Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

Dante straddled him and sat. Leather and latex creaked as Dante leaned in and kissed him, his mouth opening as Von’s lips parted. His tongue flicked against Von’s, tasting of licorice and alcohol. Von breathed in Dante’s heady scent, pulse racing.

“Merci beaucoup, mon ami,” Dante murmured, when the kiss ended. He held Von’s gaze, gold flames flickering in the depths of his dark, unshielded eyes.

“My honor,” Von whispered. He lifted a hand and stroked Dante’s hair. Slid a silky black tendril between his fingers.

Dante wrapped his fingers around Von’s wrist and raised it to his lips. He closed his eyes. Von felt the warmth of Dante’s lips, then a quick sting as his fangs pierced the skin. In restrained sips, Dante drank him in.

A sigh escaped Von’s lips. His fingers tightened in Dante’s hair, looped, and pulled. Dante shivered and moaned softly. Pleasure flowed between them like warm honey, pulsing from lips to flesh, from mind to mind, heartbeat to heartbeat. But Dante ended it just a few minutes later by lifting his head and pushing Von’s arm away. As Dante rose to his knees, Von released his hair.

“That wasn’t enough, little brother. Sit back down.”

Bending, Dante kissed him deeply, sharing the grape-sweet taste of his blood, sharing fevered heat. “It’s gonna hafta be enough,” he whispered against Von’s lips. “I can’t stay. Something’s…waking up…inside.”

“Dante…”

Slipping free of Von’s hands, Dante jumped to his feet, turned, and walked away. Energy crackled along his fingers. Blue fire haloed his hands. He clenched his glowing hands into fists.

Maker. And uncontrolled .

Sweat beaded Von’s forehead, but inside he was cold. The question Dante had asked him at Louis Armstrong International while waiting for their flight to Seattle reverberated through his mind: If I’m the only Maker in existence like Lucien says, then who can teach me what I need to know?

Lucien held the answer to that question.

And Lucien had gone silent a week ago, a silence that left Von uneasy. A silence that left Von watching the skies at night, listening for the sound of wings.

Guard him from the Fallen, llygad. They will use him without mercy .

Lucien wouldn’t have cut off communication, not willingly, not when he was counting on Von to keep him posted on Dante’s well-being.

Watching Dante walk away, blue flames licking around his knotted fists, desperation on his pale face, Von realized he needed to find an answer for Dante’s question.

Before it was too late.

The pit of Sheol

March 22

CLAWS RAKED ACROSS LUCIEN’S torso, scoring his flesh open from collarbone to hip. Pain seared his consciousness like a red-hot branding iron as he swung suspended in the air, the movement twisting the hooks barbed into his shoulders even deeper into his muscles. The rapid flutter of multiple pairs of wings fanned hot, sulfurous, stinking air across his face, and the nameless chalkydri ’s chittering filled his ears.

Lucien refused to open his eyes as the chalkydri demanded. He’d looked long enough upon his tormentor. He knew it hovered beside him in the dark pit, held aloft by its twelve pairs of hummingbird-quick wings, its long, serpentine body coiling in the air, black scales glittering with tiny decorative sapphires.

Gold wings, the chalkydri was always quick to point out, its lizardlike head lifted with pride, the feathered crescent atop its skull bristling, taloned paws patting its jeweled hide. High-blood gold, it insisted.

“Yahweh always regretted making chalkydri ,” Lucien lied, voice hoarse. “Your creation was proof of his madness, and he—”

“Murderer!” the chalkydri hissed. “ Creawdwr -slayer!”

Claws slashed across Lucien’s chest again. Another searing brand upon his consciousness. Every time his wounds healed the chalkydri inflicted fresh ones. As it had been doing ever since he and Lilith had been captured.

“He always intended to unmake you,” Lucien finished, through gritted teeth.

Angry chittering filled the air. Furious chittering. The rush of wings intensified. So, he mused, more chalkydri have arrived to defend their honor .

And, in so doing, provide amusement for Gabriel and his court.

Three Elohim guards drag Lucien through the air by his chains, sweeping past the gold-flecked, black marble columns guarding the palace-aerie’s wide mouth, flying into the massive cave. Pain bites at the edges of his banded wings, chafes his chain-wrapped ankles and wrists, but his mind is calm and his shields tight. He wonders if Lilith is chained and clipped as well, and hopes she isn’t .

She tried to warn me .

Lucien’s escorts release him in midair and he plummets to the gleaming marble floor, his banded wings futilely trying to lift him up. He hits hard, landing on his side, chains ringing against the stone. Black specks whirl across his graying vision .

Wybrcathl— fluting, trilling, warbling—from hundreds of throats echoes throughout the palace’s throne room as Elohim high-bloods voice their songs and dissenting opinions, a beautifully orchestrated choir. Lucien suppresses the instinctive urge to warble a response to the kilted and gowned aingeals ringing the sky-blue floor .

Blinking his vision clear, he pushes himself to his knees before the golden-winged Uriel or black-winged Yng can descend and kick him to his feet. Straightening with as much dignity as his chains and wing bands allow, Lucien stands and faces the throne from which he once ruled. The smells of home—jasmine and smoky myrrh and deep, dark earth—fill his nostrils, and he breathes deep .

But what he sees closes a cold fist around his yearning heart, turns it to ice. Gabriel, golden wings folded at his back, stands before the ancient black-starred throne, its carved-marble wing blades surrounding it like the petals of a flower. And sprawled on a smaller, less ornate version of the throne, his long legs stretched out before him, is the Morningstar, his star-white hair cut short and framing his handsome, bored face .

And beside him, in a twilight blue gown, stands Lilith. She meets Lucien’s gaze, chin lifted, sudden color touching her cheeks .

Always the chess player, his Lilith. Holding her gaze, Lucien bends forward at the waist, chains clanging; a half-bow. The color in her cheeks deepens and her chin lifts higher .

Gabriel waves a hand and the wybrcathl choir stops. “So, at long last, the murderer of Yahweh faces justice,” he says, his melodic voice carrying through the aerie. He walks down the dais’s steps with slow deliberation, his face thoughtful, his caramel-colored hair curling in thick waves against his purple-kilted hips. Lamplight glints from the silver bracers on each wrist. “I’ve often wondered if we’d been denied another creawdwr because this aingeal— this creawdwr- slayer—still drew breath.”

Gabriel stops in front of Lucien. Scorn sculpts his golden gaze, chisels a smile on his lips. “What say you, Samael? Any excuses? Please, amuse us.”

“I thought you were amusement enough,” Lucien says, his voice clear and deep, his words resonating against the palace’s polished marble walls. “Still trying to siphon power and respectability from others because you lack any of your own?”