Etched in Bone (14 page)

“Shit. Too goddamned many . . . “

Fear curled through Heather at the strain and desperation edging Dante’s voice. He stood, head bowed, fists clenched, body coiled and muscles trembling, and she realized that he was hearing the song
inside
as well, not just with his ears—and not just as a single choir. She suspected that each individual voice was a mental hammer battering against his shields.

Shoving her Browning into a pocket in her trench coat, Heather stepped in front of him and cupped his burning, blood-smeared face between her hands. “You’re not alone,” she whispered, looking into his dazed gold-and-blue-flame eyes. “Let me in, so I can help. I don’t give a damn about the pain.”

“I know you don’t,
chérie
, all heart and steel, you,” Dante murmured. “But not yet. Not until this headache’s gone. I ain’t sharing it. It’s too . . . hungry.”

“Sharing might make it easier to bear.”

“Not this. I ain’t letting it have you.” Lowering his head, Dante grazed his fevered lips against Heather’s before gently pulling free of her hands. “I’m gonna tell ’em all to back the fuck off, so keep close,
d’accord
?”

“Ditto, Baptiste.” Squaring her shoulders, Heather turned around once more.

Dante’s song stabbed into the air in response, a scorching and defiant aria aflame with power that challenged the symphonic greeting, demanded space. Refused to play games. Each exquisite note of his song, dark and savage and heartbreaking, pierced Heather to the core. He was making a stand, but the ledge was crumbling beneath his feet.

I think he’s had all he can take, doll . . .

And as Heather scanned the attractive faces of the five not-turned-to-stone members of the Seven, their expressions enthralled, eyes gleaming with captured moonlight, hungry and confident, and fixed on Dante, a dark realization threaded through her: they knew Dante was teetering on the edge too, about to lose his balance.

About to fall.

All he needed was a nudge. And they planned to supply it.

Heather slipped her hands into the pockets of her trench. Not if she could help it. Her fingers found the smooth shape of the morphine-filled syringe in one pocket, the Browning’s grip in the other. She would do whatever was necessary to protect him.

Even from his own damaged psyche.

The choir’s chiming and crystalline song trailed away as Dante’s fierce aria claimed the night. A woman’s reverent voice lifted into the air, husky and trembling, “Holy, holy, holy. The Maker’s song shapes us all.”

A soft chorus of “Amen” trailed her words.

Celestial Four sashayed forward, her silver and blue gown rippling like water over her rounded curves. A smile graced her lips. She stopped a cautious yard or so from Dante. She flicked a glance at Heather, then away, dismissing her.

“Quiet the song, young
creawdwr
, and douse the fire,” she said, her voice a rich, warm curl of caramel. “I am Astarte and, speaking for all of Gehenna, I am pleased to welcome you home, Dante.”

“I only dropped in to do a prison-pit snatch-and-grab,
jolie
,” Dante said, his song still pulsing molten into the night. Blue flames licked out from around his fingers. “This ain’t home, and I ain’t staying.”

11
A PROMISE IN BLOOD AND FIRE

G
EHENNA
T
HE
R
OYAL
A
ERIE
The Night of March 27–28

E
ROS’S HAIR RIPPLED AS
though caught in a breeze as he and the other members of the Seven faced the
creawdwr
, but the night held still, the thick smoke-and-saffron reek of Uriel’s extinguished wheel blanketing the motionless air.

Power, wild and deadly and barely controlled, pulsated from the
creawdwr
—Dante, according to the Morningstar and Gabriel—crackled like lightning through the air. Pain fragmented his golden aura with jagged red lines, exhaustion smudged it nearly black. Blood trickled from his nose, blood he smeared across his white skin with absent-minded swipes of his sleeve.

Not mad, this young and untrained
creawdwr
, not yet, despite Gabriel’s incensed and bitter claims. But hurting intensely. And striding the abyss’s crumbling edge.

The lovely little redhead with the tantalizing curves Eros had only caught glimpses of from beneath her wretched black trench coat had soothed Dante with a touch, a kiss, and a few murmured words. Heat had shimmered between them, sparked white-hot.

Eros had found himself wishing their kiss would continue, deepen. Found himself wishing to move closer for a better look, drawn like an arrow to an apple.

It seemed Gabriel had spoken the truth—the
creawdwr had
bonded a mortal. Another dangerous impossibility.

And at Dante’s left shoulder stood Samael—
wait, he now calls himself Lucille or Lucifer or some such thing, Lucien, that’s it!
—pale, drained of strength, the wounds created by the hooks still visible on his chest, but his back straight, his taloned hands resting easy at his sides.

Meeting Eros’s gaze, Lucien nodded, a contemptuous smile curling his lips.

A smile Eros returned along with a slow wink. Doing well for an
aingeal
who’d been blood-spelled and hanging from hooks just minutes before.

How was it that the slayer of one
creawdwr
should father the next? Eros shook his head. Given Dante’s blunt words to Astarte, his rejection of her welcome, Eros had no doubt Lucien had poisoned his son’s mind against the Elohim.

We must cleanse Dante of that poison.

The
aingeals
and
nephilim
thronging the terrace kept a healthy distance from Dante and his burning hands, from the fire smoldering in his eyes. They backed up to the balustrade, some taking to the air, wings snapping loud as canvas sails in the silence. But most stared, stunned by his words.

This ain’t home, and I ain’t staying.

And why should he? The mortal world was the only one Dante had ever known.

Thanks to Lucien.

This
creawdwr
was not what any of them had expected or even imagined. A Maker of mixed bloodlines—both pure and powerful—Fallen and True Blood. A Maker born and raised in the mortal world.
Shaped
by it. He was an impossibility. A
dangerous
impossibility. No one knew what he was capable of; within moments of his arrival in Gehenna, he’d managed to both disgrace and humiliate Gabriel.

Eros wondered how much longer Gabriel would rule the Elohim now that he’d been violently rejected by the
creawdwr
.

Dante’s crimson-edged black wings flared behind him, wings unlike any Eros had ever seen before. Starlight glimmered like ice along the designs—twisting ivy-like loops and delicate spirals—etched into their blue and purple undersides. His autumn scent—burning leaves and November frost—spiced the air.

Gabriel had claimed that the Maker’s wings had just been born, ripping free through the boy’s back shortly after he’d arrived in Gehenna. After he’d torn into Gabriel’s throat and feasted like a wild thing on his blood.

A wild thing, yes. But the
creawdwr
was also a heart-stopping, lust-fueling, thought-stealing beauty. Pale moonlight skimmed the steel ring of the collar buckled around Dante’s throat, glinted from the hoops rimming his ears, the rings on his flame-spiked thumbs and fingers.

Bewitching.

Eros’s gaze raked over the
creawdwr
’s lean, coiled length, drinking in his wing-shredded and bloodied mesh-sleeved T-shirt, low-slung leather pants and boots, his moonlight-radiant white skin, his mouth made for kissing, his hard-muscled body meant for all manner of pleasurable things, the black hair intended to entangle grasping fingers. Eros felt himself stir beneath his kilt.

<
A
creawdwr
born for the bedroom,
> he sent to Morrigan, casting her a sidelong glance. <
His training should be handed over to me. He looks to be in serious need of taming. And I would be more than happy to oblige.
>

Morrigan fingered the edge of her ever-shifting veil, and Eros wondered which face she currently wore beneath it. Her attention was riveted on the
creawdwr
and the flummoxed Astarte.

<
Beautiful, yes,
> she sent, <
but he’s just a child.
>

<
He’s young, I’ll give you that, but he’s no child. I’ll bet he never was.
>

<
No, I suppose not. But let’s win him first, tame him later.
>

<
What better way to win him over than by peeling off his clothes and exploring his luscious body by mouth?
>

Morrigan sighed. <
Spoken like a true incubus.
> Her usual disdain percolated through her thought. But Eros wasn’t fooled. He smelled the musky pheromones thickening her brine, blood, and molten steel scent. <
However, I don’t think he’s going to allow you to do that, considering he intends to leave. And we very much need him to stay.
>

<
That we do,
> Eros agreed.

Astarte glanced at Eros from beneath dark lashes, expression perplexed as she fumbled for a reply to Dante’s unexpected response to her welcome. <
Any suggestions?
>

Folding his arms over his chest, Eros shook his head. He couldn’t help but smile at Astarte’s unaccustomed speechlessness. Her boast to him—only ten minutes old—already proven false, her wager lost.

According to Gabriel, the Maker’s just a child.

A True Blood child, one born to violence and quick with his fangs.

He’s also Elohim. With Elohim instincts. So I shall accomplish what Gabriel obviously failed to do and
charm
him.

Oh, I’m sure he’ll find sinking his fangs into your throat and drinking you dry quite charming indeed.

Prick. I’ll have this mixed blood
boy
laughing and drinking with me within five minutes of meeting. I’ll have him bonded in five more.

“Gehenna
is
your home. Your rightful place is here with us, little
creawdwr
,” Astarte finally managed, regaining her composure. She offered Dante a warm, reassuring smile.

“You’re wrong about the
rightful place
bullshit. Just so we’re clear, my life is my own. I don’t answer to
any
of you.” Dante’s gaze shifted from Astarte and swept across each of them—a dark and violent promise in his kohl-rimmed eyes.

“Of course not,” Astarte soothed. “We only wish to help you, guide you.”

“To the fucking Chaos Seat, yeah? No thanks. Ain’t interested.”

Astarte stared, momentarily speechless again. Eros couldn’t really blame her. No
creawdwr
before had ever spurned the Chaos Seat, the power-focusing marble throne from which a Maker wove chaos into ordered life.

Of course,
this creawdwr
was unlike any other.

“And let me fill you in on something else in case that dick Gabriel forgot to mention it. You ain’t binding me. Not now. Not ever.”

A choked snort drew Eros’s attention to the ivy-laced balustrade. His white-winged back turned to the terrace, the Morningstar’s shoulders and wing tips shook with suppressed laughter, one taloned hand braced against the balcony.

The muscles in Eros’s shoulders pulled tight. Knotted. The Morningstar was playing them for fools. And succeeding. Frustration burned like acid through his guts.

<
At least
someone’s
amused,
> Uriel sent, darting a barbed glance at the Morningstar, his lips compressed into a thin, disapproving line. <
He’s encouraging the child’s hostility.
>

<
The Morningstar can afford to be amused. He has a huge advantage over us,
> Eros pointed out. <
He came here in Dante’s company, flew him to the pit,
and
helped him free his father. No doubt, he made us out to be the ones who put Lucien on those hooks.
>

<
Aye. And neglected to mention his own role in the
creawdwr
-slayer’s punishment,
> Uriel agreed, his expression souring.

“Bind you?” Astarte questioned. She shook her head, her curls sweeping in dark twists against her shoulders. “No one can bind you against your will, nor would anyone wish to.”

Lucien leaned in and murmured into his son’s ear in a low voice, but not so low that Eros couldn’t catch his words—as Lucien had no doubt intended: “Not true.”

Cocking his weight onto one hip, a dark smile tilted Dante’s lips, pooled deep in his eyes. Coiled. Pissed. All fangs and venom and lethal intent. “
Menteuse
,” he said quietly, his gaze fixed on Astarte.

French, with an unusual accent—Cajun, perhaps?—but the word’s meaning was clear:
Liar
.

Daggering an icicle gaze at Lucien before returning her attention to Dante, Astarte shook her head again. “No one can bind you against your will,” she repeated, each word a clear, ringing bell. “But you
must
be bonded, your sanity anchored by two
calon-cyfaill
—bondmates. Otherwise the
creu tân
, the creation fire, will sear away your tethers to reality and—”

Dante snorted. “Trust me, the reality-untethering qualities of the
creu tân
is the least of my worries. I’m bonded to Heather, so
c’est bon
.”

Lucien stared at Dante, shock blanking his face. His lips compressed into a grim line.
Interesting
, Eros mused.
He had no idea that his son had bonded the lovely redhead.

“No,
not
good.” Astarte said. “You need
two
. And a mortal bond is worthless.”