Beneath the Skin (35 page)

"Wine this evening,
signora
?"

"
Si,
Florentina,
grazie.
Merlot for both of us. And bring me my phone as well."

Nodding, the young mortal housemaid left the terrace for the kitchen.

A sour expression crossed Giovanni's face and he waved a dismissive hand in Florentina's direction. "She must be a lesbian."

"
Una lesbica?
Because she's immune to your charm? No, Vanni
mio
, she has a boyfriend she loves very much. Her good common sense has told her everything she needs to know about you."

Giovanni now flapped a dismissive hand at Renata. "She knew what we were when you hired her."

"Not that." Renata laughed. "She knows how you play with ... hearts."

Giovanni snorted. "With
hearts.
Delicate phrasing,
bella.
"

Renata nestled her little white espresso cup into its rose-bordered saucer on the table. Rising to her feet, she stepped over to Giovanni and settled herself in his lap. Her knee-length blue toile dressing gown slid up to her thighs. She tipped his chin up with her index finger. The pout slipped away from his lips.

"Have you ever been to New Orleans, Giovanni?"

Amusement skipped like a stone across the surface of his hazel eyes. "No. But I have a feeling that will change soon."

"The jet will be ready for you tonight. I want you to speak to Guy Mauvais, the lord of the head household in New Orleans, see what he knows about Dante Baptiste."

"Ah." Giovanni straightened in his chair without disturbing Renata. "To get a feeling for the True Blood in his hometown, speak to those who know him,
si
?"

"And to meet Baptiste once he's home again. I've made sure that he and his companions can travel unmolested," Renata said. "But before I approach the Cercle, I need to verify Caterina's statements. I don't doubt she believes every single word that she's told me. But ..."

"But she's mortal," Giovanni finished for her, "and could be fooled by a True Blood with very little effort on his part, eh,
bella
?"

Renata sighed and trailed her fingers through her curls. "
Si, esattamente, caro mio.
Given what Caterina told me about how Dante was tortured and twisted by mortal monsters ..." She shook her head. "I need to be certain."

"How much is this Mauvais to know?" Giovanni asked, twirling one of her dark ringlets around his finger.

"You can let it slip that Dante is True Blood, but say nothing about the other. Mauvais doesn't need to know."

Giovanni nodded, face thoughtful. "And what do I say to Baptiste?"

"Tell him the truth--that you are Caterina's
frere du coeur.
"

Florentina walked out onto the terrace, two half-filled wineglasses and a slim ruby red cell phone on a handled wood tray. Renata caught the tantalizing smell of black cherries and plums drifting from the glasses.

"
Magnifico,
" Renata said, accepting a glass and her cell phone from the girl. Giovanni murmured his thanks.

Once Florentina had left the terrace, Renata said, "When evening falls in New Orleans, I will call Mauvais and let him know that you are on the way."

"Buono."
Giovanni took a long swallow of wine. "I'll get ready to go."

Renata rested her hand against Giovanni's cheek. Felt the scratch of his whiskers against her palm. "
Grazie, caro mio.
When I hear more from Caterina, I'll pass it along." Leaning in, she pressed her lips against his in a tender kiss. "Just one thing, Vanni
mio
..."

He looked at her through his lashes.
"Si, bella?"

"Make sure that Mauvais understands that Dante Baptiste is to be guarded." She patted his cheek, allowing a wicked smile to play across her lips. "Oh, and be sure to shave. Those whiskers could be lethal."

28
THE GREAT DESTROYER

INSIDE
March 26

Heather hits the ground hard, landing on her hands and knees in night-shadowed grass, the long, thin blades slick with moisture. She shifts one hand and it slides into nothing. She yanks her hand back, a quick glance revealing the shallow grave she fell into before. Empty now.

She smells mud, swamp water, and the coppery reek of blood. Lots of blood.

A tornado of sound roars around Heather, sucking at her--whispering voices, droning wasps, the hypnotic rush of blood through veins and drumming hearts--plucking and pulling at her mind. Scattering her thoughts.

Fucking little psycho.

Dante-angel, Papa took down the curtains! Wake up!

Wantitneeditkillitdoitwantitneedit ...

Heather throws her hands over her ears, but the noise and voices freight-trains through her mind, never slowing, smashing her concentration into tiny, spinning bits she can't grab, let alone piece together again.

Good thing he's restrained ... fuck! What's he screamin'?

He's making a very loud, very clear, demand.

Kill me.

How does it feel,
marmot
?

Heather's heart kicks against her ribs and her mouth dries. She's here for a reason, in this place of graves and noise-storms. But the reason eludes her. A steady, pounding sound vibrates up through the dirt and grass and into Heather's knees. She looks for the source.

A black-haired teen in muddied jeans and T-shirt whacks a shovel blade against a body half hidden in the grass. Whacks it over and over. Blood spurts into the air with each strike. The muscles in his shoulders, arms, and back ripple beneath his T-shirt as he torques all of his strength into every downward swing of the glistening shovel blade.

The body jerks and twitches. Squishes.

Heather stares, nausea squeezing the pit of her stomach, and finds herself reaching for the small of her back. She pauses, wondering what she's reaching for. She's no longer certain, but her hand knows, so she allows it to continue its journey.

Her fingers wrap around the smooth grip of a gun. Pull it free. She arcs the gun around and aims it at the teen playing whack-a-mole with the body in the grass.

Moonlight trickles pale through the thick canopy of cypress and live oak trees and gleams on the teen's blood-freckled face, his blood and mud-spattered arms, the hands locked around the shovel's handle. He lifts it again.

"Hold it right there," Heather calls. "Put that shovel down slow and easy. Then step away from the body."

Droning and raging whispers whip around her. Dizzy her. She locks both hands around the gun to steady her grip, but still her hands shake.

I knew you'd come for me.

The prick thinks I'll murder everyone in their beds.

Wouldcha?

She trusted you, kid. I'd say she got what she deserved.

The teen swivels around to face her.

Heather's finger slips away from the trigger. She knows that gorgeous, pale face, has gazed deep into those dark brown, red-streaked eyes, has tasted those Cupid's bow lips.

Amaretto. His fevered kisses taste of amaretto.

Black light crackles around the teen, a blue-streaked nebula haloing his body, and his image flickers; shifts into the man he is/will be--leather and steel-buckled PVC, a bondage collar strapped around his throat; grown into his beauty, his strength, his pale moonlight-radiant skin.

Flicker:
He shifts into the man-to-be--smooth black wings arch up behind him, fire patterns of brilliant blue and purple streaking their undersides. Blue flames lick around his clenched fists. Glimmer reflected along the thighs of his leather pants and sleek black latex, steel, and mesh shirt. A collar of braided black metal twists around his throat. And clipped to the steel ring at the collar's center, a leash, its silver-chained length leading down across his chest and abs, and disappearing into the right front pocket of his leather pants.

Tendrils of his black hair lift into the air as though breeze-caught. Gold light stars out from his black-rimmed eyes. He looks up as song--not his own--rings through the air. The night burns, the sky on fire from horizon to horizon.

The never-ending Road.

The Great Destroyer.

One or both or neither.

Possibilities stretch away like spokes on a wheel.

Flicker:
He's the shovel-wielding teen in torn, mud-grimed jeans and black T-shirt, gray duct-tape glinting around his sneakers. Small metallic wasps--distorted and stylized as if they've been crafted from polished steel by H.R. Giger (and she wonders where that thought comes from)--crawl along the teen's arms, into his lustrous black hair, and burrow into his skin.

Flicker:
He's the man, coiled and wary, kohl-smudged eyes looking into her. His gaze brushes against her heart, a struck lighter tossed into a pool of gasoline. Wasps wriggle beneath his black-painted fingernails, rim the steel ring in his collar.

His name forms on the tip of Heather's tongue, then vanishes before she can shape it. But she feels it burning within her heart, safeguarded from the tornado.

Flicker:
The teen lowers the shovel to his side, his mud-caked fingers white-knuckled around the handle. He stares at Heather, his head tilted to one side, and his eyes seem to widen with recognition.

She wonders if
her
name is forming on his tongue.

His gaze slides past her. His dark brows slant down as fury ripples across his face.

He
moves.
A black-lit blur streaking straight for her.

She swings her gun up, pounding heart drowned out by the maelstrom of noise whirling around and through her. A chill creeps down her spine and she realizes too late that she's aimed her gun in the wrong direction.

A rough shove against her shoulder sends Heather stumbling into an oak as the teen pushes her aside. She grabs ahold of the tree trunk, the rough bark scraping beneath her fingernails, and catches her balance. Spinning around, she sees him slamming his shovel into the face of a balding, heavy-set man in a sweat-stained T-shirt.

Familiar, this man. Heather's fingers tighten around the gun's grip. She should know his name too, but the noise screaming through her skull obliterates it.

You don't need none of dat school shit for the work you do,
p'tit.
Waste o' time.

Boy needs a lesson. Boy
always
needs a lesson.

You wanna take her punishment,
p'tit
?

Holy, holy, holy ...

Heather struggles with the urge to finish what the teen has started with his shovel and empty the gun's magazine between the man's eyes.

Blood spraying from the blade's deep bite into his throat, the man crumples to the ground, clawing at his wound. The teen beats the squirming, choking man with the shovel, pounding and hacking and smashing until the skull pulps.

"Fucker won't stay dead," he says.

Dropping the shovel, he bends and grabs the body by the ankles. He drags it through the night-wet grass, a gruesome wake of blood, brains, and moonlight-glinting bits of skull marking his path. He kicks the body into the grave. It hits the muddy ground with a wet thud.

"For Chloe," he whispers. "For Von."

Chloe. Von.

Heather grabs at the names, but the whispering/droning/shrieking tornado rips them away from her. She shivers, caught in sound, held in a fist of noise. Gun down at her side, she walks to the grave and stands beside the teen. He stares into the grave, his face shadowed with exhaustion. He wipes at his bleeding nose with the back of one grimy hand.

"Who was he?" she asks.

He spits into the grave. "No one now."

"Who did you kill for?" Heather asks, turning around. "You said some names."

A wasp crawls beneath the collar of the teen's shirt. He
pushes his hair back from his face and motions behind himself with his head. He turns around, bends and picks up his shovel, then starts walking. Heather follows.

The teen stoops beneath the sheltering branches of a weeping willow and disappears beneath its green-leaved and sap-fragrant canopy. He holds the branches aside with the shovel's bloodstained handle as Heather ducks underneath. Night-cooled leaves brush against her cheek. She straightens, stops.

Bodies lie close to the willow's trunk --a little red-haired girl, a blood-smeared plushie orca tucked in her arms; and a man with dark brown hair, a crescent moon tattooed beneath his eye; a blond youth in a blood-soaked straitjacket, and snuggled against him, a brunette, a black stocking knotted around her throat, a black leather jacket draped over her body.

Heather's heart skips a beat. She knows them all--but knows the man with the crescent moon tattoo best.

Von.

She kneels in the tall, dewed grass beside the nomad and touches his cheek with shaking fingers. Cool, his skin feels Sleep-cool, not dead-cold.

"He's not dead. You can still save him."

The teen crouches beside her. "He's
mon cher ami.
And I tried to kill him."

She knows him then. Knows and loves the man the teen will become. She parts her lips, searching for his name, and finds it secreted in her heart, untouched by the whirlwind.

Safe from the whispers.

But before Heather can speak, someone else does instead, a voice rasping out of the darkness.
"Beaucoup chaud tete-rouge,"
it says. "You'll be fun, you."

She catches peripheral movement just to her left and, pulse racing, she whirls around on her knees, lifting her gun.