Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

Lyons laughed, the sound a near sob. “All I want is you, my little oracle. Healthy and happy, the circuit closed.”

The Lord of the Underworld smiled. “But I am healthy and happy, Xander.” She lowered his hand from his face. She walked into the center of the living room, spear in hand. “And soon the circuit will be closed forever and always.”

She fixed her luminous, self-torched gaze on Dante. “Once you resurrect me, little god, and I return from the Underworld to rule it, I’ll bring your mother back with me. You can create a body to hold her. Give it any form or shape you wish.”

Dante stared at her. Create a body . Those words strummed across his thoughts like fingers across guitar strings, resonated deep.

Athena propped the butt of her spear on the carpet in front of her, then leaned forward until the point rested between her breasts.

“NO!” Lyons yelled, bolting for his sister. But just as he reached her, her gaze lifted past him. A smile trembled upon her lips.

“See, Daddy? See?”

Athena/Hades threw herself onto the spear.

Damascus, OR

March 25

S ee, Daddy? See?

Dante jumped to his feet and spun around. The room whirled and he tipped back into Heather. “Gotcha,” she said, then she sucked in a sharp breath. “Shit!”

A man stood at the hall’s dark mouth, Annie hugged against his side. He held a knife to her throat. And nestled inside the crook of Annie’s arm was a woman’s severed head.

“I’m here to rescue you,” Annie muttered, a disgusted expression on her face. “Luke Skywalker I ain’t. Fuck.”

Dante looked at the man’s face. Or tried to, anyway. His face was a blur, a blank, and the sight of it slid away from Dante’s mind. Pain pierced his eyes as though he’d looked into a bright, dazzling light, throbbed at his temples. He couldn’t remember what he’d been doing or thinking.

“Your coup has failed, Alexander,” the man said, contempt icing his tone. “You couldn’t even control your lunatic sister. How could you hope to wield S? I expected more from you, much more. Now I’ll have to begin again with a resurrected bride and fresh offspring.”

Faceless Man’s voice was a finger tripping a switch. Something jagged and off-centered inside Dante ratcheted into gear. His heart drummed a fierce and rapid rhythm.

Hoping to stop whatever was happening to him, hoping to keep the wrong things from clicking into place, Dante squeezed his eyes shut and dove into the droning, wasp-riddled depths within.

“Get out of here, Baptiste!” Heather pushed and shoved at him, desperation threaded through her scent.

“Ain’t leaving you,” he whispered.

And plunged deeper.

Holytrinitydantewillmakeusoneholytrinitydantewillmakeusoneholytrinity …

She trusted you. Guess she got what she deserved .

Time to take yo’ medicine , p’tit.

What’s he screamin’?

Kill me .

But he couldn’t fall deep enough or fast enough.

“Open your eyes, S, my beautiful angel sans merci . Open your eyes and look at me. Rip Van Winkle .”

The voice looped around Dante like a noose and yanked him up again.

And, unable to stop himself, Dante opened his eyes and looked.

MARLEY’S INDIAN AND GLEN’S Kawasaki rumbled away, the engines swallowing the silence as they gunned the bikes up the dark, rain-glistening road. Von frowned at the empty Trans Am. Annie hadn’t waited. He shook his head.

Foolish, darlin’. More than a little .

Maybe heart and steel runs in the Wallace family—at least in the kick-ass women .

Von opened the driver’s-side door and grabbed the black vinyl bag from the backseat. Unzipping it, he pulled out a handful of hypes and several vials of dope and shoved them in his pockets. He tossed the bag back into the car and shut the door.

His gaze shifted up the night-shrouded driveway. All manner of bad shit hammered at his shields. From what he could tell, Dante’s shields were down and his demons were awake and in full voice.

He hoped the morphine would be enough.

Von took note of the SUV with a bicycle rack on top parked alongside the road a little ways up. A currently unoccupied SUV, one he remembered parked on Heather’s street.

Looks like I ain’t the only one sneaking around tonight .

Unholstering both Brownings, Von moved .

FAIRY-TALE TRIGGER WORDS.

Cold fingers closed around Heather’s heart when Dante’s eyes sprang open at Wells’s command. Red streaked his dark irises. Pain dilated the pupils. His attention was riveted on Wells, but a deep and primal rage blazed in his eyes.

She touched Dante’s arm and he shuddered. His muscles quivered, taut. “Don’t listen to him, Baptiste, listen to me .”

“He’s not allowed to listen to anyone else, Agent Wallace,” Wells said, looking the worse for wear, hair uncombed, face beard-shadowed, his clothes rumpled. “He won’t hear you.”

Heather met Wells’s confident gaze. “That’s what Johanna Moore thought too.”

Wells’s confidence dimmed a notch. He nodded. “Point taken.” He pressed the knife a little deeper into Annie’s throat. She held still, clearly trying not to swallow. A line of blood appeared beneath the blade. “Kindly step away from S, Agent Wallace,” Wells said.

“His name’s Dante Baptiste. Not S.”

“If you say so. Now move. Sit on the floor.”

Sliding her fingers from Dante’s arm, Heather paced aside a couple of steps, then knelt beside the sofa. She studied her sister. She looked pale and disheveled, but more than okay for a woman with a knife at her throat and a severed head in her arms, her gaze steady.

She’d never expected Annie to return, to attempt to help her. And even though it moved her that her sister had returned, Heather desperately wished she hadn’t.

“Let Annie go,” she said, voice level. “You don’t need her.”

“I don’t, true, but S will need her blood sooner or later.” Wells looked past Heather to the living room.

She glanced over her shoulder. Lyons had pulled the spear from his twin’s body and tossed its bloodied length to the floor. He cradled Athena/Hades in his lap, rocking back and forth. “Nonononono,” he whispered over and over, his voice raw and broken.

As raw and broken as Dante’s voice had sounded while the twins had tortured him. Any sympathy Heather might’ve felt shriveled in the heat of her anger. A muscle flexed in her jaw and she looked away.

She wasn’t sure she liked what she was feeling, but she’d have to deal with that later. Right now, she couldn’t, wouldn’t let Wells use Dante.

With Wells’s attention focused on his grieving son, Heather slipped her hands underneath the sofa. She groped along the carpet for the thing she’d glimpsed beneath the sofa when Dante had been feeding.

A syringe.

Heather’s fingers bumped against a smooth, cylindrical shape. Curling her hand around it, she pulled it free.

“Thank you for bringing Wallace home, Alexander,” Wells said. “I’ll enjoy studying her to see what changes S made when he healed her.”