Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

“Ain’t just hoodoo shit, llygad, ” Dante murmured, his gaze on the stone angel. He felt Von step back a few paces as he took up his duties as Eye.

Observing. Safeguarding. Composing.

Candles in glass holders burned before the stone angel. The smell of vanilla and wax curled into the air. Plastic Mardi Gras beads hung from the wing tips and around the corded throat. Good luck x s chalked in blue, yellow, and pink decorated the path in front of the statue, and curled scraps of paper nestled against the taloned feet.

“One of the Fallen, looks like,” Dante said. Something else Lucien hadn’t bothered to mention. “And someone’s turned him to fucking stone.”

Dante knelt, picked up one of the pieces of paper and read it. Loa of the stone, grant me protection from evil. Keep me safe in the night. He returned the prayer to its place beside the stone foot.

He studied the squatting shape. Moonlight glimmered and sparkled like ice along faint patterns etched into the wings. But not feathered wings, no. Like Lucien’s, these wings would be black and as smooth as warm velvet to the touch, the undersides streaked with purple. Waist-length hair framed the screaming face. The figure was nude, except for some kind of thick collar-bracelet twisted around the throat and a bracelet around one bicep. And most definitely male.

Von sent an image of the collar-bracelet. < Torc. Celtic. Ancient .>

Moonlight illuminated a dark stain on the statue’s forehead. It looked swiped on, a blood symbol of some kind, maybe a hoodoo vévé . Dante leaned forward, leather jacket creaking, and touched the stain. Residual power crackled against his fingertips like static electricity. A tiny blue flame arced in the space between his hand and the statue.

Fallen magic.

Catching a whiff of Lucien’s pomegranates-and-dark-earth scent from the blood symbol, Dante pulled his hand back and regarded the angel, wondering what Lucien had done and why. To turn one of his own kind into stone…

Then he remembered Lucien’s words from that night: Shield yourself. Shut it out. Promise me you won’t follow.

Dante would bet anything he was looking at the reason why for that promise. Touching a finger to the collar— torc —around the angel’s throat, he closed his eyes and listened. Song whispered in through his fingertips. His breath caught in his throat as his own song, chaotic and dark, answered. The stone beneath his fingers tremored like a rung bell.

Pain suddenly bit into his mind. White light strobed behind his closed eyes. Migraine storm warning. Dante opened his eyes and started to rise, then hesitated, one knee still down on the pavement. The fading song plucked at him like desperate fingers.

Promise me…

He wrapped his left hand around the angel’s dead bouquet. The sun-dried stems and shriveled petals crackled beneath his fingers. Flaked away like cindered wood. Like unspoken truth.

You look so much like her .

You knew all this time? And you never said a word?

Anger swept through Dante and music pulsed white-hot at his core. He poured energy into the wasted bouquet’s remains. Song, dark and driven and wild, raged through his mind, from his heart, and spiraled around the skeletal stems. Blue fire kindled in his palms and shimmered against the stone.

The cupped stone fingers now held green stems topped by tightly closed buds. But pain shafted through Dante’s mind again and his rhythm shifted, blasted harsh and dissonant notes, and his song spilled away into the night.

His hand slid from the angel and he staggered up to his feet. Pain twisted through his mind, snagged his thoughts like barbed wire. He clenched his jaw. Tried to will the pain away.

Send it below .

The cemetery spun; the moonlit tombs wheeled white beneath the cypress. Blood trickled from his nose. Spattered the pavement at his feet.

Behind, he heard Von calling his name.

Within, voices whispered. Dante-angel?

Above, he heard a rush of wings.

Dante closed his eyes and touched fingers to his temples. Sweat slicked his skin. A familiar, cool touch pressed against his mind, seeking admittance. Lucien. He tightened his shields, refusing.

Fingers squeezed his shoulder. “How the hell do you do that?” Von’s voice, low and tight, sounded uneasy.

Dante opened his eyes. A black-flowered and thorned bouquet swayed within the angel’s stone grip as though caught in a gentle breeze. Or as if it moved on its own, dancing to the song cupped within the heart of each dark blossom.

“Fuck.” He’d done it wrong. Pain throbbed behind his eyes. “Not what I intended.”

“Intended or not,” Von said, “that gift ain’t nightkind, least not that I’ve ever heard. Must come from your dad’s side of the family.”

“Yeah, my thought too.”

Von gently turned Dante around. “How’s your head?” he asked.

Dante shrugged and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Blood smeared his skin. “I’m okay.”

Sliding his shades up, the nomad cocked an eyebrow and regarded him dubiously. “Uh-huh,” he said, then dropped the shades back over his eyes.

Dante glanced at the stone angel and the midnight twist of flowers in its hand. “Why?” He nodded at the offerings tucked at the angel’s feet. “Why do mortals pray this way? What do they hope to gain?”

Von stroked his mustache, considering. “Hard to say,” he replied. “A lot of different reasons. Some might be prayers for a friend or relative who’s in trouble, maybe for protection or success, or to be healed from something.”

Dante’s gaze returned to the candles. He stepped forward and fingered a loop of smooth beads dangling from one wing tip. “Did you do stuff like this? When you were mortal? Pray, I mean.”

“No, not like this,” the nomad replied. “And I never prayed to anyone, ya know? I just kinda said things that I really hoped would happen, like wishing a friend safe on a long journey or saying good-bye to one that’d died.”

“Who hears the wishes and good-byes?”

“I forget you don’t know this stuff.” Von shook his head. “Who hears the wishes and good-byes? The speaker does,” he said, voice quiet, reflective. “And you hope that what you say from the heart has power. Power to protect, power to reach the ears of the dead. A spoken thing or a wished-hard thing takes a shape within the heart, man. Takes shape. Becomes real.”

“Becomes real,” Dante repeated. “And the good-byes?”

“Good-byes can heal the hurt. Or at least start the healing.”

This doesn’t need to be good-bye .

Heather’s words whispered through Dante’s memory. An image of her filled his mind: Rain-beaded red hair, black trenchcoat, cornflower-blue eyes, she’d looked into him with her steady gaze. She was a fed, yeah, but a woman of heart and steel too. He remembered telling her: Run from me .

She had and now she was safe.

From him, maybe. But was she safe from the Bureau? She’d uncovered a nasty secret in D.C. Now she was caught between the truth and a hard fucking place. She was on her own in Seattle, without backup.

But not for long.

The West Coast leg of the tour ended with two gigs in Seattle followed by two weeks of downtime before the tour picked up again. Trey had already ferreted Heather’s address, had teased it free from the Seattle DMV’s online records with a deft touch.

Easier than rolling a tourist on Bourbon Street, Tee-Tee .

Dante let go of the Mardi Gras necklace, the beads clicking against the stone wing, and turned to face Von. “You got paper? A pen?”