In the Blood

36 THE UNDERWORLD

Damascus, OR

March 24

DANTE moved.

Heather jumped back, shielding her throat with her arms, hoping to hell she’d hit her mark. Dante stumbled to a stop about two feet from her, staggered. He plucked the dart from his throat. A familiar smile tilted his lips and, for an instant as he looked at her, he was himself again.

Relief flickered in his dark eyes.

The dart tumbled from his fingers. Then he followed it, sprawling belly down on the oatmeal-shaded carpet, his black hair spilling across Heather’s Skechers.

Heather lowered her arms. She tossed the trank gun aside, then dropped to her knees beside Dante. She grabbed his shoulders and rolled him over. She touched his face. He was burning up, his skin hot beneath her shaking fingers.

“Good shootin’, Tex,” Lyons said from behind her—in the hall. “I kinda thought he’d tear you apart. Gotta admit, I’m glad he didn’t.”

Heather glanced at him from over her shoulder. “You’re so full of shit, I’m surprised you haven’t suffocated yet.”

“Ouch,” Lyons murmured, voice amused. He sauntered into the room and crouched beside her. “Looks like he took a bullet.”

Heather followed his gaze to the hole in Dante’s PVC shirt above the left pec. Almost a heart shot. Not fatal, but Rodriguez would still be alive if he hadn’t missed. But where would that have left Dante?

“Move away, Wallace. I’ll truss him up.”

“Where’s my dad?”

Heather lifted her gaze to the girl still standing wide-eyed and trembling beside the sofa where Dante had shoved her for safekeeping. “Is my dad here?”

Heather’s throat tightened. “I don’t know, honey,” she said softly, rising to her feet. “What’s your name?”

“Brisia,” she said. “Shouldn’t we call 911? My dad always told me—”

“You’ve been very brave, Brisia,” Heather said, crossing to the sofa. She knelt beside the dark-haired girl. “Your dad would be proud of you. You just need to be brave for a little while longer, okay sweetie?”

Brisia nodded, expression uncertain, her eyes glassy with shock. Heather stroked her arm, knowing her attempt to soothe the girl was hollow, at best.

Brisia’s father was dead, his body in another room, just yards away. She’d learn the truth soon enough and it wouldn’t matter to her that Dante’d had no choice, that he’d been programmed to kill on a madman’s whim.

All Brisia would know was that he’d murdered her father.

The mingled smells of coffee, blood, and burning leaves wove a pungent latticework throughout the room, a scent of pending grief. A scent Heather knew Brisia would always remember.

Lyons flipped Dante back onto his belly and cuffed his hands behind him. Then, still face-down, Dante’s unconscious body lifted into the air, his hair swinging forward to curtain his face.

Heather felt Brisia tense beneath her hand. She looked at the girl just as she hid her face behind her hands as if she was a three-year-old watching a monster movie.

But she was a ten-year-old and the monsters were real.

“Back in a sec to tie up loose ends.” Lyons accompanied Dante’s floating body down the dark hall and out of sight.

Heather squeezed Brisia’s arm, then rose to her feet. The girl dropped her hands from her face. Heather hurried her to the front door. “I want you to run to a neighbor’s house and have them call 911, okay?”

Brisia nodded. She grasped the doorknob, then glanced at Heather. “Do you need help too?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about me,” Heather said. “Just go.”

Brisia yanked the door open and dashed out into the night and across the street, her long hair streaming behind her.

Breathing a little easier, Heather closed the door. She left the house by the back door and trotted over to Lyons’s truck. He finished snapping the black cover over the truck bed, then looked up.

Heather’s hands curled into fists. Lyons had stashed Dante in the back of the truck like a piece of equipment. “We need to move,” she said. “Cops’ll be on their way.”

Lyons shook his head, his expression amused. “So you let the kid go. I figured you would.” He shrugged. “It’s Dante she’ll remember. I’ll bet his face will be burned into her memory.”

Heather had a feeling he was right. “Dante’s done everything you asked; so have I. Where the hell’s Annie?”

“Listen, Wallace,” Lyons said, all humor gone from his face, his eyes cold and still, “and listen very close. Screw up my instructions and your sister pays.”

SHERIDAN FOLLOWED A LONG stream of traffic onto I-5 south, merging the SUV at high speed into the interstate flow of red taillights. Lyons’s address in Damascus glowed in green letters across the GPS screen mounted on the dash.

Rutgers’s voice curled into his ear from the Bluetooth hooked around it. “I just got the word from the Seattle PD, Rodriguez is dead. Murdered.”

“Prejean,” Sheridan murmured.

“I believe so. The Seattle PD said it looked like a wild animal had torn into Rodriguez. I certainly couldn’t tell them that a vampire was more likely.”

“No.”

“I assured them that I’d be sending a team in. There’s also a witness, a daughter. She mentioned two men, one woman.”

“Prejean, Lyons, and Wallace.”

“Given your intel about what occurred between Prejean, Lyons, and Wallace at her house this evening, I did a little digging. Hell, I roto-rootered the files and uncovered a classified gem.”

“Ma’am?”

“Lyons is the son of Robert Wells.”

Sheridan whistled. “Do you think Wells sent him to intercept Prejean?”

“I do. And to use Prejean.”

“Mission accomplished,” Sheridan murmured. “And Wallace?”

“Still Prejean’s. Nothing’s changed there. And since Lyons loaded the vampire into his truck bed and drove away with him, I think it’s safe to assume Lyons or his father or both plan to keep using him.”

“Instructions?”

“It chaps my ass that the SB was right, even if for the wrong reasons.”

“Ma’am?”

“Wells and Wallace.” Rutgers sighed, the sound low and weary. “I rescind my order on Cortini. But if she gets in the way, don’t hesitate to remove her.”

“Yes, ma’am. And Lyons?”

“He takes Cortini’s place in your list.”

“Roger that,” Sheridan said.

“And Brian? Be careful. Do you have your rifle?”

“Yes.”

“Use it.” The connection ended.

Buzzing on yet more pick-me-ups, exhaustion sanding his eyes, Sheridan arrowed the SUV into the fast lane.

HEATHER STEERED THE TRANS Am around a lumbering semi, gliding into the fast lane, the truck’s red and yellow lights streaking into one long carnival streamer of color as she passed. Through the windshield, the road merged with the night, endless and black.

Her heart drummed a relentless, angry cadence.

Rain beaded the windshield and Heather flipped on the wipers. She realized her hands were aching and she eased her white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel.

Almost there, she told herself. Almost there.

Lyons’s instructions after they’d left Rodriguez’s house had been clear: Take the Trans Am and wait in a nearby Safeway parking lot for a half hour, while Lyons fetched Annie. After the half hour was up, Heather was to drive to Damascus, to the address she’d looked up earlier on the computer.

If she didn’t pull into Lyons’s driveway within ten minutes of his arrival, Annie would never wake up again. Heather had only Lyons’s word that Annie was still alive.

If she wasn’t, if Dante had sacrificed his sanity and freedom for nothing…

She had to be.

Heather goosed the gas and edged the speedometer past 80 mph.

ALEX WALKED INTO THE cottage’s front room. “Athena?” he called. Unzipping his hoodie, he pulled it off and tossed it onto the sofa. <Athena?>

White noise—telepathic busy signal—buzzed into his head. She was either out-of-range or on her meds. He believed the out-of-range option more likely and, given that her laptop wasn’t on the coffee table, she and it were most likely in the main house.

Watching Father.

Wonder if he’s begged yet? Promised Athena love and miracles?

Wonder what he’ll promise me?

Alex pulled his currently useless S&W from the back of his jeans, freed Heather’s Colt from his hoodie pocket, and headed for his room.

His nose wrinkled. The cottage smelled dank and stale, but as he stepped into the darkened hall, he detected a faint, fetid odor layered underneath the mustiness.

He flipped on the hall light and frowned at the clumps scattered across the carpet. Looked like dried mud or dirt clods. Alex followed the trail to his sister’s bedroom. He pushed open the door.

A thing lay in Athena’s bed, a dirty thing dressed in a nightgown, a thing with scrawny arms, clawed fingers, and no head. The thing’s torso ended in a raw-edged neck stump. It took Alex several heart-pounding moments to realize that the thing was his mother. Or what was left of her.

Alex leaned against the threshold, his muscles weak with relief.

She promised not to kill Mother, but did anyway. No wonder she’s not answering.

Alex rubbed his face with his hands. A tendril of unease curled through his thoughts. The fact that Athena had finally murdered their mother didn’t bother him, not really. But what surprised him was the body’s condition and location—Athena’s bedroom, not her lab.

And where was Mother’s head?

Dropping his hands from his face, Alex pushed away from the threshold and the thing in Athena’s bed, and crossed the hall to his room. He dialed open the gun safe on the bureau, and pulled out a fresh magazine for his S&W. Stashing the Colt inside the safe, he locked it up again. Alex slapped the magazine in place, then retucked the S&W into the back of his jeans.

Time to unload the sleepers and check in on Father.

ALEX DROPPED ANNIE’S GYM bag with its lingerie-wrapped bottle of absinthe on the carpet beside the main house’s front door. Dante was stretched out on the sofa, his blood-smeared hands cuffed behind him. The vampire was still unconscious, but at least he no longer bled from his nose or from the bullet wound in his chest.

Alex strode across the room and into the hall. He glanced into the guest room. Annie slept curled on her left side atop the quilted comforter, her wrists and ankles flex-cuffed. He’d stripped the duct tape from her mouth. She’d be awake soon, and here in the boonies, she could make all the noise she wanted.

Alex walked down the hall to his mother’s dark room, following the sound of his sister’s whispers. He paused in the doorway, his finger hovering below the light switch. He closed his eyes, basking in his twin’s warm and electric presence—a cat in sunlight—and ignored the mingled stink of clotted blood and decay curdling the air.

“Threeintoonethreeintoonethreeintoone…”

“Athena?” he asked softly, opening his eyes. The whispers stopped.

“Alexander returns triumphant,” she said, her voice vibrant and proud. “Behold the Lord of the Underworld.”

Alex flicked on the switch, bathing the room in light.

THE INDIAN MOTORCYCLE RUMBLED through the night, the sound vibrating up Von’s spine as he leaned against the gear strapped to Marley Wilde’s bike, his right hand perched on her hip. The wind whipped through his hair and needled his face with cold rain, rain he finger-wiped from the goggles protecting his eyes. Marley’s blonde dreads writhed around her skull like Medusa snakes.

Her partner, Glen One-Eighty, gunned his cobalt-blue Kawasaki Versys beside them, jerking ahead a few meters. The black, bird-shaped V tattooed on his right cheek named his clan—Raven. As he dropped back, Von extended both middle fingers—fuck you twice. He caught the gleam of teeth as the nomad grinned.

Fuck you twice. Dante’s phrase. And Dante and Heather were the reason Von was on the road flying toward Portland and Damascus at 75 mph on the back of a Raven’s Indian instead of sitting beside Silver on a plane winging to New Orleans.

One moment, Von’s chatting with the pair of Ravens at a Dutch Bros. coffee kiosk inside the terminal; the next moment, pain ragged as a chainsaw blade chews through his relaxed shields and into his mind. Literally knocks him on his ass.

Dante.

Von funnels energy into his shields, tightens and strengthens them. The pain vanishes, but his head still aches, the throb a phantom, a memory ghost.

He jumps to his feet and runs, blurring past the weekend tourist crowds, to the bank of pay phones. Fumbling Heather’s card from his jacket pocket, Von plugs a debit spike into the pay slot and punches in her number.

Von grows colder with each unanswered ring. He leaves a message on her voice mail, then decides to ask a favor.

The Ravens had been happy—Honored, nightwalker bro—to take Von to Heather’s house. No Trans Am. Von had vaulted the fence and walked around to the back of the house and looked in through the dining room window. The boxes Heather had packed were still there. So was Dante’s duffel bag.

And Von had known. Calm and cold and intuitive.

Not a second team trying to snatch Heather. Not a car accident. Not even the goddamned Fallen.

Alex Lyons had refused to take no for an answer.

All you have to do is heal my sister.

Lyons knew how to trigger Dante. Knew how best to hurt him.

Remembering what Heather had said about Lyons’s home in Damascus, Von had sent to Trey in New Orleans and asked him to search the Internet for the address. Ninety seconds later, Von had asked the Ravens for a ride south.

Hand on Marley’s hip, raindrops stinging his face like pissed-off honeybees, Von wished they could eat up the road faster.

Shoulda never left Dante’s side. Shoulda never let him walk away.

ALEX STARED AT THE Lord of the Underworld, the blood chilling in his veins.

She stood between the occupied beds, a smile on her lips, her mud-streaked face luminous as though a fire burned just beneath her skin and behind her eyes. Her hair was twisted with mud into dark coils sweeping against her shoulders. A long, white, gore-streaked tunic belted at the waist graced her slender form.

In one grimy hand, she held a spear from their father’s collection, and in the other what looked like an apple or pomegranate or—no, too big, Alex thought, too misshapen and moist. She held a heart.

“Welcome home, my Xander,” Athena/Hades said.

Alex’s goddess of wisdom was drifting away from him with each breath she drew, a kite with a broken string.

A string Dante could not only mend, but reel back in and tether. Alex would make sure of it.

“I brought Dante home,” Alex said, joining his sister between the beds.

“I know.” She tilted her head, then shuddered. “He’s dreaming.”

“Thank God you’re back,” his father said from the right-hand bed, his voice thin with relief. “She’s betrayed us. She helped the assassin into the house. She murdered your mother—” Rage throttled his words into silence.

“Consider it a mercy,” Alex said. “Mother’s been dying for years.” He looked around the room, cataloguing all of his sister’s additions to the décor.

A garland of bluish-gray intestines looped across the top of the closed curtains and hung down each side of the window.

A man’s head, a small bullet hole marring the forehead, was perched on the nightstand beside Mother’s bed. And in Mother’s bed, a dark-haired woman in black slept, her wrists and ankles wrapped in leather restraints.

“The Tightrope Walker?” Alex asked.

“Yes, once,” Athena/Hades said. “Now she’s a meal for our Dante.”

Still holding his sister’s hand, Alex turned to face his father. Robert Wells stared at him with red-rimmed and furious eyes, helpless and full of hate. A well-deserved karmic kick in the gonads, Alex mused.

“I triggered Dante,” Alex said, holding his father’s gaze. “He did as you instructed. Rodriguez is dead. And I don’t think it was a pleasant death. Dante’s an effective tool, but not a very subtle one.”

Father drew in a deep breath, then nodded. “If you hope to have any success using him, you need me, Alexander.”

“I noticed your little safeguard. He can’t even hold your name in his mind.”

A smug smile curved his father’s lips. “Keep this word in mind: Safeguards.”

“Keep this word in mind: Hood.” His father’s smile faltered. “Here’s another: Duct tape. If Dante can’t see your face or hear your voice, I’ve got a feeling he’ll have no problem killing you.”

“Unmaking you,” Athena/Hades added.

Their father paled. “You still need me. I have the map.”

“No,” Athena/Hades said. “Dante needs to remember. When he does, he’ll take you apart.” Swiveling, she walked from the room.

“I can coax S into healing Athena,” Father said. Sweat gleamed on his forehead.

“Y’know, I always thought Mother was right about one thing,” Alex said, walking to the doorway. Pausing at the threshold, he continued, “I think Alexander the Great did have his good ol’ dad, King Philip, murdered. Goodnight, Father.”

Alex flipped off the light and closed the door.

HEATHER PULLED IN BEHIND Alex’s Dodge Ram. She slid the Trans Am’s gearshift into neutral, switched off the headlights, then the engine. The night, deep and endless, swept in and swallowed up all the places the doused headlights had abandoned.

She climbed out of the Trans Am and pocketed the keys. Not wanting to give Lyons another excuse to search her, she left her trenchcoat in the backseat. The air was thick with the smell of pine and moist earth, of the woods surrounding the houses. A nearby stream gurgled over rocks.

Pale light spilled from the windows and across the dark curves of shrubs and bushes. She glanced from one house to another, wondering which one she was supposed to go to; Alex had neglected to mention two houses.

Just as Heather started across the yard toward the main house, the front door opened and a light-haloed form stepped outside onto the porch, a gun in one hand.

“Cutting it close,” Lyons said.

“It’s not an easy place to find,” Heather said. She stopped at the foot of the steps leading to the porch. “Let me give the car keys to Annie. Let her go. Why do you need all three of us?”

Lyons raked a hand through his curls, his face thoughtful. “You might have a point. C’mon in, let’s see if we can reach an agreement.”

Heather placed a foot on the bottom step. “You’ve lied to me before. I need a show of good faith,” she said. “You let Annie take the car and leave, I’m yours.”

“I’ve got Dante, so you’re mine anyway.” Lyons turned around and sauntered back inside the house. “Annie’s negotiable.”

Body tight as a fist, Heather climbed the steps. She walked into the house. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw Dante on the sofa, still unconscious.

“He’s fine,” Lyons said, a knowing smile on his lips.

Telepath. She was going to have to be very careful. “Where’s Annie?” Her gaze skipped around the room—leather recliners, wide-screen TV, bookcases, coffee table—marking window locations, possible exits, hall, kitchen archway.

“My sister’s fetching her.” Lyons nodded at the recliner closest to the sofa. “Take a seat, Wallace. Get comfy. You’re gonna be here a while. Oh, and hands out, wrists together.”

After her wrists had been secured again with flex-cuffs, Heather perched on the edge of the recliner, the leather squeaking beneath her. Alex went to the sofa, bent, and waved a capsule of some kind under Dante’s nose. Dante stirred, then his head jerked away from the capsule. Heather caught a whiff of something acrid.

“Rise and shine,” Lyons murmured. He slipped the capsule into his jeans pocket. Hooking a hand around Dante’s bicep, he hauled him upright.

Dante shook his hair back from his face. Blinking, he looked around the room and Heather could just imagine what he was thinking: Where the hell am I now? He looked at Lyons and something very dark and dangerous flashed across his pale face.

“Did I pay for Annie?” Dante asked, his Cajun accent thick, his words slightly slurred. “She safe?”

“No,” Heather threw in before Lyons could answer him. “He lied to us. He’s still holding Annie.”

Dante’s gaze shifted to Heather and the dangerous light faded from his face. “You okay, chérie?” His eyes were glassy and dilated, just a thin ring of deepest brown slashed with red circled each pupil.

“I’m good,” she said. “I’m just trying to convince Lyons to give Annie the car keys so she can go.”

Dante’s gaze returned to Lyons. “Did I do what I was fucking supposed to do?”

Lyons nodded. “You did.”

A muscle in Dante’s jaw flexed. “Yeah? Then why you still holding Heather and Annie? You want me to heal your sister? I’ll do it.”

Lyons chuckled. “Just like that?”

Dante nodded. “I can be as easy as you want me to be. Just let them go.” His nostrils flared as though he’d caught a whiff of something bad, then he turned and looked toward the hall. “Fuck,” he whispered.

The stench of death wafted into the air, greasy and thick, and carried on a murmured tide of words Heather couldn’t make out. A tall, slender woman in a white Grecian-style gown streaked with dark smears and smudges walked into the room. She held a spear in one grimy hand, her other hand locked around a wide-eyed Annie’s arm.

“My sister,” Lyons said. A strange mix of love and despair swept across his face. “The Lord of the Underworld.”

A chill rippled down Heather’s spine. If this was Lyons’s sister, then she was worse off than Heather had imagined, much worse.

“What do you see, my Hades?” Lyons asked, his voice hushed.

The murmured tide of whispers stopped. Athena Wells looked at Dante.

“I can’t see beyond his beautiful face,” she said, her voice low and full of wonder. “I’ve tried and tried and tried. Either he blocks the way or he is the way.”

“The way?” Lyons questioned. He moved around the sofa and pulled Annie from his sister’s grasp, walked her to Heather’s recliner.

Heather saw the fear in Annie’s eyes. “It’ll be okay,” she promised. “We’ll get you out of here.”

“I fucked up,” Annie whispered. She looked away, blinking, jaw tight.

“Give me the car keys,” Lyons said, holding out his hand.

Rising to her feet, Heather worked her fingers into her jeans pocket, snagged her keys and pulled them from her pocket. She flashed a look at Annie, one her sister caught, then fumbled the keys. They jingled to the carpet.

Annie scooped them up like a first baseman diving for a low ball.

“Whoops,” Heather said.

Lyons looked at her, an almost smile on his lips. “Smooth, Wallace.” Opening up his pocketknife, he cut through the flex-cuffs binding Annie’s wrists. “Okay, all right, Annie can go. I’ll even walk her out to the car.”

The glint in Lyons’s eyes hinted of nastiness to come: a bullet fired into Annie’s skull underneath the evergreens, her body dumped into the trunk of Heather’s car, or maybe out in the woods.

Cold lanced through Heather. “No, wait—”

With a quick shove of his hand to her chest, Lyons pushed Heather back into the recliner. She landed hard, her head bouncing against the back of the chair.

A blur of fluid motion rocketed across Heather’s field of vision, a blur of leather and white skin launched from the sofa. Lyons slammed to the floor, Dante on top of him. The gun Lyons had just pulled somersaulted from his hand, across the carpet, and disappeared under the TV stand.

Heather jumped to her feet. “Annie! Run!”

Annie whirled and bolted out the front door.

“Both of you!” Dante yelled, straddling Lyons. “Fucking run!” Hands still cuffed behind him, he dipped his face toward Lyons’s throat. A flash of fangs and then he slashed into either the arm Lyons had flung up or into his throat.

Outside on the porch, Annie stopped in front of the window and mouthed run. But Heather shook her head and motioned for Annie to keep going. She wouldn’t, she couldn’t, abandon Dante. They were in this fight together.

Annie’s eyes widened in horror and she clapped a hand over her mouth.

Skin prickling, Heather spun around.

The Lord of the Underworld drove her spear into Dante’s back, just beneath his left shoulder blade. Dante sucked in a sharp, pained breath. She yanked the spear free, the tip flinging dark droplets of blood through the air. She swiveled around to face Heather, a breath-stealing smile on her lips. Heather froze.

Outside the Trans Am revved to life. Gravel scattered under tires.

“Welcome to Hell,” Athena Wells said.