Adrian Phoenix: In the Blood

Until now.

She could’ve sworn she’d seen relief on Bronlee’s face as he’d faced the rig.

Caterina’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. She tried to focus on the road and the white lines blurring past alongside. Why droned and buzzed in her mind like a fly trapped between windows. She switched on the radio and country-tinged music twanged from the speakers.

The droning and buzzing faded as she concentrated on the song lyrics. I hear the train’s lonely whistle blow / and I pour another drink / I lift a glass to you, Joe / because of you my heart’s on the brink …

Miles rolled past underneath the Charger’s tires and song after song rolled through Caterina’s mind. Spotting a blue REST AREA sign, she swung the Charger onto the exit ramp, pulled around to the far side of the restrooms, and parked.

She listened to the car’s engine click and tink as it cooled. She rolled down the window and hot, dry air smelling of baked sand and diesel exhaust wafted into the car.

Her mother’s words played through her mind: You walk in two worlds, Caterina. Dangerous worlds. Never forget that. As a child, you learned a truth most mortals never uncover—they are not alone. So you must listen to your instincts, cara mia. Always.

Caterina unfastened her seat belt and retrieved the mailer from the passenger seat. She dumped the CD from the envelope, then swung open the laptop. She pushed the on button. And slipped the CD into the hard drive.

A list of files popped up on the screen, each marked with a letter of the alphabet. Caterina tapped a finger against her lower lip as she studied the headers. Dr. Moore had addressed the mailer to Dante Prejean. How had Special Agent Bennington referred to Prejean during his debriefing in D.C.?

Dr. Moore warned us—that’d be me and Agent Garth—that E and S were on their way home, led by Thomas Ronin. But Ronin never showed. Only E and S and a third individual—an unsub.

E had been Elroy Jordan.

Caterina clicked the file marked S and began reading.

New Orleans—St. Louis No. 3

March 15

“SO WHERE’S THIS WEIRD-ASS bit of hoodoo supposed to be?” Von asked.

“Beside a tomb,” Dante said as they scaled the cemetery’s locked, wrought-iron fence, both vaulting with ease over the black bars and onto the path below.

“Yeah, but which tomb?”

“Baronne, I think,” Dante said, pushing his hood back. He chose the paved central path and followed it past gleaming white crypts. He drew in a deep breath of cherry-blossom-scented air. But beneath the sweet scent, he caught a whiff of decay, moldering bones, and old, old grief.

“These N’awlins cemeteries are creepy as hell,” Von commented. “I can’t imagine what they’d look like in daylight.”

“Didn’t you ever check ’em out when you were still mortal?”

“Hell, no,” Von snorted. “Like I said, creepy. Especially for a delicate flower like moi .” He paused, touching a finger to his ear. “Wait…breaking news. Correction, seems I ain’t a delicate flower.” He shrugged. “Who knew? Mama musta lied.”

Dante laughed. “Yeah, you’re gonna be fun on the tour bus.”

“Man, I’m fun anywhere . And we should be heading to the airport soon.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know.”

Dante read the names on the tombs as he passed: DUFOUR, GALLIER, ROUQUETTE, and listened for the quiet pulse that had drawn him to St. Louis No. 3. When he caught the letters BA, he stopped, his heart kicking against his ribs.

He hears the sound of his own voice, raw and demanding, the words echoing in the cathedral’s vaulted silence. “What was her name? Genevieve…what ?”

Dante’s hands clenched into fists as he struggled with the memory. He closed his eyes. His breathing quickened and fire flickered to life within his veins. Smoldered within his heart. He opened his eyes. Pale moonlight shafted through the thick, twisted oaks, dripped from the Spanish moss.

“Baptiste,” he whispered.

Von sent.

Dante nodded. He looked at the tomb and finished reading the name chiseled into the white stone: BASTILLE. He released his breath. His hands unknotted and an emotion he couldn’t name curled through him, damping the flames into embers.

Did his mother even have a grave?

A hand squeezed his shoulder and he looked up into Von’s moonlit, green eyes. The nomad had shoved his El Diablo shades on top of his head.

“You sure, man? No pain? Cuz I thought I felt—”

Dante cupped Von’s whisker-rough face between his hands. He brushed his lips against Von’s, tasted him, whiskey and road dust, then smoothed his thumbs along the edges of the mustache framing the nomad’s mouth.

“I’m good, mon ami, ” Dante replied. Dropping his hands, he twisted free of the nomad’s grip. “And I don’t need a fucking nanny.”

Von extended a middle finger. Arched an eyebrow. “How about that? You need that?” Extended the finger on his other hand. “How about some more?”

“I’ll take it all,” Dante said, “gêné toi pas.”

Dropping his El Diablos back over his eyes, Von shook his head and sighed. “Boy’s hopeless as hell.”

“Merci.”

As they resumed walking the moonlit path, a hush swirled through the city of the dead, isolating it from the world beyond the wrought-iron fence like a deep black moat. The air was so still the muffled clink of the chains on Dante’s leather jacket and the creak of Von’s leather chaps echoed in the silence.

But beneath the hush, Dante caught the faint rhythm that had—for the last couple of weeks—filled his mind just as Sleep swept over him. Primal. Like a tribal drum beating within the earth’s heart.

Like the wordless song that poured, at times, from Lucien and into him, its complicated melody meshing with the refrain of his answering song. Similar, yeah, but not the same. This rhythm reminded him of the unfamiliar song that had rung through his mind that night in Club Hell.

The night Jay had been murdered, dying as Dante had struggled to reach him.

I knew you’d come .

The same night he’d found Lucien broken and impaled on the checkered floor of St. Louis Cathedral, his wings torn, his song nothing but cooling embers. And had learned that Lucien, his closest friend, his ami intime, was something else altogether.

You look so much like her .

Pain prickled at Dante’s temples. Send it below. Focus on now. Focus on here .

The song wisped into his mind again like smoke. A muted, desperate rhythm. Beckoning him. He moved, racing past whitewashed and time-weathered statues guarding tombs, standing sentinel to loss. Trees and marble monuments blurred into one flickering shadow as he picked up speed.

The song’s deep-earth drumming pulsed in time with the blood flowing through his veins, increasing in intensity until he felt it resonate within his own chest. Then the sound vanished.

Dante slowed to a stop. He stood next to a tomb marked BARONNE. And crouched beside it, holding a bouquet dead and dried, its wings curved forward, mouth wide-open, was a stone angel.

The one rumored on the streets to have appeared in the cemetery overnight.

Magic, some said. Gris-gris, others believed. A sign.

So mortals whispered, yeah.

And nightkind said nothing, their silence uneasy.

A gust of cool air smelling of leather, frost, and old motor oil fluttered his hair as Von stopped beside him. “Well, there ya go,” the nomad said. “Weird-ass hoodoo shit.”