Justine had never countermanded or changed one of his orders before and, he was quite sure, had never before considered doing such a thing. He intended to make sure she never did again.
“Explain yourself,” he said, his voice cold enough to frost the deck.
“Of course, mon pиre,” Justine said, her tone dulcet and obedient. “I only did what needed to be done. You used Stephen and Patrick to firebomb Baptiste’s home, and I used them to finish the job.”
“Meaning?”
“I knew Dante Baptiste would come for those responsible for the fire and for the death of his silly Simone. Especially if he knew when and where to look. So I used Stephen and Patrick as bait.”
Mauvais’s fingers white-knuckled around the railing. Wood cracked. “Who helped you set them up? Who made sure Baptiste received word of your false rendezvous?” he asked, his voice crackling with icy anger.
“The artist on Magazine Street—Vincent. But he believed he was setting you up, mon pиre, not that marmot Dante.”
Mauvais nodded, then blew out an irritated breath. Time to clean house once more. An annoying but necessary task repeated every half century or so. Even though Justine had manipulated and used the Magazine Street lord, Vincent would die for his foolish betrayal; his household would be scattered.
Without mercy, he would meet any and all challenges to his authority. As always.
Mauvais watched the dark line of the river bank glide past, shore lights smearing orange, yellow, and white color across the Mississippi’s surface. “Tell me more,” he commanded quietly.
“Everyone aboard La Belle Femme will die tonight. Je regrette, mon cher Guy, but your yacht has been made into a trap.”
“Ah, what have you done?” Mauvais closed his eyes. “Ungrateful child. I gave you your justice. A life for a life.”
“Justice?” Justine laughed. “How could you possibly imagine that one death would atone for Йtienne’s murder? For the loss of his entire household at the hands of that True Blood bastard? I am giving Йtienne the justice you did not, mon pиre.”
The bitter accusation, the quiet fury in his fille de sang’s words, opened Mauvais’s eyes and finally turned his head. Justine met his gaze, her chin lifted, waves of lustrous coffee-brown hair framing her beautiful snow-white face. A fierce grief burned in her dark eyes—a poisoned apple that she had devoured to the stem and core.
Just as he’d known it would, the sight of her pierced Mauvais to the heart, sharper and more ruthless than any knife. He remembered turning her, how she’d clung to him, as he’d drained the blood from her body. Remembered her quiet and grateful murmurs.
He would never find another like her.
But she refused to look beyond her broken heart and her empty bed. She would never understand that vampire society, stagnant and collapsing in upon itself, might very well need Dante Baptiste and the chaos seething in his veins in order to survive.
Of course, the trick would be properly guiding that chaos and violence, a trick Mauvais believed he could handle well.
“You gave me no other choice,” Justine said.
Mauvais lifted a hand from the railing and stroked the backs of his fingers against her soft cheek. “Foolish girl, ungrateful child,” he murmured. “You have given me no other choice as well, ma belle.”
Mauvais stabbed his fingers into Justine’s chest, his nails puncturing her silk bodice and pale breast, cracking bone, and seizing her heart. He yanked the pulsing organ free and held it up for her to see.
As Justine’s blood sprayed across his face and fine French linen shirt, Mauvais regretted removing his leather apron. She blinked in shock, mouth opening and closing, her hands fluttering up to her ruined chest belatedly.
With a flick of a sharp-nailed finger, Mauvais sliced away the black velvet choker with its white rose cameo from around her throat, reclaiming his gift. The cameo bounced across the riverboat’s deck. He brushed Justine’s dark and rose-scented tresses aside so he could whisper into the delicate shell of her ear.
“I disown you.”
Justine crumpled to the deck in a spill of blood and silken midnight-blue skirts and creamy skin.
Leaning over the rail, Mauvais dropped Justine’s heart into the river. It disappeared beneath the dark water without a sound. He straightened, then turned and bellowed, “Edmond!”
Edmond hurried from belowdecks, smoothing his black uniform, then paused, wide-eyed, as he took in the situation. Edging carefully away from the spreading pool of blood on the deck, he awaited Mauvais’s instructions.
“Clean up this mess, then toss mademoiselle overboard. She is no longer a member of the household.”
Edmond blinked. “Oui, at once, my lord.”
Mourning his ruined shirt and slacks, Mauvais strode toward the pilothouse. He had a message to send Dante Baptiste, provided it wasn’t already too late; a message that would end with the young True Blood owing Mauvais a very big favor.
But when the operator signaled the yacht, static and silence was the only reply.
41
HOW TO DESTROY ANGELS
NEW ORLEANS,
La Belle Femme
March 28
GUNSHOTS POP-POP-POPPED FROM THE light-pearled yacht below like corks fired from champagne bottles. The power boat bobbed against the anchored vessel, empty. Tiny figures raced across the deck. Some fell. More pops echoed across the lake. Dante’s pulse drummed through his veins, at his temples.
He arrowed himself down toward the yacht, dropping from eight stories above the white-capped water to five, his deltoid muscles burning as his wings slashed through the humid air, the salt tang of brine prickling his nostrils.
More pop-pop-pops.
Trey’s head snapped back, dreads whipping around him almost in slow motion, then he dropped to one knee on the deck. And swayed. Cold fingers latched around Dante’s heart. A streak of black and purple–edged motion, then Silver stood over the mortal shooter’s splayed body, licking blood from his fingers. He looked up, silver eyes brimming with light.
<Hurry, dammit,> he sent. <Trey ain’t listening.>
<On our way down, cher, hold on.>
Trey staggered to his feet. He dashed across the main deck, then darted up a flight of stairs to the upper deck, disappearing inside the cabin. Another series of pop-pop-pops welcomed him. Silver raced after him, face grim.
Dante glanced to his right. Lucien flew close to his wing tip, his hair a streamlined banner of liquid night blowing behind him, Von tucked against one side, Heather the other. Lucien had convinced Dante that he shouldn’t carry anyone on his first flight, not until he had tested the strength of his wings and his landing skills.
I doubt Heather would enjoy a long drop into the lake, Dante, or a crash landing on the yacht. I doubt you’d enjoy it either.
A point Dante hadn’t argued, couldn’t argue; his wings were untested. And after having already knocked Heather on her ass with his fucking seizure . . . A muscle flexed in Dante’s jaw.
As though feeling his gaze, Lucien looked at him from over his shoulder, his golden eyes glinting in the darkness like stars. Dante felt a gentle touch against his shields, Lucien seeking permission.
Dante thinned his shields.
<Time to learn to land, child. Listen.>
Lucien’s wybrcathl rang out in a complicated melody, streaming information into Dante’s mind on wind and speed and rates of descent along with spatial dimensions and perspectives. Images of wing and body positions, of gliding techniques, strobed behind his eyes. He drank in the song and the information embedded within its chiming chords. Pain sparked electric at his temples, then winked out.
The wybrcathl ended in a quiet spill of deep bass notes.
<Got it, mon ami,> Dante sent.
Heather glanced at Dante, wind slashing tendrils of red hair across her face. She touched her fingertips to her lips and kissed them. <For luck. Don’t break anything.>
<Ditto, catin. See you below.>
Dante contracted his delts and worked his wings, tipping to the left as he glided down toward the yacht. Looks like I’m left-handed and left-winged. Shifting his weight more to center, he leveled his descent. But not his speed.
The yacht was coming up fast.
Dante flapped and flexed his wings to slow himself down, and it worked to a small degree, just not as much as he’d hoped. He skimmed over the yacht’s antenna, satellite dishes, and sun deck, his shadow rippling across the jacuzzi’s bubbling water, and aimed himself at the main deck.
People in crisp white uniforms looked up. Dante caught a glimpse of their expressions—stunned disbelief, adrenaline-soaked panic, and terror—as he swooped past and down.
Fanning his wings to slow his descent—nah, make that a controlled plummet—Dante swung his body around to vertical and landed. His boots hit the deck hard and at a run. He slammed into the metal railing, knocking the air from his lungs and nearly catapulting over the side.
“It’s the Fallen!” someone screamed.
“Holyshitholyshitholyshitholyshit . . .”
White light strobed at the edges of Dante’s vision, migraine early warning. Pain pricked behind his left eye. Pulsed at his temples. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Dante shoved himself away from the railing and spun around to face Mauvais’s gun-wielding crew, his wings flaring out behind him, muscles spring-coiled.
Most of the crew scattered, pelting away in every direction, skirting around or jumping over the handful of bloodied bodies Trey and Silver had left behind on the teak-paneled deck. Dante heard a loud splash as someone opted for a man-overboard exit strategy.
But three others, two guys and a chick with gel-spiked blonde hair, carefully placed their guns down on the teak deck and surrendered. All three knelt and laced their fingers behind their bowed heads, their faces drained of color.
Dante studied them for a moment, unease prickling along his spine. What’s wrong with this picture? So far, he’d only seen mortals on the yacht. Where were Mauvais’s nightkind guards and crew? Protecting the fi’ de garce and his chienne of a fille de sang while leaving his servants to their own fucking fate?
“Don’t move a muscle,” Dante said, blurring across the decking to scoop up their guns and toss them over the side. “And y’all might live through this.”
Lucien touched down with a graceful flutter of wings. Another loud man-overboard splash greeted his arrival.
“Smooth landing, Baptiste,” Heather murmured, stepping from Lucien’s embrace.
“Almost brought tears to my eyes,” Von agreed.
“Nothing beats an appreciative audience, yeah—and y’all can blow me.”
An unshielded and anxious thought from one of the kneeling trio of white uniformed mortals spiked out into the adrenaline-and-cordite smoked air.
If only M’sieu were on board.
Dante went still. That couldn’t be right. Maybe the thought had been intended to be intercepted, to trick him into believing Mauvais wasn’t here. He closed his eyes and listened, tuning out the fast-paced patter of mortal pulses to focus on the slow pendulum swing of immortal hearts.
From the main deck: BOOM. BOOM. From the upper deck: BOOM. BOOM. Von and Lucien; Trey and Silver.
Dante opened his eyes. No other nightkind were on board. Which meant that either Vincent had lied to him or that Vincent had been lied to—but in either case, Dante had just led everyone he loved into a goddamned trap.
The yacht’s engines rumbled to life.
Justine’s words snaked through his aching mind: Trust me, I’ll make sure you regret every breath you’ve ever drawn.
“Mauvais ain’t here,” Dante said, voice tight, sending his words to Silver and Trey at the same time. “And we’ve been set the fuck up. Get off the yacht tout de suite.”
<Trey still ain’t listening,> Silver sent. <And I don’t think I can drag him out.>
<Split, p’tit. Get outta there. I’ll grab Trey.>
“I’ll make sure the speed boat’s ready to roll,” Von said, tucking his Brownings back into the double holsters beneath his leather jacket and striding for the ladder leading to the lower deck. “Four is too many to be carried, we’re gonna need it.”
Looking at Lucien, Dante tilted his head at the kneeling crew members. “Find out what they know. Then get the hell out of here.”
Lucien nodded, then turned his gleaming gaze on the mortals. But the stubborn set of his jaw and his silence spoke volumes: He wasn’t leaving before Dante.
Dante raked a hand through his hair in frustration.
A firecracker string of muffled pops echoed from the upper deck, then Silver blazed to a stop beside Dante in a swirl of copper and cinnamon-scented air. Blood glistened on his vintage Mad Max T-shirt and smeared his pale face, some of it his own, judging by the scent and the blood-slicked hand he was pressing against his belly.
“Trey’s heading for the pilot house or bridge or whatever the fuck you call the steering place,” he said.
“Haul ass to the boat,” Dante said. “Von’s already on his way.”
Silver nodded.
“And you?” Heather asked. “What about you?”
“I’m gonna fetch Trey.”
“Then I’d put those things away, dude,” Silver advised, eyeing Dante’s wings. “Real tight quarters in there.”
“Shit. Good point, cher.” Dante drew in a breath, then contracted his deltoid muscles. He felt the smooth glide of his wings as they telescoped down and in, with a whisper of velvet against skin. He looked at Heather. “Go ahead. I’ll catch up.”
Heather shook her head. Her fingers white-knuckled around the grip of her Colt. “I’m not leaving without you, Baptiste.”
“Then let’s go, catin.” Dante wrapped an arm around Heather’s waist and moved.
DANTE SPED THROUGH THE upper deck—bar, salon, dining room, scrubbed and gleaming stainless-steel galley—following Trey’s bread-crumb trail of bloodied, white-uniformed bodies to the bridge.
Dante slowed to a halt, dread spinning tight in his chest like a wheel on the hatch of a submarine when he heard the rhythmic and muffled beep of a timer.
Time was running out, disaster breathing down its neck.
Heather slipped free of his embrace and did a slow three-sixty of the wheelhouse, gun lifted in a secure two-handed grip.
Trey stood at the equipment console, his fingers blurring across a computer keyboard, dreads dancing against his back and shoulders. Blood streaked the side of his face, saturated the back of his navy blue button-down shirt, the left hip of his jeans, the smell of it thick and heady in the enclosed space.
“You ain’t hiding from me,” Trey was muttering underneath his breath, over and over like a child’s curse/chant. “You ain’t hiding from me. You ain’t. You ain’t.”
“Trey,” Dante said softly, stepping up beside him. Pain chiseled at his concentration as his migraine revved into the red zone. “Mauvais ain’t here. He never was. This is a trap and we gotta go, cher.”
Nautical charts flashed across the computer’s monitor. “You ain’t hiding from me. You ain’t. You ain’t.”
“Trey . . .”
“I heard you, Tee-Tee,” Trey said, his fingers falling silent on the monitor. “Fi’ de garce is laughing at us. Thinks killing Simone was a game, him. Wish I could move like data through the Internet. I’d be on the motherfucker right now.”
“His night is coming, cher—and soon. It just ain’t tonight.”
A dark and furious grief radiated from Trey like the fiery corona of an eclipse. Metal screeched as his fingernails scraped across the console. He lifted his head, then looked at Dante. His eyes drank in the light, swallowed it whole, and gave none back.
“I’m gonna need more of your blood, Tee-Tee.”
“You’ll have it,” Dante promised. “Bu
t right now, we need to move our asses.”
Trey said, “See you topside,” then swiveled around, dreads swinging against his back. He moved, vanishing from the bridge in a streak of bloodied blue, and dark coils.
Relief cascaded through Dante and his heart slowed its double-time march against his ribs. As he moved away from the console to join Heather, he felt Lucien’s polite rap against his shields and opened up to him.
<These three know nothing of a trap,> Lucien sent. <However, I just noticed several other crew members—including the captain—boarding a second power boat.>
<Fuck. Abandoning ship after starting the engines. I’m thinking a bomb.>
<As am I. Hurry, child.>
Dante tucked Heather against his side. “Yacht might be a time bomb, catin.”
She stared at him, and he heard her pulse picking up speed. “Shit.”
Dante grabbed her hand and moved. When they reached the lower deck, Trey and Lucien were waiting for them at the stern, beside the ladder leading down to the wave-bobbing boat below. Another boat sped away across the lake, its engine a high-pitched drone, a V of black water rippling in its wake.
Dante waved Lucien and Trey on—go, go, already, we’re right behind y’all—then opened his mouth, but whatever he’d intended to say skated away beyond his recall as red-hot pain drilled through his skull. The yacht deck tilted like a capsizing ship as another image wheeled over it and clicked into place.
Mama Prejean smacks Jeanette as she sets the table, telling her she’s doing it ass-backwards. Papa, with an irritated grunt, backhands the girl and knocks her down.
Dante drops his Metal Scene mag and rises from the floor . . .
Another wheeling image . . .
An electronic beep sounds from the door. A green light reading OPEN scrolls across the lock’s LED screen. The thick door ka-chunks open.
Some douchebag wearing blue scrubs and paper slippers stands at the threshold, a priest’s satin stole draping his broad shoulders. He holds a brown leather carrying case in one hand, a loop of beads in the other. His face is hard and rugged, all weathered angles and planes, the tough mask of a resistance fighter. His blue eyes burn with a fierce light.