Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires (23 page)

“Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus.” He swayed.

“Hold on,” she said. “Hear me? We're walking out of here together.”

A
healing
hole marred Étienne's pale forehead. Blood streaked his face, trickled from one nostril. His eyes were half-lidded. Heather touched a hand to the vampire's throat. Blood pulsed beneath her fingers.
Guess he has a heart after all.

She shoved the .38's muzzle against Étienne's chest, right above that theoretical heart.
This is an execution. You do this, you might as well leave that badge and all it stands for in the dirt outside.

Sweat trickled along her temples, between her breasts. Her muscles trembled.
And how would I bring this bastard before a court? He's a vampire,
she thought, realizing she finally believed it.
He's a killer.

So is Dante.

That's the way of it, Pumpkin. Some you bring to justice. Some you silence. Some you let walk away.

No and no and no. Her finger tightened on the trigger. Her breath rasped in her throat.

“Mine.”

Startled, Heather yanked the .38 away from Étienne's chest, her finger easing off the trigger. She looked up into Dante's dark, pain-dilated eyes. No glimmer of recognition lit his face.

He doesn't know who I am.
That the realization stung so sharply surprised her. Like Annie, when she was lost to migraine pain, booze, and madness:
Who the
fuck
are you?
Like Annie—pissed. Hurting.
Feeling.

Heather rose to her feet, her gaze on Dante. He was definitely feeling. It burned in his eyes, fevered his pale face, coiled through his taut-muscled body. He straddled the head-shot vampire, twisted a handful of Étienne's blood-spattered shirt around his fingers, and jerked his torso up.

“Let this go,” she said. “Dante, you're hurt. Let me help you.”

But Dante didn't reply and Heather wasn't sure he'd even heard her.

Étienne's head hung limp, his braids sweeping the floor, beads clicking against the concrete. She caught a glimpse of Dante's fangs as he bit into Étienne's arched throat. Saw the vampire's body convulse and his eyes fly open. Heard him hiss. Dante ripped into Étienne's throat. Blood sprayed.

Heather stared, pulse pounding hard through her veins. Her fingers tightened around the .38's grip. Dante wasn't feeding, no, this was something else. Primal. Pissed and hurting. Every instinct she'd honed during her years with the Bureau screamed at her to swing up the .38 and stop the slaughter happening right in front of her.

But—
did
she have a right to interfere? Dante wasn't human, she knew that now; neither was Étienne. Did human laws apply here? Was there nightkind law? Nightkind courts?

Or was nightkind justice dispensed like this—one to one, savage and bloody and personal? Was Dante within his rights? Was Étienne?

Heather's shoes squelched in something. She looked down. She stood in the pool of blood circling the straitjacketed body—
no, Jay, his name is Jay
—circling Jay. She had backed up unaware.

She swiveled around and gazed into Jay's empty green eyes. Crouching, she brushed her fingers against his still warm cheek. Had he been killed as Dante watched? She remembered the heartbroken sound of Dante's scream and her throat tightened. She should've never let him go in alone.

We're on our own. The case has been closed. I can't call for backup.

Me neither.

I'm your backup.

She slid her hand from Jay's face, clenching her fingers into a fist. Some backup. When Dante'd needed her, she wasn't there. Didn't matter that she hadn't counted on being sidelined by a vampire. What mattered was she'd failed Dante and the friend he'd tried to save.

Ronin and Étienne had kidnapped and murdered Jay. And Gina too? Could she have been wrong about the CCK's involvement? The perp she'd followed for three years was human. Human DNA.

Then it all clicked into place.

Ronin's assistant—Elroy Jordan.

A pair of killers. A tag team? It was a possibility she'd never seriously entertained. The Hillside Strangler had been two men, cousins. Were Ronin and Elroy Jordan together the CCK? Or just playing at it? She wasn't sure how Étienne fit into the picture; maybe he'd just tagged along, lugging his hatred for Dante.

So…where was Elroy Jordan?

Something thudded against the concrete. Heather swiveled around on the balls of her feet.

Wiping blood from his mouth with the back of his wrist, Dante stood. Étienne's head dangled from his other hand, braids wrapped around his fingers. He dropped the head onto Étienne's chest. The braids jittered with each beat of the heart. The eyes blinked.

Stepping over the still living body, Dante picked up a candle from the crate beside the door, and carried it back to Étienne. The head's eyes rolled, wild, white. Dante touched flame to the black braids and to the expensive shirt and designer slacks. Smoke curled into the air. Hair and clothing burst into flame.

Dante stood, the movement swift and smooth. The stench of burning hair and roasting flesh closed Heather's throat. With a last glance at Jay, she rose and stepped out of the sticky pool of blood.

Dante watched Étienne burn.

“Hey,” Heather said, voice low. She reached for him, but he spun abruptly, knocking her hand away and grabbing her, his fingers clamping around her upper arms. He yanked her in close. Lowered his head.

Heather shoved the .38 against his ribs, heart hammering. In his eyes she'd seen loneliness and loss. Yearning. He burned against her, his body raging with an inner fire to rival the one consuming Étienne's body.

Dante nuzzled her throat, his lips brushing against her skin and she stiffened, even though fire flared within her at his touch. She wrapped her finger tighter around the .38's trigger. Dante lifted his head. Sweat-damp tendrils of hair clung to his face and blood trickled from his nose. He closed his eyes. The muscle in his jaw twitched. His wire-taut muscles trembled as he struggled for control.

Heather's arms tingled, her fingers cold, as Dante's tight grip cut off the circulation. She wondered if he was aware of the gun against his ribs. She wondered if he cared. Desperation knotted around her heart.

“Dante, don't do this.”

His eyes opened. Pupils dilated and rimmed with red-flecked brown, he looked into her. He released her, then touched her face with shaking fingers, brushing stray strands of hair back from her face.

“Heather,” he breathed.

Pain prickled through Heather's arms as the blood resumed flowing. She lowered the .38 to her side. The relief, the wonder, in Dante's voice told her that he'd believed her dead. She could just imagine what Ronin had told him:
Caught the fed outside. Her neck snapped real easy.

The question was, why
hadn't
he killed her?

Heather touched cold fingers to Dante's face. “You're hurt,” she said. “Let's—” She felt smooth, fevered skin beneath her fingertips, then air.

“Run as far from me as you can.” His voice was strained, edged with pain.

She spun toward the sound. Dante stood in the doorway, hands braced on either side. She opened her mouth to argue, but it was pointless.

Dante was gone.

L
UCIEN'S SONG SMOLDERED WITHIN
Dante, its rhythm faint and faltering, dying embers of a fire that had burned hot and steady for hundreds—no,
thousands
—of years. He rushed up the cathedral's steps to the locked double doors. He looked up. Shutters blinded the windows.

The image of an arched chamber—
SANCTUSSANCTUSSANCTUS
—strobed within Dante's mind, then flared into a golden burst of color. He touched his link to Lucien, but it was closed. He pushed. The seal held.

Voices whispered and droned. Wasps crawled.

Lucien,
mon cher ami—

Jay's green eyes, steady and full of trust, even as the light went out of them, filled Dante's mind.

I knew you'd come for me.

Would he fail Lucien, too? Would he watch the life ebb from his eyes?

White light etched mysterious glyphs at the edges of Dante's vision. Blood dripped onto the concrete beneath his feet. Voices shouted and shrieked and murmured behind him, none of them making any sense. He grasped the door handles and
pushed
.

Dante didn't have to look behind him to know that mortals circled the MG parked at the foot of the cathedral's steps; he smelled them, blood and sweat, booze and desperation. He heard their hearts, pounding and hammering and pulsing; a disjointed rhythm threading through the night beneath the buzz of their voices.

With an echoing snap, the locks broke. Dante swung the heavy doors open and stepped into the golden chamber he'd seen in his mind before pain, white hot and not his own, had stolen his breath and his song.

A gold cherub stood in the aisle near the dark, gleaming pews. The smell of incense and candle wax, sharp and fragrant—sandalwood, rose oil, and sorrow—drifted through the cathedral. Silence as thick as cotton muffled the sounds from outside, but amplified the beat of Dante's heart.

Dante glanced up. Painted in amber across an arched ceiling beam were the words SANCTUS SANCTUS SANCTUS. A jagged hole marred the gold ceiling, destroying one of the painted oval images of Christ or Mary or some fucking saint. He dropped his gaze to the shattered pews on the left side of the aisle. The tip of one black wing poked up beyond them like a distant sail.

Dante ran up the black-and-white-tiled aisle to the cathedral's center, then slid to a stop beside the ruined pews. Sprawled on his side across part of a broken pew, one tattered wing against the floor, long black hair veiling his face, Lucien lay motionless.

Dante's breath caught in his throat. A splintered shaft of wood impaled Lucien—in through his lower back and out through his sternum. Blood stained the shaft's tip. It quivered with each slow beat of Lucien's heart. Light gleamed on the X-rune pendant at Lucien's throat.

Dante dashed up the wood-and-plaster-littered aisle and knelt beside Lucien's unmoving form. He stretched out his hand to brush his friend's hair aside. His fingers trembled. His hand shook. Jaw clenched, he reached—and images exploded in his mind, vivid and searing—

Gina, black stocking knotted around her slender throat, her glazing eyes fixed on the empty doorway:
Tomorrow night?

Jay, blood spreading like dark wings beside him:
I knew you'd come for me.

Chloe, choking on her own blood, hand reaching for Orem, her plushie orca:
My Dante-angel
. Pain shafted through his mind and that brief image-memory shattered and vanished.

Dante's vision cleared. He sat on the debris-littered floor, his hand frozen over Lucien's hidden face, heart hammering, head aching.

Promise me you won't follow.

“Fuck you,” Dante whispered, and brushed Lucien's hair aside.

Blood trickled from several small cuts on Lucien's face and from a gash along his throat. Dante touched fingers to his cheek, surprised his hand held steady. The skin felt hot beneath his fingers.

Leaning over, Dante pressed his lips against Lucien's, tasted tears and blood.

<
I won't lose you.
> The thought bounced back, unheard. “I won't.”

Dante rose to his knees. Seizing the bloodstained spear of wood, he yanked. The broken length of wood slid free and blood gushed from the wound, so dark it looked black. Dante tossed the wood shaft aside. It clunked against a pew, the sound echoing through the cathedral.

Dante wrapped his arms around Lucien, gathered him close. He'd expected his friend to be heavier and he nearly tipped them both over onto the debris-strewn floor. Then he remembered how effortlessly the angel would launch himself from the balcony into the night sky, black wings unfurling.

Lucien cradled in his lap, Dante pressed his hands against the chest wound. Blood seeped hot and sticky between his fingers. Lucien's heartbeat slowed. The dying embers of his song cooled, the fire of its rhythm dimming.

Dante brought his arm to his mouth, bit into his wrist, then lowered it over Lucien. Blood spattered against Lucien's lips, spilled untasted and unswallowed from the corners of his mouth.

“Drink, damn you. Don't you dare—” The words withered in Dante's throat. Pain jabbed his temples. He squeezed his eyes shut. His chest hurt, like he'd taken a brass-knuckled punch to the sternum. Pain hooked around his heart.

I'm not gonna sit on my ass and watch someone else I care about die.

But he had.

I knew you'd come for me.

Dante opened his eyes, raised his healing wrist to his mouth again, slashed it with his fangs. Drank in his own blood until it filled his mouth. Bending over Lucien, he kissed him, parting the angel's cool lips with his tongue. His blood poured like mulled winter wine into Lucien's mouth.

Dante breathed into Lucien, fanning the embers of his song into red-hot life again. His own song flowed into Lucien, dark and wild and pissed, twisting through the angel's veins, his nervous system, flooding him with pale blue light.

He remembered Lucien's wings, black and velvet smooth, a hint of dark purple underneath. Remembered the strength of his bones. The thickness of his talons. He remade Lucien as he remembered him; wove blue light into the fabric of his being, pulled loose threads and braided them together.

Remembered that first night on the wharf—sinking his fangs into the winged stranger's throat, his pain fading—then waking up in Lucien's arms as he flew through the night.

You will never be alone again, child.

Pain twisted like a screwdriver behind Dante's left eye. His song blazed and he burned with it. Flesh knitted itself whole. Bones snapped back into place, unmarred; holes vanished in wing membranes.

Healed? Remade? Dante didn't know.

He ended the kiss, drained and shaking. As he lifted his head, Lucien opened his eyes. Wonder lit his black eyes.

“Genevieve.”

A name Dante had never heard before, but it didn't matter; Lucien's heart beat strong and slow, life sparked golden in his dark eyes.

“Mon ami,”
Dante whispered.

“You look so much like her,” Lucien murmured dreamily, trailing a finger along a strand of Dante's hair.

“Like who?” Dante stared at Lucien, suddenly cold, his joy clotting up like old blood.

“Your mother.”

H
EATHER GOT OUT OF
the cab on the corner of Royal and St. Peter. She pushed through the crowd jam-packed in the street, breathing in the odors of sweat, beer, and Dentyne as she forced her way through the revelers.

The door to the club swung open. The faint bass beat exploded into full-on screaming sound. Von strode out, Simone beside him, her face tight with concern. Von stopped, his shaded gaze seeming to lock onto Heather. He lifted his hand. No wolfish grin this time, just a crooked c'mere finger.

Heather angled across the street to the sidewalk, her hope that Dante had returned fading with each step. It scared the shit out of her to think of him cruising the streets alone looking for Ronin, pissed and hurting and out of his head. She'd promised to stick with him, to be his backup, and she'd failed him.

Dante hadn't walked out of CUSTOM MEATS with Jay and she hadn't walked out with Dante.

Run as far from me as you can.

She had a feeling Dante had been running all his life.

Heather stepped onto the sidewalk beside the tall nomad. Light flickered and flashed across his shades, his leather jacket. It glimmered on the crescent moon tattoo below his eye. Simone nodded in greeting, but Heather noticed her tension, her half-clenched fists.

“Dante's not here, is he,” Heather said.

Von's eyebrows drew down together. “Fuck. I was afraid you were gonna say that. Me and the others, we've been feeling some bad shit.” He tapped a finger against his temple. “Then…nothing. What happened?”

Disappointment sliced into Heather and her remaining strength bled out. She bit her lip, looked away. “Ronin set him up,” she said finally. “Jay's dead. Dante—”

“Mon Dieu,”
Simone whispered.

“That sonuvabitch!” Von spat. “He fucking lied in
front
of me.” His muscles flexed, then coiled, snake tight. Fury and contempt radiated from him.

Von was much more than a bouncer, more than a strapped nomad vampire—and that alone was enough to spin Heather's thoughts. What had the others called him? Lew god? What was his role in nightkind society?

An honor to be escorted by you,
llygad.

“Where'd Dante go?”

Heather shook her head. “He killed Étienne.” The nomad and Simone exchanged glances at that name. “Then he took off. I don't know where. He was half out of his mind…Jay…” Her words trailed away as a pang of regret pierced her.

She'd walked out of CUSTOM MEATS and left Jay lying on the concrete floor in a pool of his own congealing blood, still locked inside the blood-spattered straitjacket. She'd walked into the alley and searched it until she'd found her cell phone.

She stares at the cell. She needs to call the bodies in. But she can't wait for the cops. Can't wait around to make a report. She needs to find Dante. Nightkind or not, he was in no shape to take on Ronin.

The air reeks of Étienne's torched body, his burned dreads. The stench clings to her like rank incense, settling into her trench, her hair.

Caught in the moonlight, her badge sparkles like mica in the dirt. Fidelity. Bravery. Integrity. Her throat tightens. She punches in Collins's number. When he answers, she reminds herself he doesn't deserve to be dragged through the shit. Her finger hovers over the end button.

“Wallace?”

“There's been a murder at 1616 St. Charles, inside the Custom Meats building. Two bodies.”

“Okay, hang on. I'll get some units there—”

“I can't wait. I can't prove it…yet, but one vic was killed by Thomas Ronin.”

“Whoa! Ronin…the journalist?
That
Ronin? Evidence? Witnesses?”

“Yes. A witness, but I've got to go find him before Ronin does.”

“Don't tell me. Prejean.”

“I think the CCK is a tag team—Ronin and Elroy Jordan.”

“Wallace, hold on. You said two bodies.”

“Right.”

“Is Ronin good for that one, too?”

“No…parties unknown. I'll catch up with you later.” Her finger touches the end button, then switches off the ringer. She slides the cell into her purse.

She's surprised that it was so easy. Her heart isn't pounding. Her palms aren't sweaty. Her head is clear.

She walks down the alley to her badge, bends over and picks it up. She brushes the dirt from it, shakes the gravel from the holder. Fidelity. Bravery. Integrity. She wraps her fingers around her badge.

She remembers the raw sound of Dante's scream.

Something stings Heather's eyes. She blinks until the sensation is gone. Dropping her badge into her pocket, she walks from the alley. She has a promise to keep.

A hand squeezed Heather's shoulder. She tensed, startled, and looked up into summer green eyes. Von peered at her from over the tops of his shades.

“Did you hear me?”