Beneath the Skin (23 page)

Prejean lowered his hand and knotted both into fists. His gaze locked with Gillespie's. The bloodsucker's coiled muscles unwound. Gillespie pulled the trigger and kept pulling, but Prejean was gone.

A semi hauling steel and cruising at the speed of light slammed into Gillespie, bulldozed him down to the pavement. Blue light swallowed his vision as the back of his skull bounced against the blacktop. The air exploded from his lungs and his Glock flew from his grasp.

Pain and dizziness ricocheted from one side of his skull to the other, banging back and forth, back and forth, in an ever-diminishing cycle.

Weight pressed down on his abdomen, something--knees?--jabbed into his ribs on both sides. Gillespie gasped for air, sucking in the smells of burning leaves and early morning frost. Heat radiated against him, and his survival instincts jerked his arms up and over his throat as his stunned mind belatedly realized that a bloodsucker had flattened him, not a steel-hauling semi.

And not just any bloodsucker, but a designer monster called Dante Prejean.

Hot hands seized Gillespie's forearms and wrenched them away from his throat. His vision cleared in time to look up into Prejean's eyes--only a sliver of red-slashed dark brown circled the dilated pupils. Gold light flared in their hungry depths.

What the ... ?

Gillespie squirmed and twitched, struggling to bring his knee up in the hope he could jerk free of the vamp's iron grip and yank his backup weapon free from his ankle holster.

But a very quiet, calm, and resigned part of him knew it didn't matter. It was too late. Had been too late from the moment he'd locked gazes with Prejean.

He was going to die and not in a good way.

"Hey, Papa, my turn, yeah?" Prejean said. Blood trickled from one nostril.
"J'ai faim,
motherfucker." His pale, beautiful face dipped for Gillespie's throat, lips parting and revealing his sharp, white fangs.

Papa?
Was the bloodsucker confused or just toying with him?

Heated lips touched Gillespie's throat. Twin stabs of pain followed. He renewed his struggle, but couldn't yank his arms free of Prejean's steel-fingered hold or roll free of his pinning knees. And his jackhammering, frantic heart would only feed his life away faster.

Gillespie went still.

PAIN JABBED DANTE'S temples, white-hot and ragged. His vision fractured. Pain chiseled away at the boundary between
then
and
now.
Wasps droned. Burrowed under his skin.

Don't put nuthin' in his mouth. Boy bites.

No escape for you, sweetie.

Prejean, stay right where you are. Don't move
.

The black detective or cop or secret fucking agent twisted underneath Dante, struggling to roll free, sweat beading his face. Behind his gold-rimmed glasses, his eyes narrowed with effort. Probably the hardest workout the fucker'd had in years./
Papa squirms under Dante like a huge fucking worm. The bastard's heartbeat thunders in Dante's ears, a primal and compelling sound, drumming up his hunger, his rage from deep within.

"Hey, Papa, my turn, yeah?
J'ai faim,
motherfucker."

The cop kicked and pounded and panted./
Papa's heels drum against the dining room floor as blood spurts from his slashed throat. Disbelief widens his eyes.

Just as Dante's lips touched Papa's whiskery throat, his fangs piercing the skin, a woman's scream--raw and anguished--scraped away all other sound. "My baby!"

Dante's heart skipped a beat. He lifted his head from Papa's bleeding throat, tore himself away from its hot, intoxicating smell--sweet berries spiced with the juniper-bitter taste of adrenaline--and twisted around.

An Asian woman knelt on the sidewalk in front of room 10's open door, glass from a bullet-shattered window surrounding her. She clutched a little girl in jeans and a purple sweater against her chest. Rivulets of blood streamed from the back of the girl's head, glistening in her long, black hair. Her mother wailed, blood smeared on her hands, and soaking into her khaki slacks.

Time paused, a caught breath, as the woman's cry froze everyone in the parking lot in place. Gunfire stopped. Shouts and yelled orders ceased--except one, issued by an unfamiliar male voice: "Call 911!"

Dante jumped to his feet and
moved
across the parking lot, past the SUV, and the redhead crouched in front of it, gun in her hands. Dropping to his knees in front of the sobbing woman, he said, "Give her to me."

"She's not breathing," the woman choked out. "Can you help her?"

No one is going to save you. Ever. You can only save yourself.

Liar, liar, goddamned fucking liar.

"Give her to me," Dante repeated, voice soft. "I'll do everything I can." Pain pulsed at his temples. "Ain't gonna let 'em have her."

The thick smell of blood filled his nostrils, hitting him like an open-handed slap to the face. Hunger scraped through him. Shivering, he denied it. Pushed it down into the wasp-crawling depths below.

The woman stared at him for a moment, desperation brimming in her tear-reddened eyes, then glanced down at her daughter. She whispered, "Dear God, if you can do anything, anything at all, help her, please."

Dante scooped the girl's limp body into his arms. Glass crunched underneath him as he sat cross-legged on the sidewalk, cradling the girl in his lap. Her almond-shaped jade-green eyes stared up at the stars, empty, unseeing. Blood trickled from a hole in her forehead.

She was silent, still. No heartbeat. No breath. All rhythm gone.

Chloe lies on the concrete floor, snow-angeled in a pool of blood.

It's too late, Dante-angel.

"Nah, it ain't. I won't let it be," Dante said, stroking a finger along one blood-soaked lock of hair.
"J'su ici,
shhh." He caught a whiff of cinnamon, cloves, and freezer-frosted ice, a phantom scent.

You won't save her, you know. You'll fail.

Yeah, you know what? Fuck you.

Electricity prickled through Dante. Crackled along his fingers. His song swept up from his heart, a dark and intricate aria, dancing in time to the blue flames flickering around his hands--one of which he rested on the girl's chest, above her ash-filled heart. Blue sparks skipped along her Hannah Montana Comeback Tour sweater.

Closing his eyes, he plucked at the dying DNA refrain within her; strummed the fretted fingerboard of her escaping essence, and reeled it back inside with a burning glissando--rearranging, shaping, composing.

Bowing his head, Dante touched his lips to the girl's, breathed blue fire into her lungs. Molten music flowed into and illuminated the dark chambers of her heart and swirled among the ashes, a fiery and pulsating rhythm.

He imagined her eyes bright and warm, imagined her hair moonlit and clean, imagined her giggling, a plushie orca tucked under her arm.

Let me go, Dante-angel.

The past uncoiled, then played back in reverse.

Dante crawls away from Chloe, the knees of his jeans dry. The blood that's smeared and sticky on his hands, his fingers, and beneath his sharp, sharp nails belongs only to the ass-holes sprawled dead on the concrete floor.

Orem floats up from the concrete, the plushie orca's fur no longer stained with blood but clean-clean-clean, and snuggles into Chloe's hand again.

The pool of blood surrounding Chloe glides up from the cold floor, beads up and rolls along her skin, trickles away from her hair, all of it pouring back into her slashed throat. The wound zips shut, never was.

Dante's sharp, sharp fingernails never touch Chloe's soft throat. Color blossoms in her cheeks, brightens the freckles
spilled across her nose. She sits up, her blue eyes wide and scared, but no longer empty.

Dante grabs her and hugs her tight against him. She's in his arms, warm and alive. It doesn't happen; he doesn't kill her. It never happens and never would.

Pain brass-knuckled against Dante's mind. His breath caught in his throat, rough. His song splintered, then scattered, the complex arrangement not quite complete.

You'll fail.

Heart hammering against his ribs, Dante kissed Chloe's forehead. He tasted blood, felt it sticky against his lips. Hunger stirred, hunger once again denied. He breathed in the sweet scent of strawberries and soap.

"Wake up, princess," he whispered.

A CHILL RIPPLED ALONG Heather's spine and iced her from the inside out as music, jagged and discordant, prickled against her healed heart for a pulse-pounding moment, then vanished. She stared at the child in Dante's arms.

Dear God ...

The girl's eyes focused on Dante, no longer empty or unseeing, and no longer jade green, but blue. Long red hair fluttered beside her now-freckled face. Drying blood streaked her new fair skin, but Heather had no doubts that the wounds in the girl's forehead and the back of her skull had healed.

"My name's Violet, not Princess," the little girl said.

Dante lifted his head and shook his hair back from his face. A smile tilted his lips. "Violet? Yeah?
T'es sur de sa?
That don't sound right,
chere."

"It's right, just ask my mama. Are you an angel?" She touched a finger to Dante's pale face. Awe lit her sleepy blue gaze. "Your eyes are like gold stars."

"Ain't no angel,
p'tite."

"Uh-
huh,
you are too. Why're your wings black? You a nighttime angel?"

"Ain't got wings, princess." Dante paused, his dark brows slanting down, his expression perplexed. "I'm ... nightkind."

"Nuh-uh, you're an angel," Violet declared. She yawned. Her eyes shuttered closed. "Pretty angel ..."

Dread settled in Heather's belly like a bucket of bricks. She doubted Dante was even aware of what he'd done. The taut lines of his body, of his jaw, the sweat beading his forehead, all shouted pain. His words and voice and actions said something else altogether: he was lost in the past.

He's fighting damned hard to keep himself here and now and with us. But ...

Not even twenty-four hours had passed since Lyons and his sister had tried to torture their way past the programming their father had implanted in Dante's mind, had tried to shove together the fragments of his broken and buried memories.

Not even twenty-four hours since he'd lost Lucien.

I think he's had all he can take, doll. Heart and mind.

He needs a safe place. And time to heal.

But we're fresh outta time.

Violet's mother, still kneeling on the sidewalk and surrounded by blood spatter and glass shards, stared at Dante, her dark eyes wide with horror and shock, both hands pressed against her mouth.

Heather glanced up and saw the same look of stunned disbelief on most of the faces of the people--agents in grimy yellow jumpsuits, staring motel guests--scattered across the motel parking lot and sidewalk. Silence curled through the cordite-smoked air.

Snugging her Browning into the back of her jeans, the barrel hot against her skin, Heather knelt beside Dante, just out of arm's reach. Blue flames still flickered and snapped around his hands.

"Baptiste," she said softly. "You hear me?"

He shuddered, blood trickling from his nose, then nodded.
"Oui, cherie,
I hear you." He kept his gaze on Violet.

"She's alive and breathing now, Baptiste. You need to turn off the magic."

Dante squeezed his eyes shut. "Focus," he muttered. "Fucking
focus."

Dropping her hands from her mouth, Violet's mother whispered, "Oh my God. Oh dear God," her voice rising in volume with each word. "What have you
done
to her? You changed her! You
changed
her!
Give her to me!"

Panic burned through Heather when she saw the woman lean forward and realized she intended to snatch her daughter away from Dante--from his glowing blue grasp.

"Stop!"
she shouted. The woman instinctively froze, her hands still lifted. Her gaze flicked over to Heather. "If you touch him, he might change you too."

Fear flashed across the woman's face and she pulled her hands back, knotting them together on her thighs. "I want my daughter back," she said, her voice quavering. "I want her back right now."

"I'm working on that," Heather said, shifting her attention back to Dante and the little girl curled up in his lap.

She wished she could move closer to him, touch him, connect with him in a deeper, more immediate way than just speaking. She worried that words alone wouldn't be enough. But as long as blue fire flared around his hands, she couldn't risk it.

"You still listening, Baptiste? We're at a motel in Damascus--"

"Put the child down now!"

The agent that Dante had knocked down stood a couple of yards away, his face ashen and his glasses askew. Blood trickled along one side of his throat. He held his gun in both hands--
shaking
hands--the barrel aimed at Dante's head.

"Back the fuck off, asshole," Von growled. "You ain't helping the situation. Let the lady do her thing."

A muscle ticked in the agent's jaw, but he didn't say anything else. His gun, however, remained aimed at Dante's head.

"Keep talking, doll."

Heather drew in a steadying breath. "We're in Damascus, Oregon, Dante. You, me, Von, and Annie, and we're headed home. The girl you're holding is
not
Chloe. Your princess died eleven years ago."

"Eleven ... ? No, it just happened," Dante said, his eyes still closed. Blood from his nose streaked a dark and glistening trail down his lips and chin. "But I rewound everything, took it all back. Chloe's safe. Orem too."

Heather stared at Dante, another bucketful of bricks dropping into her belly. Dante wasn't just
remembering
horrific bits of his past, he was
reliving
them. Tears stung her eyes and she blinked them away.