Beneath the Skin

5 NOTHING IN HIS EYES

DAMASCUS, OR

March 25

GLOCK IN HAND, Merri edged up along the driver’s side of the travel-grimed SUV parked on the shoulder of the road, just past the steep driveway marked PRIVATE. Washington plates. Bicycle rack on top. Condensation-fogged windows not yet warmed by the early morning light.

From inside, she heard the rapid patter of a mortal heart. One fluttering as fast as hummingbird wings, powered by fear, pain, or adrenaline, maybe all three.

Small twigs and needles crunched beneath her partner’s boots, spiking the air with the sharp smell of pine and wet bark, as Emmett paralleled her path on the SUV’s passenger side. Leather creaked as he pulled his Colt .45 from its shoulder holster.

From behind her, Merri heard shoes gritting against gravel, followed by a pair of quiet clicks as Holmes and Miklowitz slipped out of the Saturn and eased the doors shut.

Holmes had called in a check on the license plate and they’d learned it was a Sea-Tac rental taken out by one Brian Sheridan. No criminal record, but a quick search on Miklowitz’s iPhone revealed a D.C. address and an FBI occupation.

So what was SA Brian Sheridan from D.C. doing here? And what had his pulse racing through his veins at light speed?

From D.C. to Seattle to Damascus.

It didn’t take a Magic 8 Ball to guess why. He was tailing Wallace or Prejean. After the FBI had been instructed by the SB to drop all surveillance on the pair days ago.

Merri edged alongside the rain-beaded SUV to the fogged-up driver’s side window. She tapped against the glass with the muzzle of her Glock. The rapid heartbeat remained steady, no sudden spike or frantic thudding.

Merri frowned. Sheridan’s lack of reaction bothered her. Wondering if the fed was sleeping or drugged, she moved, grabbed the door handle and yanked the door open. Stale air reeking of BO, urine, and greasy old burger wrappers poured out of the SUV. She shoved her gun against the temple of the man sitting in the driver’s seat.

“Don’t move, Sheridan,” she said. “You’re in deep shit. Who assigned you?”

He remained still. Never blinked. Never even flinched.

“Whoo!” Merri resisted the urge to fan the air. It smelled like Sheridan had been doing surveillance duty for a couple of days at least. Merri wanted to take a step back from the stink, but another odor, the thick, copper-edged tang of blood, held her, drew her gaze down to the mortal’s thigh.

Blood seeped through the rain-drenched trousers despite the blood-soaked tie Sheridan had knotted above the wound. Hunger twisted through Merri like a lazy curl of smoke, but her pulse remained steady. No time for hunger. Not now. And like smoke caught in a breeze, her hunger dissipated.

The passenger side door jerked open and Merri looked up. Emmett aimed his Colt at Sheridan, his whisker-shadowed face Clint Eastwood–hard in the morning light. Morning light that Merri hoped remained barricaded behind the mist-trailing rain clouds. Her ugly-ass floppy-brimmed hat, thick sunblock, and brown leather gloves would protect her if the sun burned through the clouds, but sauntering around in daylight still made her nervous.

The last time she’d walked without fear beneath the sun had been over two hundred years ago when she’d been a slave on a tobacco farm in Virginia. And guess what? She didn’t miss it. Not one damn bit. The stark and unforgiving light of day burned away illusions and revealed most things, no matter how beautiful or cherished, for what they truly were—ugly and heartless.

“Ripe,” Emmett commented, fanning the air in front of his nose. “Is he alive?”

“Heart’s beating. But it looks like he took a bullet to the thigh.” Merri nudged the gun muzzle against the mortal’s temple. “Hey, Sheridan.” He didn’t blink. His eyelashes didn’t even quiver. “Maybe he’s in shock,” she said.

She patted him down for weapons and found none tucked into his cold, wet, and muddy clothing. But she did score a damp wallet from an inside pocket of his suit jacket. She flipped it open. “ID, badge, it’s definitely Sheridan.”

“What’s the story?” Miklowitz asked, drawing up alongside Merri.

“Damned good question. But he isn’t answering.” Merri dropped the wallet into a pocket of her suede jacket. She holstered her Glock. “He’s been shot. Let’s see if he’s been doped.”

Cupping the fed’s chin in her gloved hand, Merri turned his face toward her. He stared past her, hazel eyes gazing at something beyond what she could see. No dilated pupils, no shock or fever glassiness. But the slackness in his face made her flesh crawl. Made her want to slap at herself as if the nothing in his eyes could slither in through her eyes. Whisper against her skin from the inside out.

“Fuck,” she whispered, jerking her hand away. His head returned to its previous position, his attention once more focused straight ahead on nothing. She wiped her palms against her jeans. “Not doped, I don’t smell any chemicals,” she managed to say. “No dilated pupils. No obvious sign of head trauma.”

Merri looked past Sheridan to the SUV’s rear seats. Crumpled fast-food wrappers and white sacks, empty Gatorade bottles, foil gum wrappers, an empty urinal littered the interior. But the thing that caught her eye was a small monitor screen resting on a folded flat backseat.

“He’s got a camera rigged up somewhere,” she said.

Emmett glanced up at the SUV’s roof. “Now the bicycle rack makes sense.”

“Why don’t you and your partner head on up,” Miklowitz said, tipping his head toward the driveway, a lock of honey-brown hair flipping into his eyes, “while we secure Sheridan and the vehicle.” He absently pushed the errant lock back from his face, then pulled a pair of flex-cuffs from his jacket pocket.

Merri nodded. “Sounds good. We can search the vehicle and call medics afterward.” She stepped back from the SUV so Miklowitz could take her place.

Holmes walked around the front of the SUV and joined his partner, gun still in hand. He was shorter than Miklowitz’s six feet by a couple of inches and less thick through the middle, but probably close to the same age—mid-thirties—despite his full head of neatly trimmed white, gray-threaded hair.

Wonder what spooked the color outta him? Merri struggled to keep from smiling and managed—just.

“We’ll catch up with you guys in a few,” Holmes said, halting beside Miklowitz.

“Roger that,” Emmett said. “We’ll get the lay of the land and wait for y’all before we make any moves.”

“Sounds good to me,” Merri said. “I’m happy to let you deal with Zombie Boy.”

“Man’s probably in shock,” Holmes said, his gaze locking with hers. “Have you had any experience with injured agents before? Mortal ones?” His voice was level, but his icy green eyes permafrosted his expression into one of arctic disdain.

“As a matter of fact, I have.” Merri kept her voice low and level. Keep talking if you wanna be counted among them. “You got a problem with me?”

Holmes shook his head. “No, no problem,” he muttered, then turned away to help Miklowitz cuff Sheridan.

Merri swiveled on the balls of her feet and stalked around the SUV to the driveway’s tree-shadowed mouth. Her leather gloves creaked as she flexed her fingers.

No mystery behind what Holmes didn’t have a problem with. Merri wondered what offended him most: Working with a woman? A black woman? A vampire? Or a black female vampire? Whichever it was, it’d made for a delightful forty-minute ride from the Portland airport.

She stopped beside the blue street sign reading PRIVATE, and studied the driveway leading up the mist-shrouded hill, lined with oak, pine, and fir trees. The mingled scents of wet, dark soil, pine, and moss, clean and thick with life, filled her lungs. Tatters of pale mist skirted the tree trunks and clung to undergrowth.

Gravel gritted beneath boot soles. She listened to the sound of her partner’s approach. She caught Emmett’s scent before he reached her—fresh ice and anise, cold and pure and licorice sharp.

“Time to catch some bad mofos,” Emmett drawled.

“Truth, brothah.” Merri pulled her Glock free of its holster. Chambered a round. “Bad and beautiful mofos.”

An image of Dante Prejean from the file they’d studied on the flight down popped into her mind. One candid shot in particular stood out in her memory.

Sunglasses perched on top of his head, Prejean leaned against a stone wall, one leg braced behind him, thumbs in the pockets of his leather pants. He wore a long-sleeved mesh shirt underneath a black tee reading DOES IT OFFEND YOU, YEAH? and a steel-ringed collar buckled around his throat.

A Goth couple held his attention—a blond guy in an old-fashioned frock coat, white lace spilling from the throat of his shirt and over the coat’s lapels, and a dark-haired beauty in a red velvet mini and thigh-high black stockings. The blond was speaking, his handsome face lit up, mouth open, hands lifted in the air.

A sexy smile tilted Prejean’s lips—a warm and inviting smile—and his dark eyes gleamed with captured light and affection.

White skin, glossy black hair, Cupid’s bow lips, Dante Prejean was beyond beautiful. Just the sight of him in a photo had made Merri’s heart race, filled her mind with delicious and naughty thoughts. He’d also looked very young—twenty, twenty-two—and she was intrigued by the fact that nowhere in the file was his age listed or when he’d been turned or even by whom.

“Bad and beautiful,” Emmett repeated. “Definitely. Prejean …” He shook his head. “If I was still single and if he wasn’t a murderer, I’d-a tapped that in a heartbeat.”

Merri snorted. “Assuming he’d want your sorry ass. I’m gonna tell Mark that you’ve been lusting in your heart.”

“Tattletale. FYI? My heart isn’t exactly the part of me that’s lusting.” A wicked grin parted Emmett’s lips. He nodded at the driveway. “Ready, partner?”

“Let’s do this thing.” Merri swiveled around, then stumbled as dizziness whirled through her. She grabbed ahold of Emmett’s arm for balance. She felt his muscles cording beneath his windbreaker sleeve.

“You okay?” he asked.

Merri sucked in a deep breath, then nodded. “Just the goddamned pills.” Emmett’s blue-eyed gaze remained on her face, studying her. She released his arm. “I’m fine. Enough with the penetrating gaze already.”

“Roger that.” A smile flickered across Emmett’s lips.

She hated the stay-awake pills and used them only when duty required it. Designed for vampire metabolism, the pills effectively countered the narcotic embrace of Sleep. But with her natural rhythm disrupted, side effects were unavoidable.

Taking opposite sides of the driveway, she and Emmett walked up the hill at a slow pace, scanning the trees and undergrowth. Even though Emmett placed each foot carefully, she still heard the whisper of grass against his trousers, the crunch of pine needles, the soft thud of each footfall.

She heard Emmett’s heartbeat pick up speed as they neared the crest of the hill, knew adrenaline was pumping into his veins, just like it was into hers. She slipped both hands around her Glock’s grip, listening. Bird chirps and trills, the clicks of busy insects and small mammals doing their morning thang.

The rush of water, a river, echoed up from somewhere deep, and the chilly air clung to her skin, beading on her face. An odd scent lingered in the mist-laden air, the crackling smell of ozone. Merri drew in a breath, tasting the air, wondering if a thunderstorm had blown through Damascus a few hours earlier.

Merri held up a hand as she caught a glimpse of a house in between the trees. She tucked herself against the lichenlaced trunk of a pine. A flash of peripheral movement told her Emmett was doing the same.

She frowned. She should be able to see two houses. She only saw one. Maybe the satellite images had made the houses look closer than they actually were or maybe she was at a bad angle.

Motioning that she was moving forward, Merri slipped from one tree trunk to the next until she stood behind a rain-dripping oak at the driveway’s beginning. What she saw slammed her heart against her ribs, trapped her breath in her throat.

A cave’s dark mouth stretched across the ground, an opening into the earth’s heart. An unseen river pulsed through its veins, its roar echoing into the air. But that wasn’t even the most bizarre thing in view, wasn’t the thing that dried her mouth, no.

“What … the … hell?” Emmett whispered.

Gleaming white statues of winged beings in various postures ringed the cave. Some stood, others crouched or knelt, while those captured in flight—wings slashing up or down—capped the standing statues like a celestial Stonehenge. Blue sparks flickered like fireflies over the white stone, skipped along the butter-smooth wings.

On the cave’s east side, a small house squatted, its front door wide open, its interior dark, its windows shattered. The guest cottage looked like a bombed-out home on the edge of any war zone—minus the graffiti. Glass glittered in the dew-beaded grass like fire-sparked prisms.

No main house. No Dodge Ram, no Trans Am, no vehicles, period. Their perps had either driven them away or the cave had swallowed them all. Including their perps?

“What the hell happened here?”

Merri shook her head. “You got me, partner.”

A low rumble, like distant thunder, rolled through her—the frantic drumming of dozens of hearts. She zeroed in on the guest house. She frowned. The pills were messing with her again. No way the cottage was filled to the rafters with panicked individuals.

Signaling for Emmett to hold, Merri moved past the statues, across the ravaged lawn and chewed-up asphalt to the guest cottage. Glock in both hands, she paused beside the empty front window. The rain-stained edge of a sage green curtain fluttered in the cool breeze. She listened.

No patter of hearts from inside. Just silence. The thunder seemed to be coming from … Merri’s mouth dried. She turned to face the circle of statues, her own pulse pounding hard and fast through her veins. Not possible.

Emmett scrunched across what remained of the lawn to join her, Colt in both hands, his wary gaze on the cottage at her back.

“I didn’t give you the all clear,” Merri said.

“And you didn’t wait for backup,” Emmett drawled, coming to a halt beside her. “Anyone inside?”

A breath of fetid air wafted from a glassless window.

Merri shook her head. “No one alive, anyway.”

She caught the sound of careful footfalls coming up from the highway below. Miklowitz and Holmes. When the two field agents hunched into view, guns in hand, rain jackets crinkling, she waved them to the guest cottage.

Both men stopped and stared, varying shades of alarm and confusion rippling across their faces. Miklowitz was the first to pull himself together and hurry across the remnants of the lawn and driveway to the guest house, Holmes following.

“Christ,” Miklowitz breathed, stopping beside Merri. “What the hell happened?”

“Where’s the freaking house?” Holmes added in a low voice as he joined them. “Any sign of Prejean, Wallace, or Lyons?”

“No,” Emmett said. He nodded at the cottage’s yawning doorway. “My partner says there’s no one alive inside. Y’all check the house for bodies to ID. We’ll check that.” He pointed at the cave with his Colt.

Hearts hammered and pulsed through Merri’s consciousness, a frenzied pounding. She found herself walking toward the circle of statues as if caught in a tractor beam, moving forward without thought, a single refrain drumming in her mind, over and over: Not statues. Not statues. Not statues.

She halted in front of a male figure. His hands were lifted in front of himself, his face averted, as though warding off a blow. She drank in all of the statue’s details—the braided and twisted open-ended collar circling his throat, the nipples on the bare chest, the muscle definition, the fall of fabric in his kilt, the upper arch of his wings.

From within the white stone, a heart fluttered, the sound slowing as Merry listened. She touched a gloved and shaking finger to the figure’s face. Tiny blue sparks crackled into the ozone-spiked air.

“This is unreal, Goodnight. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Merri replied. “But I do know these aren’t statues.”

“Aren’t statues? Is that the stay-awake pills talking or are you actually saying these are real angels and that someone Medusaed them into stone?”

“Looks kinda like statues of the Fallen,” Merri said, her gaze lingering on the featherless wings. She drew in a deep breath of ozone-spiked air to calm her wild pulse.

“The Fallen? You mean as in fallen angels?”

“The Elohim, yeah.” Merri stepped out from behind the oak, her palms sweating around the grip of her Glock.

“You shitting me?”

“Nope.”

Merri moved to the next statue, a female, her gown clinging to voluptuous curves, her wings flaring behind her, her desperate gaze on the sky above, her hands at her mouth. Merri’s gaze moved up as well, to the angel capping this statue and the previous one, an angel in flight, wind whipping through the length of her hair and rippling the fabric of her gown, wings cutting though the air, her expression one of joy.

“Merri?”

“I hear their hearts, Em. I hear their goddamned hearts.”

Emmett whistled low and long. “Jesus Christ! Jesus fucking Christ. But who or what could turn fallen angels to stone?”

Merri sensed power in each stone figure, power that tingled against her gloved fingertips. She remembered tales of Fallen magic, whispers of angelic battles.

Back in the beginning—when the Elohim fought their wars for power over the mortal world—blue fire lashed through the air, girl, filling it with the smell of lightning just before it strikes.

Or so a wandering llygad told me, back in the day, Merri-girl.

Just fairy tales, or so she’d always believed. Even vampires had myths and legends. But as Merri paced her way around the circle of stone angels, each face was a masterpiece of shock, fear, disbelief, and horror. Except for the capping stone angels, who’d been captured in luminous white stone as they winged through the night sky—and it had to have been at night, right? Maybe even as she and Emmett had stood in Rodriguez’s living room talking to Gillespie.

Maybe during their flight down to Portland.

She regarded the cave that the Fallen surrounded. Water roared in the darkness below. And she thought she heard something beneath that, a voice, no—voices. She held up her hand, motioning for Emmett to hold still and keep quiet, and listened.

Three different voices singing in unison: Holy, holy, holy.

The hair prickled on the back of Merri’s neck. The voices sounded off, cold, inhuman. And not just vampire inhuman—something-out-of-deepest-darkest-nightmare inhuman. She shot Emmett a glance.

“I hear voices below.” She pointed to the cave mouth. “Three voices, singing.”

Emmett frowned. “Singing?”

Merri nodded. “But it’s weird. The voices seem intertwined somehow.”

Stepping past the stone-captured Fallen, she walked to the lip of the cave and knelt in the dirt. Holding her Glock down at her side, she leaned forward on her left hand and peered into the thick darkness below. Cold, moist air reeking of ozone and fresh-turned soil and rushing water wafted against her, chilling her to the bone.

She caught the faint gleam of the river far below. Moisture glistened on stones protruding from the cave’s throat. Beneath the river’s rush, voices drifted like mist, warbling a multiple-throated chorus, Holy, holy, holy.

Merri shivered. She had the strong and undeniable feeling that whoever—or whatever—was singing in the darkness below was about as far from holy as she was from mortal.

She felt Emmett kneel down beside her, caught his anise and ice scent and felt soothed. Her partner didn’t believe in monsters or fairy tales, and that calmed her. He leaned forward to peer into the cave too.

Something moved down in the darkness beside the river, something pale and thick, humping along the stone like a gigantic slug.

Holy, holy, holy …

With a half-strangled gasp, Merri shoved away from the cave mouth, heart hammering, falling on her ass. “Something’s down there,” she choked out, refusing to take her eyes off the cave’s black lip. “Something moving.” Something that might climb out of the cave and hunch into the stark and unforgiving light of day.

“What?” Emmett asked, his voice tight, on alert. “What’s down there?” A peripheral flash of movement told her he’d leaned over farther in his effort to see into depths mortal eyes couldn’t fathom.

“No.” Merri reached over and grabbed Emmett’s arm, hauled him away from the cave. “I don’t know what’s down there, but I don’t think it’s—”

An abrupt bumblebee buzzing vibrated against Merri’s taut nerves and she moved on pure instinct, locking her fingers around her partner’s arm and hauling both their asses away from the cave and past the Fallen Stonehenge to the safety of the pines in a single blurring rush.

When she stopped, Emmett stumbled free of her grasp and up against the trunk of a pine tree. He dipped his hand into the pocket of his windbreaker, pulling out his cell phone. He held it up as it buzzed and bumbled in his hand, a huge grin on his face.

Cheeks burning, Merri glared at him, daring him to say anything.

Emmett glanced at the cell phone’s screen. His grin faded. Gillespie, he mouthed. Thumbing the TALK button, he said, “Chief.”

Emmett raked a hand through his auburn hair as he listened, all mirth vanishing from his face. He nodded. “You got it, Chief. Just gone. No idea what happened. But we stumbled across a wounded fed, SA Brian Sheridan. Someone put a slug in his thigh.” He listened for several more moments, then said, “Roger that.” He ended the call and slipped the cell phone back into his pocket.

“What’s the news?” Merri asked as his gaze lifted to meet hers.

“Gillespie wanted to let us know that the house was gone.” A wry smile touched his lips. “Code 54. And he’s on his way here.”

“Great,” Merri murmured. A secure-and-contain order meant that anyone who wandered onto the scene—a newspaper carrier, a hiker, a child chasing a ball—would be scooped up and tossed into an evidence van to be debriefed.

Looking past Emmett, Merri caught movement as Holmes and Miklowitz stepped out of the guest cottage, their faces grim. Spotting her, Miklowitz shook his head.

“Our perps don’t seem to be here—alive or dead,” she said. “Unless they were gobbled up by the cave.”

Emmett sighed. “If they’re alive, no telling where they are. Prejean’s either Sleeping somewhere safe or buzzing on stay-awake pills.”

Merri nodded. “Provided he’s alive.”

“What the fuck happened here?” Emmett asked quietly. Strain edged his voice. “I mean—fallen angels morphed into stone, a missing house, and a mysterious cave. How is this even possible?”

“Don’t know, partner.” Merri turned away and scanned the oaks and evergreens following the gentle slope of the land up to the stand of mist-garlanded pines at its crest. A gleam of white from within the shadows beneath a fir’s heavy branches caught her eye. Another of the Fallen or …

The image of pale, pale skin and deep, dark eyes flashed into Merri’s mind and her pulse leapt into high gear. Her fingers tightened around the grip of her Glock.

Merri moved. She breezed through wet undergrowth, thorns catching at her slacks, her suede jacket, hooking, then tearing free. Even before she reached the figure, she realized it wasn’t Prejean. Just more blue-sparked stone.

Halting in front of the kneeling fallen angel, Merri wondered why this one was so far from the others. Trapped within white stone, the angel’s heart pulsed. Her waist-length stone locks rippled in chiseled waves from her bowed head, framing her face. A slender open-ended collar encircled her throat.

The fallen angel’s wings were curved forward as if in an attempt to shelter herself, her eyes closed, her hands clenched into fists in her lap. She didn’t look horrified or shocked or enraptured like the others ringing the cave.

Whatever had happened, they’d been caught off guard.

Not her. She’d knelt before the inevitable, a supplicant for mercy she’d known she wouldn’t receive. Whoever she was, she would’ve had a prime view of what was happening to the house and her companions. Yet she hadn’t attempted to escape.

Maybe she couldn’t escape.

Merri crouched and touched the angel’s knotted fists. Blue sparks snapped the smell of ozone into the pine-scented air. Cold iced Merri’s spine.

Who or what had the power to transform the Fallen to stone?

And why had the Fallen come here?