Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

She looked out the windshield. The night stretched down the road and merged with the dark, tree-bristling humps of the hills and, in the distance, scattered lights glowed like tiny candles.

Candles. Candlelight glinting in Silver’s eyes. His voice whispered through her memory: Temporary links are formed when we take blood from someone, that’s why you can hear my thoughts right now. Blood-forged, my père de sang says. You could say good-bye to me in the air, Annie, and I could say good-bye back .

Fuck your good-bye and fuck you .

Closing her eyes and swallowing her pride, Annie called to Silver.

DANTE COUGHED UP BLOOD. Pain burned through his back, his chest. His entire body ached. He felt himself lifted, then lowered, but didn’t feel hands.

I’m back in the Perv’s van. Hurtling through the night. Musta dreamed I escaped .

Something warm and wet stroked his stinging eyelids. He tasted blood, his own, mingled with alcohol and the wormwood-bitter, anise-sweet flavor of absinthe. Green light skipped like a stone along the surface of his thoughts.

Constant murmuring whispers, like the rush of wind through the trees, or maybe the sweep of strong wings through the night, flowed all around him.

Holytrinitydantewillmakeusoneholytrinitydantewillmakeusoneholytrinity …

He felt the hot trickle of blood from his nose. A hand smacked his cheek. Fingers snapped in front of his face. “Dante? C’mon, boy, wake up. Focus.”

“Leave him alone, goddammit!” Heather’s voice?

“Heather,” Dante croaked. His throat felt raw, sandpaper scrubbed.

“Here, Baptiste, I’m here.”

Dante opened his eyes, but instead of the Perv’s grinning face, he looked up into a handsome, beard-stubbled face, a familiar face, then it clicked and memory slid into place—Lyin’ Lyons. A taped-on gauze pad bandaged the bites in Lyons’s forearm, but Dante still smelled the blood, and the aroma slammed straight into his aching head.

The whispers stopped. A woman’s voice said, “You’ve had another seizure. Did you keep any of the memories?”

Those words trailed cold fingers down Dante’s spine. He glanced in the direction of the voice, at his feet. He realized he was stretched out on the sofa, his head pillowed in Lyons’s lap, his legs across the Lord of the Underworld’s thighs. Realized she held a laptop computer.

Lyons’s twin, the mud-haired, tunic-wearing chick with the spear, smiled at him, a strangely shy and girlish smile. “Did you keep any?” she asked again.

Another seizure? Panic coiled through Dante. How much time had passed? He looked past Lyons’s sister to Heather sitting rigidly in the recliner. She met his gaze, her face pale and strained, her bound hands clenched into fists in her lap. “Annie got away,” she said. “Thanks to you.”

“ Bon . Let Heather go—”

Heather shook her head. “I’m staying with you.”

Fingers stroked Dante’s hair, stroked and tugged, a hurtful caress—Lyons. “You haven’t answered Athena,” he chided.

“Go fuck yourself.”

“Hades,” his sister corrected. “Did you keep any memories this time?”

“You can fuck yourself too.”

Lyons yanked Dante’s hair. “Answer the question. Or I start in on Heather.”

Jaw tight, Dante said, “Nothing. I remember nothing.” But deep within, wasps stirred, droned, and a chill shuddered through him. Sweat trickled down his temples. Sure about that?

Lyons sighed. “Okay, let’s go again. I hate to keep doing this to you.”

“Liar,” Dante said. The fed’s voice said he liked doing this to him, liked it a lot. And hoped to keep doing it. “How many times already?”

“Five,” the Lord of the Underworld said.

Fear curled into Dante. Five ? “How many seizures?”

Lyons laughed. “Five, gorgeous, five. I keep thinking you’re gonna tear yourself apart, but you don’t. Not yet, anyway.” He paused. “Ready, Athe—Hades?”

The whispers breezed awake: “Holytrinitydantewillmakeusoneholytrinitydante…”

Alex lifted a green bottle, his stolen bottle of absinthe. “Open wide, time for more medicine.”

“The green waters of remembrance,” Athena/Hades murmured. “Drink deep, so when you’re killing our father, you’ll know why. Then our rebirth can begin.”

Dante clamped his lips shut and turned his face away. He wanted his past, wanted to see, wanted to know, but on his own terms and with Heather. Jordan had tortured him with the past and now Lyons and his gone-gone-gone sister were doing the same.

No more. Fuck each one of them .

“Your choice,” Lyons muttered. He grasped Dante’s jaw with hard fingers, forced his head around.

A prickling column of energy pried at Dante’s lips, forcing his mouth open, and wedging into one corner. His heart trip-hammered against his ribs, triggering hot, liquid pain in his chest. Sweat trickled down his face, stung his eyes.

Athena/Hades watched, a gore-smeared hand resting on Dante’s leather-clad shins, her pale brows drawn down. “You’re hurting him, again,” she said. “You shouldn’t. He’s a part of us.”

“He isn’t yet. And I don’t have time to be gentle.”

A thought brushed against his blazing mind, and Dante became aware of two things: His shields were down, drug-dropped, and Lyons was scared.

.>

Lyons positioned the absinthe bottle between Dante’s lips and poured. The pale green liquor filled his mouth faster than he could swallow. He choked, and coughed, breathless.

“That’s the last of it,” Lyons said.

The wedge of energy vanished and Dante, coughing, jaw aching, closed his mouth. He saw Athena/Hades lifting a laptop. Images flickered across the monitor. Familiar images. Pain chiseled at his thoughts. He squeezed his eyes shut. They couldn’t keep torturing him if he didn’t look.

But Lyons sighed and said, “Again with the closed eyes? You really don’t remember, do you? Or maybe you’re just fucking stubborn.”

“Both and both and both,” Athena/Hades chanted.

Absinthe-green light pinwheeled and flickered behind Dante’s eyes as the heavy dose of wormwood burned though his veins like gasoline and pooled in his mind, just waiting for a match.

“You’re not alone, Baptiste.” Heather’s voice, as cool and steady as river water. “I’m with you. I’m with you. I’m here and I’m with you.”

And Dante held on to that promise with all his strength, refused to let go even as tiny metal hooks pierced his eyelids and hoisted them up—again. Even as the laptop with its flickering images— Is that me ? descended over his face—again. Even as pain shuddered through him, cracking his psyche like an egg against the hidden past—again.

Images quaked up from the jagged depths below, each one a struck match tossed into his wormwood-soaked mind.

Papa Prejean uses the special straps to bind Dante’s hands, then shoves him onto his knees in front of the bathtub full of steaming hot water .

You wanna take her punishment , p’tit? D’accord, if you so hellfire eager, take it .

Papa grabs Dante’s hair and plunges his head and upper body into the scalding water, holds him down and holds him under until he finally sucks in a lungful of water and drowns…