Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said, stepping out into the gray day. The air smelled of impending rain and wet pavement. “Look, there’s probably nothing to be worried about, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

“We’ll keep the Sleepers safe, for true,” Jack said, meeting her gaze. “If someone’s hunting Dante, he ain’t gonna get through us.”

Heather smiled. “Thanks, Jack.”

“Ça fait pas rien.” He closed the door. The dead bolt clunked into place.

She swiveled around and headed across the lawn for the padlocked gate in her backyard’s northwest corner. Once through it, she’d follow a short alley between the houses and to the street, but behind Lyons’s Dodge Ram.

Slipping her hand under the back of her blue turtleneck sweater, Heather touched the grip of the .38 tucked into her jeans at the small of her back.

SHERIDAN YAWNED.

The SUV’s interior smelled of coffee and greasy hamburgers. His stomach rumbled, but he didn’t feel hungry. The buzz from the pick-me-ups he’d swallowed during the night when he’d begun his surveillance was fading, leaving him twitchy and tired. Sighing, he rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger.

Dawn had come and gone and he was still waiting and watching; Prejean was still Sleeping and breathing, and Cortini was nowhere in sight. Nothing was going the way he’d hoped.

With another yawn, Sheridan returned his gaze to the handheld mini-mon. The small camera rigged to the rooftop bike rack provided a steady feed of the street outside of Wallace’s white-brick house. He rested fully reclined on one of the car’s rear seats and he doubted Cortini or anyone else cruising past would be able to make him. To all intents and purposes, the SUV looked like nothing more than a parked neighborhood vehicle.

But that couldn’t be said about the truck parked across the street and down half a block or so. It had shown up a couple of hours before sunrise had smeared the sullen horizon with bruised color, a red pickup with a black cover or tarp protecting the bed. The rumbling diesel engine had shut off, but no one had emerged from the cab. The flare of a lighter and a cigarette’s glowing end proved someone was in there.

Someone watching, just like he was.

More than a little curious, Sheridan had run the plates. The Dodge Ram was registered to Alexander A. Lyons of Damascus, Oregon.

Portland SAC Alexander Lyons. The agent who’d accompanied Wallace on her little field trip to her mother’s murder site.

Sheridan’s curiosity levels had blasted through the roof. So he’d put in a call to Rutgers and, ironically, that was the reason Prejean was still breathing.

SAC Lyons is here keeping an eye on Wallace. Any official reason why?

None that I’m aware of. Rodriguez wanted to interrogate Wallace more thoroughly about Bad Seed. I wonder if he’s initiated action of his own?

Instructions?

Don’t proceed until Lyons is out of the picture. And keep me apprised. If he’s working for the SB and not Rodriguez …

Roger that. Prejean and his band are holed up at Wallace’s place .

This seems to indicate that Wallace lied to us .

Definitely. She was guarding Prejean earlier .

A shame. Prejean corrupted her somehow. Goddamned vampires .

Ma’am, is collateral damage acceptable? If I can’t get Prejean alone ?

Absolutely not. We’re not the SB. Only Prejean and Cortini are acceptable .

Yes, ma’am. Roger that .

Yawning, Sheridan dry-swallowed a couple more pick-meups. Prejean wouldn’t be going anywhere until twilight. Maybe he could risk a run over to a nearby restaurant for real food and a restroom. The urinal he’d picked up at Walgreens was doing the trick, but it’d be nice to wash up.

And if Cortini cruised by while he was gone? Circling her prey before moving in?

Movement drew Sheridan’s gaze back to the mini-mon. Someone strode purposefully along the opposite side of the street—a red-haired, slender figure in sweater and jeans, one hand at the small of her back.

Sheridan’s sleepiness vanished.

Heather Wallace sidled up alongside the red pickup and tapped on the driver’s window with the barrel of her gun.

CATERINA KNOCKED ON THE guest cottage’s front door, then opened it and walked inside. Gray daylight seeped around the edges of the closed drapes and into the room. Athena’s laptop rested on the coffee table, folded shut. The air smelled faintly of fresh-turned soil and vegetable decay, like a just-mulched garden. Caterina frowned. She didn’t see any potted plants, no window-box flowers.

She glanced at her watch. It was nearly ten thirty. She hadn’t given Athena the shot until the wee hours, so she should still be out cold. Thick silence layered the shut-in air, weighted the atmosphere.

No whispers. No constant murmur.

Caterina’s inner alarms prickled. The silence felt wrong somehow. She reached into her jacket and drew her Glock from its shoulder holster. She listened. Refrigerator hum, dripping faucet in the kitchen.

She padded across the room and into the hall; a nightlight at the hall’s end twinkled like an evening star. Dark clumps dotted the carpet at irregular intervals. Crouching, she touched one of the clumps—mud. She stood and chambered a round.

Back to the wall, Caterina ghosted down the hall to Athena’s room. The door was still open, just like she’d left it earlier. A quick peek inside revealed a form curled under the smudged and smeared blankets. Mud clumps led to the bed like a trail of bread crumbs.

Glock in a two-handed grip, Caterina stepped into the room. The smell hit her immediately, a mingled stench of mud, shit, and death. She crossed to the bed and yanked down the mud-smeared blankets.

Gloria Wells’s corpse, muddied and crawling with insects, rested on the sheets. Caterina stared, stunned, absorbing the fact that the body was dressed in a fresh nightgown and a blue ribbon adorned the mud-stiffened hair.

“Welcome to the Underworld.”

Caterina felt a sharp sting against the back of her neck and whirled, Glock lifted.

Athena held a syringe between her dirty fingers, her hair and underwear-clad body streaked with drying mud. “I am Hades, Lord of the Underworld,” she said. “The dead do my bidding and soon, so will you.”

Caterina squeezed the trigger. The gun crack sounded like a cannon blast. Cold spread through her, icing her blood and spinning a white-out blizzard across her mind. She tried to fire another round, but heard only a dull tunk .

Looking down, she saw her gun on the floor. The room tilted and she reeled against the bed. A fetid odor wafted into her nostrils as her hand grabbed hold of the corpse’s arm for balance. Things writhed under the already-moldering skin beneath Caterina’s fingers.

Jerking her hand from Gloria Wells’s cold arm, Caterina stumbled, then fell to the floor. The ceiling spun and spun, faster and faster.

“I think I’ll call you Little Red Riding Hood,” Athena/Hades whispered. “And I’m going to let Dante eat you all up.”

Caterina spun into the abyss, the Lord of the Underworld’s girlish whispers guiding her into the darkness.

LYONS’S HEAD JERKED AWAY from the rain-beaded window he’d been snoozing against and his hand dove inside his hoodie.