Beneath the Skin (39 page)

Von
moved
, tackling him around the waist and knocking them both over the bench and into the rain-slick grass. Dante exhaled hard in a startled
whoof
, his head bouncing against the ground. His black hair fanned across his face.

Von wrestled Dante--taut, corded muscles, faster-than-light reflexes, steel fingers and sharp nails; like wrestling a goddamned leopard--onto his back, pinned his wrists down at his sides, then sat on him, jamming knees into ribs.

Dante tossed his hair back from his face. Fury streaked his dark eyes with red. Corded the muscles in his neck. "Get the fuck offa me."

"Not until you open the link, you stubborn sonuvabitch," Von growled.

"We ain't got time for this."

"No shit."

"Get the fuck offa me."

"And you know my answer to that." The muscles in Dante's wrists flexed. Von tightened his grip. "While I've got you here, there's a coupla other things we need to discuss."

"Fuck you."

"Stop being a dick and listen."

Fire blazed in Dante's eyes, but he kept his mouth shut, a good sign--even though his muscles remained coiled. Von nudged his knees deeper into Dante's sides.

"Here's a few facts you need to grasp: Just a month ago, a serial killer murdered two people you loved, then shoved a past you didn't even know about down your throat."

And I'll bet he did it with the same knives he used to slaughter Gina.

Dante went still. All expression vanished from his face.

Hating the necessity, Von continued, his throat almost too tight for words. "Just a couple of nights ago you were triggered and used by Lyons, then tortured. You lost your bond to Lucien and maybe, just maybe, you've lost Lucien himself."

"He ain't dead," Dante said, voice low and furious. "I'm gonna find him."

"And I'll help you. I'll be at your side every step of the way and we're gonna need that link to be open. Little brother, you don't have the faintest idea how important you are. Like it or not, you're a
creawdwr
. There ain't been one in thousands of years. Everyone's gonna want a piece of you, from mortals to nightkind to Fallen. And you ain't ready to face any of them."

"I wanna face them," Dante said. "Torch 'em. Burn 'em to the fucking ground. I ain't running. The FBI's smearing Heather's name and rep and setting her up to be a future suicide, and the SB wants to take her apart to see what makes her tick--because of me."

"You. Ain't. Ready. To. Face. Any. Of. Them." Von released one of Dante's wrists so he could emphasize each word with a hard-fingered poke to his sternum--each poke slashing another stripe of red through Dante's brown irises. "You have power like no one else in this world. And if you don't learn how to use it, how to control it, you'll destroy the world and everyone on it--including Heather."

Dante's muscles bunched, flexed, then he
moved
, Von's hand still locked around his right wrist, his knees still in Dante's ribs. Von hit the ground hard, back first, then found himself staring up into the rain cloud-paled sky, Dante sitting on top of
him
.

Holy hell--boy's got a few moves I didn't know about.
He felt a pleased smile curl across his lips.

"I. Ain't. Running," Dante said, poking a black-nailed finger into Von's chest with each word. "And I sure as hell ain't hiding."

"You're
making
things in your Sleep, little brother, without meaning to. Changing things. People, too. Do you even remember the little girl you transformed at the motel?"

Dante sucked in a breath as though gut-punched. He closed his eyes, a muscle ticking in his jaw. "Fuck," he whispered. "I thought I'd dreamed it."

"No dream, Dante," Von said, voice soft. "You saved her life, but she looks like someone else now. Because you don't know what you're doing and you don't have any control over your gifts, your power."

"My responsibility," Dante said, opening his eyes. "I get it,
mon ami.
I'll have Trey find out who she is and where she lives so I can make things right again for her."

"When things die down," Von pointed out. "But you need to realize, to expect, that things may never be right for her and her mom ever again. Think hard about that."

"Bien compris,"
Dante said, his expression troubled and weary. He rubbed a hand over his face, wiping away rain. "I'll think about everything you said,
d'accord
?"

Relief flickered through Von. "Fair enough."

The shutters on the window inside opened and Von felt Dante's warm, intense presence, followed by his thought.

<
I'm listening,
llygad,
but I promise you - I ain't running.
>

<
Understood. Wish I'd sat on you months ago, Hell,
years
ago
.>

Dante snorted, then offered Von the double-bird flip-off, before rising to his feet and pulling Von up with him. He paced in his bare feet in front of the bench. "Heather," he said, voice low. "She ended up in my dreams also, and--I don't know how it happened--but she's bonded to me now. I'll always be able to find her--no matter where she is, and she can reach me without touching me or being near, but everything in here"--Dante tapped a finger against his temple--"is gonna pour into her."

"Holy hell," Von breathed. "I'll teach her how to shield herself from you. So she don't get overwhelmed or--"

"Hurt," Dante finished. Emotion shadowed his dark eyes, knotted up his body.

"Yeah, little brother, that too. She'll be okay--we'll see to it, you and me."

Dante pushed his hands through his rain-wet hair, nodded. Then his eyes unfocused, turned inward. Von waited, wondering who was sending to him. After a moment, Dante refocused on Von, a smile tilting his lips.

"Simone," he said. "Mauvais sent a summons to the house. I guess his lackey promised dire fucking consequences if I don't show tomorrow night."

Von chuckled. "Wonder what passes for dire in that old Creole's mind? Not receiving an invitation to tea and a duel?"

Amusement gleamed in Dante's eyes. "The last thing he'll be expecting is for me to actually show up."

"Ah. True. Does that mean you will?"

"Maybe, yeah."

"Shall we grab a coupla towels outta the back of the SUV so we can dry off and get this show on the road?"

"I'm driving," Dante said. As he turned and trotted across the grass for the SUV, an image flashed into Von's mind, staggering him with its intensity.

Smooth black wings arch up behind Dante, 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.

Von's mouth dried. He watched Dante climb into the driver's side of the SUV.
Think hard, little brother. Think long and hard on everything I just said.

31
WITHOUT A RIPPLE

NEW ORLEANS, THE FRENCH QUARTER
March 26

A TRUE BLOOD. AND right under his nose all this time. Mauvais stalked the river's edge, the
Winter Rose
some distance behind him. Moonlight shivered across the river's sleek surface. Red lights winked as freighters glided upriver, sluicing through the black water.

Perhaps True Blood was the reason the Fallen, in the imposing form of Lucien De Noir--the Nightbringer--had chosen to stand beside Dante Baptiste.

Mauvais halted. He breathed in the Mississippi's scent of mud, moss, and fresh rain. He recalled Giovanni Tosca-nini's accented voice:

A True Blood can perhaps be forgiven many things?

Perhaps, perhaps not. But Mauvais was willing to be persuaded.

The Mississippi slapped against the rocks lining its banks and against wharf pilings. Mauvais caught a faint whiff of decaying wood.

And the world decays around us.

He resumed walking, hands clasped behind him.

The mortals destroy the planet that nurtures both our species and we do nothing; we who move through time, but are forever lost to it. Our society stagnates.

Dante could be a force of chaos, of change. He might divide us, awaken us.

Mauvais increased his pace, blurring past mortal strollers; gone in the blink of an eye. He abandoned the river for the beating heart of his beloved New Orleans:
le Vieux Carre.
Like a cool gust of air from the river, he breezed past streets choked with honking cars, past sidewalks thick with mortal crowds reeking of alcohol, lust, and abandon--and underneath, faint but present, the lingering odor of decay.

Mauvais strolled past the throng in Jackson Square, its iron fence decorated with colored lanterns. He walked Pirate's Alley, still amused after all these years at the name. Pirates had never congregated along that cobblestoned stretch except, perhaps, to urinate. He flew past Dumaine Street, then on to Chartres stopping at last beside the haunted walls of the Ursuline Convent.

Gaslit streetlights flickered orange on the rain-wet cobblestone street. Down the block, a horse's hoofs clopped as a carriageful of tourists headed back to Jackson Square. For a moment, Mauvais almost believed he'd stepped back in time to the New Orleans of two centuries ago. Back when the streets had never been this clean. A smile touched his lips.

He'd discovered Justine here just after the Second World War when he'd returned to the city after abandoning it for nearly a century. Beautiful Justine, a French refugee, heartbreakingly young and all alone.

Mauvais's heart contracted; his love for his
fille de sang
, his only blood-daughter, was a physical anguish at times, as sharp as a knife. With her white skin, dark eyes framed by thick black lashes, her cherry-red lips, he'd never known a moment of regret for her making. He couldn't say that for most of his
fils des sangs.

But Justine had threatened to contact the Conseil du Sang if Giovanni and the Cercle de Druide allowed Dante Baptiste to walk away from his crimes unpunished--True Blood or not.

In truth, Mauvais doubted most members of the law-enforcing Conseil du Sang had ever laid eyes upon a True Blood. He had, centuries before, when he was quite young, and he'd never forgotten the intoxicating taste of a born vampire's blood. Or the strength it'd given him, for a time.

True Bloods, few as they were, seemed to be solitary creatures, rarely longing for the company of others. Dante was different even in this with his band and his Club Hell; not so solitary.

Perhaps True Blood aloofness could be attributed to the fact that they'd never been human. Never suffered the doubts and agonies of a newborn vampire remembering what it was to be mortal. Never experienced the anguished realization that draining the lifeblood from those they loved wasn't at all difficult.

Defiant and disrespectful, his every action brimming with anarchy, Dante might very well be the chaotic and violent infusion of life that their decaying societies-mortal and vampire--needed in order to survive.

The sound of hurried footsteps drew Mauvais's gaze. A young woman wrapped in an old-fashioned black cloak sprinted down the sidewalk. As she passed beneath the streetlight, the flickering flame etched gold light into her blonde hair. Shadows danced across her anxious face. Small hands held her black and purple lace skirt up as she ran.

As she drew near him, Mauvais stepped forward. "May I be of assistance,
m'selle
?"

She stopped. She met Mauvais's gaze with deep green eyes outlined with kohl. Her crimsoned lips curved into a hesitant smile. She smelled of lavender and lilac. An exquisite doll.

"I'm so late," she said in the clipped tones of a Northerner. "The ghost tour, I mean. We're supposed to meet at Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop and I-- Could you point me in the right direction?"

"I can do better than that,
m'selle
," Mauvais said with a courtly half-bow. "I shall escort you."

The girl's lovely face lit up when he offered his arm. All trace of her previous anxiety vanished. She looped her arm through his.

"A real live Southern gentleman," she murmured. "I'm April, by the way."

"
Enchante, M'selle
April," Mauvais said, smiling. "A lady should never walk the streets alone after dark."

She looked away, cheeks flushed, dazzled. "And why is that?"

"It is the vampires,
m'selle,
" Mauvais whispered. "You see, they are everywhere in this city."

She giggled. "Then it's really good I ran into you."

"I'd call it destiny,
m'selle.
"

Her sweetness, her darling white face tugged at him. For a moment, he thought of giving Justine a sister. But only for a moment. He'd offered to escort her and so he, as a gentleman, would. She would never be safer.

Once April had been delivered to the candlelit tavern, Mauvais strolled the Quarter's sidewalks, listening to the mercurial heartbeat of the crowds filling the streets, listening for the single rhythm that would both drum up his hunger, then end it once more.

As he walked and listened, his thoughts looped back to Dante Baptiste, possibilities sparking like fireflies through his mind.

One: Win the favor of the holy Cercle de Druide and Renata Cortini in particular by doing everything that she and her
fils de sang
asked in regards to Dante.

Two: Allow Justine to voice her complaint to the Conseil du Sang and sow a few seeds of chaos, enough to rip open the rift of antipathy between the holy order and rigid vampire law--a rift the Elder judges of the Parliament of Ancients would be called upon to bridge. And in the confusion?