew a way to hide him from the world until he could regain his balance, until he had the chance to face his past on his own terms and reconcile himself to it . . .

But chance and time were working against them. Again.

Glancing across the light-and-shadow-striped terrace to the arched entry leading back inside the Royal Aerie, Heather mentally measured the distance. The fallen angels gathered on the terrace had silently melted away from Dante and his glowing hands like winter frost in the path of a rolling red-embered coal, their handsome faces wary, leaving the way clear.

Heather touched Dante’s shoulder, careful to avoid his flame-swallowed hands and their cool, transforming fire. “Your gate. I think we can still make it.”

“Did you say
his
gate?” De Noir questioned.

“Your son created a gate of his own,” the Morningstar said.

Considering that Dante had literally punched his way into another world, transforming a tomb into a flame-embered doorway, and destroying a cemetery with a shock wave of blue light in the process—a fact she still struggled to wrap her mind around—Heather felt that
created a gate
was one hell of an inadequate description.

“I severed our bond to keep you safe, to keep you out of Fallen hands,” De Noir said slowly, staring at his son. Despair lined his face. “But I drew you straight to Gehenna instead. A gate of his own . . .”

“I had to find you,” Dante said softly. “Whatever it took.” His shaded gaze shifted to the arched entry. “You and Lucien get the hell outta here,
catin,
and head home. I’ll catch up. Tell Von—”

Anger prickled cold and hollow in the pit of Heather’s belly. “Screw that. I don’t know about De Noir, but I’m going to be standing right here beside you. You ditched me earlier tonight in that fight with Mauvais’s nightkind. You’re not doing it again.”

“I didn’t
ditch
you, dammit. I wanted to keep you outta their fucking hands.”

“You could’ve followed me over that cemetery gate.”

“Aw, shit,” Dante muttered, trailing both hands in frustration through his hair. Tiny flames skipped along his black tresses like blue fireflies in the wake of his pale fingers. “
Now
? We’re going to fucking discuss this
now
?”

Heather sucked in a deep breath and looked up. The incandescent wheel circled ever closer, strobing the terrace and its occupants with alternating bands of dark-side-of-the-moon shadow and blinding light.

“No, we’re not. Not now,” Heather admitted, voice tight. “But get this through your head—I’m not leaving your side.”

“And you call
me
pigheaded?”

“By all that’s holy, are you
both
mad?” De Noir growled, voice a deep rumble. He stepped in front of Dante, a furious light burning in his black eyes, his wings flexing. “You can’t stay. They will chain you up—heart, mind, and soul. I’ll
carry
you out if I have to. Both of you!”

Heather liked that idea. She had no objections to De Noir tossing Dante over his brawny shoulder and carting him out of Gehenna—if necessary. But . . .

She noticed that the wounds in each of De Noir’s pectoral muscles were only half-healed—pink and raw and ringed with dried blood—despite his Fallen regenerative abilities, and he looked drained, almost nightkind-pale. She had a feeling his flight from the pit to the terrace had used up all of his strength and that he’d be lucky if he could walk himself out of Gehenna.

“I ain’t running, Lucien. Ain’t hiding. And you still ain’t got no say in my . . .” Dante’s words trailed off as if he’d suddenly lost his train of thought.

Pain stabbed into Heather’s mind, a red-hot splinter burning through the filter of Dante’s exhausted, weakening shields. She caught a glimpse of a steel hook hanging from the ceiling of a blood-splashed room. Her heart constricted.

I know this. I saw it on the Bad Seed disk.

The room where Chloe had died. Where Moore had ordered Dante—twelve or thirteen years old and savage with grief—strapped into a nightkind-proof straitjacket and hoisted up by his chain-wrapped ankles to hang upside-down above the little girl’s body.

White light strobed at the edges of Heather’s vision, then vanished, taking the pain and nightmarish peek into Dante’s past along with it. She stumbled forward a step and sucked in a deep breath of ozone-charged air.

“Fuck,” Dante whispered. He touched shaking fingers to his left temple. “Focus, goddammit.
Focus
.”

Dread dropped like a cold brick into Heather’s belly. How could he focus past pain that intense? How could he even keep on his feet? He was hurting and exhausted—on all levels.

“Stay now, Baptiste. Stay with me.” She grabbed him by both biceps, the muscles hard as steel under her fingers. Fevered heat baked through his cotton and mesh sleeves and into her palms. “Stay here.”

A shudder traveled the length of Dante’s body, his muscles knotting, his breath catching in his throat. “
J’su ici, chérie,
” he said, voice ragged.

Rotating light from the wheel above strobed incandescent along the lenses of Dante’s sunglasses. The thunderstorm smell of ozone crackled through the air. Heather’s scalp prickled as her hair started to lift.

Time was running out.

“Your control is slipping, child. You can’t stay,” De Noir said, dark brows knitted together. “Where’s your gate?”

Dante nodded at the arched doorway. “Inside. But I ain’t—”

“He’s right, you know,” Heather said, releasing her hold on Dante’s arms. “You’re in no shape to face anyone down, let alone a bunch of ambitious Fallen determined to bind you.”

A wry smile tilted Dante’s lips. “Von said the same thing.”

“Smart man, that nomad,” Heather said. “You should listen to him. Look, I get why you want to face them, I do, but you’re exhausted. This isn’t the time to make a stand. There’s no shame in retreating long enough to regain your strength, your focus—”

The searing white light disappeared. The lenses of Dante’s shades went dark.

Heather blinked rapidly in the sudden darkness, trying to clear her vision of the white, orange, and black retinal ghosts haunting it. Behind her, she heard a rush of wings, the soft slide of silk against flesh, the scuff of sandals upon marble.

“Shit,” she sighed. “They’re here, aren’t they?”

“Yup.” Dante wiped blood from his nose with a swipe of his mesh sleeve as he eyed the Seven over her shoulder. “Definitely not a Christian rock band.”

“Whatever you do, don’t give the Morningstar one gram of trust,” De Noir said, voice pitched just above a whisper. “And don’t let
any
of them mark you with their blood.” He pulled his healing body erect, rolled back his tight-muscled shoulders. His hair rippled between his wings like a banner of black silk.

“
Je t’entends
.”

Mark you with their blood
. A chill traced the length of Heather’s spine as she recalled what the Morningstar had said in the cemetery about De Noir.
Gabriel used a blood-spell to bind him to Gehenna’s fate.

Dante slid his shades to the top of his head. He looked at Heather from beneath his black lashes, his dilated pupils rimmed with molten-gold. Blue light and dark emotion flickered in their depths. Shadows bruised the skin beneath them. “Let’s do this and go home,
catin
.”

“Sounds good to me.” Heather tightened her grip on the Browning. “It’s almost our bedtime, anyway,” she added with a full-of-promise wink.

Dante laughed, and some of the tension drained from his face and shoulders, just as Heather had hoped. “Then we’d better hurry.”

“Damn straight.” Heather swiveled on the ball of one foot to face the so-called Celestial Seven.

They stood Fallen-tall and proud in front of the arched, brazier-lit entry leading into the Royal Aerie. But only five—three males and two females in flowing gowns, silken kilts, veils, simple torques, and—in one case—what sure as hell looked like a priest’s white collar and black, leather-belted cassock.

Adrenaline pumped through Heather’s veins, flooding her mind with a diamond-edged focus and crystal awareness. Her gaze ticked across each Celestial face, noting details in a split-second.

Celestial One:
Gold wings, hair a cap of tight black curls, ebony skin etched with graceful, gold-inked glyphs, gold light fades from his eyes, revealing irises the dark purple-black of ripe plums;
his full lips twist into a calculating smile; a purple kilt flecked with silver stars is double-belted at his muscular waist.

Celestial Two:
Deep red wings, a spill of winter-wheat pale hair, honey-colored eyes, the brooding face of a Romantic poet; a Highlander’s belted blue plaid tartan falls to his knees above black leather boots, a silver torque twists around his throat.

Celestial Three:
Black wings, a veil of shifting aurora borealis color drapes her from head to shoulders, hiding her features except for the black cherry-red tendrils of hair snaking and twisting from beneath the veil; a burgundy gown clings to her curves, its corseted bodice providing a display shelf for her smooth and rounded cleavage.

Celestial Four:
White wings; glossy chocolate-brown hair cascades to her shoulders in long curls; golden-brown skin, proud nose, eyes black as the night and glittering with gold flecks; her flawless complexion, bee-stung lips, and voluptuous figure in its demure flowing silver and pale blue gown a Renaissance artist’s wet dream.

Celestial Five:
No visible wings, olive-skinned, short black hair curls against his temples, introspective summer evening–blue eyes above a straight Roman nose, he wears a priest’s collar and cassock, a beaded rosary wrapped around the knuckles of one hand.

All radiated a cool poise, their body language one of anticipation and curiosity as their gazes caressed Dante, lingering on his pale face, tracing the length of his hard body.

Seeing lust flare in more than one pair of moonlight-sparked eyes, a cold smile touched Heather’s lips.
If they think he’s a just a plaything to tumble between the sheets, they’re going to be in for one helluva rude surprise.

Celestial One suddenly dipped one gold wing tip and song rang into the air, a beautiful hundredfold song pealing and harmonizing like cathedral bells, loud enough to fill the night. Each joyous crystalline note resonated through the air.