Etched in Bone (21 page)

Pulling his hands from his pockets, Dante paused on the empty sidewalk, his gaze on a sleek old Caddy gleaming like a white-washed tomb beneath the street lights, nestled against the curb on Saint Peter, just before Preservation Hall.

The beats of two mortal hearts—one hammering out a desperate rhythm, the other a lazy roll of thunder, the shark’s unhurried tempo—echoed from the car’s interior.

Behind the Caddy’s windshield, Dante saw a dark-skinned boy with close-cropped black curls struggling to slide across the passenger seat to the door. One hand reached for the door handle. But the Caddy’s driver wasn’t having it. His fingers twisted into the teen’s long-sleeved black T-shirt and yanked him back. Shook him.

“You think I don’t know a lie when I hear it, you little shit?” The driver’s face was impassive, without a flicker of emotion, his voice matter-of-fact. “Robbed, my ass. You done smoked-up my money again. And for the last fucking time. You’re gonna be a lesson for the rest of the little shits.”

Hard-knuckled images flashed through the man’s mind as he doubled up a large fist.
Bullet to the temple. Body dumped into the Caddy’s trunk. A quick drive out to the bayou. A Happy Meal for hungry gators.

From the darkness below, Papa-fucking-Prejean laughed.
Boy needs a lesson. Boy
always
needs a lesson.

Dante
moved
.

Before the
fi’ de garce
had even lowered his fist, Dante had wrenched open the Caddy’s passenger side door, tearing it from its hinges in an eardrum-scraping shriek of metal and tossing it to the sidewalk. Steel clanged against brick.

Two pairs of dark and startled eyes focused on Dante, bodies frozen in a stark still-frame of impending violence.

Dante breathed in the smell of sweat and beer and the heady, smoky aroma of panic-peppered adrenaline and shivered as hunger twisted through him. He
moved
again. Leaning into the car, Dante grabbed the teen’s wrist and jerked him free of the driver’s grip, out of the Caddy, and onto the sidewalk.

The boy—maybe fourteen or fifteen and meth-skinny—stared at Dante, mouth open, panic still bright in his eyes. “God-
damn
,” he breathed.

Dante spun the teen around, then pushed him away from the Caddy with a shove to the back of his How to Destroy Angels T-shirt with its skeletal beast graphic.

“Fucking go. And don’t look back.”

The boy bolted toward Bourbon Street, his sneakers slapping against the sidewalk bricks with ever increasing speed.

Dante turned back around to face the Caddy and its driver—nah, make that
pimp
—who was reaching under his seat—no doubt for the gun he’d planned to use on the now-fleeing teen, his dead-eyed gaze on Dante.

“You’ve just made the last mistake of your life, asshole,” the man stated, his tone level and easy, a man ordering mashed potatoes with his BBQ ribs, as he swung the gun out from beneath the seat.

Dante
moved
, blurring into the Caddy, across the front seat, slamming against the pimp, a forearm pressed against his throat. The back of the pimp’s head smashed against the driver’s side window, a spiderweb of fractures crackling across the glass behind his trimmed ’fro. Dante snugged his leather-clad knee against the man’s crotch.

Wincing and struggling for air, the pimp
fi’ de garce
shoved the gun muzzle underneath Dante’s hoodie and against his ribs. Dante reached down and wrapped his fingers around the gun’s barrel. And twisted. Fingers and other small bones in the pimp’s hand and wrist snapped.

The man screamed, the sound scraping like fingernails across Dante’s aching mind. Dante released the gun and it bounced onto the seat before thudding onto the floorboards. Grabbing the pimp’s chin, Dante forced his face aside, exposing his throat.

“Still thinking this is the last mistake of
my
life, motherfucker?”

“Go screw—” were the only words said motherfucker managed to grate out from between clenched teeth before pain-triggered endorphins flooded his adrenaline-saturated scent. And Dante’s hunger uncoiled like a striking rattler.

Dante tore into the pimp’s taut, whiskered throat with his fangs, shredding flesh and muscle and larynx, lost to everything except the rush of hot, coppery blood pulsing in between his lips.

D
ANTE TOSSED THE
C
ADDY’S
keys into the trunk alongside the pimp’s already cooling body, then shut the lid.

Guess the fucker was right about a body in the trunk, just wrong about whose.

A sliver of molten pain pierced Dante’s mind. “Fuck,” he muttered, rubbing his temples with his fingers.

Despite feeding, pain still chiseled away at his thoughts; his migraine refused to relent one fucking iota. And the blood-fed energy surging through his veins was only skating along the surface of his exhaustion, like a dragonfly skimming the Mississippi, instead of washing it away like normal.

Looks like trashing cemeteries and creating gates comes with a honking huge price tag. Who knew, yeah? And I’m flat-ass broke.

Maybe after Sleep . . .

He thought of Heather, felt her presence at the back of his mind like a blue-white star, cool and soothing and constant. Beacon and anchor both. But their bond was a danger to her if he couldn’t keep his shit together and stay in the here-and-now.

Ain’t losing her too.

He stepped up from the street onto the sidewalk, skirting the Caddy’s liberated passenger door. He swiveled around, looking past green-shuttered doorways, past night-pooled balconies with pots of ferns and roses and geraniums hanging from their black iron scrollwork, the flowers perfuming the humid air, and toward the restless flickers of neon on Bourbon.

He hoped that the teen with the black curls and HDA tee had found a safe place to snooze, but knew safe was real fucking relative when you lived on the streets.

With a last glance toward Bourbon Street, Dante said, “
Bonne chance, p’tit
.”

Tugging the edges of his hood past his face, Dante strode up the empty sidewalk, his boots soundless against the brickwork. Headlights starred the night, dazzling his vision and needling pain into his eyes, as a car turned onto Saint Peter and purred up the street. Wishing for a pair of shades, he both shielded his sight with his arm and looked down at the bit of sidewalk between his boots.

He and the car reached the club at the same time. The headlights winked out as the vehicle glided up against the curb, in front of Von’s Harley. The engine revved, a high-performance eight cylinder’s throaty roar, idling down into a low rumble as the driver eased off the gas pedal, then killed the engine.

Dante looked up, his muscles coiling in anticipation.

A silver Jaguar convertible with black-tinted windows glinted beneath the gaslights. Music escaped from the car’s interior, penetrating the night—bass throb and sexy, up-tempo drumbeat, a pensive voice—David’s Bowie’s “China Girl.”

Dante frowned. He didn’t recognize the car. Given the Louisiana license plates, it sure as hell wasn’t piloted by a lost tourist. Maybe one of Mauvais’s muscle-nerds looking to play?

Glancing at the star-faded horizon, Dante felt the deadly dawn burning beneath it, searing away the night. Still an hour or so away. A cold smile tugged at his lips. Maybe the night’s hunt
wasn’t
over, after all.

Dante pushed his hood back from his face and stepped over to the Jaguar, his hands loose and ready at his sides.

The driver’s side window hummed as it glided down into its slot and a cloud of smoke smelling of premium, dark-leaf tobacco and vanilla rolled out from the car’s interior, carried on “China Girl’s” dark and yearning chords.

“Christ. I always forget how bloody gorgeous you are, mate,” a male voice with a light British accent said, managing to sound both amused and rueful at the same time. A voice Dante recognized as belonging to one of Simone and Silver’s friends, the lord of the household down on Magazine Street—a household allied with Mauvais’s. “I think it must be a self-defense mechanism of some sort.”

Body still tensed for action, Dante met Vincent’s gleaming, eye liner-rimmed gaze. “Self-defense mechanism, huh?”

“Must be. Otherwise I’d become obsessed with figuring out how to get you into bed for a proper and thorough shagging. Then I’d never get
anything
bloody done.”

“You could just ask me.”

Vincent blinked, mouth open. He
moved
, blurring out of the car and onto the sidewalk. Dante caught a glimpse of the Jaguar’s full moon–white interior before the car door thunked shut again. The music shut off.

Vincent leaned against the Jaguar, dressed in his usual 1970s glam-style—skin-tight purple and blue paisley button-down shirt, the black top of his usual pack of Pink Elephant cigarettes poking up from the pocket; snug mock-snakeskin vinyl pants and platform-soled boots. His shoulder-length dark brown hair was cut glam star shag-style, his face clean-shaven. Several centuries old, maybe more, but he didn’t look a day over thirty.

Dante had always thought he looked like Ewan McGregor’s character, sexy and out-of-control Curt Wild, in that old movie
Velvet Goldmine
. Minus the heroin habit. And the tendency to expose himself. Well, maybe not on that last one. At the moment, however, Vincent was staring at him, arms folded over his chest, the expression on his handsome face one of utter disbelief.

“I could just
ask
? And where would the sodding fun be in that?”

“In the proper and thorough shagging if the answer was yes, would be my guess,” Dante said with a shrug. “Whatcha doing here, Vincent? Kinda late for a visit, yeah?”

Emotion tightened the corners of Vincent’s mouth and all amusement vanished from his hazel eyes. “Silver called me. Told me about the fire . . . and Simone. My condolences, mate.”

Dante nodded, his muscles twisting several turns tighter. “
Merci bien
, but you didn’t hafta fucking drive out here to tell me that. What else?”

“Your nose is bleeding.” Vincent tapped a paint-stained fingertip under his own nose. “And no, I didn’t drive out here to tell you
that
,” he added with a roll of his eyes. “I’m not bloody psychic
or
that desperate.”

Dante snorted. “What else?” he repeated, wiping at his nose with the sleeve of his hoodie.

Shaking his head, Vincent straightened and stepped away from the Jaguar to stand less than a handspan from Dante. Underneath the nicotine, tobacco, and vanilla reek of his smokes, his skin smelled of turpentine and ink and fresh canvas.

“I don’t know what Mauvais’s beef with you is exactly,” Vincent said, “and to be honest, I don’t sodding care. The man’s a prick. So are you at times. But I suspect that whatever it is, it’s the reason Simone died. Which means you fucked up, mate.”

Fire scorches her lungs. Blackens her skin. Devours her with relentless teeth.

“
Oui, je connais
,” Dante agreed, voice low. “I fucked up for true and she paid the price. So did her brother.”

“Bloody hell. I forgot about her brother. How is he?”

“In fucking shock.”

Vincent’s brow furrowed in concern. “Will he survive it?”

“Gonna do everything in my power to see that he does,” Dante said. “Now if that’s all—” His words cut off as pain drove an ice pick through his left eye.

The gaslit sidewalk and Vincent tilted, then shifted, peeling away to reveal a concrete floor awash in water. Dante stumbled, but strong hands latched around his biceps and kept him upright.

A dark ribbon of blood curls through the water and away from the scrubs-clad man sprawled facedown on the wet concrete floor.

Dante crouches beside the body and rifles the guy’s pockets, searching for the lighter or book of matches he knows has to be there, given the smoke and nicotine odor coating the tech’s skin and clothes. Score. He finds it. Dante pulls his hand free and palms the blue Bic lighter.

His pulse races. Fuckers will be here soon. Gotta hurry.

Rising to his bare feet, he splashes across the padded room to the mattress he’d tossed aside. Hands shaking, he places Orem, the plushie Orca, the only thing he has left of Chloe, onto the torn and shredded mattress’s dry center. Long-dried flecks of blood dot the white part of Orem’s fur.

Ain’t letting them touch you. Ain’t letting them take you. I promised.

Dante’s eyes sting. He flicks the lighter’s wheel . . .

Someone was shaking Dante, calling his name in a low, urgent voice. Focused energy tapped insistently against his shields.

The image of his hand touching the lighter’s flame to Orem’s fur rippled like a puddle pummeled by rain drops, then vanished as Vincent’s pale and perplexed face blurred into view. Fingers were squeezing Dante’s biceps hard enough to cut off the circulation.

“
J’su ici
,” Dante whispered, blinking. Pain prickled behind his eyes. He tasted his own blood at the back of his throat. He tried to recall what he’d just been thinking about or remembering, but it spun away from him like an oiled roulette wheel.

“Yes,” Vincent said, drawing the word out dubiously. “You
are
here. But are you all right, mate? You looked . . .” He hesitated, as though searching for the right words, then said, “. . . lost.”

“You can let go now,” Dante said, ignoring Vincent’s question, flexing against his tight-fingered hold.

“You’re welcome,” Vincent muttered, releasing Dante’s arms. “Next time I’ll bloody well let you bash your skull against the pavement. Might do you some good.”

A smile tilted Dante’s lips. “Fair enough.” His fingers tingled with pinpricks as blood started flowing to his hands again.

“Of course,” Vincent mused, his gaze taking a slow cruise along Dante’s body from his head to his boots and all ports in between, “if that was an attempt to end up in my arms . . .”