In the Blood

3 BLEEDTHROUGH

Above New Orleans

March 15

WINGS FANNING THE AIR, Lucien slowed and descended to the weed-and mud-pebbled banks of the Mississippi, Dante’s black flowers singing in his hand, Lilith’s words echoing in his mind.

Gehenna is fading.

Folding his wings behind him, Lucien knelt on one knee and plunged the blossoms into the dark water, the reek of moss and mud and fish thick in his nostrils. A gust of air swept his hair across his face, and he caught a peripheral flash of red.

“What are you doing?” Lilith cried and grabbed at his arm.

Fending her off with a shoulder flex, Lucien tightened his grip on the flowers and shoved them deeper into the Mississippi. The black tendrils knotted around his hand and arm and throat, twisting tight and digging into his flesh as the bouquet struggled for life. Little bubbles flecked the water’s surface. Lucien thought he detected a faint gurgling underwater song. His chest tightened. He had no other choice. To keep Dante safe, he would do whatever was necessary.

“Stop!” Lilith leaped into the water, then bent, her hands searching beneath the surface for his and the things he drowned. Her fingers skittered across the back of his hand. Her talons stabbed.

The bouquet’s inky tendrils slithered free of Lucien’s throat and arm, limp and lifeless. He released the flowers and pulled his hand from the river. Blood welled up in the punctures, even as the wounds healed.

Lilith swished her hands around in the muddy water for a moment longer, then she straightened, a single black flower, drenched and silent, hanging from her hand. She sloshed from the river, her gown wet from the thighs down and clinging to her shapely legs. She fluttered her wings, shaking water from their tips.

Rising to his feet, Lucien fixed his gaze on her. Like all Elohim high-bloods, she was tall, but at six two, she was still a head below his six eight. He remembered the feel of her silky hair as it slid between his fingers, the softness of her wings—even after thousands of years.

An image of Genevieve draped only in a white bath towel, her wet hair streaming past her shoulders, laughing, dark eyes gleaming, flashed behind Lucien’s eyes, and grief closed a fist around his heart.

Lucien was grateful that Dante was gone and on his way to Los Angeles. He was far enough to keep him safe temporarily—but not out of Elohim reach, not yet. Shields tight around his mind and heart, he watched Lilith’s approach.

Stroking one taloned finger along the drowned flower’s stem, sadness glimmered within Lilith’s golden eyes. She lifted her head, the fire in her eyes searing away any trace of the sorrow he’d witnessed just a moment before.

“How could you, Samael?” she demanded. “A creawdwr’s beautiful gift and you killed it like an unwanted kitten.” She flung the flower at him. It fell into the weeds.

“I haven’t used that name since I left Gehenna,” he said. “Call me Lucien.”

“Do you plan on slaying this creawdwr too?”

“Perhaps I already have.”

“Perhaps.”

Lilith crossed the short distance between them, her breasts shimmying beneath the thin silk with each step. She stood in front of him, chin lifted, a knowing smile curving her lips. Her scent reawakened the past, unearthed memories of heated, soft flesh and urgent moans. He tensed, breathing in her warm cedar and amber fragrance, his pulse winging through his veins.

“Perhaps,” she repeated. “But I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway. If you had killed him, you wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to murder his flowers.”

Lucien smiled. “Are you certain of that?”

Tilting her head, she studied him. The river breeze lifted tendrils of her black hair and blew them across her face, slashing her lovely face with midnight-black shadows. “Yes, my cydymaith. I’m certain you haven’t killed him…yet.”

“I’m no longer your cydymaith,” Lucien said quietly. “I gave that up as well when I left Gehenna.”

“I didn’t,” she returned with a haughty lift of her chin.

Lucien laughed. “After all this time? Lilith, please.”

The fire in her golden eyes intensified, bright and hot, as if she wished she could burn him to nothing but ash with one glance.

“Do you know where this Maker is?” she asked. “I know he’s young, male, and powerful from his anhrefncathl. And unstable.”

Dread gripped Lucien with cold talons. Even Lilith realized that Dante was unbound, a creawdwr edging toward inevitable madness. Forcing a smile to his lips, he said, “His song brought me, as well. I have no more idea of where he is than you do.”

“Really?” Lilith murmured. She slid a warm hand up his bare chest to his lips. “Then who turned Loki to stone and chained him to the earth?”

Without thinking, Lucien kissed her fingertips. It surprised him to realize how easily he reverted to habits he believed long dead. Surprised and disturbed him. Grasping her hand, he lowered it from his face. “It’s less than he deserves, I’m sure. Loki has any number of enemies,” he said. “Did you send him?”

“No. He’s been spending his time with the Morningstar and that wretch, Gabriel.”

“Ah.”

“How long have you known of the existence of this creawdwr?” Lilith asked.

Lucien shook his head. “What does it matter? I won’t let you have him.”

“So you do know him,” Lilith breathed. “I knew it.”

“Would you like to join Loki, my sweet?”

But Lilith didn’t back away as Lucien thought she might. Instead her hands knotted into fists and her wings fluttered in agitation. “You are selfish,” she said. “Selfish and full of pride. You’d let Gehenna vanish and leave the Elohim homeless and bereft and for what? Because you think only you know what’s best for a Maker!”

“I know I’ll never allow another to be chained to Elohim will!”

“Yahweh was never chained! How can you say that?”

“He was used, manipulated, and lied to! You didn’t hear him, you weren’t with him, you didn’t see—” Throat suddenly too tight for speech, Lucien closed his mouth, and turned away.

Let them have me.

“Do you think you were the only one who loved him?” Lilith asked softly. “Astoreth was his calon-cyfaill, too. And she died with him. I’ve never understood how you survived the bond-breaking.” Her fingers closed around his shoulder, her touch warm and strong. And damp-sticky. Blood? “You’ve given me no choice,” she whispered.

Lucien jerked free of her hand, and whirled. Pale ethereal light streamed from Lilith’s palms. As the binding words slipped from her lips, he dove into the river.

The Mississippi’s cold water sluiced away the blood on Lucien’s shoulder. He berated himself for being so careless. If he’d been just a split second slower, Lilith would’ve finished her blood spell and bound him just as he’d bound Loki.

Then she could’ve returned him captive to Gehenna to face justice for the murder of Yahweh. Or maybe bargained with him, his freedom in exchange for the creawdwr?

Lucien swam underwater for as long as he could. Then, chest aching, he surfaced and gasped in a deep lungful of sweet, cold air. Wiping water from his eyes, he looked for Lilith on the shore and in the sky. He saw nothing—no flash of red, no glowing golden eyes, no movement. She wasn’t gone. He knew better than that; she never gave up, not easily. It had been one of the things about her that he’d once loved.

Until she’d severed that love by convincing a tormented creawdwr to curl himself into a golden ark to be carried across the desert by mortals who worshipped him; a people yearning for a land of their own, a home. Yahweh had guided them, a sacred and crazed divining rod.

With Yahweh gone, and Lucien and Astoreth searching for their calon-cyfaill, Lilith had perched upon Gehenna’s black-starred marble throne in Lucien’s absence. And gone to war with Gabriel and his golden wings—undoing in one heated moment the peace Lucien had so carefully crafted over centuries.

Wings flaring and flapping against the river’s surface, spraying droplets of water in the air, Lucien winged up from the Mississippi and into the night sky.

Gehenna is fading.

Had Lilith spoken the truth? Very possible. The wait for another creawdwr to be born among the Elohim high-bloods had never been this long—over two thousand years. Did Gehenna feed on a Maker much like nightkind fed on mortals? And without the one, the other would die?

Only one way to find out.

Lucien spiraled up into the sky. The air was thin and cold and burned within his lungs. It iced his lashes, froze his wet hair, and frosted his wings white, but melted against his heated skin. Miles blurred past beneath him, and the star-field glow of city lights disappeared as he winged over the dark and restless ocean, the smell of brine thick in his nostrils.

His heart beat hard against his ribs as he drew closer to the gate between Gehenna and the mortal world, a border he hadn’t crossed in literal ages.

Hadn’t dared cross. But he had to know if Lilith told the truth.

A trilling wybrcathl drew his attention. Lilith was warning him away from Gehenna. Interesting, considering that bringing him in to face the Tribunal could only strengthen her rule.

Perhaps she hoped to keep news of a creawdwr’s existence secret until she had him in hand and under her wings.

Refusing to answer her, Lucien flew on, dark doubt brewing deep within him. Loki had said that the Morningstar had allied himself with Gabriel and the two were mounting a campaign against Lilith in another attempt to wrest the black-starred throne out from under her.

If she bound the creawdwr and became his calon-cyfaill, the Morningstar might as well fly down into Sheol, make himself cozy in the embers and pour ashes over his dazzling white hair, because no one would lift wing at his command again—not as long as Lilith ruled with a Maker at her side.

And Gabriel? The amber-haired high-blood would remind everyone that he’d once been the Voice of Yahweh in the mortal world. And would humbly offer his service to the new creawdwr.

A twisted Voice, Gabriel. And heartless. Bitter anger prickled around Lucien’s heart. He’d always regretted leaving the pompous, puffed-up aingeal alive.

And who, Lucien wondered, would be chosen as the other half of the balance and the triad’s third, the second calon-cyfaill? A better question would be: Who would Lilith allow to be chosen?

For his son.

Lucien winged on through the night, his strokes strong and sure. He caught a glimmer of color, undulating waves of purple and pale blue and gold, streaking the sky; an aurora borealis where none belonged.

Lilith’s wybrcathl ended.

Lucien slowed and hovered, his wings flapping, and stared. Where once a golden gate had spun, visible only to Elohim eyes, there was now only a wound in the fabric of reality, and all the colors and energy-life force of Gehenna bled into the mortal skies.

Lilith had spoken the truth. Gehenna was fading.

She hovered beside him, her tresses frozen into long glimmering icicles, the shifting colors reflected across her face. “Why wouldn’t you listen to me?” she muttered.

“Who rules Gehenna?” Lucien asked, fearing he knew the answer.

“Gabriel.”

So, Loki had lied. Not surprising in itself, but what chilled Lucien’s blood was why. Loki had suggested they bind the creawdwr—Dante—together, suggested that Lucien could once again rule Gehenna. He now suspected that Loki had hoped to overthrow Gabriel by manipulating Lucien’s ambitions, ambitions that had died with Yahweh. But Loki being Loki simply had not known how to speak the truth.

Had Lucien turned an ally to stone?

Beyond the new aurora borealis, a song trilled into the night, a trill answered ten, twenty, thirty times. Black wings and gold wings blurred through the dancing curves of light as Elohim swarmed from the tear between worlds.

“I hope you’ve kept your talons sharp, my foolish, stubborn cydymaith.”

Sudden calm buoyed Lucien. He’d been waiting for this moment for so long that now it had arrived, he felt relieved. He quickly closed his link to Dante and sealed it against any pushes from his child. He considered severing it, but feared what it might do to them both.

“I’ve always kept my talons sharp,” he said, then met the first aingeal head-on, talons slashing. Lilith fought at his side, as though she belonged there, as though all the centuries apart had never happened, her wings lashing the sky and her talons flinging dark blood into the night.

As though she believed escape were possible.