Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

The streetlight dazzled Dante’s eyes and he lifted a hand to shade them. He was right about her hair; it tumbled loose past her shoulders. And she was wearing a black jacket and curve-hugging jeans. Her gaze locked onto his and her breath caught in her throat. A split second later a smile curved her lips, lit her twilight-blue eyes.

“Dante…” she said, stepping into the room. Then she stopped.

Her gaze skipped from the papers, broken glass, and photos on the carpet to him. To the open window behind him. To her disheveled and bloodied sister standing in front of him, her hands still on his hips. Her brows drew down. “What the hell’s going on?”

With a wink, Annie shoved away from Dante, whirled, then crumpled to the floor.

“De mal en pire,” Dante muttered. From bad to worse .

Seattle, WA

March 22

ANNIE CRUMPLED TO THE floor and, for a moment, the image of their mother half-curled on the leaf-littered ground flashed behind Heather’s eyes. Dante muttered something, an exasperated expression on his face, then dropped to his knees and pressed his fingers against Annie’s temples.

Heather rushed across the front room, skirting around the crime scene photos, papers, and folders littering the carpet. She knelt beside her sister and brushed her multicolored hair back from her face.

“Is she okay?” Heather asked. She reached into her jacket pocket for her cell phone and flipped it open. Dante’s warm scent, burning leaves and deep, dark earth, curled around her. She was close enough to him to feel his heat.

“Don’t call. She’s okay. High, maybe drunk, maybe faking, but okay.”

“Faking?” Heather shut the cell and slipped it back into her pocket.

Dante shrugged. “Maybe.” He slid his hands from Annie’s temples and rested them on his leather-clad thighs. “She’s mad at me.”

“She’s not alone in that,” Heather said, leaning over her sister.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. But we’ll talk about that later.”

“Fair enough.”

She smelled booze on Annie’s breath. Dammit, Annie . Blood stained Annie’s right hand, her wrist. She turned her sister’s wrist over and tensed at the still-bleeding gash sliced into the flesh.

“She did that before I could stop her,” Dante said. “I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault,” Heather said.

Night-cooled air poured in through the open window at Heather’s back. Must be how he got in. Jimmied the window . Or had Annie broken in first? Anger simmered. She’d been worrying about him, trying to reach him by calling Simone, and going to Vespers, and he was busy breaking into her house and…what…wrestling with her sister?

“What happened anyway?” Heather asked, looking into his dark eyes.

“She’s hurting inside,” Dante said. “And she didn’t want to hurt alone.”

Heather’s anger faded as she took in the dried blood smeared beneath Dante’s nose. “Were you—did she—” she paused and looked at her sister, searched her smooth, expressionless face, then returned her gaze to him. “Was a memory triggered?”

Dante shook his head. “Not that I recall.” His lips tilted into a smile.

“Not funny.” Heather studied his bloodied hands—defensive wounds—and then she saw the jagged slash at belly level in his latex shirt. Sucking in a sharp breath, she gingerly touched the cut in his shirt and plucked it open. “Shit! Did she hurt you?” The pale skin beneath the sliced latex was bloodied and sticky.

Dante’s warm fingers wrapped around hers and pulled her hand away. “I’m okay, chérie . Don’t worry. Nightkind, remember?”

“I remember.” Relief flooded through her and she squeezed his hand before releasing it. “But you can still be hurt.”

Dante shrugged. “Oui.”

He scooped Annie into his arms and then stood, his movements fluid and graceful even with a woman cradled against his chest. Annie’s head slumped against his shoulder, her face veiled by black, purple, and blue strands of hair. “Where do you want her?”

“This way,” Heather said, rising to her feet and leading him into the hallway, to the guest room. She stepped aside at the threshold as Dante walked through and eased Annie down onto the comforter-draped bed. It sloshed beneath her weight.

“A water bed? Seriously?” Dante said, straightening.

Heather felt a smile quirk up one corner of her mouth. “I happen to like this bed, Mr.-I-Have-a-Futon, so shut up,” she said, stepping into the darkened room. She clicked on a little bedside lamp. A small yellow circle of light appeared on the ceiling.

She sat on the bed beside her sister, the bed wobbling beneath her weight for a few seconds. She stroked Annie’s hair from her face. Was this the start of a manic episode or the downward spiral of depression?

Heather looked up, intending to ask Dante to give her a few moments alone with Annie, but he was already gone. For a moment, she worried he’d just leave, but he hadn’t broken into her house just to saunter off without saying whatever it was he’d come to say. A band of tension buckled across her shoulders.

Von’s words sounded through her memory: He’s been worried about you .

But she’d had a feeling, standing there in the dimly lit corridor at Vespers, that Von had left a whole lot unsaid.

But despite what Von’d said or hadn’t said, the concern crinkling his eyes, his tense posture had made one thing clear— he was worried about Dante.

Heather carefully turned over Annie’s cut wrist, examining the wound; even though it still bled a little it wouldn’t require stitches. She checked Annie for other injuries, discovered cuts to the insides of her fingers and a faint, bluish bruise on her forehead.

Heather stood and then watched her sister as the bed sloshed gently for a few moments. A strand of blue hair clung to one cheek. The skin beneath her eyes was smudged with kohl and bruised by lack of sleep. A faint smear of dried blood streaked her lips.

Annie must’ve seen the crime scene photos, given their current arrangement on the living room floor. I never would’ve left them out if I’d known she was coming .

Turning, Heather went to the bathroom for a washcloth, antiseptic, and Band-Aids. In the hall, she caught a glimpse of Dante gathering the scattered papers from the floor. “You don’t need to do that,” she called. “I’ll get it later.”

He snorted and continued with what he was doing. Heather shook her head. Still pigheaded. She thought of him carrying her sister and easing her onto the bed with care and tenderness, even after she’d tried to share her hurt with him. Still Dante. But now she needed to add B&E expert to his list of finer qualities.

Returning to the guest room with her supplies and a warm, damp washcloth, Heather sat back down onto the bed and waited for the sloshing to stop.

“Hey.”

Heather looked into Annie’s kohl-rimmed eyes and noted her dilated pupils. She also noted that for a woman who’d passed out and awakened somewhere else, she didn’t seem very confused. A muscle tightened in her jaw. Maybe faking . She had a feeling Dante’d been right about that. And it wouldn’t be the first time Annie had pulled a fake.

“Hey back. How are you feeling?” She gingerly cleaned the blood from the gash in Annie’s wrist.