Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

One broke away from the others, a male with a flowing mane of red hair, the moist air steaming against his bare chest. His golden wings cut through the night with strength and precision as he soared down to skim the tops of the trees, then angled back up into the sky in a graceful pirouette of wings and body; a breathtaking aerial ballet repeated by each, one after the other. And they sang; a choir of crystal voices chiming and pealing through the night.

Like a courtship ritual, Heather thought.

The Fallen circled above Dante.

“They’re calling to him,” she said, pulse hammering through her veins.

“They can’t have him,” Von growled. “C’mon, doll.”

“Stay here,” she said to Annie. Heather caught a whiff of frost and leather, then felt a muscle-corded arm loop around her waist. Von held her close as they moved .

She heard thudding footsteps far behind and knew Annie followed. Of course. She never listened. That was her little sister. She had a feeling Cortini also followed.

Von breezed to a stop ten yards from Dante. “Keep back, doll,” he murmured.

Heather drew in a sharp breath as spears of blue light spiked out from around Dante, stabbing into the night. The air prickled with power. His pale face was tipped up to the sky and the fallen angels wheeling above him.

One descended, black wings kiting him down to the mist-shrouded ground. His wings flared once, then folded behind him, his red kilt swirling like silk around his hips. He bowed to Dante, then dropped to his knees in the wet grass, strands of his long champagne-pale hair lifting on the breeze.

“We’ve come to help you home, young Maker,” he said, his words clear and respectful. “To guide you to Gehenna and your rightful place upon the Chaos Seat.”

Dante lowered his head, his black hair beaded with iridescent pearls of rain. He leveled his burning and golden-eyed gaze on the flaxen-haired Fallen. “Gehenna?”

The fallen angel stared, lips parting. “Ah! So beautiful, little creawdwr !”

The winged woman standing beneath the trees behind Dante stepped forward and whispered into his ear. Dante listened, wiping absently at his bleeding nose with the back of one glowing hand.

A deep pang of sympathy pierced Heather. Can’t they see how much he’s hurting? She started forward, intending to stand at his side. A steel-fingered hand latched onto her shoulder and jerked her back.

“No,” Von hissed. “Too dangerous.”

“I don’t care. Let me go.”

The nomad shook his head. “Forget it, doll. Dante’d never forgive me if anything happened to you.”

“And I’ll never forgive you if anything more happens to him. Dammit! Let go!” But Von kept a tight and hard grip on her shoulder. She realized with frustration that she wasn’t going anywhere until he allowed it.

Several other Fallen swooped down to the ground and landed. Black wings and gold wings fluttered, flinging away moisture, then closed. Blue and black and purple and red kilts and gowns settled against limbs. Gold and silver torcs glinted with tiny slivers of captured moonlight.

One by one, they approached Dante crooning, “Douse the fire, young one. Douse the fire and silence your song so that we may help you. Guide you. Beautiful little creawdwr, we will take you home.”

“Did you kill him?” Dante said, fury lighting his face, seething in his husky voice. His gaze skipped from face to face. “Did you? Or you?”

The Fallen looked at one another, expressions bewildered. “Kill who, little creawdwr ?” one questioned. His gaze shifted to the Fallen female behind Dante. “Perhaps the Lady Lilith has misinformed—”

“Lucien. My father.”

Von sucked in a breath. Dismay shadowed his face. “That’s what I felt. A broken bond.”

“De Noir, dead?” Heather whispered.

“We don’t know this Lucien, your father,” the champagne-haired Fallen said, rising to his feet. “The Lord Gabriel and the Morningstar sent us—”

Dante slammed his hands against the fallen angel’s shoulders, shoved him back a step. “T’a menti,” he snarled. “Liar, liar, goddamned fucking liar !”

“Uh-oh.” Von’s hand slid from Heather’s shoulder to her bicep and he quickly backed them both up.

Blue light starred out from around Dante, shafting into the aurora-glimmering air and into the Fallen, those on the ground and those still in the sky. Heather smelled ozone. Electricity crackled through her hair and goosebumped her skin. She grabbed ahold of Von’s arm.

A spear of blue light pierced the fallen angel Dante had shoved. The angel’s mouth opened in shock, then fear tremored across his face as blue flames lit him up from within, turning his skin translucent. The light flickered out. A stone statue stood on the wet grass beneath the evergreens, stone wings half-opened, features terrified, kilt frozen in motion around the hips.

“Dante, shit,” Heather breathed. Pain and loss etched his beautiful face. His fury had swallowed him whole.

Screams and panicked trilling rang beneath the trees and in the sky.

Blue rays spiked into the fleeing Fallen, one by one. And turned them to stone. Those winging frantically through the air plummeted to the ground, those on the ground, kneeling or bowing or standing, remained there. All were transformed into statues of exquisite detail and captured motion—tendrils of hair lifted into the air, bodies half-twisted, faces averted, hands raised—in gleaming white, blue-edged stone.

The aurora vanished. Silence wound thick through the woods like river mist.

Dante spun around and faced the Fallen female. Her golden eyes were wide, her hands at her mouth. “You ain’t binding me, either,” he said, voice strained.

“I have no desire to bind you, Dante,” she said, lowering her hands. “I still need to hide you before others come. Your father sent me to keep you safe. To teach you what it means to be a creawdwr —”

“He woulda told me about you!”

“He couldn’t!” she cried. “He was afraid they’d find you through him!”

Dante’s black hair snaked into the air, merged with the night. “Liar,” he whispered. “Lucien warned me…”

She fell to her knees in the grass. “Please, little Maker, my daughter needs me,” she said, desperation stark on her face. “I couldn’t keep her safe, but with your—”

“He fucking warned me.”

A rope of blue fire snaked around the black-haired woman. Her wings curved forward and she closed her eyes, her hands clenched in her lap. Caught within glimmering blue coils, she morphed from flesh to stone, her long hair a white curtain framing her bowed head.

Light continued to whip around Dante and his pale, grief-stricken face burned with both rage and ecstasy. His song poured into Heather, brimming with wild, searing chords and pounding rhythm; each beautiful note vibrated into her heart.

She stumbled against Von, clutching at him for balance. He slipped an arm around her as Dante’s haunting and powerful song rang from her heart to his and back, rippling within her in ever-widening circles.

And Dante’s triune beast sang a layered refrain: Holyholyholy …

Eyes closed, face rapt, Dante funneled a fountain of blue fire into one spot—the remains of the main house. Geysers of dirt spumed into the sky. The ground rolled and quaked, spasmed. Split open.