Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

Shannon had been captured in the act of planting a kiss on James’s cheek, her hands with their purple-lacquered nails clutching his jeans-clad thigh. Her long red hair, teased into a retro-nineties stripper-chic bouffant, framed her face. A grin parted James’s lips, and behind his glasses his eyes were closed. A lock of honey-blond hair had tumbled across his forehead. They both looked so young. Happy.

If Heather asked her father, would he even remember one laughing minute from twenty-plus years ago? Laughing moments slipped away, transient, light as a summer breeze; but tragedy was etched into hearts and souls, indelible, a lightning strike altering lives in a split second…

Your mother isn’t coming home .…forever.

“You look a lot like her,” Dante murmured, voice husky.

“Maybe a little,” Heather allowed. “Ever since she died, I’ve had dreams about her death, nightmares, I guess I mean.”

Dante nodded.

“The thing is, ever since D.C., the dreams have become more vivid and detailed, but they don’t feel like dreams. It feels like I’m seeing it all through her eyes. And last night, it was like I was Shannon Wallace.” Heather paused a moment, then said, “Is it because of you?”

Dante carefully placed the photo of her parents on the table, then met her gaze, his own troubled and thoughtful. “Could be, yeah. If it is, it wasn’t deliberate.”

“I know that,” Heather said softly. “I’m not trying to blame you. I’m just trying to understand it. Or maybe nearly dying triggered a latent ability.”

Dante nodded. “That’s possible too.”

It was, but she’d bet a year’s salary on Dante being the originator of the change within her. The real question, one that Dante couldn’t answer, was: Had he woven any other changes into her while saving her life?

“How about you? Have you learned anything about your mom?”

“I had Trey search for info on her,” Dante said. “We found nothing. Like she never existed. They not only killed her, they fucking erased all trace of her.”

“There’s gotta be something,” Heather said. “She lived in New Orleans. Someone had to know her. Worked with her. Something.” She caressed his arm, her fingers whispering across the mesh, feeling the heated skin and hard muscle beneath. “You might consider asking De Noir.” The muscles beneath Heather’s fingers tensed.

“No.” Dante’s gaze smoldered, his jaw tight.

“You look like her, you know,” Heather said softly. “A lot. She was a beautiful woman. Black hair, dark eyes, warm smile.”

Dante nodded and looked away. “Yeah, Lucien said so too.”

Heather wished De Noir hadn’t destroyed the Bad Seed CD documenting Dante’s birth and his hellish childhood. Wished she had a picture of Genevieve Baptiste she could give Dante, a memory he could look at whenever he wanted, and keep. Wells and Moore couldn’t have erased Genevieve’s existence. Not completely. She and Dante would just have to dig a little deeper, that was all.

The aroma of fresh coffee drifted into the room. Releasing Dante’s arm, Heather rose to her feet and went to the kitchen to pour coffee for both of them. When she turned around, Dante was walking into the kitchen and brushing cat fur from his velvet-and-vinyl pants.

“I can pour my own, y’know,” he said.

Heather handed him a mug. “Yeah, yours is so tough to remember. Black.”

He smiled. “Merci beaucoup.”

“I want to thank you for last night,” Heather said.

Dante looked at her, his pale face puzzled. “For what?”

“For picking up the mess, and for being so good to Annie, even when she was telling lies about you. I owe you an apology for that too.”

“No, you don’t,” Dante said. “You owe me nothing.”

“Yes, I do, Dante, I do,” Heather said. “I gave you shit over kissing my sister and I had no right—”

“Shhh.” Dante pressed his fingers against her lips. “Forget it.” Leaning in, he bent and replaced his fingers with his lips, a warm kiss, lingering. She laced her arms around his waist, his earthy and intimate scent teasing her nostrils. Heat kindled in her belly, stoked a fire she realized had never died.

Looking into her eyes, he said, “Annie’s home.”

Heather heard the front door open, then shut. “Gotta love nightkind hearing,” she murmured. Sliding her hands from his waist, she stepped past him and walked into the living room. Annie flounced onto the sofa and switched on the TV with the remote.

“Hey,” Heather said. “I was starting to worry about you.”

Annie rolled her eyes. “No need. I was good. I didn’t drink or buy anything illegal, I—” Her words ended abruptly, her gaze sliding past Heather. Her eyes widened.

Heather felt Dante step up beside her.

“Hey, Annie,” he said.

“Holy fuck,” Annie breathed. “It wasn’t the tequila and oxy. You really are that fucking gorgeous.”

“Thanks, but I’ve been told. Ain’t nothing I care about. Just so you know.”

“You’d care if you weren’t good-looking,” Annie declared, settling back into the sofa, a sardonic gleam in her eyes. “Then every compliment would melt your heart and make you fall in love with the person saying them.”

“Annie…” Heather sighed.

“Nah, she may be right,” Dante said. “But, tell me, Annie, you know this how ?”

Annie lifted a hand and flipped him off. Dante pointed to the words on his shirt—BLOW ME—and lifted an eyebrow.

“Yeah?” Annie challenged. She pointed at her crotch. “You first.”

“Is this a new game?” Heather asked, pretending innocence. “How does it work? You point at body parts until someone misses and pokes an eye out?”

Annie stared at her for a moment, then said, “Y’know that might work as a drinking game.”

Dante looked at Heather and amusement gleamed in his eyes. He looked happy and untroubled, relaxed. She liked seeing him that way, and she liked that she was the cause of it. Liked it very much.

She realized that she knew so many dark and painful things about Dante’s life, more than he did, but she didn’t know any of the simple things about him like his favorite color or his favorite band or what he liked to read or what size shirt he wore. And his birthday was coming up in…oh…twenty-four days.

Dante walked over to the table and set his cup on its cluttered surface. “I should fix your window before I head over to Vespers,” he said, pulling tools and a lock kit from the pockets of his leather jacket. He headed to the window, Eerie hopping after him, then bent over the windowsill, twisting the screwdriver with precision.

Heather smiled. “So you do know how to use a screwdriver.”

“Great for jimmying locks.”

“Don’t make me arrest you.”

Dante laughed. “No ma’am. We’ve already been there, done that.”

“Yes, we have.”

A few minutes later, he’d installed the new lock. Eerie leaped onto the sill and mewed his approval. Grinning, Dante scratched the top of the cat’s orange head. “Couldn’t’ve done it without your supervision, minou ,” he said. Glancing at Heather, he added, “He’s got a lotta grace for having only three legs.”

“He does,” Heather said. “The shelter I got him from said he’d been attacked by a dog. He survived somehow and it’s never really slowed him down.”