In the Blood

2 A DARK AND DELICATE SONG

New Orleans, St Louis No. 3

March 15

LUCIEN DE NOIR STOOD motionless on the moonlight-bathed path, Dante’s furious words—They’re gonna hafta kill me—battering his calm like brass-knuckled fists. He drew in a deep breath and forced his muscles to relax. Unclenched his hands.

Perhaps knocking his stubborn son to the ground and sitting on him until reason overcame rage—as Von had suggested a few nights earlier—would be necessary.

Shouldn’t have to sit on him for longer than a week or two, Von says, straight-faced. Maybe three. He’s your son, after all.

I am patient, Lucien reminds him, not stubborn.

Von laughs.

Lucien bent and searched through the scraps of paper at Loki’s stone feet for the blood-kissed prayer Dante had placed among them. Finding it, he plucked it from the pile and straightened. The fading essence of creawdwr blood magic tingled against his fingers. Unfolding the liquor store receipt, he read the words scrawled in Dante’s lefty slant:

Watch over her, ma mère. S’il te plaît, keep her safe. Even from me.

Lucien reread the prayer until the words blurred. He closed his fingers around the receipt, the paper crinkling against his palm. He had no doubt who she was—Special Agent Heather Wallace.

Wounded, his child, yes. Damaged, yes. But Dante’s heart was whole and in love, it seemed, with a mortal. Perhaps Heather Wallace could bind Dante and help keep his sanity from unraveling.

Insanity. The fate of an unbound creawdwr.

Until Dante relented and forgave him, Lucien would be unable to teach his son how to control his gifts. Would be unable to help him keep his balance as creawdwr power raged through his mind and heart. Would be unable to lend him the strength to fight madness.

He wasn’t the only one Dante hadn’t forgiven. Dante also refused to forgive himself. Still sought penance for acts he’d committed as a child struggling to survive, acts he couldn’t even remember. Penance unowed, as far as Lucien was concerned.

Lucien studied Dante’s handiwork, the bouquet his child had created. The soft-petaled flowers in Loki’s hand danced as though breeze-stirred. Thorned tendrils snaked around the stone figure’s arms, neck, and wings. The scent of smoky incense, of myrrh, wafted up from each flower’s glossy black heart, a night perfume.

A song, delicate and dark, chimed up from the bouquet.

Dante’s power strummed across Lucien’s heart and radiated into the star-pricked sky—a beacon for any Elohim within range. A cold finger traced the length of Lucien’s spine. He straightened and listened to the night. Listened for wybrcathl. Listened for the rustle of wings. He heard only the faint pulse of Loki’s stone-caught heart.

Lucien looked at Loki’s crouched and screaming form. Time was running out. Soon, whoever had sent Loki would wonder at his absence.

Ever since Yahweh’s death, well over two thousand years ago, the Elohim had waited for the rise of another creawdwr. But only Lucien knew the wait had ended nearly twenty-four years ago, when a Maker had been born, a creawdwr like no other—vampire and Fallen.

Only Lucien knew—so far.

And he intended to keep it that way for as long as possible.

Lucien carefully plucked free Loki’s bouquet, unwinding its black roots from around the pale stone. A riot of chiming notes rose into the air, a sharp and wild crystalline song. Inky tendrils slithered free of Loki’s arm and curled around Lucien’s arm, his throat. The song quieted.

A beautiful song. One he would drown in the Mississippi.

Tucking Dante’s prayer into the pocket of his black slacks, Lucien fanned open his wings. Air gusted, extinguishing the few remaining candles still flickering and scattering the prayer-etched bits of paper across the cemetery path.

As his wings flared and swept upward, lifting him into the sky, he suddenly heard another heartbeat. Strong and measured. A rhythm he knew. Hovering just above the cemetery’s main path, Lucien scanned the shadows.

She stepped out of the darkness pooled beneath the cypress. Flowing midnight hair, creamy skin, and gleaming eyes. A red gown clung to her curves and, at her back, her black wings were folded.

Rubies glittered in the slender torc curving around her throat and in the gold bracelets around her slender wrists. A cold smile played across her lips—lips the color of moonlit ruby wine and just as intoxicating.

“No song of greeting, my cydymaith?” Lilith asked.

Without a word, Lucien spun and soared up into the sky. Dante’s black blossoms chimed and sang as the wind stroked their petals. He didn’t need to look to know Lilith followed; he heard the powerful whoosh as she took to the air. He’d always out-winged her in the past. He hoped that was still true. He flew swiftly for the wide, night-blackened curve of the Mississippi, the night cool against his face.

The lights of the city burned bright beneath him, glimmered with headlight glow, except for one dark, empty section stretching to the east—what used to be the Ninth Ward, now a razed shadow reeking of decay. Vévés and gris-gris and blessed candles warded its haunted borders, protecting the rest of an unknowing New Orleans from the bitter and angry spirits trapped within—forever drowning, forever waiting for help that never came. And never would.

Moisture beaded on Lucien’s face as he veered toward the south and the river. Moonlight rippled across the Mississippi’s surface and ship lights glowed red and yellow upon the slow-moving waters.

Lucien caught a glimpse of black and red in his peripheral vision: Lilith had caught up and flew beside him, her wings stroking smoothly through the sky.

So much for out-winging her, he thought wryly.

Ethereal notes rang into the air, clear and lilting. And, for one heart-stopping moment, the centuries dropped away and he was once again flying beneath the deep blue skies of Gehenna, his brilliant and beautiful cydymaith winging beside him, trilling her complicated song.

The sky-rumbling roar of an airplane overhead shattered the illusion and the centuries returned. But Lilith singing, that was no illusion; her desperate wybrcathl filled the air and Lucien’s heart.

What she sang turned his blood to ice.

Gehenna was fading, a land too long without a creawdwr’s powerful and sustaining touch. The border between worlds bled and soon the Elohim would return to the mortal world to rule it for all time.

Then the wars for power would begin in earnest.