Adrian Phoenix - In the Blood

“Who rules Gehenna?” Lucien asked, fearing he knew the answer.

“Gabriel.”

So, Loki had lied. Not surprising in itself, but what chilled Lucien’s blood was why. Loki had suggested they bind the creawdwr —Dante—together, suggested that Lucien could once again rule Gehenna. He now suspected that Loki had hoped to overthrow Gabriel by manipulating Lucien’s ambitions, ambitions that had died with Yahweh. But Loki being Loki simply had not known how to speak the truth.

Had Lucien turned an ally to stone?

Beyond the new aurora borealis, a song trilled into the night, a trill answered ten, twenty, thirty times. Black wings and gold wings blurred through the dancing curves of light as Elohim swarmed from the tear between worlds.

“I hope you’ve kept your talons sharp, my foolish, stubborn cydymaith .”

Sudden calm buoyed Lucien. He’d been waiting for this moment for so long that now it had arrived, he felt relieved. He quickly closed his link to Dante and sealed it against any pushes from his child. He considered severing it, but feared what it might do to them both.

“I’ve always kept my talons sharp,” he said, then met the first aingeal head-on, talons slashing. Lilith fought at his side, as though she belonged there, as though all the centuries apart had never happened, her wings lashing the sky and her talons flinging dark blood into the night.

As though she believed escape were possible.

On I-5 between Portland and Salem, OR

March 22

SHANNON WALLACE DIED BENEATH the sheltering branches of an oak tree, her blood soaking into the pine-needled ground like rain on a hot summer day. She died in the dark without a struggle. She died drunk. And she died looking into the face of her killer.

Of that, Heather Wallace felt sure.

Twigs and dead leaves crunched beneath her Skechers as she stepped through the underbrush. She stopped beside a lichen-laced oak and stood at the spot where her mother’s body had been discovered two decades earlier.

Memories whirled like pinwheels in Heather’s mind, the revolving images blurring from one into another.

Whirl: Mom laughing. A smile lights her face and the air shimmers around her like a summer dawn. Rose incense burns in the little brass holder .

Whirl: Mom silent and focused as she cleans the house, scrubbing every surface with cleanser and stiff-bristled brushes. For hours and hours. For days.

Whirl: The raw sound of Mom’s rage. The crash and crack of thrown dishes, stoneware shrapnel. The heavy stink of cigarettes and booze .

Whirl: Mom sits at the kitchen table, elbows propped on the littered surface, her head in her hands. Her hair, uncombed and lank, spills over her knuckles. A cigarette burns in an ashtray full of stubbed-out butts. Empty brown prescription bottles roll on the table beside an empty bottle of vodka .

Whirl: Mom laughing…

Heather blinked the images away and drew in a deep breath of sun-warmed air to clear the lingering memory-smell of smoke and roses from her mind.

Shannon had been thirty when she died, mother of three, wife to FBI forensics expert James William Wallace. Heather had already outlived her by a year.

Shannon had been a woman no one had ever championed, not even her husband. The case had gone cold. Forgotten. No justice rendered. Heather wasn’t blameless either—even after she’d learned the truth about her mother’s death, it’d taken six years for her to act. And watching as Dante had spoken for the mother he’d never known.

“ Avenge your mother,” Lucien whispers as Dante’s eyes open .

Heather hoped finally to speak for her mother.

And maybe, just maybe, the truth would heal Annie.

But before Heather could help her sister or champion their murdered mother, she needed to keep herself alive. And to do that, she wanted the Bureau to see an agent so focused on her job that she voluntarily worked a cold case while on medical leave just to keep occupied, an agent who behaved as though nothing had changed in the last three weeks.

Even though everything had irrevocably changed—including herself.

Dante …

She touched the spot on her chest where the bullet had pierced her, felt the steady beat of her heart beneath her fingers. Remembered the desperate sound of Dante’s voice, his words husky and Cajun-spiced: I won’t lose you .

Heather closed her eyes and gently pushed the memory aside. Not now .

After a moment, she opened her eyes and peered into the gloom beneath the trees, inhaling the thick smells of pine, damp soil, and moss. The trees and shrubs muffled the rush of traffic on I-5. Crouching, she studied the ground, trying to imagine what Shannon had seen and felt that last night of her life. Tried to work it like any other case.

Even twenty years ago, leads in the case had dried up fast. Shannon had left the Driftwood Bar and Lounge in northeast Portland alone around 11:30 p.m. on October first. Employees and patrons were interviewed, barfly statements sifted and compared.

Shannon Wallace frequented local watering holes and often made hookups . Wasn’t thought to be too choosy, according to her drinking buddies .

The Portland PD detectives working the case at the time had believed Shannon Wallace to be a victim of a serial killer working the I-5 corridor, the Claw-Hammer Killer. The CHK preyed on prostitutes and barflies, women who generally wouldn’t be missed. Not immediately, anyway. The FBI task force hunting for the CHK had also believed Shannon a possible victim of their perp.

If that was true, then Shannon had already been championed.

Special Agent Craig Stearns, then of the Portland field office, killed the CHK—a Hillsboro carpenter named Christopher Todd Higgins—during a violent struggle while serving a search warrant shortly after Shannon’s murder.

Stearns.

Heather fixed her gaze on the green and gold leaves above her. Tried to resist the memory flip back to New Orleans. Failed.

Stearns lifts his Glock and calls Dante’s name .

Dante, hands braced against either side of the house’s open threshold, turns. Fire sparks from the Glock’s muzzle. His head snaps to the side as the bullet catches him in the temple. He stumbles, then falls. He sprawls across the threshold, half-in and half-out of the house .

Stearns strides toward Dante’s body, gun in hand. Heather bails out of the car before Collins brings it to a full stop. She runs, .38 clenched in both hands. “Drop it! ” she yells. “Don’t make me do this! ”

Stearns spares her a glance, then turns back to Dante. Aims .

She fires .

“Shit,” Heather whispered, dropping her gaze to the ground. Only three weeks had passed and the memory still cut deep. She blinked until her eyes quit burning.

According to Inferno’s MySpace page, the band was on the road, so Dante was safe—for the moment. And Stearns, her mentor, the man who’d been more of a father to her than James Wallace, was dead, buried with honors in Seattle’s Lakeview Cemetery.

She drew in a deep breath. One thing at a time, Wallace. Just one thing at a time .

A heavy thunk penetrated the green-lit silence. Car door.