Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

Or so he’d believed. Until Athena’s mind had quietly, slowly, and irrevocably unwound. Paranoid schizophrenia. A flaw unforeseen.

Settling into his comfortable and well-broken-in leather chair, Wells set the cognac bottle down on his desk and picked up a copy of the disk his daughter was watching at this very moment.

Thena is watching it again. She enjoys it .

Athena wasn’t alone in that; Wells had watched it many times as well. But he didn’t enjoy it; that wasn’t the word he’d use. No. A better, a more accurate word would be scared . It scared and exhilarated him. But he didn’t enjoy it. He slipped the disk into the drive.

Taking another sip of the cognac, Wells clicked PLAY. A corridor appeared on the monitor, the dim lighting tinted night-vision green. A figure moved into view—waist-length black hair snaking into the air like night-blackened seaweed caught in a current. His wings, black and smooth, arched up behind him, half-folded, as he knelt on the floor and reached for one of two figures crumpled together on the tile.

A voice curled from the computer’s speakers, low and deep, with a trace of a European accent. But, just like the first time he’d heard them, the words trailed a finger of ice down his spine.

‘’Avenge your mother. And yourself.”

And S rises from the speaker’s arms, rises up from the floor, bathed in dim red emergency light, his body tight and coiled, blood smeared across his breathtaking face. Rises up like a god from the ashes, a burning, beautiful, terrifying god.

Wells hit PAUSE and poured himself another drink. Until he’d viewed the disk, he’d considered the late Elroy Jordan—sociopath, sexual sadist, and serial killer—to have been Bad Seed’s greatest success. No longer.

The beautiful boy who’d risen from the floor on the monitor had eclipsed Jordan.

Smiling, Wells poured another drink.

Damascus, OR

March 22

“IS THE DISEASED OLD cow still breathing?” Athena asked. She sat cross-legged on the sofa, her gaze on the laptop cradled in her lap. The lab smock she wore over her jeans was smeared and spattered with blood and other fluids.

“Mother’s still breathing, yes,” Alex replied, kicking the door shut behind him. He set his sister’s tray of night meds on the cluttered coffee table.

“Good. I don’t want her dying before I can kill her.”

“That’s the spirit.”

The room smelled of hot circuits and cinnamon potpourri, but underneath Alex caught a whiff of something that stank of rotten eggs and singed hair drifting from Athena’s study lab. “How did your experiment go?”

“Unsuccessful,” Athena murmured. “I need more material.”

“Okay, I’ll take care of it.” Alex sat on the sofa beside her. “What else have you done today?”

“Studied.” Her eyes scanned the images on the monitor, sliding right, then left.

“Ah.” Meaning she was studying Dante, watching the med-unit footage yet again. He sighed. “We need to talk.”

“About…?” Athena looked up. Lamplight glimmered in her eyes like sunshine on calm water and, for a moment, her eyes seemed translucent, palest ocean-green.

“What happens next.”

“I’m listening,” she said, returning her gaze to the laptop’s monitor.

Alex wrapped his fingers around the monitor’s edge and folded it shut. “Enough. It’s time for you to stop studying.” He pulled the laptop from her reluctant grip and placed it on the coffee table.

“But I need to understand him,” she protested. “When I look, I can’t see anything beyond him and I don’t know what that means.”

“You’re tired, that’s all,” Alex said. “You need rest.” The dark smudges beneath her eyes testified to that and to all the restless, sleepless nights she paced away. But her visions were always right, sleep or no sleep, meds or no meds.

Visions Father knew nothing about.

“I’ve got to figure out how to undo Dante’s programming.”

“You can worry about that after I bring Dante home. C’mon, fresh air. Meds. Move your butt.” Alex grasped Athena’s hand and pulled her to her feet. He led her through the kitchen and out the back door, easing the screen door shut behind them.

He released her hand as she settled into the swinging bench on the porch, then he sat beside her, wood creaking comfortably beneath him. Without looking, he grasped Athena’s hand again. Her fingers, warm and hard, curled around his.

Alex drew in a deep breath of moist, pine-scented air. “So much better.”

“If you say so.”

A quick glance revealed the smile shadowing his twin’s lips. He smiled too.

“The SB is probably planning on killing Father,” Alex said, his gaze on the night sky. He watched the stars light up one by one like votives in a church. “Hell, the Bureau might’ve even rubber-stamped it after the fiasco with Moore.”

“Do they know Father’s the one who tipped Ronin off to Bad Seed?”

“I doubt it. That’d require some real intelligence work.”

“What if they kill Father before he teaches you how to use Dante?”

“We’ll have to hope that doesn’t happen,” Alex said. “I’ve armed Father and the security’s tight, but…” He shrugged. “A pro could get past all of that. I’ve tried and tried to get Father to go underground.”

“Maybe they’ll send a bumbling amateur or a poor shot instead of a pro. It’s not like it’s the mafia. It’s the government.”

Alex laughed. He leaned in and pressed his forehead against his sister’s. Heard her quiet, never-ceasing thoughts: Does Father dream now? Of power and gods? Of all he can never be? And shall never have?

Athena’s mind refused silence, refused to rest.

Alex straightened, relaxing into the bench as it swung back and forth, back and forth. The wood creaked, drowning out the sound of Athena’s thoughts/whispers. He didn’t have to look to know her lips struggled to keep up with the ideas streaming through her mind.

“I don’t think Dante knows about Father’s role in his conditioning,” Athena said. “I don’t think he knows about Father, period.”

“That’s good. Then he won’t be expecting us.”

“What happens next?”

“I go to Seattle,” Alex said. “Trigger Dante, dope him when he’s finished doing what he’s supposed to do, then bring him home.”

“How are you going to get close enough to him to dope him?” Athena looked at him, her blonde curls tumbling across her face, curls she brushed back automatically.

“Shoot him from a distance. In the back, preferably.” Alex considered all that he’d read about Dante, replayed in his mind the footage that his twin obsessively watched: Dante cups Moore’s face. His hands tremble. Glow with blue light. His hair snakes up into the hair and energy crackles.

Dangerous.

“Amen, brother,” Athena whispered. “But soon he’ll be a part of us. We’ll give him Father to play with—after we restore his memories.”

“Can we do that? Restore his memories?”

“I don’t know, but there must be a way…”

“Unless the damage is too great,” Alex finished.

“Green waters of remembrance,” Athena said, her voice a low monotone, her oracle voice. “He’ll need the green waters.”