Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

“I’m on your side, Heather. Yours and Dante’s.”

“Somehow I doubt that. And you’re mistaken if you think we’re going to let you talk to Dante alone.”

We’re? Alex’s gaze skipped around the room, from face to face—white, cream-in-coffee, black—each was watchful and serious and hard. A worm of doubt wriggled into Alex’s mind. Had he made an error in judgment by allowing Heather to find him?

“Sit on the sofa,” Heather said, stepping aside. “Get comfy. You’re gonna be waiting for a while.” She glanced at Jack. “Keep an eye on him.”

“Damn straight,” the drummer said.

Heather walked from the room and into the kitchen. Alex heard her rummaging through drawers. Jack motioned at the sofa with the gun. “Sit, you.”

Alex sat at the unoccupied end and did as Heather had suggested, making himself as comfortable as possible. She returned a few minutes later with a roll of duct tape and, kneeling, carefully bound his wrists together.

She regarded him for a long, silent moment before standing. “Do you know how long we have?”

Alex met her gaze and knew he’d lose her completely if he didn’t give her something. “I killed the pickup team,” he confessed, keeping his voice low. “I bought you some time, but I don’t know how much. Maybe a day, maybe two.”

Heather sucked in a breath. “Why would you do that?”

“I like you and I hated the thought of what would happen to you if they succeeded.” He glanced toward the empty hall. “And because you have a sister who needs you like mine needs me.”

“What else do you know about me?”

“Everything.”

“Just everything on record ,” Heather said, then stood and walked away, her .38 tucked into the back of her jeans once again.

True, but Alex had a feeling it would be more than enough.

Seattle, WA

March 24

ALOW, DEEP INHALATION drew Heather’s attention from the box she was packing at the dining room table. Von pushed the throw off and, yawning, stretched. She noted with amusement that even stripped down for Sleeping—black jeans, socks, and white wifebeater—he still wore his double shoulder holsters.

Bet anything he was a scout when he was mortal, checking the road ahead for his clan, searching for welcome or danger .

Von sniffed the air and was on his feet and at the sofa before Heather realized he’d even moved from the recliner. Attention on the napping Lyons, Von said, “Who’s Sleeping Beauty?”

“SAC Alex Lyons,” she answered. “I caught him spying on the house.”

“Once again, paranoia pays off. So what’s the plan?”

“Good question,” Heather said, tucking the box’s flaps closed. “He knows about Bad Seed and who’s behind it. I’m not sure who he’s working for. He claims no one sent him, but I don’t find that very reassuring, y’know?”

“I hear ya, doll.” A pause, then, “Bad Seed, huh?”

The quiet menace in Von’s voice snapped Heather’s head up. He leaned over Lyons, his hands knuckled into hard fists, his jaw tight. “He one of the assholes who messed with Dante?”

“I don’t think so,” Heather said. Wiping her dusty hands against her jeans, she stepped around the table and walked into the front room. She stopped beside Von. “But he does have information.”

The nomad’s gaze was fixed on Lyons’s throat. “Info, huh? Stuff we need, no fucking doubt.”

“No doubt,” Heather agreed. “He says he needs to speak to Dante alone.”

Von snorted. “That ain’t happening.” He straightened, then rolled back his shoulders. Exhaled. His hands relaxed.

“Spy Man also said some team was coming for Heather,” Jack tossed into the conversation. “But he intercepted them. Said he killed them, he did.”

Heather glanced over her shoulder. The drummer sauntered from the kitchen, pulling the Browning from the back of his jeans as he crossed the room. He handed the gun back to Von.

The nomad holstered the Browning. He looked at Heather, cocked an eyebrow. “That’s twice, darlin’. I ain’t gonna put up with it a third time.”

Whistling innocently, Jack whirled and returned to the kitchen where Eli and Antoine worked at the counter making sandwiches for the evening flight home.

“Second time, what?” Heather asked.

“Second time you neglected to mention you were in trouble too.”

Heather stared at him. All playfulness had vanished from Von’s green eyes. “I…it wasn’t intentional…I was worried about Dante, and I…” Her words trailed off. It had never occurred to her to tell Von about the trouble she was facing. Never occurred to her that they had more than Dante in common. But, judging by the nomad’s ain’t-brooking-no-nonsense expression, they did. She felt a smile tip up the corners of her mouth.

“Sorry about that,” she said, meaning it. “It won’t happen again.”

Von nodded, then shifted his gaze back to the man on the sofa. “So he claims he put the smackdown on the bad guys, huh? Whattaya think, doll? He telling the truth?”

“Yes.” Heather remembered the steadiness of Lyons’s gaze. “ That I believe.”

Von glanced around the room. “Looks like you’re packing.”

“I am. But just stuff I can’t replace. Everything else—furniture, dishes, TV—I’m leaving behind.” Lyons’s story, true or not, had convinced her of what had been simmering in the back of her mind ever since her meeting with Rodriguez, Rutgers, and her father.

Time is running out. Disappear .

And thanks to her father, the hourglass had just run dry.

The image of James William Wallace standing beneath the buzzing fluorescent lights of the parking garage flipped into her memory. I want us to be a family again .

Heather’s jaw tightened. We were never a family . Her father had lied to her, but she expected that from him. The realization that he’d used the same lie to sweet-talk information from Annie tied Heather’s stomach into knots. She’d never forgive him for using Annie.

Heather had tried to talk to her sister about what she’d overheard Lyons say, but Annie, finally wearing Heather’s robe, had refused to even meet her eyes and retreated to her room.

“We can talk about where you’re planning on going later,” Von said.

Heather looked at him. He nodded at Lyons. The crescent moon tattoo beneath the nomad’s eye glittered like moonlit frost in the room’s curtained gloom. “What are you, exactly?” she asked.

“The hell kinda question’s that, woman?”

“In nightkind society, I mean. Llygad .”

Von smoothed his mustache with thumb and forefinger, his face thoughtful. “Okay.” He returned to the recliner, sat, and tugged on his boots. Reaching back, he pulled the elastic tie from his ponytail and shook his hair free. It swung just past his shoulders, a deep and glossy brown.

Just as Heather had decided that was his entire answer— Okay , he said, “We’re the keepers of nightkind history, the impartial Eyes of truth.”

Heather mulled that over. She thought back to when he’d stood motionless beside Dante during his meeting with Ronin in Club Hell. “So, like witnesses?”

“Close enough.” Von slid the hair-tie around his wrist for safekeeping. “In another age, or so I was told, we were called filidh, warrior-bards. We protected and educated, shaped history and truth into lyrical stories, but hell, even that’s an incomplete naming.”