On the landing, she dropped into a crouch and cleared right, then turned to the left. Dante stood in a doorway, one gloved hand braced against the threshold. Heather straightened. Gargoyle candle sconces guarded the framed art lining the walls. An old-fashioned Oriental hall carpet cushioned her footsteps.
Dante didn"t move, did nothing to indicate that he heard her or knew she was there.
A thick, coppery smell filled Heather"s nostrils, a smell she knew all too well. Her gut knotted. The steady plop-plop of dripping became more distinct as she drew nearer. She stepped beside Dante, gun still held in both hands, and looked into the room.
It was worse than she could"ve imagined. Much worse.
6.
Magic and Mystery Johanna Moore stood at her office window, watching the snow fall. Snow always made her think of Christmas and of her youth; she remembered the magic and mystery of the tiny glittered windows of the Advent calendar and the surprises they revealed when opened. February in D.C. lacked magic or mystery and held only ice-slicked sidewalks and stark tree limbs.
"E is in New Orleans," she said finally.
"A coincidence," Gifford replied.
"I don"t think so," Johanna said. "And I don"t like it one bit." She turned away from the window and the snow and her memories.
Gifford sat in the plush leather chair in front of Johanna"s cherrywood desk, a frown on his face as he thumbed through the thick file in his lap. He reached a hand into his suit jacket"s inside pocket and withdrew a slim brown cigarillo.
He shook his head, his gaze still on the file. "He can"tpossibly know about S. Or Bad Seed." Flicking open his lighter, he touched flame to the cigarillo.
Johanna heard the crackle of the tobacco as it withered and burned. A sweet cherry-vanilla scent curled into the air.
"I wonder," she said, crossing to her desk. Several more files and CDs were scattered across its polished surface, all marked: TOP SECRET and RESEARCH - SPECIAL OPS ONLY.
"The last victim had met S." Johanna sat on the edge of her desk and fixed her gaze on Gifford. "And was slaughtered in the courtyard next to the club."
He looked up, gray eyes thoughtful. "Again, coincidence."
"And, again, I don"t think so. E burned S"s logo into the victim"s chest." Reaching over, Johanna plucked the cigarillo from between Gifford"s fingers. Brought it up to her lips. Inhaled.
Amus.e.m.e.nt lit Gifford"s eyes. "Maybe E is a music lover," he said. "h.e.l.l, maybe he"s a fan of Inferno.
Even serial killers have their favorite bands."
Johanna blew out a stream of scented smoke, savoring its tobacco-and-vanilla taste. She shook her head. "No. He"s communicating."
She extended the cigarillo to Gifford. He took it back from her, his fingers lingering for a moment against hers, warm and smooth.
"It scares the c.r.a.p out of me to think he might actually have an agenda."
"Communicating?" Gifford asked. He glanced down at the file in his lap again. His brows knittedtogether as he flipped through several pages. "With who?"
"I don"t know," Johanna said quietly. "S, maybe."
"If that"s the case, we don"t have to worry," Gifford said. Paper rustled. "S doesn"t knows.h.i.t , right?"
"Not after the way his memory was torn apart. No." Standing, Johanna brushed past Gifford"s knees and returned to the window.
The snow continued to fall. The sky lightened from dark gray to light gray as the dawn deepened into a winter morning. A thick white silence, like the one insulating her heart, encased the world beyond her window.
The sound of flipping paper suddenly stopped. "Blockedandfragmented ," Gifford said. "According to the history."
Johanna heard Gifford"s finger sliding from line to line in the report. "I was there, Dan, from start to finish," she said. "Torn apart isfar more accurate."
An image slipped past her guard, her silent white barricade: A slender twelve-year-old boy in a blood-spattered straitjacket suspended upside down from the ceiling, chains wrapped around his ankles. Long black hair streams past his face except for a few sweat-and-blood-dampened tendrils clinging to his forehead, his pale cheeks. He hangs motionless, the fight, rage, and grief drained from him like blood from a corpse.
His punishment ended, no one wants to bring him down - the blood-sprayed walls and the bodies crumpled on the cement floor keep them on the safe side of the steel door.
Johanna enters alone and alone stabs a hypo full of tranks into the boy"s neck. Alone, she eases the boy"s chains from the butcher"s hook and lowers him to the floor. Doped and dreaming, this beautiful vampire child, lost to the madness of p.u.b.erty.
Gathering him into her arms, she carries him to another cell. She trembles, magic and mystery pulsing once again through her veins, glittering like Christmas in her mind. The boy"s psyche is, for her, an Advent calendar; with each compartment she opens or twists or triggers, a wonderful surprise is revealed.
Johanna ran her fingers through her short-cropped hair, glancing at her faint reflection in the window.
Attractive, early thirties, blonde and blue-eyed Nordic, tall and fit. The very opposite of herpere de sang in physical appearance. But she and Ronin shared a deep hunger for knowledge. In that they were very much alike.
Weariness surged through her. She needed blood, then Sleep. She was pushing the pills" limits too far.
She could only postpone Sleep so long.
"What was done to S"s memory isn"t the problem," she said, turning to face Gifford. "E"s cross-country killing spree and the Bureau"s involvement in the case is the problem. I don"t know how, but E"s led them, more or less, straight to S."
"Do you want E stopped?" Johanna shook her head. "I"d like to keep studying his progress. But it"s making me nervous that the Bureau"s so close."
"I see," Gifford said. He leaned forward in the chair. His composed gaze met and held Johanna"s.
"What do you want done?"
Lucien sat in the darkened living room, back straight, eyes closed as he guarded those who Slept in the rooms upstairs. Slept deeply. Except for one. Dante"s Sleep-addled thoughts brushed against Lucien"s mind. He felt Dante"s struggle to remain conscious, alert. d.a.m.ned woman and her d.a.m.ned search warrant. Lucien"s fingers flexed and gripped the easy chair"s armrests. He drew in a deep breath and carefully lifted his fingers.Calm.
He knew how difficult and contrary Dante could be - the child had often tested his own considerable patience - and Wallace had simply reacted to Dante"s refusal to cooperate.
But...why did Wallace even wish to search the courtyard? What did she hope to find? And what didany of it have to do with Dante?
Lucien opened his eyes and stared into the curtained gloom. Shadows draped the sofa, bookcases, and standing lamps, hiding all color. Outside, birds twittered and sang, busy with morning tasks.
For a moment, Lucien longed to take to the air, to feel the dawn warm against his face, to warble his wybrcathl into the golden sunrise, to await the answering aria of another of the Elohim.
But hiswybrcathl needed to remain unvoiced. The child he guarded needed to remain hidden from the Elohim, undiscovered. Lucien touched the pendant hanging at his throat. Ran his fingers along the edges of the X, the metal smooth and warm.
The rune for partnership - given to him four years before by Dante, a warm and unexpected token of their friendship. Lucien"s fingers tightened around the pendant. The rough edges bit into his flesh. He bowed his head and closed his eyes. Remembered the wild, roughanhrefncathl he"d answered five years before...remembered landing on a wharf beside the Mississippi River.
A youth in worn leather pants, scuffed-up boots, and a T-shirt sits cross-legged on the wharf"s warped and weathered wood, something wriggling between his hands caught in a bluish glow.
Lucien lands lightly on the wharf, his wings expanding in a last flutter of air before folding behind him.
Water laps and splashes against the wharf pilings. The strong odor of fish, muddy water, and rank mud layers the air.
The youth doesn"t look up. Black hair hides his face, his head bowed as he concentrates on the thing squirming in his hands.
Lucien steps forward, the wood still sun-warm against his bare feet. Pain and power radiate from the youth, sharp and spiky and fevered. Blood drips from his nose and splashes onto the back of his hand.
The blue light glowing from the youth"s hands, the chaos song swirling up from him, anguished and yearning and heartbroken - draw Lucien closer. His muscles tighten; fire burns through his veins. Thelast time he saw that blue glow or heard ananhrefncathlwas thousands of years ago from a creawdwr now long dead.
Has anotherfinallybeen born? Hidden in the mortal world?
Lucien"s wings tuck into their pouches on his back as he crouches in front of the youth. Pain pierces him.
Drawing his shields tight, Lucien flexes away the youth"s unwanted agony.
"Child."
The night-haired youth doesn"t respond. His hands open, trembling, and the blue glow fades, then vanishes, like a snuffed flame. The thing he held scampers away, bright black eyes gleaming in the moonlight.
A wharf rat, Lucien realizes in surprise. Or, at least whatusedto be a wharf rat. The former rat scurries to the edge of the wharf and off. Its many pairs of translucent and delicate dragonfly-like wings lift it uncertainly into the night. It flies away.
Forever altered by acreawdwr"s touch.
"Child," Lucien says again, and tips the youth"s face up with a taloned finger.
He is too stunned by recognition - the dark, intelligent eyes, the cheekbones, the curve of the lips - to even fend the boy off as he uncoils from the wharf. Lucien falls back as the boy wraps strong, slender arms around him and sinks his fangs into Lucien"s throat.
Heat radiates from the boy as he gulps down Lucien"s blood, heat and hunger and a deep, deep grief.
Lucien holds him for a moment, allowing him to feed, allowing the youth to pin him to the wharf"s old wood with a leather-clad thigh. He smells of smoky autumn fires and November frost, sharp and clean and intoxicating. The youth"s pain and near madness batters at Lucien"s shields like an unrelenting sledgehammer.
He looks just like her.
Not possible.
Her son...
Gently, Lucien breaks the boy"s steel-muscled grip and rests a hand against his fevered temple. He pours healing energy into the boy, dousing the fire ravaging his mind and easing him into sleep. The youth slumps against Lucien, his bloodied face smearing a red trail along Lucien"s shoulder and chest.
Lucien pushes aside the tangled black hair and gazes into the boy"s white face. He stares in wonder.
Trails a finger along the boy"s jawline. Pushes his lip up and looks at the slender fangs. Cold seeps into Lucien.
Where is his mother?
Genevieve...
Lucien opened his eyes, fingers still locked around his pendant. So much unknown and unsaid. Heshould"ve told Dante the truth when they met. Now he feared it was too late. The moment had long pa.s.sed. Sighing, Lucien released the pendant with a final caress.
He listened to the still house - the tick-tock of the pendulum clock in the hall, the creak of old wood and old foundations, the sunny buzz of life beyond the shaded windows.
Lucien relaxed into the easy chair, allowing himself to doze/ meditate. Several minutes pa.s.sed. A half hour. The rosy light of dawn faded to gray. The curtains darkened. Rain clicked against the roof tiles, spattered the stone walk.
A p.r.i.c.kle of rage, the deep ache of an old hurt reopened, roused Lucien. His head lifted. Apprehension twisted like barbed wire around the length of his spine.
His child no longer struggled with Sleep. He was wide-awake.
7.
Closer than She"d Ever Been Her nude body lay face-up on the rumpled bed, her hands cuffed to the bedposts, legs spread, a black stocking wrapped and knotted around her throat. Stab wounds punctured her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and stomach.
Long dark hair partially veiled her face, which was turned toward the door. Blood and foam flecked her lips and her tongue protruded slightly. Mascara and eyeliner and dried tears streaked her face. Her half-lidded gaze seemed to stare straight at Heather.
Carved into each milky-white inner thigh was the anarchy symbol.
Blood dripped onto the carpet. Heather"s gaze followed the blood up to the soaked sheets, then up blood-streaked forearms to the vertically slit wrists. Her vision narrowed down to the falling drops of blood.Just died. Minutes? A half hour - tops?
On the wall behind the bed, a message had been scrawled in blood, the uneven, slanting letters smeared across most of the wall.
"Gina," Dante whispered.
Heather looked at him sharply. "Youknew her?"
Dante nodded, disbelief, shock, and something Heather couldn"t quite name shadowing his face. He fumbled for the sungla.s.ses on top of his head, slipped them on.
Shifting her .38 to her left hand, Heather retrieved her cell phone from her purse and thumbed in the number for the Eighth District. "Agent Wallace," she said into the phone. "There"s been a homicide at 666 St. Peter. Club h.e.l.l."
Switching off the phone, Heather slid it back into her purse, her gaze fixed on the rain-damp curtains beside the open French windows.
Maybe the killer had left as they"d entered the club. Or - Heather shoved Dante against the door frame. "Stay there."
Or maybe he"d never had the chance.
.38 extended in both hands, Heather crossed the room, edging past the bed, to the French windows.
Stepping out onto the balcony, she slid low and to the left, gun aimed at the opposite end of the rain-slick balcony. Empty. She leaned against the black iron railing, gun lowered.
She looked down into the street below. A few preMardi Gras revelers staggered along the wet sidewalk. Laughter drifted up like smoke.