Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

Glad that Prejean saved your life .

How many secrets had Annie bartered away over the years?

Numb, thoughts reeling, Heather held Annie, realizing for the first time just how alone she truly was.

Damascus, OR

March 23

ALEX FINISHED BURYING THE remains of Athena’s latest experiment, tamping the dirt in place with the back of the shovel. Sweat stung his eyes. He straightened, wiping his sleeve across his forehead and arching his back to work out the kinks. He sucked down pine-scented and river-cooled air to wash the stink of melted flesh out of his nostrils.

Leveling the shovel over his shoulder, he headed back to the cottage and the shower. After toweling his hair dry, he pulled on jeans and a black Inferno tee, one with flames licking up from the sleeve hems and the word BURN to the left of center on the chest. He laced his Rippers, shrugged on his hoodie, then followed the wind-through-the-trees rustle of Athena’s whispers.

She sat cross-legged on the sofa in the front room’s closed-curtained gloom, light from the laptop monitor flickering across her face, sparking in her eyes. Her lips moved as she whispered.

“I’m leaving for Seattle,” Alex said, stopping beside the sofa. Blue light flashed across Athena’s rapt face as she watched Dante unmake Johanna Moore yet again. He suspected she had that scene on a repeating loop.

“I’m leaving,” he repeated gently, crouching beside the sofa. “Can I trust you to stay here while I’m gone?”

Athena nodded and her hair tumbled into her eyes. She brushed it back with an absentminded sweep of her hand. Blue light danced in her eyes.

“Stay away from Father. Which means you can’t snuff Mother either. Promise.”

“Promise.”

“What do you see ?” Alex asked.

“A night sky full of black and gold wings,” she murmured. “The Fallen descend, setting the sky afire with their song. I see a woman balanced on a tightrope.”

“What does this mean?”

“Ask Dante.”

Alex grasped his twin’s hand and squeezed. “Thena, will you be all right? You could always come with me.”

She looked at him then, the glare from the monitor vanishing from her eyes. “I’ll be fine, Xander.” A small smile brushed her lips. “And you’ll do much better in Seattle without me.” She squeezed his hand back, warm and quick.

The circuit closed again and, for a too-brief moment, Alex felt connected and whole. Then Athena released his hand. Her gaze returned to the monitor. She touched the keypad and light flashed across her face again. Danced in her eyes. Her lips moved, whispered.

He’d lost her. Again.

Alex rose to his feet, opened the front door and left the cottage. The misty rain had stopped. Pale and ragged streamers trailed from the gray clouds, combing across the tops of the trees. A breeze smelling of pine and moist earth rustled through the trees, a soft sighing whisper.

Call me Hades .

A chill swept over him, goose bumping his skin.

Time was running out. Faster than he wanted to imagine. Faster than he could imagine.

Alex sprinted across the yard to the gravel driveway and his Ram. Rain beaded on the truck’s ruby-red finish, glistened on the windows. Sliding in behind the wheel, Alex glanced at the floorboards.

The former shotgun satchel now contained everything he needed to restrain Dante. The iPod encoded with his father’s instructions to Dante and a small, slim trank gun were in his hoodie pockets. As was something Father didn’t know about and sure as hell wouldn’t approve, a flash drive containing all of Bad Seed’s history and Dante’s past.

Just in case everything went south.

“Amen, brother,” Alex murmured, starting up the truck.

DOWN IN THE DIRT, pine needles, and bugs, Caterina watched through binoculars as a tall, lean-muscled blond man in jeans and black hoodie climbed into a pickup. He backed the pickup down the driveway to the highway below and drove away.

Looked like Alexander Lyons had the day off, given the way he was dressed and the late afternoon hour. That left his twin in the cottage and his dying mother in the main house with his father.

“Wonder how long the son’ll be gone,” Beck said.

“Does it matter?” Caterina asked, keeping her attention focused on the expensive house nestled in the pines. “It’ll only take me a moment to finish Wells.”

“Yeah,” Beck sighed. “Little Ms. Bad Ass.”

“Keep your commentary to yourself.”

“Got it. Little Ms. Bad Ass is working.”

Caterina’s muscles tensed, and for a moment, she held in her mind a very clear picture of herself garroting Michael Beck with her binoculars strap, imagined twisting it tight, her knee in his broad-shouldered back. And, for some reason, that image cracked her up. It was like a scene from a retro action flick full of cheesy puns and stiff dialog.

Ah’ll be back …

The day she was reduced to strangling someone with a binoculars strap would be the day she resigned. And took up action flicks? Her resentment of Beck’s presence eased. A deep breath in, tension out. A brief, heated conversation with her handlers at the Portland airport had gotten her nowhere.

I don’t need a backup. Call him off .

Wells and Wallace are yours, Caterina, and yours alone. Beck is there if something should go wrong. Better to be prepared, than caught unaware .

Nothing will go wrong. Have I ever —

Beck stays .

And that had been that. Even though she usually worked alone and preferred it that way, her handlers sometimes saddled her with a backup on assignments with multiple targets. Like this one.

Calmer, her pulse slow and steady, Caterina reviewed what she knew of the house’s occupants:

Alexander Apollo Lyons: He’d taken his mother’s maiden name in an effort, an apparently successful one, to carve a career of his own without any juice from his father’s name. FBI agent, Special Agent in Charge of the Portland field office, thirty-five, six two and one-ninety, the younger twin by two minutes. His power climb through the Bureau had come to a screeching halt when his twin had become mentally ill and he’d transferred from D.C. in order to care for her.

Athena Artemis Wells: A noted clinical psychiatrist specializing in abnormal psychology, thirty-five, five ten and one-forty. She’d been overtaken by schizophrenia, or a form of it, at age twenty-five. She’d managed to function for five more years before her madness landed her in a lockdown ward, drugged and restrained.

Below, the house and the guest cottage beside it were quiet. Two more cars were parked in the driveway, a Saturn and a tarp-covered vehicle. The covered car was most likely Athena’s.

Caterina’s research had revealed that Wells’s wife, Gloria, had been diagnosed with uterine cancer five years ago. She’d undergone surgery and radiation treatments. A year ago, Wells’s receipts revealed purchases of chemotherapy drugs and morphine and other medical supplies, so it would seem that the cancer had returned.

Scanning the yard, Caterina saw no sign of a dog, or pets of any kind. Perhaps the Wellses weren’t a cuddly kind of family. The smell of pine and wet grass filled her nostrils.

Had Bronlee sent the med-unit footage to Wells? Caterina planned to find out as soon as it was dark. Her mission that day was twofold: Clip Wells. Retrieve the missing footage—if it was in Wells’s possession.