Etched in Bone (29 page)

Rutgers smoothed the back of her skirt underneath her as she sat down and met the priest’s curious gaze. She drew in a breath of air musty with the smells of books with leather bindings and yellowing pages, of crackling parchment and fresh ink.

“This may sound odd, but, trust me, I’m very sincere,” she said. “What can you tell me about fallen angels and demons?”

Father Aloysius’s eyebrows crawled up to his hairline. Blowing out a surprised breath, he leaned back in his chair, the springs squeaking as it rocked back. “I’ll admit that’s not what I was expecting, Ms. Rutgers.”

She chuckled. “I’ll bet.”

“I thought you were going to ask about all the blasted vampires.”

R
UTGERS FOLLOWED
F
ATHER
A
LOYSIUS
down to the basement, bits of their conversation from upstairs ringing through her still partially disbelieving ears.

Unmaking people. Destroying the cemetery. Blasting doorways into Hell. If what you’ve said is true—and I’m not saying it isn’t—we might be dealing with something much bigger and even deadlier than a demonic True Blood/Fallen hybrid.

And that would be?

The Great Destroyer.

Excuse me, the Great . . . what?

Destroyer. Cultures throughout the world have been seeded with prophecies about this angelic being and what his or her appearance means for humanity.

And what does it mean for humanity?

Our end.

Do you mean the Antichrist? But that’s just . . . I mean, even if it’s true, he’s defeated and—

The Great Destroyer, the Unmaker, has absolutely nothing to do with Christianity, Ms. Rutgers . . .

The pungent scents of sandalwood and frankincense permeated the closed-in air as the priest led Rutgers down a narrow, well-lit hallway to what looked like a steel door at its end. She noticed a symbol sketched both on the door and above it in what looked like dried blood.

“Protection sigils,” Father Aloysius explained, following her gaze. “Holy script.”

“And who does it keep out?” Rutgers asked.

“Anything not mortal.”

“And has anything ‘not mortal’ put it to the test?”

“Not yet,” the priest admitted.

“How long have you been doing this . . . killing vampires?”

“Just the last year, but we’re learning with each strike.”

Of all the churches in all of New Orleans, I walk into this one
, Rutgers mused. Maybe there really was such a thing as destiny or fate.

A keypad rested on the wall beside the door, a tiny green telltale glowing at its base. Father Aloysius quickly punched in a code. A beep sounded from the pad, then Rutgers heard a solid
clunk
as the door unlocked. Grasping the handle, Father Aloysius pushed the heavy door open. Air laced with the smells of gun oil and candle wax whooshed out of the room.

The priest ushered Rutgers inside. As she went in and looked around, her pulse picked up speed. Hope blossomed within her.

Weapons of all sorts lined the walls: pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, crossbows, stakes of different lengths. Computers rested on workstations. Books were shelved in cases hugging the lower half of each wall.

A bulletin board displayed photos of vamps beneath two headers:
MISSION
and
ACCOMPLISHED
.

Father Aloysius followed her into the room, his cassock rustling, and stood beside her. “We’re called the Hand of God, and we meet every Tuesday and Thursday,” he murmured. “We have access to information—both arcane and practical—all around the world. God bless the Church
and
the Internet.”

Rutgers looked at him, and a grim smile curved his lips as he met her gaze. “Trust me, Ms. Rutgers. We’ll find a way to kill this Dante Prejean. No matter
what
he is.”

25
A WISE MAN

D
ALLAS
/F
ORT
W
ORTH
I
NTERNATIONAL
A
IRPORT
March 28

I
WISH TO REQUEST
a leave of absence, sir, effective immediately
.

Slim black briefcase in hand, James Wallace entered the airport terminal from the gangway and strode past the crowd—bouncing up on tiptoes, buoyant expressions matching the enthusiasm demonstrated in their feet—waiting for friends and relatives and loved ones.

Someone else altogether would be waiting for him outside the terminal.

Does this request have anything to do with the situation involving your daughter?

Sir, it’s a personal matter.

After retrieving his champagne-pale Samsonite suitcase and wheeling it through the automatic glass doors leading out into the bright Texas sunshine, James stood at the curb, feeling the moisture practically being sucked from his Pacific Northwest skin in the dry air. A white van marked only with SI in elegant black lettering on the side panel glided to a stop in front of him.

If a man should go looking for a missing daughter during a
leave of absence, it’s no one’s business but his own. Wouldn’t you agree, Wallace?

I would, sir.

With a metallic click, the van’s side door hummed open. James slid his suitcase inside, resting it on the floor in front of the empty passenger seats. As the door hummed shut again, James opened the front passenger door and climbed inside. A pine-tree shaped air freshener hung from the rear view mirror, saturating the air with the reek of artificial pine.

Of course, once a man found his daughter, he’d be wise to take her and go and forget about the off-limits male in whose company he found her.

A wise man indeed, sir.

“Good flight?” the driver asked, offering James a thinning of the lips that he most likely believed passed for a smile.

“As good as any flight can be.” James strapped on his seat belt and settled his brief case on the floor beside his feet. He looked at the driver.

Late thirties, with well-creased crow’s feet at the corners of his gunmetal gray eyes, a man who spends a lot of time in the sun and the weather, a thick-muscled and powerful build beneath his black Members Only jacket. Ex-military or law enforcement vibe.

“You must be Stevenson,” James said.

“That would be me, yup.” Stevenson edged the van into the slow crawl of cars, vans, and taxis headed out of the airport. “Do you have a lead on where the bloodsucker took your daughters yet?”

“No, but I imagine New Orleans will be the destination,” James Wallace replied, shifting his gaze to the front windshield and the traffic flow beyond.

“No offense, but I gotta ask, how the hell did this bloodsucker manage to snag
both
of your daughters?”

Good question.

Heather had been brainwashed. The damned vampire had wormed his bloodsucking way inside her head, inside her heart, into her bed, and taken control of her every thought, every action.

That was the only thing that made sense. Why else would she have thrown away her career, her life?

And Annie? Whether Annie had simply tagged along or been forced to accompany her sister on her cross-country flight, James didn’t know. But he had a strong feeling Annie would call him when she found an opportunity.

“I don’t see that
how
he managed to grab them matters,” James said. “What matters is retrieving them before he turns them.”

“How do you know that he hasn’t already turned them?”

James’s heart did a slow, painful thump inside his chest. “I don’t,” he admitted. “But again, it doesn’t matter. Turned or not, we extract them.”

“Let me make this very clear, Mr. Wallace, even though you’re in charge of this little operation. The Strickland Institute isn’t equipped to deal with bloodsuckers. And won’t. We only handle human extractions and deprogramming—unhooking people from the grip of a religious cult, a government deep-cover mission, or a bloodsucker’s influence—that’s all. Hell, the majority of our staff don’t even know that vampires exist.”

“I understand all that,” James replied. “And I won’t be asking the institute to deal with my daughters
if
they’ve been turned—only to pull them out. The rest would be my responsibility.”

“That it would be,” Stevenson agreed, his gaze on the heavy traffic cruising alongside them as they headed for Dallas. “Just as long as we’re clear.”

“Are all the arrangements in place?”

“That they are, Mr. Wallace. All we need is the go-ahead from you.” Stevenson nodded his head at a small paper bag resting on the console between the seats. “There’s the special item you requested. Gotta admit, that particular request was a first. But then again, we’ve never had to deal with a born vamp before either.”

“You and your team won’t be dealing with one at all.
I’ll
be handling that honor.”

“Bullets filled with the resin from a dragon’s blood tree. Who knew?”

Hardly anyone, as it had turned out.

James’s research had turned up almost zilch on True Bloods and how to kill them or even if a different method other than the usual bullet/stake/ice pick/what-have-you to the heart followed by decapitation and burning was even required.

The Bureau’s files had contained nothing useful regarding born bloodsuckers, and he’d been refused access to SB files. Period.

What little information he’d managed to dredge up online had possessed all the frantic factoid qualities of urban legends—only a silver stake dipped in holy water thrust into the heart at high noon; the heart needs to be cut out and burned on a pyre a la Percy Shelley—until he’d stumbled upon an obscure but enthusiastic website dedicated to nomad culture and their pagan beliefs.

The clan
shuvano
(shaman;
shuvani
to indicate a female shaman) favored me with a fantastic tale about a night elemental (born vampire) and her adventures in the ancient world, and how she died unexpectedly in Yemen after spotting a tree bleeding red sap and tasting the resin out of curiosity . . .

Myth? Folktale? Possibly. Yet somehow, the story rang with authenticity.

After more research into the dragon’s blood tree and its history, James had decided to take a gamble, feeling in his gut he had the winning number.

“The resin is medicinal for humans,” James murmured. “Poisonous and usually fatal to born vamps, depending on how much gets into their bloodstream.”

“Does it affect regular bloodsuckers?”

“That I don’t know.”

“Might be interesting to find out.”

“Agreed.”

James scooped up the bag, unrolled the top, and looked inside at the box of .38 caliber ammunition. A warm curl of satisfaction, of upcoming fatherly retribution, spiraled through him.

Dante Prejean had a very big surprise coming his way. Two or three or six bullets in all the right places should guarantee that the bloodsucker wouldn’t be doing anything to anyone’s daughters ever again.

“You’ll like the facility, Mr. Wallace,” Stevenson said. “I’ll give you the big tour when we get there. It’ll be comfortable and cheery for your girls as they undergo their rehabilitation, and ultra-secure. No chance of anyone wandering away.”

“That’s good to know. Annie is talented at breaking out of supposedly secure institutions.”

Stevenson chuckled. “She won’t be breaking out of this one, I can promise you that. And once she’s on medication for her disorder and in therapy, she won’t want to, trust me.”

“Promises and trust mean nothing,” James said quietly. “Only results.”

“No argument here.”

Shifting his attention to the scenery blurring past the passenger-side window, James didn’t voice the other thoughts racing through his mind—that it was Heather he was concerned about, not his youngest child, and it wouldn’t break his heart if Annie quietly disappeared, taking the shame of her disease with her.

And James was certain that Annie
was
his, despite Shannon’s whoring; he’d discreetly conducted paternity tests on each of his children. Except Heather. He’d never doubted she was his daughter. Her intelligence, her drive, her thirst for justice, all were qualities she’d inherited from him, while Annie had inherited only Shannon’s flaws.

It seemed as though Shannon had deliberately funneled everything he’d hated about her—the drinking, the running around, the ugly mood swings, the screaming fights—into their last daughter as she’d gestated inside Shannon’s womb, just to spite him.

James honestly didn’t expect Annie to live any longer than her mother had.

Kevin? Ah, his son had been more Shannon’s boy than his, a photographer and a boozer, in a committed relationship with another man; he was full of thoughtful silences and adrenaline-fueled action—sky-diving, skiing, and surfing.

But Heather was his flesh and blood,
his
daughter—mind, heart, and soul.

If only he could remind her of that fact.

The paper bag rustled as James pulled the box of ammo out. Untucking the box’s end flap, he slid out the carton with its neat rows of bullets.

Of course, once a man found his daughter, he’d be wise to take her and go and forget about the off-limits male in whose company he found her.

A wise man, perhaps. But he was a father.

26
FIRE-CRACKED BONES

N
EW
O
RLEANS
March 28

T
HE SMELL OF SMOKE
, burned wood, and water-logged ashes hung heavy in the air. And in the sunshine, the stark sight of the fire-cracked bones of what had once been their home rooted Lucien to the fractured and stained sidewalk like an oak, one hand still grasping the SUV’s door.

Dante’s words, low and husky, whispered through Lucien’s memory.

The fire I told you about? Simone didn’t . . . make it out. She’s gone,
mon ami.