Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

And he intended to keep it that way for as long as possible.

Lucien carefully plucked free Loki’s bouquet, unwinding its black roots from around the pale stone. A riot of chiming notes rose into the air, a sharp and wild crystalline song. Inky tendrils slithered free of Loki’s arm and curled around Lucien’s arm, his throat. The song quieted.

A beautiful song. One he would drown in the Mississippi.

Tucking Dante’s prayer into the pocket of his black slacks, Lucien fanned open his wings. Air gusted, extinguishing the few remaining candles still flickering and scattering the prayer-etched bits of paper across the cemetery path.

As his wings flared and swept upward, lifting him into the sky, he suddenly heard another heartbeat. Strong and measured. A rhythm he knew. Hovering just above the cemetery’s main path, Lucien scanned the shadows.

She stepped out of the darkness pooled beneath the cypress. Flowing midnight hair, creamy skin, and gleaming eyes. A red gown clung to her curves and, at her back, her black wings were folded.

Rubies glittered in the slender torc curving around her throat and in the gold bracelets around her slender wrists. A cold smile played across her lips—lips the color of moonlit ruby wine and just as intoxicating.

“No song of greeting, my cydymaith ?” Lilith asked.

Without a word, Lucien spun and soared up into the sky. Dante’s black blossoms chimed and sang as the wind stroked their petals. He didn’t need to look to know Lilith followed; he heard the powerful whoosh as she took to the air. He’d always out-winged her in the past. He hoped that was still true. He flew swiftly for the wide, night-blackened curve of the Mississippi, the night cool against his face.

The lights of the city burned bright beneath him, glimmered with headlight glow, except for one dark, empty section stretching to the east—what used to be the Ninth Ward, now a razed shadow reeking of decay. Vévés and gris-gris and blessed candles warded its haunted borders, protecting the rest of an unknowing New Orleans from the bitter and angry spirits trapped within—forever drowning, forever waiting for help that never came. And never would.

Moisture beaded on Lucien’s face as he veered toward the south and the river. Moonlight rippled across the Mississippi’s surface and ship lights glowed red and yellow upon the slow-moving waters.

Lucien caught a glimpse of black and red in his peripheral vision: Lilith had caught up and flew beside him, her wings stroking smoothly through the sky.

So much for out-winging her, he thought wryly.

Ethereal notes rang into the air, clear and lilting. And, for one heart-stopping moment, the centuries dropped away and he was once again flying beneath the deep blue skies of Gehenna, his brilliant and beautiful cydymaith winging beside him, trilling her complicated song.

The sky-rumbling roar of an airplane overhead shattered the illusion and the centuries returned. But Lilith singing, that was no illusion; her desperate wybrcathl filled the air and Lucien’s heart.

What she sang turned his blood to ice.

Gehenna was fading, a land too long without a creawdwr ’s powerful and sustaining touch. The border between worlds bled and soon the Elohim would return to the mortal world to rule it for all time.

Then the wars for power would begin in earnest.

Above New Orleans

March 15

WINGS FANNING THE AIR, Lucien slowed and descended to the weed-and mud-pebbled banks of the Mississippi, Dante’s black flowers singing in his hand, Lilith’s words echoing in his mind.

Gehenna is fading.

Folding his wings behind him, Lucien knelt on one knee and plunged the blossoms into the dark water, the reek of moss and mud and fish thick in his nostrils. A gust of air swept his hair across his face, and he caught a peripheral flash of red.

“What are you doing?” Lilith cried and grabbed at his arm.

Fending her off with a shoulder flex, Lucien tightened his grip on the flowers and shoved them deeper into the Mississippi. The black tendrils knotted around his hand and arm and throat, twisting tight and digging into his flesh as the bouquet struggled for life. Little bubbles flecked the water’s surface. Lucien thought he detected a faint gurgling underwater song. His chest tightened. He had no other choice. To keep Dante safe, he would do whatever was necessary.

“Stop!” Lilith leaped into the water, then bent, her hands searching beneath the surface for his and the things he drowned. Her fingers skittered across the back of his hand. Her talons stabbed.

The bouquet’s inky tendrils slithered free of Lucien’s throat and arm, limp and lifeless. He released the flowers and pulled his hand from the river. Blood welled up in the punctures, even as the wounds healed.

Lilith swished her hands around in the muddy water for a moment longer, then she straightened, a single black flower, drenched and silent, hanging from her hand. She sloshed from the river, her gown wet from the thighs down and clinging to her shapely legs. She fluttered her wings, shaking water from their tips.

Rising to his feet, Lucien fixed his gaze on her. Like all Elohim high-bloods, she was tall, but at six two, she was still a head below his six eight. He remembered the feel of her silky hair as it slid between his fingers, the softness of her wings—even after thousands of years.

An image of Genevieve draped only in a white bath towel, her wet hair streaming past her shoulders, laughing, dark eyes gleaming, flashed behind Lucien’s eyes, and grief closed a fist around his heart.

Lucien was grateful that Dante was gone and on his way to Los Angeles. He was far enough to keep him safe temporarily—but not out of Elohim reach, not yet. Shields tight around his mind and heart, he watched Lilith’s approach.

Stroking one taloned finger along the drowned flower’s stem, sadness glimmered within Lilith’s golden eyes. She lifted her head, the fire in her eyes searing away any trace of the sorrow he’d witnessed just a moment before.

“How could you, Samael?” she demanded. “A creawdwr ’s beautiful gift and you killed it like an unwanted kitten.” She flung the flower at him. It fell into the weeds.

“I haven’t used that name since I left Gehenna,” he said. “Call me Lucien.”

“Do you plan on slaying this creawdwr too?”

“Perhaps I already have.”

“Perhaps.”

Lilith crossed the short distance between them, her breasts shimmying beneath the thin silk with each step. She stood in front of him, chin lifted, a knowing smile curving her lips. Her scent reawakened the past, unearthed memories of heated, soft flesh and urgent moans. He tensed, breathing in her warm cedar and amber fragrance, his pulse winging through his veins.

“Perhaps,” she repeated. “But I don’t think so. Not yet, anyway. If you had killed him, you wouldn’t have been in such a hurry to murder his flowers.”

Lucien smiled. “Are you certain of that?”

Tilting her head, she studied him. The river breeze lifted tendrils of her black hair and blew them across her face, slashing her lovely face with midnight-black shadows. “Yes, my cydymaith. I’m certain you haven’t killed him…yet.”

“I’m no longer your cydymaith ,” Lucien said quietly. “I gave that up as well when I left Gehenna.”