Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

“You want some coffee?” she called. “I can make some.”

“Sure.” From right beside her.

“Shit!” Heather whirled, heart pounding, fists lifting automatically.

Dante stepped back, hands held up defensively. She hadn’t heard him get up or walk into the kitchen. She’d forgotten how fast and silent he was, even more so than regular nightkind, and that was saying something, from what she’d seen.

“Whoa, hey! Sorry,” he said, laughing. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Christ! Maybe I should bell you like a cat!” She shoved past him to the counter, grabbed the glass carafe from the coffee-maker and filled it with water. Once the coffee was brewing, its strong scent curling into the air, she returned to the table.

Bending over its littered surface, she resumed flipping through the papers. “What has De Noir—I mean, your father, told you about Bad Seed?”

“Nothing,” Dante said quietly. “But, then, I ain’t been exactly friendly.”

Heather glanced at him, a pang of sympathy cutting deep. “He should’ve been honest with you.”

Dante trailed a hand through his hair and his pale face suddenly looked weary. He nodded at the papers she was busy searching. “Why you worried about me? Bad Seed died with Johanna Moore, right? It’s over.”

Heather shook her head. “No, it’s not over, not completely. There was another person involved in the project—the man who conceived it and who recruited Moore.” The paper she was looking for finally appeared. She pulled it free and set the stack aside on the table. She looked at Dante.

“Go on,” Dante said. His gaze was steady, his beautiful face wary. “What’s his name?” His fingers white-knuckled around the back of his chair.

“Dr. Robert Wells.” Heather stepped beside him and showed him the paper. He looked at it, his gaze fixed on the photo at the top. “He delivered you and ordered the death of your mother.”

The sharp crack of splintering wood ricocheted through the room as the chair back snapped beneath Dante’s fingers.

In the Skies

March 22

CATERINA GLANCED OUT THE plane’s small window. Thousands of tiny lights burned and flickered in the darkness below, a reverse sky with the stars beneath and cold infinity above. Pulling up the edge of her sleeve, she looked at her watch. Twelve twelve a.m. EDT, which made it nine twelve p.m. in Portland, Oregon. She’d travel back in time as she flew across the country, away from the dawn and toward the night.

Relaxing into her seat, Caterina closed her eyes for a moment. She’d told Rutgers the truth about the missing security cam footage and it irked her no end that she hadn’t yet recovered it. But she had an idea of where it might be.

After Bronlee’s death, she’d traveled to Gaithersburg to express her condolences to his widow, Nora. This was an action she took whenever possible to remind herself that it’d been a life she’d ended, not simply an assignment accomplished.

While sitting with the grieving woman— I’ll never know why he up and left us. Kristi was the world to him —Caterina had learned that Bronlee and his widow practically worshipped Dr. Robert Wells.

The plane bumped up and down violently for a few seconds and Caterina’s eyes flew open. Her heart slammed into her throat. Turbulence. She hated flying, hated entrusting her life to a stranger. She picked up her plastic cup from the fold-down tray and drained the rest of her vodka. The Absolut Vanilla burned smooth and warm as it went down. She felt her muscles unkink.

Apparently, Wells had performed delicate and controversial genetic work on Jon Bronlee’s only child while she’d still been in Nora’s womb. Fragile X syndrome. Without Wells’s work, Kristi Bronlee would’ve faced life mentally disabled, possibly autistic as well, and that would’ve been only the start of the problems. Providing special care for Kristi, medical and schooling, would’ve kept the Bronlees in deep debt.

Dr. Robert Wells had changed that future by altering their daughter. Because of his work—free of charge, no less—Kristi Bronlee had been born healthy, free of handicaps, and with a future of limitless possibilities.

It’d be interesting to find out if Wells had received a package from Bronlee.

Caterina handed her plastic cup to the flight attendant and shook her head when he asked if she’d like another. As he moved down the aisle, Caterina listened to his cheerful voice as he tended to other passengers. She closed her eyes again.

Half-dozing, her thoughts curled back to her mother and her soft bedtime songs—ages-old lullabies sung in Italian, her voice warm as flannel. Fi la nana, e mi bel fiol / Fi la nana, e mi be fiol / Fa si la nana / Fa si la nana / Dormi ben, e bel fiol / Dormi ben, e mi bel fiol …

Caterina pictured Renata Alessa Cortini—slim and small and graceful, dark eyes and pale skin, her dark, rich brown hair a Roman cap of ringlets and curls that swept against her white shoulders.

Renata had told Caterina about True Bloods, admitting that even in all her centuries, she’d never met one, although she’d heard jaw-dropping tales from elders who had. True Blood encounters were becoming ever more rare, and that had deeply disturbed Renata.

She’d feared the Bloodline was breaking down, its purity diluted, tainted.

After viewing the CD in Bronlee’s laptop, Caterina had been able to temper her mother’s fears: The Bloodline still holds. I’ve seen it .

A True Blood had been born. His mother slaughtered. His father unnamed.

How could Johanna Moore—as a vampire, as a woman, as a living being—have done that to her own fille de sang and the child of that daughter’s womb?

Fire flared to life within Caterina with the memory, rushed through her veins, wild and hot. She drew in a deep breath and counted to one thousand. The fire smoldered, banked and under control.

She still needed to find Dr. Moore or at least learn what had happened to her at the center. She suspected the missing med-unit security camera footage that had cost Jon Bronlee and so many others their lives held the answer.

In Caterina’s work, the completion of the assigned task was everything. No questions. No hesitation. Honor demanded no less. She’d become what she was with her eyes wide open. Was she a sociopath? She didn’t think so. She only killed when it was required and not for personal gain, power, or sexual kicks. She was samurai in an honorless world.

Caterina had always believed that the work done at the center, including the projects initiated by Moore and Wells, had been for the collective good, mortal and vampire. She’d known their work had involved studies of the mind, but had never given thought to how those studies had been conducted, had never considered the cost.

Her job hadn’t required her to know.

But her heart had wondered, a wondering she’d muffled with duty.

Now she knew. Now a True Blood child named Dante Baptiste had put a breathtaking face on Moore’s studies.

Create sociopaths to study. And—unspoken and unwritten—control.

Dante had been placed in the worst foster homes available, shuffled around constantly; everything and everyone he had ever cared about or loved had been systematically stripped from him.

Dante had been mind-fucked in many ways, another experiment in psychopathology, his memory fragmented and buried.