Beneath the Skin

6 KNIFE’S EDGE

OUTSIDE DAMASCUS, OR

THE HAPPY BEAVER MOTEL

March 25

CATERINA WAITED UNTIL HEATHER’S breathing had shifted into the easy rhythm of sleep, then she rose to her feet and padded to the desk. She plucked Von’s leather jacket from the back of the chair and pulled it on, trying to keep the jingling to a minimum. She caught a faint whiff of motor oil and smoky incense from the jacket’s lining.

The sleeves swallowed her hands and the shoulders hit her at the biceps. She had a feeling that she probably looked like a teen wearing her outlaw boyfriend’s jacket. But at least the Browning snugged into her jeans at the small of her back was hidden from view.

Caterina’s sneakers whispered across the carpet as she walked to the door. She unchained and unlocked it. Easing the door open, she slipped outside, pulling it shut behind her.

She scanned the motel parking lot. Barely visible white paint outlined the parking spaces in front of numbered doors. Only a handful of cars, windows fogged, occupied the slots. A crow hopped along the blacktop while, above, several white and gray seagulls wheeled in the gray morning sky, lamenting the lack of food.

Across the parking lot, between the cottage marked OFFICE and the door numbered 1, several vending machines huddled behind a grilled cage. To the cage’s left, a stainless-steel box full of ice hunkered beside a pay phone.

Caterina studied the mist-wrapped trees across the highway. An unusual shadow beneath a fir held her attention for a moment. Her muscles unknotted as she realized it was only that—a shadow cast by drooping branches. The cool, moist air smelled of pine and wet asphalt. Pale mist feathered the hills and floated ragged across the highway.

She touched her throat, remembered the heated touch of Dante’s lips, the sharp pain as his fangs had pierced her skin, the pain vanishing as he drank her blood down—an offering from Alex Lyons.

She was still weak from blood loss and in poor shape to defend Dante as he Slept. She’d finally used up the adrenaline surge that had buoyed her on the hill at the Wells/Lyons compound, and she felt light-headed with fatigue.

Her hand slipped down to the front right pocket of her jeans, her fingers tracing the rounded shape of the quarters she’d taken from the console in Heather Wallace’s car. Food first, then she had phone calls to place.

She wasn’t sure what had happened to her cell phone. It had been tucked into a back pocket of her jeans when she’d dropped by the guest cottage to check on Athena Wells. Hours later, she’d regained consciousness bound and gagged inside the main house, surrounded by bits of the dead, and guarded by a demented woman. The cell? Long gone. She could only hope that it had disappeared along with the main house.

Caterina stopped in front of the vending machines, cold sweat beading her forehead. One held only drinks, the other candy and snack food. No orange juice, but Red Bull was offered. That’d have to do. Hands shaking, Caterina plugged in quarters, punched the appropriate button. A loud clunk into the vending machine’s bottom tray announced the Red Bull’s arrival.

Pulling it free and popping it open, Caterina poured half of it down her throat in one long swallow. She pressed the cold can against her face and sighed. The Red Bull hit her empty stomach like an iced brick. Stepping over to the snack machine, she studied its dubious offerings.

Hoping for a decent mix of protein and carbs, Caterina chose Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and a small bag of mixed nuts. She slotted in quarters, then gathered her purchases with shaking hands when they clunked into the tray. Finishing the Red Bull, she dropped the empty can into the blue recycle bin beside the trash can.

Caterina leaned against the black grille protecting the vending machines and reviewed her mental to-do list as she ate her snack food.

To-do number one: Call her hotel in Portland and let them know she wouldn’t be checking out until later tonight.

To-do number two: Call the airline and book another flight. She’d already missed the one she was supposed to be on.

To-do number three: Check in with her handlers and see if Dante Baptiste’s status had changed since Rodriguez’s murder.

Dante’s programming was triggered.

Heather Wallace’s quiet words had created an avalanche of ice within Caterina. Who else knew how to activate Dante’s programming? She not only needed to guard her True Blood prince, she needed to protect him from himself as well.

The only thing was, she might not be able to do so alone.

She hadn’t known yet that Dante was more than True Blood, that he was a Maker as well, when she’d last spoken to her mother, Renata Alessa Cortini. Von had said the Fallen couldn’t be trusted. Not where Dante was concerned, anyway. Would Renata and the other Elders or the llygaid know how to guide Dante? How to teach him?

Creawdwrs had always been Fallen only. As far as she knew, Dante was the first vampire/Fallen Maker. What if the Elders, learning of Dante’s programming, decided he was too dangerous? Decided that a monster lurked beneath his skin and behind his eyes?

If the damage is too great, then bring him to us so we may end his life with love and respect. He belongs to us. Alive or dead. Not in the hands of mortals, not even yours, my little love, child of my heart.

She’d felt his lips hot against her throat, felt him drinking in her blood, drinking in life, had seen the gold light glimmering in his dark eyes, the wonder on his gorgeous face when she’d told him that her mother was vampire.

Your mother’s nightkind?

No monster this True Blood prince. Wounded and scarred, yes. But the future pumped within his heart and flowed through his veins.

The future for all of them: mortal, vampire, Fallen, and everything in between.

If he fell, the world would fall with him.

Calm and purpose unwound within her.

Caterina popped the last salted cashew into her mouth. She crumpled up the empty package and tossed it into the trash. Swiveling around, she bought another Reese’s. She scooped it out of the bottom tray, then stepped over to the pay phone. She dropped quarters into the slot, then punched in the numbers and code for an international calling card issued in her mother’s name.

If the SB ever felt compelled to go over her phone records, she didn’t want a few calls from a pay phone in the Damascus area popping up like a screaming car alarm.

After she’d phoned the hotel and the airline, she made a third call. But not to the SB. That call would wait until she could call from her hotel room or via her laptop. As the phone trilled in her ear, Caterina tore open the Reese’s package with her teeth.

The trilling stopped as, thousands of miles away in Rome, someone picked up the receiver and said in a low, musical voice, “Sì?”

“Ciao, Mama,” Caterina replied. “I found him.”

THE MORNINGSTAR STOOD BEHIND a tall fir tree, one shoulder leaning into its rough-barked trunk. Rain dripped onto the fragrant green needles in the dirt beneath its branches. Mist undulated down the hill and across the highway, a ragged ghost.

A red neon sign flashed MOTEL VACANCY above the mist, bright as flame against the gray sky and shadowed hills. Brass numbers marked each motel room door. But he only watched number 9; the room with an empty parking slot in front of it now that the dark-haired woman had moved the sapphire blue Trans Am.

The door to room 9 opened and the dark-haired woman slipped out again, wearing the nomad’s leather jacket this time. She eased the door shut. Walking with an easy grace, a predator’s deliberate pace, she padded past the empty parking space, then stopped. She appeared to scan the parking lot, the highway, and the woods beyond.

Appeared to zero in on him.

The Morningstar drew in a breath. Held it. Shaped a hunting blind of tattered mist and rain and glistening, green leaves around himself; a seamless illusion.

Silence—except for the pat-pat-pat of the rain onto pine needles—filled the woods like cotton, absorbing and muffling all sound. Birdsong vanished. Insect clicking stopped. Nothing scurried or dug in the underbrush. Not with the Morningstar standing still and quiet, his radiance dimmed.

After one more long look at the spot where he stood, the mortal resumed walking, stopping at the vending machines.

The Morningstar released his breath and it feathered the air white. The blind vanished. He wondered about the lithe, dark-haired woman and the others who’d walked into room 9 with her. He needed to learn more about Dante’s companions, needed to know who surrounded him and why.

Needed to learn more about Dante.

But the very fresh memory of how the others—including his cydymaith, his luscious Lilith of Lies—had been transformed into white power-sparked stone kept him on the safe side of the highway. Then, like now, the Morningstar had watched from deep within the pines as Dante had lost all control of his creawdwr magic.

“Did you kill him?” Dante says, fury lighting his face, seething in his husky voice. His gaze skips from face to face. “Did you? Or you?”

Blue light shines out from Dante, shafting into the aurora-glimmering air and into the Fallen, those on the ground and those still in the sky.

All are transformed into statues of exquisite detail, captured in gleaming white, blue-edged stone.

Wounded, exhausted, stumbling, only rage had kept Dante on his booted feet. Since Dante believed his father— Lucien—dead, the bond between them must have been severed. Whether Lucien or Samael or whatever he wished to call himself had severed it himself or Gabriel had killed him, the result was the same: the lost bond had injured Dante, and the Morningstar could only hope that it hadn’t damaged the young creawdwr beyond healing.

In any case, the Morningstar planned to keep the promise he’d given Lucien before leaving him in the pit, hanging from hooks through his shoulders.

I find it amusing that the slayer of one creawdwr fathers the next. Dante, an intriguing name, but inappropriate, don’t you think? Once he’s seated upon the Chaos Seat, he’ll finally be far away and safe from the hell politely referred to as the mortal world.

And he’ll be mine.

The boy needed stability and guidance, a sure hand. Before it was too late.

Before he lost his sanity. Before Gehenna ceased to exist.

CATERINA EASED THE DOOR open and slipped into the darkened room. She remained still as she waited for her vision to adjust. She heard a shift in someone’s breathing—it had to be Heather; Dante and the llygad wouldn’t stir until twilight. It pleased her that even as exhausted as the soon-to-be former FBI agent was, her survival instincts were still in high gear.

“It’s me,” Caterina said quietly. “Vending machines.”

“Okay.”

In just a few moments, Heather’s breathing dropped back into the low, easy rhythm of sleep. Eyes adjusted, Caterina turned, and locked and chained the door. Returning to the desk chair, she stripped off Von’s jacket. Draped it around the chair again, chains chiming.

The Red Bull winged jittery energy through her system and accelerated her heartbeat. Offered the illusion of wakefulness, an illusion she accepted and needed.

Caterina walked over to the bed shared by Dante and Von. Knelt one knee down on the carpet at Dante’s side of the bed. She glanced at the window and gauged the amount of rainy-day light filtering in through the curtains. Not much. The gloom seemed thick enough even for a True Blood.

Winding her fingers tight around the warm, fleecy blankets, she slipped the covers down from Dante’s face, ready to yank them back into place if she’d misgauged the amount of light in the room.

Dante’s glossy black hair, smoothed away from his face by Heather’s hands, trailed across the pillow. Kohl smudged his eyelids. Blood trickled from his nose and stained his lips and chin red.

His scent tugged at her, perfumed each breath—burning leaves and frost and deep, dark earth. She wondered what her mother would detect in his scent, wondered if his spell—cast unaware even as he dreamed—would also enrapture Renata Cortini.

Caterina touched the inside of her wrist against Dante’s forehead and sucked in a breath as heat pulsed into her flesh at the contact.

He burned when he should be Sleep-cool.

Rising to her feet, Caterina padded into the bathroom and wet two washcloths with cold water. Wringing out the excess, she returned to the bed. Dante didn’t stir as she placed the folded washcloth over his forehead. She used the other washcloth to clean the blood from his face.

Her mother’s words whispered up from memory: Earn his trust, cara mia, then bring him to us. I’ll tend to those hunting him.

He’d be safer in Rome within the protective embrace of Renata Cortini, that was certain. If he remained in the States, the SB would eventually haul him in. Lock him up. Or worse—they’d use this True Blood child and Fallen Maker like a weapon against their enemies.

She wouldn’t … couldn’t … allow that.

But if Dante refused to travel to Rome? Refused the wishes of Renata?

Caterina wadded up the bloodied washcloth in her left hand and pulled the blankets back over his face with the other.

Given time, perhaps she could change his mind, persuade him to listen to her mother and the Elders composing the holy Cercle de Druide.

And if not? What then?

Caterina tossed the washcloth into the bathroom sink, then returned to the desk chair and sat down. She rubbed her face with her hands, trying to push away the exhaustion nibbling away at her awareness, despite the Red Bull and snacks.

She’d guard Dante with everything she had—heart, mind, and razor-sharp reflexes. And share with him everything she knew. From the interior of the Shadow Branch’s labyrinthine heart to her mother’s whispered bedtime tales about the Elohim.

But she didn’t know if she could or should force him to do Renata’s bidding.

Reaching behind, Caterina pulled the Browning free from the back of her jeans. She rested the gun on her thigh, her fingers curled around its grip.

What she’d seen up on the hill … Images of what Dante had done swooped like gulls through her mind.

Dante, curled up on the carpeted floor, shivering with fatigue and seizure-induced pain as spokes of blue light wheel from his hands, transforming everything they touch.

The carpet ripples, shifting into a forest floor of pine-needled dirt, thick underbrush, and tiny blue wildflowers. Thorned blue veins slither across the room.

Blue light stabs out from the house, from its shattered windows and yawning front door, as Heather and Von—Dante draped over his shoulder—run from the shuddering, quaking building.

Above, a massive rush of wings draws her gaze. Shapes dive and glide through the rain-cloud-paled night, outlined against a shimmering splash of vivid twilight colors—an aurora borealis—where none belongs. The night rustles, full of wings. Ethereal music rings through the wet air as the Fallen sing to Dante Baptiste.

Singing to guide their young creawdwr home to Gehenna.

But Dante had set the Fallen ablaze with blue fire, turned them to stone even as they sang to him. Even as they tried to flee from him, realizing too late that he blamed them for the death of his father.

Caterina recalled the words Von had spoken earlier: Lucien asked me to guard Dante from the Fallen.

And that was another marvel—a llygad who took action instead of remaining an impartial observer of events. From what Caterina had witnessed just a few hours earlier, Von had abandoned his essential impartiality and aligned himself with Dante Baptiste—against all precepts of llygaid law.

Caterina sighed, and leaned back in the chair. She had so many questions to ask Von and Dante both. But she realized Dante probably didn’t have any answers for her—given how his mind had been ravaged by mortal monsters, his past fragmented and buried deep within him. She tried not to think about Dante’s seizures or what they might mean.

And Von? Well, it depended on how much he trusted her. Or if he trusted her.

The less she knew, the better, in all honesty, since she planned to return to the SB. If something seemed hinky or off to her handlers when she spoke to them again, she could find herself facing an interrogator like Teodoro Díon who would destroy her mind as he stripped knowledge from it, piece by piece. And leave her a drooling idiot.

If she was unlucky.

Caterina shivered, goose bumps popping up on her arms. She tightened her grip on the Browning. Her cold, wet clothes would keep her awake. Another Red Bull wouldn’t hurt either. In four hours, she’d catch some sleep.

She and Heather both needed to be on their toes, sharp and alert, balanced on a knife’s edge for whatever would come next once twilight deepened the gloom.

The light seeping in beneath the door and at its edges vanished. Caterina bolted to her feet, snapped up the Browning. Adrenaline pumped into her system, kicking her heart into high gear. Her focus narrowed. She aimed the Browning head-height.

Blue sparks shot out of the lock’s key-card slot, a miniature fireworks display. Caterina’s heart kicked against her ribs. She kept her aim steady, though she now suspected a bullet wouldn’t stop whoever stood on the other side of the door.

The door pushed in as far as the chain allowed, stopping with a thunk. Another shower of blue sparks. The chain fell from the door, links glowing, molten. Caterina caught peripheral motion and realized Heather had awakened and was swinging up her Browning too.

The door creaked open, but only mist and rain and green leaves swirled into the room on a strangely heated breeze. Caterina’s finger flexed against the trigger, stopping just a hair short of firing the gun.

No one entered. But the hair rose on the back of her neck. She caught a whiff of ozone. The mist and rain and green leaves still spun in the air as though caught in a storm-fueled funnel cloud. A man-sized funnel cloud. A funnel cloud that glided into the room with a purpose.

“Shit,” Heather breathed.

Caterina swiveled and shifted her aim, the Browning’s muzzle now targeting the whirl of leaves and mist.

A voice rang out, chiming, scorching; a bell of fire. “Be still.”

Those words rippled into Caterina’s mind, searing away all thought. Just as her mind blanked and she plunged into darkness, she thought she saw a tall man with short white hair curling against his temples, thought she saw white wings folded at his back, thought she saw him smile— dazzling like diamonds caught in a waterfall spray.

She pulled the trigger.