Adrian Phoenix - Beneath the Skin

“Stick together? Are you fucking nuts ?” Annie laughed, the sound tight and incredulous. “You saw what Dante did, right? You saw what he made … saw him knock those fucking … angels from the sky, right? And turn them to stone?”

“I saw,” Heather said quietly. She’d felt it too, as his furious song had pulsed between them, heart to heart, wild and dark and powerful, rippling into her core.

“Then why aren’t we running the hell away from him?”

“He sacrificed himself for you,” Heather said, holding up one hand and extending her index finger. “He saved my life.” Extended a second finger. “Now he needs us.” A third finger. “Reasons enough?”

Annie’s mouth opened, then closed. She looked away, the line of her jaw tight. Her hands knotted into fists. “He’s a fucking vampire,” she grated. “So’s Von. And that Caterina chick is a freaking assassin—one who said she was sent to kill you, by the way. They don’t need us.”

“Dante does.” Heather’s thoughts flipped back to what she’d been forced to witness, wrists flex-cuffed together, not even an hour ago, as Lyons and his demented twin had tried to pry open Dante’s fragmented and hidden memories.

Dante falls silent when the seizure ripples the length of his body. His muscles lock, his back arches, and his limbs twist. His head whips back and forth, a blur. Blood flings into the air from his nose, his mouth, his pierced eyelids. The twins push Dante onto the floor and allow the seizure to have its way with him.

Athena kneels on the blood-flecked carpet beside Dante’s convulsing body and whispers to him: Rememberandrememberandrememberandremember …

The seizure ends and Dante curls up on the floor, dazed and trembling, sweat-damp black hair clinging to his forehead and cheek.

Lyons floats Dante up into the air and back onto the sofa. He bends over Dante with a washrag and wipes the blood from his face. And the process starts all over again.

And each seizure is worse than the one before.

Heather shoved the memory away, throat tight. “Lyons and his sister just tortured Dante for hours, Annie. You heard his screams.”

Annie swallowed hard and looked up into the dawn-edged sky, the deep rose line streaking from behind the hills lighting her face. “Aren’t you scared of him?”

“No, I trust him,” Heather said, joining her sister in front of the Trans Am. “But his power—his magic, his gifts, whatever you want to call it— that scares me.”

“How can he do those things? What the fuck is he?”

“I’ll tell you what I know, I promise,” Heather said. “But right now, I need you to get your butt inside.”

Annie finally looked at Heather. Exhaustion shadowed her face, pooled dark in her eyes. She bit her lower lip and looked for a second so much like she had when she was little that Heather’s heart went out to her. Annie-Bunny.

Pushing her hands through her wet blue/purple/black-dyed hair, Annie released her breath in a long sigh. “Fuck,” she said. “Okay.” She bent and looped a hand through the gym bag’s strap, then straightened. Snatching the keycard from Heather’s hand, she opened the door and stalked into the room. She headed straight for the bathroom.

Heather closed the motel room door, latched the lock, and hooked the little golden door chain in place. The bathroom door slammed shut, then the bathroom fan whirred into muffled action. Heather’s muscles knotted even tighter. She rested her forehead against the door.

Keep it together. Just one thing at a time.

She drew in a deep breath and immediately regretted it. The room stank of cherry blossom room freshener and, just underneath, the sour-milk odor of mildew.

“She going to be a problem?” Cortini’s voice, laced with Old World charm, turned Heather around. The Shadow Branch assassin sat perched on the plump arm of the room’s only easy chair, one arm slung casually along its vinyl top.

“No. And even if she was a problem, she’d be mine to deal with. Not yours. Are we clear?”

The gloom made it difficult to read Cortini’s expression. Early thirties, Heather estimated, possibly older, but very well-kept if so. Her slim, boyish body was relaxed, but coiled, ready to run, fight, or kill. Even in her wet black sweater and black jeans, her shoulder-length dark hair rain-plastered to her skull, she managed to look unruffled. Deadly.

“We’re clear,” Cortini murmured.

“Glad to hear it.”

“Me too,” Von tossed in. “Annie ain’t your concern, Cortini.”

Cortini’s gaze cut to the nomad. “Llygad,” she murmured, nodding in acknowledgment.

Von had eased Dante onto the double bed farthest from the curtained window. He finished pulling Dante’s boots off and stood them together on the floor at the foot of the bed. A blur of movement, then Dante’s bloodied and ripped hoodie and PVC shirt ended up on the floor beside his boots.

Cold fingers wrapped around Heather’s heart when she saw the healing bullet wound in Dante’s chest and thought of Rodriguez—the man who’d shot him in a desperate struggle to save his own life—sprawled on the floor, his throat bloodied and ruined. Thought of Rodriguez’s daughter, Brisia, who would mourn him.

Where’s my dad?

Von’s fingers skipped over the purple and blue bruise stretched across the left side of Dante’s rib cage. “Musta happened when the goddamned house exploded.”

“Or during a seizure,” Heather said, joining the nomad at the bed.

“Yeah, maybe.” Von gently rolled Dante onto his side, his fingers sliding along the pale skin, flakes of dried blood falling onto the sheets from the healing spear puncture in his back. “Were they using him for target practice or something?” the nomad growled.

“The or something option,” Heather replied. “Lyons’s sister stabbed Dante when he was helping Annie escape.”

“The sister Lyons wanted Dante to heal?”

Heather nodded. “Yeah, well, apparently she didn’t feel the same way.”

Von shook his head, his face grim. He eased Dante onto his back again, then unbuckled his belt. He glanced at Heather. Nodded at Dante’s leather pants. “He got anything on under these, doll?”

“No.”

Von snorted. “Why ain’t I surprised? Well then, let’s leave ’em on in case he has another seizure. The leather ain’t all that wet and, hell, if it was me, I’d hope someone would safeguard my modesty if I was too unconscious to do it myself. If I had any modesty to safeguard, that is.” He brushed damp tendrils of black hair from Dante’s pale face. “Sleep tight, little brother,” he said. He straightened, then swayed. “Whoa.”

“You okay?” Heather asked.

“Yeah, doll. Just Sleep coming.” Von looked her up and down, his green eyes Sleep-dilated. “What ’bout you? Boy was drumming you hard during that last seizure in the car. You should get your pants off,” he said, yawning.

As Heather opened her mouth to protest, he held up a placating hand, palm out, while he finished his yawn—a jaw-stretching one that revealed his fangs, his molars, and even his tonsils. “That didn’t come out quite right, doll. I meant so I could see how much damage Dante did to you.”

Heather pushed her wet hair back from her face, struggling not to smile. “Just bruises, doofus, and I think I’ll keep my pants on, thanks.”

“Just what every man wants to hear.”

The chains on Von’s leather jacket jingled as he shrugged the jacket off, revealing the double shoulder holster strapped on over his black, button-down shirt and the butts of his Brownings tucked into them. He undressed quickly, stripping down to damp royal blue boxers.