Beneath the Skin (27 page)

<
You showed faces frozen in many different expressions--some ecstatic, others surprised, disbelieving, afraid. You think these fallen angels were all caught off-guard but for one, yes?
>

<
Yes.
>

Merri's thoughts flipped back to the angel kneeling among the trees, knowing her
mere de sang
would receive the image.

The fallen angel's wings curve forward as if in an attempt to shelter herself, her eyes closed, her hands clenched into fists in her lap. A supplicant for mercy unreceived.

<
She knew what was coming and why,
> Galiana sent.

Merri felt the heat of provocative possibilities simmering in her
mere de sang's
mind. <
Why there?
> Merri sent. <
Why did the Fallen show up in Damascus, Oregon, of all places? Who or what turned them to stone and arranged them around a newly formed cave?
>

<
Who took you to Damascus? Who were you seeking?
>

<
A couple of mortals and a vampire.
>

<
Research their histories. Maybe one of them is the key to this mystery. But please, Merri-girl, be cautious. I have a suspicion that events beyond the scope of mortals or even vampires might be unfolding.
>

Uneasiness snaked through Merri, coiled cold in her belly. She sat up. <
Beyond the scope of vampires? What the hell does that mean?
>

<
I need to speak to the
llygaid
and look into this more. Research those histories like I asked and, Merri-girl?
>

<
Yeah?
>

<
Promise me you'll be careful.
>

With Merri's promise, the conversation ended. She stubbed her cigarette out in the bottom of the metallic trash basket beside the bed. She rose to her feet and her vision grayed. She sat down on the bed again, the springs only giving slightly beneath her, and lowered her head.

Damned stay-awake pills. It'd take several nights of natural Sleep before she was truly back on her game again. After a moment, Merri eased back onto her feet. Her vision remained clear. An excellent sign.

Rummaging through her overnight bag, Merri palmed the flash drive Gillespie had given them before she and Emmett had headed out for Portland, the flash drive containing all the pertinent data on the Rodriguez case and its suspects.

She'd learned quite a bit about both Wallace and Lyons, but Dante Prejean's history had been slim--frontman for Inferno, a bunch of arrests in New Orleans, all misdemeanors--so she hoped she could put a little more meat on its highly classified TSP bones tonight.

Merri tucked the flash drive into her jacket pocket. Unlocking the door, she slipped out into the empty and after-hours-quiet corridor. She looked at the door across from her own, Emmett's room. Probably in the cafeteria or snoozing. No need to bother him unless she found anything worthwhile.

Like why Gillespie had lied to her and Emmett about Prejean being enhanced.

Enhanced, my ass.

Opting for the stairs instead of the elevator to reach Prissy-Ass Purcell's office two levels down, Merri
moved
down the corridor for the door marked EXIT/STAIRS at its end. She hit the door's bar and breezed down the stairs, a blur on the security cameras stationed at each exit landing.

Yanking open the door on level five, Merri
moved
down another empty hall. She stopped outside Purcell's office. Light off, door closed. Mr. Prissy-Ass wasn't in. A small green light winked from the security keypad in the wall, indicating Purcell's door was unlocked.

Must mean he's coming back and soon.

Twisting the doorknob and cracking the door open just wide enough for her to slither through, Merri entered Purcell's darkened office. A hint of clove-scented smoke lingered in the air along with a faint trace of Purcell's cologne--a blend of ginger, green tea, and bitter orange.

Merri paused, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the near-total blackness of the underground office. Using the thin light filtering in through the door's frosted glass panel and the yellow and green telltales on Purcell's computer and printer, she padded over to his desk.

She tapped the mouse and the sleeping monitor flickered to life. A picture of the Fallen Stonehenge, white stone glistening in the rain, filled the screen. A chill touched the back of her neck.

Events beyond the scope of mortals or even vampires ...

Fishing the flash drive from her jacket pocket, Merri inserted it into a USB port on Purcell's Dell and went to work downloading copies of files. She grabbed pretty much everything available. She'd check them out on her laptop once she'd returned to her room, and separate the wheat from the chaff.

The sound of footsteps in the corridor grabbed her attention. Merri paused and listened. Two sets of footsteps. Two heartbeats, one a mortal's fast patter, the other slow enough to be vampire.

Prissy-Ass and a kissy-ass, no doubt. Time to go.

Disconnecting the flash drive from the Dell, Merri straightened, then stumbled as dizziness spun the room around her. She grabbed the edge of the desk to keep from falling. Her vision faded.

Oh, hell no! Goddamned pills.

Sucking in a deep breath of air, Merri lowered her head. Her jackhammering heart drowned out all other sound--including the approaching footsteps.

The room twirled to a halt, and the black flecks stealing her sight vanished. Shoving the flash drive into her pocket, Merri bolted for the door. The footsteps were closer, but she still had time to split without being seen.

Merri slid through the cracked-open door, then eased it shut. Given that Purcell seemed to be in a vampire's company, she tightened the shields around her mind. She hoped her frantic heartbeat hadn't already given her away.

Merri
moved
into a side hall and stopped inside a darkened office doorway, tucking herself into its shadows.

A few moments later, two men strode past the hall juncture in quick strides. The man walking with Purcell wore a slim-cut suit and was very tall, around Emmett's six three, with golden-brown hair razor-cut in a hip, European style. With his tanned olive skin, he sure as hell wasn't vampire. She caught a whiff of vanilla spice and dandelions and, laced underneath that, a hint of ozone.

No vampire. But not mortal either.

"And you're sure what you saw wasn't just madness? Delusion?" Purcell said. He opened the door to his office, flipped on the light, and went inside.

His companion paused at the threshold, then looked back toward the juncture he'd just passed and tilted his head. His eyes--a startling violet--gleamed, full of captured light.

Merri held her breath and quieted her heart. Sank deeper into the shadows.

What the holy living hell
is
he?

After a moment that stretched out into decades, the man stepped inside Purcell's office and shut the door.

Relief curled through Merri. She had no idea exactly what Purcell's buddy was, but she didn't intend to hang around and find out. She'd do a little digging later.

She
moved.

When she reached her room, Merri relocked the door, then fetched her laptop out of her bag. Plunking down onto the bed, she retrieved the flash drive from her pocket. She inserted it into one of the laptop's USB ports and started scrolling through files.

One titled Bad Seed caught her attention.

What kinda TSP was Prejean a part of?

HQ's playing this one real close to the vest. All I was told was that it was a joint project
--
us and the feds
--
devoted to the study of sociopaths.

In other words, their monster slipped its leash and they want us to fetch it.

Monsters. Sociopaths. Bad Seed.

Merri clicked open the file and began reading.

MERRI CLOSED THE LAPTOP, fire smoldering in her heart, an unholy image from the Bad Seed file etched into her mind.

In a blood-spattered straitjacket, Dante is suspended upside-down from a huge hook in the ceiling, chains wrapped around his ankles. He hangs above the bodies of those he'skilled
--
including the body of his princess, his Winnie-thePooh-loving Chloe.

ADIC Johanna Moore enters the room
--
its walls a Jackson Pollock-worthy masterpiece in high-velocity blood spray
--
and bends over Chloe's body. With a touch of her fingers, Moore pushes the child's eyelids open. Makes sure Chloe's empty gaze remains fixed on Dante.

Setting the laptop aside on the bed, Merri rose to her feet. Her muscles felt hand-cranked-wire tight. A True Blood. Not an "enhanced" vampire. But a
True Blood
wrenched away from his mother at birth.

And the things done to him from that moment to this ...

A muscle flexed in Merri's jaw. It looked like all the minds behind Bad Seed were the true sociopaths.

Oh, let's not forget Purcell. He'd participated in Bad Seed as Wells's errand boy. Seemed to delight in all the nasty things done--especially to Dante.

Merri lit up a Djarum Black and paced the small room while she smoked it, Prissy-Ass Purcell's words still ringing in her ears.

Fucking little psycho.

She needed to let Emmett know what she'd learned. Given Dante Prejean's programming and where he'd ended up--the Wells compound--she wondered if he'd been deliberately triggered and used to murder Rodriguez.

A sense of unease rippled through Merri as though she'd jumped into a lake and found the water too cold and too deep and too dark. Found herself sinking while a leviathan rose beneath her, jaws open.

Talk to Em. Get some perspective. See if you can make sense of this shit.

Merri walked into the bathroom and tossed her cigarette in the toilet. As she turned around, the room dipped and twirled. Black spots speckled her vision. She reached for the wall to steady herself, but missed. Her flailing hand grabbed at empty air.

She fell, crashing onto her side across the bathroom threshold, her damn-near lacquered ponytail lashing her cheek. Sleep poured into her like a waterfall, tumbling her consciousness away in a roaring rush of unstoppable black.

20
A SHALLOW GRAVE

ON I-84 EAST
March 25-26

THE SUV'S TIRES HUMMED along the interstate, a steady, hypnotic sound. With Dante doped and Sleeping, his head cushioned in her lap, her fingers stroking his hair, Heather decided to close her eyes. Just for a moment. She rested her head against the window. And dreamed.

OCTOBER AND THE AIR is crisp. But she's not cold, she's on fire and alive and flying. Heather's birthday is coming up. She'll be twelve. Twelve going on forty. She sees too much and maybe not enough.

Have I lost her?

I'll make her birthday special, bake her a chocolate cake with butter-cream frosting. I'll decorate the house with red,
blue, and yellow balloons and string a HAPPY BIRTHDAY banner across the dining room archway.

Shannon stumbles, her heel catching on the asphalt's ragged edge. She giggles. Good thing she isn't driving. Point in her favor. She licks the tip of a finger and strokes an imaginary line in the air. Sliding off her shoe, she peers at the heel.

Headlights pierce the night. Shannon sticks out her shoe instead of her thumb, cocking her weight onto one hip and smiling. The headlights glow, twin moons filling her vision and dazzling her sight.

The car pulls over, tires crunching on gravel, the muffler streaming a plume of exhaust and the heady smell of gasoline in the air. The engine purrs.

Headlight-blinded, she wobbles as she tries to put her shoe back on. She hops backward before sprawling on her ass. She throws back her head and laughs. Good thing she isn't walking the line for a cop. Another point in her favor. She draws another imaginary line in the air.

Slipping off her other shoe, damned heels playing havoc with her balance, well, that and all the booze, Shannon climbs to her feet, stumbling only a little. She's brushing the dirt off her rear end when the driver's door opens.

A man slips out of the purring car, and something gleams in his hand.

"Need help, Shannon?" he asks.

Shannon shades her eyes from the headlight dazzle with the edge of her hand. Recognizing the tall figure with its tousled dark hair and tight smile, she mutters, "Crap."

Her good humor, her
joie de vivre--
as her drinking buddies at the Driftwood Bar and Lounge call it--evaporates. "Whatcha doing out here, Craig? Jim send you?"

"Jim? Only if you're on the Most Wanted list, Shan." Craig chuckles, but Shannon thinks she hears a bitter note in his laughter and wonders if something's come between her
husband and his best friend. "Been helping a buddy work on his car. Just on my way home."

"That why you're holding a hammer?"

Craig looks down as if he just realized that he is, indeed, carrying a hammer. His fingers white-knuckle around the handle. Lifting his gaze back to Shannon's, he says quietly, "Get in the car. I'll take you home."

Shannon shakes her head. Her husband's friend and coworker seems strung tighter than a tennis racquet, for whatever reason. Maybe he needs a drink. She swallows back the giggles bubbling against her lips.

"Thanks anyway."

Craig sighs. "You aren't going to let me give you a ride, are you?"

"Bingo!" Shannon says. "Give the man a prize. No, I'm not going with you. No matter what you say, I know Jim sent you. I'll just go back to the Driftwood and call a cab."

Shoes in hand, Shannon manages an about-face
and
keeps her balance. Score. She draws another imaginary point in the air. She feels her
joie de vivre
catching a second wind. She steps onto the smooth road to spare her bare feet bruises from pebbles.