A sudden burr of wings opened Lucien"s eyes. One of the chalkydri, scaled hide gleaming in the ember light, buzzed away. It fluted/chittered in a mock-wybrcathl: "The Nightbringer has a bond with the creawdwr!"The chalkydri"s fluting ended in a startled squeak. The strong flap of Elohim wings echoed from the nearest tunnel. Lucien"s heart turned to stone when white wings cut through the darkness at the tunnel"s mouth. He threw his shields back into place. The Morningstar emerged into the pit proper, the chalkydri hanging limp from his taloned hand. He dropped the scaled body into the embers. Its delicate wings sizzled on the coals, and the sickening smell of roasting flesh wafted into the air.
A smile blazed upon the Morningstar"s radiant face. "Still planting seeds of trust, my love?"
Lilith spun away, her black wings stroking through the gloom for the pale sky above. Lucien focused on keeping his bond bright enough for her to follow. He wished her fletched-arrow speed.
"I find it amusing that the slayer of one creawdwr fathers the next," the Morningstar said. "Dante, an intriguing name, but inappropriate, don"t you think? Once he"s seated upon the Chaos Seat, he"ll finally be far and safe from the h.e.l.l politely referred to as the mortal world."
White wings slashing through the reeking air, the Morningstar whirled up to Sheol"s mouth. "And he"ll be mine."
Lucien stared after him, cold to his core.
And Dante"s anhrefncathl still raged through Gehenna"s sky.
HEATHER STARED, HEART POUNDING against her ribs, as Dante lifted his glowing hands from Wells"s face. Or what used to be a face. Only smooth skin remained. And behind his absent lips, Wells"s trapped screams faded. Her stomach clenched and, swallowing hard, she looked away.
He couldn"t hold Wells"s face in his mind any more than he could his name.
Looks like he fixed that problem.
A self-destruct safeguard had been programmed into Dante. And Wells had been about to trigger it until...well, until Dante"d made sure he could never speak again.
Drawing in a deep breath, Heather returned her gaze to Dante, carefully avoiding looking at Wells. Dante absently wiped at his bleeding nose with the back of his hand, then knotted his hands into fists-fists engulfed in blue fire. Pain glimmered in his golden eyes. He stood with quick and easy grace, and looked at her.
The sight of him tore at her. Exhaustion was pooled in blue shadows beneath his eyes. And blood slicked the front of his purple PVC shirt, dripped dark onto the carpet.
"Heather," he breathed, the pain fading from his eyes. Then he stiffened, his body so tight, Heather was afraid another seizure was about to knock him to the floor. But he lifted into the air, instead, his expression startled.
"s.h.i.t!" Heather watched as Lyons floated Dante across the room. "Are you nuts? He doesn"t have control of his power!"
"Don"t have anything to lose." Lyons lowered Dante to the floor beside Athena"s white-gowned body.
Heather thought of his father"s face and thought, Yes, you do. But kept that thought to herself. Anything Dante did to Lyons, Lyons had coming. In spades.
Had coming, yes, but Dante yearned for redemption, to be free of the past. Yearned to know who and what he was. How would he ever be free if she just stepped aside and let him kill? She"d be even more guilty than him, because she truly knew better.
Dante didn"t...not yet.
"Hey," Annie whispered.
Heather looked down. Her sister was kneeling on the floor, the pocketknife previously pressed against her throat now in her fingers. She smiled. After a quick glance at Lyons, she sliced away the flex-cuffs binding Heather"s wrists.
Annie started to rise to her feet, but not wanting her to see Wells, Heather shook her head. "Keep low," she whispered.
Annie searched her eyes for a moment, then she bit her lower lip, and nodded. She crawled to the sofa, multicolored hair hanging in her face, and started cutting through the sleeping woman"s cuffs.
Rubbing her wrists, Heather glanced around the room for a weapon, found none. "Give me the knife," she told Annie.
She wouldn"t let Lyons d.a.m.n Dante. Or let Dante d.a.m.n himself.
GABRIEL DESCENDED INTO THE pit, his face lit and triumphant, his golden wings gleaming in the last of the moonlight. Wybrcathl trilled and warbled in the skies above.
"I knew you were hiding a Maker," Gabriel said. "My scouts have already left."
Lilith"s sending arrowed through Lucien"s mind: His eyes not leaving Gabriel"s smug face, Lucien sent, And that, Lucien thought, would have to be good enough.Gabriel"s tawny brows slanted down, he fluttered closer. "Samael? Who are you sending to?" He probed Lucien"s shields, flexed against them. "Who?"
Lucien flicked open the link between him and Dante, un-sealed their bond. His child"s mind burned, pain-ravaged, a concerto of fire-his shields breached or down. Grief whispered through Lucien.
Closing his eyes, Lucien sent one last thought to Dante, then severed their bond.
TELEKINETIC ENERGY BOUND DANTE in tingling ropes. He tensed his muscles, but even with his strength renewed by Caterina"s blood, he couldn"t twist free.
"She believed you could bring her back from the dead," Lyons said, his voice thick with pain, face shadowed. "She was...
is...an oracle and her vision"s always right."
"Not about this."
"If you won"t bring Athena back, then you can join her in the Underworld." Alex swung up his S&W. Aimed the muzzle at Dante"s forehead. "Your choice."
"Pull the trigger-"
The sudden thought glimmered in Dante"s mind, stroked across his fevered consciousness like a cool and soothing hand. The bond between them sprang apart as though sliced with a fire-heated blade, either end coiling away into the ether. And a part of himself unraveled as well. Pain blasted through Dante; an explosion of fire squalled through his mind, his heart, his soul, and whipped his song into a savage bonfire aria.His song burned, an inferno, chaotic and hungry.
And Dante burned with it.
f.u.c.kER HAD A h.e.l.lUVA eye and was a h.e.l.luva shot, too. Spotted me even when I was moving. Von dropped belly-down to the ground. Pine needles crunched beneath him, fragrant enough to make him sneeze.
A bullet whinged into the soil a yard to Von"s right. G.o.dd.a.m.n. f.u.c.ker had sharp ears too. Could be nightkind, could be enhanced, or just good at his job. Rain started again, drops pattering against leaves and tree trunks.
Wishing for a downpour, Von rolled to his feet, and moved. He heard a small thip behind him as a bullet notched a tree trunk. A moment later, he crested the rise. Racing past the man in a suit jacket lying down in the dirt, his eye to the scope on his tripod-steadied rifle, Von angled to a stop behind him. Lifted the Brownings.
"Hey motherf.u.c.ker. You owe me a pair of shades."
The skies opened up and rain fell hard and fast and heavy. The man froze, his mortal heart drumming louder than Von"s wished-for downpour.
So this comes true, but not my wish for a winning lottery ticket?
"Toss the rifle."
Hand trembling, the shooter flung the rifle down the hill. It crashed through the underbrush for several seconds before thudding to a stop.
Just as Von opened his mouth to ask the guy who he was working for and who he was gunning for, pain hammered against his shield-raw, primal, and soul-deep-staggering him.
"Little brother," he whispered, glancing back down the slope. Blue light spiked from the windows of the main house.
Fear laced cold around his heart. Von fired a round into the mortal"s thigh to keep him from moving too much or too far.
The man screamed between clenched teeth.
Von ran.
STILL LOCKED WITHIN LYONS"S telekinetic grip, Dante convulsed upright, head whipping, back arching, his limbs and body twisting in a violent and heart-wrenching blur of motion.
Lyons tilted his head, adjusted his aim.
Slipping up beside him, Heather punched the pocketknife blade into his side, between the ribs. Lyons gasped, but squeezed the trigger anyway, the gunfire cracking through the room like thinning winter ice. The smell of cordite curled into the air.
But his concentration had been broken. Dante hit the floor with a hard thump, his rigid body still spasming, contorting.
Heather yanked the knife free and jumped back out of reach as Lyons whirled around, gun held in both hands. "Annie, go!" she yelled.
"Maybe he"ll go to the Underworld for you," Lyons said. He fired again and Heather threw herself to the floor, rolling to her knees, then diving behind the recliner.
Dante"s seizure ended. He curled up on the carpet, shivering, his breathing rough. Spokes of blue flame wheeled around his hands, spinning out wider with every revolution.
Transforming everything they touched.
The floor rippled, shifted into a forest floor of pine-needled dirt, thick underbrush, and tiny blue wildflowers.
Heather"s adrenaline-hyped pulse jumped into overdrive. Despite the gunfire she"d heard outside, she yelled, "Annie! Get out! Go out the back door!" She leaned past the recliner and risked a glance at the sofa.
Annie, blue light reflected in her wide eyes, screamed, "What! The! f.u.c.k!"
"Just go!" The dark-haired woman was sitting up, no longer asleep. Annie grabbed her hand and yanked her to her feet. The woman flashed a look at Heather, her eyes full of wonder and blue light. "I"ll make sure she"s safe," she said, a faint European accent to her voice.
Heather shifted back around and her heart slammed into her throat. Lyons stood in front of her, his gun dead-aimed at her head. Dante had risen to his knees, his golden-eyed gaze stunned. Blood spilled from his nose and from his ear, trickling along the line of his jaw.
"Fetch my sister from the Underworld," Lyons ordered, "or I"m sending Heather down below to keep her company."
Heather locked her fingers around the knife handle and slammed the blade through one of Lyons"s Rippers, into his foot and through to the floor...earth...beneath. A strained scream escaped from between Lyons"s clenched teeth.
Leaping up, Heather shoved him as hard as she could. Lyons stumbled, arms pinwheeling for balance, tripping over thick, blue-thorned vines snaking across the floor.
Dante caught him with both glowing hands and pulled him down. Blue light whipped around Lyons, through him, shafting out from his opened mouth and shocked sea-green eyes. The gun tumbled from his hand to the dirt. It curved into a black- carapaced turtle that crawled under the recliner.
Heather backed away from the rays of light lashing around Dante and Lyons. Lyons twisted like a rope of licorice in Dante"s grasp, his arms twining around his body, his face shifting. Lyons screamed, the sound edged with blind animal rage and pain.
Energy crackled like lightning into the air, lifting the hair on Heather"s arms and head. Pressure thrummed through the house, pushed against the walls. Her ears popped, and she winced, working her jaw. The mingled smells of ozone and burning leaves and graveyard soil curled into her nostrils.
The house quaked. Trembled. Cracks zigzagged up the walls to the ceiling. Plaster dusted the air. The front window exploded in a spray of gla.s.s shrapnel-shards that morphed into a constellation of blinking, blue crystal fireflies flitting past the porch and into the night.
Dante"s song pulsed within Heather, dark and wild and heartbroken, its rhythm vibrating against her heart, within her heart.
She stared at him, unable to look away, not wanting to look away.
Dante closed his eyes and shuddered. Pain flickered across his pale face. Two blue bolts of fire spiked out from his hands; one lanced through Athena"s body, the other arrowing across the room to impale her faceless father.
Athena"s dead flesh undulated. As though boneless, her body slithered through the blue-vined underbrush to twist like hot taffy into her brother"s spiraling, stretching form. Lyons"s golden curls rippled into hay-colored fur. Athena"s gown morphed into white feathers. Fur and feathers and hot taffy flesh braided together. The twins were now a single ent.i.ty.
La.s.soed in blue flame, Wells was dragged over the top of the red-berried hedge that had once been the sofa. One slipper caught on a branch and remained behind, dangling like a sun-browned leaf. He clutched the severed head to his blood-soaked chest like a child"s bedtime plushie.
Wells entwined with his children, twirling around and into them, his flesh stretching as though elastic. The decapitated head slid up from his arms and over his featureless face like a mask. Only now the head was that of a young woman with vibrant blonde hair, taut skin, and a gaping mouth.
They rose into the air, bathed in cool, blue fire, a three-faced pillar of flesh. Arms and legs streamlined into feathered tails.
Eyes blinked open in the triune creature"s braided torso and back. Rotating mouths opened in a chorus of song: "Threeintoone..."
One of the thick wood ceiling beams cracked, jutting through the roof. Huge chunks of plaster crashed to the floor just feet in front of Heather.
The house continued to quake and shudder. With a rifle-sharp crack, another ceiling beam split and part of the ceiling collapsed across the sofa-hedge.