Urban Fantasy Collection - Vampires (25 page)

“Sixty foster homes, two stints in the loony bin,” LaRousse said, his tone conversational, his voice on the verge of a chuckle. “Words like
schizophrenia
and
homicidal
tossed around. A missing little girl and…oh, yeah!…the last foster home burns to the ground with the foster parents still inside. That'd be the Prejeans.”

Turning his head, Dante met LaRousse's gaze. The detective stared at him, handsome face hard, cold light glinting in his eyes.

“You're a fucking liar,” Dante said. His hammering heart said
maybe not
.

“That right?” Dickhead leaned in closer. “So tell me, does that good-looking FBI bitch know she's balling a stone-cold psycho?”

Dante slammed his fist into LaRousse's nose.

“W
HO MADE YOU
?”

Simone glanced at Heather, her pale face tinted green by the van's dashboard lights, then returned her attention to the road in front of them.

“Nightkind,
oui
? That's what you're asking?”

“Yeah, that's what I'm asking.”

Heather had never imagined having this conversation, never imagined vampires existed outside of horror movies or outside of Goth clubs. Never imagined the undead lived, worked, and fed alongside those who weren't.

But after watching Dante, after shooting Ronin, after witnessing parts of Étienne's body try to escape the flames consuming him, her skepticism, her doubts, had ended and her understanding of the world altered. She didn't want to look out the passenger window into the night. Didn't want to know what might look back from deep within the shadows alongside the road, eyes full of moonlight, mouth full of sharp teeth.

Simone sighed. “A friend of the family turned me, just after Papa's funeral.”

“Was it something you wanted?”

The blonde shook her head. “No. But she didn't offer me a choice.”

Shadows flickered across Simone's face. Her hands were relaxed on the steering wheel. No bitterness edged her voice. If a family friend had done the same to her, Heather would've tracked her down and…what? Killed her? Forced her to take it back? Maybe Simone had had time to come to terms with the situation.

How did one come to terms with being made into a vampire? How did a mortal adjust to immortality?

“And your brother?”

“He was all the family left to me,” Simone said, her voice low, taut. “I gave him a choice. If he'd a said no, I probably woulda set myself on fire.”

“You turned your own brother?” Heather asked, surprised.

“I couldn't bear the thought of watching him grow old and die.”

Heather thought of Kevin, of Annie. Could she have done the same to them? Siphoned off their humanity? Or let them age? Bury them one after the other next to Mom? Her throat constricted.

“So, how does this undead stuff work? Dante's skin is warm. He has a pulse. He's intensely alive.”

The corners of Simone's mouth quirked up in a smile. “
Oui,
Dante's intensely
everything
.”

Heather stared at her, shoulders tight. Remembered Dante leaning over Simone on the dais steps, whispering in her ear, and touching her hair. She had a strong suspicion they'd been more than just friends once. Were they still?

“We're
not
undead,” Simone said. “We're a separate species. We've always lived alongside mortals.” She looked at Heather and smiled.

“And Dante? Do you know who made him?”

Simone's fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “No. He's never said.” She glanced at Heather. “I don't think he knows. Maybe it's lost to him.” Sorrow sharpened the planes of her face.

“Like so much else,” Heather said. “Hidden behind his headaches.” Or was he what Ronin had called him—True Blood? Born vampire?

Her name was Chloe and you killed her.

Ronin's smooth, commanding voice wormed through Heather's thoughts. What if Dante didn't remember his past because he'd done terrible things? Things he couldn't bear to remember?

Were Ronin's attempts to awaken Dante a desire to trigger him, to wind him up and turn him loose? But if Dante could be
triggered
, wouldn't that mean he'd been
programmed
? And wouldn't that mean his memory had been
deliberately
crippled? Would certain questions trigger protective subliminals like migraines? Unconsciousness? Madness?

Heather's heart pounded in her ears, drowning out the sound of the road rushing beneath the van's wheels, beating cadence for the thoughts pulsing through her mind—black ops ran mind experiments, had for decades. Government funded and Bureau protected.

She heard Stearns's voice:
He's no longer your concern.
But that meant he was
someone
's concern. Whose? And which agency? How deep did this go?

Heather looked out the passenger window. Her reflection, pale, pensive, and weary, hid the night beyond. The shadows and what they
might
contain no longer seemed so scary. Not compared to the place her suspicions had brought her—a place both very dark and very real.

And Dante was caught in the middle—lost, maybe. Heather's hands knotted in her lap. Not if she could help it.

And her investigation? If Ronin and Jordan together were the Cross-Country Killer, the evidence would nail them, give a clear voice to their victims. The dead would finally speak.

Link the DNA evidence. Nail Jordan. Prove the CCK hadn't died in Pensacola. But what about Ronin? Could a human court even touch him? If she suggested he was vampire, the case would be thrown out of court and her career'd be over.

Would nightkind care if one of their own butchered mortals? Dante cared, but was he an exception?

Maybe she'd have to settle for Elroy Jordan.

The van slowed and Heather opened her eyes. Simone parked in the gravel drive curving in front of the house. Heather glanced at the dark windows. “Is your brother home?” she asked, pulling the door latch.

“Oui.”
Simone opened the driver's door and slipped out of the van. “He just doesn't need light.”

Heather climbed out of the van and into the chilly, humid night. The air was sweet with the scent of wild roses and cherry blossoms and moss.

“Wallace.”

Heather froze. She recognized the voice. She'd listened to it for years. Been guided by it. The fact that he was in New Orleans was enough to ice her blood. The fact that he was at Dante's house scared the shit out of her. She slid her right hand into her trench. Reached for her .38.

“I wouldn't.”

Heather turned around, pebbles from the path crunching beneath her shoes. Stearns stood beside the van's driver's side door, a silencer-equipped pistol pressed to Simone's left temple. He held the vampire's arm in a tight-fingered grip.

“We need to talk,” he said.

D
ICKHEAD'S NOSE FLATTENED
. He fell off the stool, mingled pain and surprise flickering in his eyes. He hit the floor, blood spurting from his nostrils.

His sidekick, Davis, blinked, his mouth half-open. He reached inside his jacket, but Dante stepped forward and back-fisted him with his blood-smeared left hand. Seizing the stunned detective by the back of the neck, he pounded Davis's face against the bar's polished surface. The detective crumpled to the floor.

Standing between the two downed mortals, Dante glanced up to see Maria pressed up against the bottle-lined shelves, eyes wide, a hand to her mouth. Movement on the floor caught Dante's attention.

LaRousse struggled to his knees, eyes watering, nose swelling. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gun—looked like a nine mil.

“You ain't walkin' from this—” LaRousse's words, blood-thick and harsh, ended abruptly when Dante kicked the nine mil out of his hand. The detective's wrist snapped, bent at an unnatural angle. He screamed through gritted teeth.

Dante crouched in front of LaRousse. Pain prickled along his temples, behind his eyes. His vision blurred. Latching onto the detective's shoulder, he forced LaRousse's head up and to the side with a hand to his chin. Blood pulsed fast and frantic within the mortal's arched throat.

Baring his fangs, Dante lowered his face to LaRousse's warm, reeking flesh.

“I work for Guy Mauvais. I have his protection,” Dickhead said, his voice a strained whisper.

Dante let go of LaRousse's shoulder and tore at his tie and shirt buttons. A button flew through the air. The shirt ripped. There, glimmering in the hollow of the detective's throat, iridescent, was a rose; visible only to the eyes of nightkind.

“Hey! Asshole! What the
fuck
you think you're doin'?”

Dante glanced at the speaker. The athlete from the pool table charged toward him, face tight and glowering, pool cue reversed and brandished like a baseball bat. Dante shoved LaRousse away hard. The detective slid across the hardwood floor and slammed against the wall.

Dante straightened from his crouch, hands intercepting and seizing the pool cue as Athlete swung it down. Dante stepped past Athlete in a rush of air and wrenched the pool cue from his grasp. Athlete's expression shifted from righteous rage to confusion. He stared at his empty hands.

How does it feel,
marmot?

Whirling, jaw clenched, Dante whacked the pool cue across Athlete's back. Athlete stumbled forward, body arched. A quick stride stood Dante in front of the off-balance pool player. He smashed the pool cue against Athlete's temple, canting his head to one side. The cue snapped in half. One splintered end pinwheeled through the air and crashed against the wall phone behind the bar, knocking it from the wall. It exploded against the floor, dinging once.

As Athlete slumped to the floor, Dante swiveled and looked at Maria. She'd turned her face away from the flying spear of wood, shielding herself with one hand, the other still outstretched toward the now useless phone.

A raw-throated scream of rage spun Dante around again, the other half of the pool cue still clenched in his hand. Good Ol' Boy Terry lunged at him, fingers wrapped around the hilt of a hunting knife. Beer Gut followed, red-faced and sweating, hot on Terry's heels, cue stick clutched in both hands.

“C'mon, Ernie! Let's take out the motherfuckin' trash!”

But Terry rushed forward alone. Dante noticed Good Ol' Boy Ernie had stopped to scoop something up from the floor.

Dante swung one arm up to grab Terry's knife hand as he slammed the broken pool cue across Beer Gut's belly. Beer Gut's breath
whoof
ed out from his lungs and he fell to his knees. His cue stick dropped from his hands, clattering against the floor.

An image of Lucien slumped on his side across broken pews, plaster and gold flecks of paint dusting his hair, a length of splintered wood impaling him, flickered through Dante's mind.

Mon ami—

You look so much like her.

Sudden searing pain fractured Dante's thoughts, scattering the fragmented images and half memories. Terry's hunting knife plunged through his palm and out the back of his hand. Wasps droned. Stung. Venom poured through Dante's veins. Snarling, he yanked his arm back, jerking the knife hilt from Terry's grasp.

“Yeah!” Terry crowed. “Take
that
, mother—”

Dante swiped the back of his impaled hand across Terry's work-grimed throat. Blood sprayed Dante's face and shades, hot and fragrant. He licked it from his lips. He tugged the knife from his hand and dropped it on the floor.

The frenzied drumming of Terry's dying heart sucked Dante in and, unable to resist the pungent blood scent, he wrapped his arms around the man, pressed his parted lips against the gashed throat. Blood poured into his mouth. Together, Terry and Dante dropped to their knees.

You were wrong, boy. I've had more than a taste.

You can still save him, True Blood.

As Dante drank the diminishing flow, he heard whispers, whispers
not
from within. “Aim for the head and don't…fuck in'…miss.”

Dante
moved
—diving to the floor and then rolling to his feet—as fire flashed from a gun's muzzle. The bullets slammed into Terry's still crumpling body—one, two, three.

“Shit!” Davis cried.

Dante scooped up the broken pool cue half and hurled it at Davis, hitting him in the temple as he pulled the trigger again. The shot went wild, hitting—

“Wayne!” Ernie screamed.