Adrian Phoenix Sampler

1
a necessary evil
Seattle, WA
March 25
E mmett Thibodaux stood at the threshold of the

victim’s home office, light from the hallway casting his
shadow across the body on the floor.
FBI SAC Alberto Rodriguez was stretched out on the
carpet like a man seeking relief for an aching back. But the
thick, coppery reek of blood and the crackling of police ra-
dios from the living room told a different story.
Emmett flipped on the light.
Rodriguez stared up at the glass-domed ceiling light
with half-lidded, milky eyes. His throat looked shredded,
savaged. Blood had soaked into the front of his pale blue
sweater, staining it a dark maroon that matched the blood
halo soaked into the carpet around his head.
“Christ, did his daughter see him like this?” Emmett asked.
Phoenix_BeneaththeSkin_Final.indd 9 10/27/09 9:39 AM

10 Adrian Phoenix
“No,” his partner, Merri Goodnight, murmured from
just behind him. He heard the whisper of suede against his
windbreaker as she leaned forward to look into the murder
room. Caught a faint whiff of cloves. “Not according to
what Abano told me. The kid only saw the perps. She didn’t
know about her dad.”
“Abano? The fed in charge of the scene?”
“You mean the fed that was in charge of the scene?”
Merri replied dryly. “That’d be him.”
“No doubt he’s one unhappy camper at the moment.”
“Given that the vic’s one of their own, that’s putting it
mildly.”
“Yeah, well, wonder how he’d feel to learn that some
of his own might be involved in the killing,” Emmett mur-
mured. “The feds’ll be even unhappier when they realize
we’re shutting this crime scene down altogether.”
Controlling and sanitizing the situation. A clean wipe.
Scraping clinkers into the furnace to watch them burn, as
his granddad used to say. No matter how you put it, the
result was the same. Events were being altered at best and
erased at worst.
A necessary evil in his line of work.
From the front room, Emmett caught a low murmur of
voices from the TV that no one had turned off, hoping to
catch the result of the Garcia-Dowd middleweight champi-
onship bout and the latest sports scores while processing the
scene. No more police radio static or low, irked mutters.
The Bureau’s people had vacated along with the Seattle
PD’s people. Hell, maybe they had all gone to a local tav-
ern to brew up a booze-fueled bitchfest about the Shadow
Branch’s glory-stealing theft of their case.
But nothing was ever what it seemed to be. Especially
here.
Emmett stepped into the room, carefully avoiding the

Beneath the Skin 11
spatters of blood marring the cream-colored carpet near
the threshold. He caught a faint whiff of piss just under the
blood reek.
“ETA for our cleanup crew is ten minutes,” Merri said.
“Gillespie’s supposed to drop by with instructions from HQ.”
“Wonder what’s taking so long? Usually Gillespie’s first
on scene.”
“HQ probably put the chief on hold while they were
busy trying to figure out who to smear the sticky, gooey
blame on. Once they have that figured out . . .”
“Heads are gonna roll,” Emmett agreed. He allowed his
gaze to rove around the room, ticking off each item he saw
as normal or not, a mental what’s-wrong-with-this-picture
game that he played at each assignment. Hell, not just at
assignments or crime scenes anymore. He found himself
doing it everywhere he went—at Safeway, the mall, in a
movie theater, picking up the kids from school.
Gun on the carpet against the north wall, a Smith &
Wesson—not normal.
Desk with neatly parked chair—normal. Black, four-
drawer file cabinet—normal.
Opened gun safe containing a single box of ammo—
probably not normal.
And the late Alberto Rodriguez sprawled on the carpet
in a drying pool of his own blood—well, hell, not even close
to normal.
But normal had nothing to do with what had happened
in this house.
“Abano and his people have no clue about vampires,”
Merri said, as though reading Emmett’s mind. But he knew
she hadn’t; that was an issue they’d hashed out years ago.
“They think Rodriguez was killed by multiple slash and
stab wounds to the throat. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to
enlighten them.”

12 Adrian Phoenix
Emmett chuckled. “They wouldn’t’ve believed you anyway.”
“Not at first,” Merri said, a smile quirking at the corners
of her mouth. “You didn’t either, as I recall.”
“Still don’t,” Emmett drawled.
Merri folded her arms across her chest, slung her weight
onto one hip, and arched an eyebrow. “Uh-huh. Don’t
make me prove it to you, Thibodaux. Again.”
Emmett shook his head, smiling. “Once was enough,
thanks.” He pinched up his trousers at the thighs, then
crouched down beside Rodriguez’s body. The man’s ruined
throat had been pierced and torn by sharp teeth.
“Not the neatest work I’ve ever seen,” Merri said, her
voice pitched low, and now right beside him. After five years
of working together, her speed and stealth no longer startled
him. Most times, he even forgot what she was.
“Looks to me like one outta control vamp.” Emmett
glanced up at his partner.
Merri tilted her head, her dark brown eyes studying all
that remained of Special Agent in Charge Alberto Rodri-
guez, husband, father, Bureau man. “Young vamp, maybe.
Or hungry as hell.” She shifted and glanced back at the
doorway and Emmett followed her gaze.
High-velocity blood spatter speckled the doorway’s wood
frame and the peach-colored wall beside it. “Looks like
Rodriguez got one good shot off, though,” she said.
“He did.” Emmett agreed.
Merri nodded at the gun on the carpet. “For all it was
worth.”
“So what stopped the vamp from killing Rodriguez’s
daughter?” Emmett said. “Why didn’t he snatch up that kid
and drain her dry?”
“Good question.” Merri crouched down beside Emmett
and he smelled spice and cloves from the cigarettes she
smoked. “And I think I have the answer.”

Beneath the Skin 13
“Yeah? Let’s hear it, then, Goodnight,” Emmett said,
his voice a low drawl, a little bit of Louisiana creeping in
underneath his words. “You gonna tell me this vamp’s got a
soft spot for kids?”
Merri shook her head and her straightened black hair,
gathered and glossed into a high and neat ponytail, swung
like a pendulum across her shoulder blades. “Nope. Some-
one else shot him again.”
“Yeah? Who?”
A smug smile curved Merri’s rosy full lips. She lifted her
hand and displayed a small, slender dart pinched between
two fingers. “One of the other perps dropped the vamp
with a trank gun. I relieved Abano’s techs of the one they’d
bagged while processing the scene. But they missed finding
the dart in the carpet.”
Emmett grinned. “I knew there was a reason I kept you
around.”
“Because I’m a better field agent than you’ll ever be?”
“That’d be it.”
“Truth, brothah,” Merri said, then chuckled, the sound
warm and throaty. She slid the dart into an inside pocket of
her black suede jacket. “Makes me wonder what else they
missed.”
“Truth, sistah. I’m guessing tons, but it doesn’t matter. It’s
never going to court.” Emmett rose to his feet, his knees creak-
ing with the movement. An annoying new voice in the body-
choir his joints, tendons, and bones had orchestrated ever
since he’d turned forty. A body-choir that sang loud and strong
when it rained. Given that he lived in Seattle, the singing was
almost year-round and lusty as hell.
Looks like all those years of karate sparring are catching
up with me.
“Do we know for certain that feds are involved in this?”
Merri asked.

14 Adrian Phoenix
“HQ just said it was possible and to keep everything
hush-hush until the perps were positively identified,” Em-
mett said, offering a hand up to his partner.
Merri snorted. “When isn’t something hush-hush?” She
grasped his hand, her dark brown skin bleaching out his
hard-won tan, and he pulled all five foot nothing of her up
onto her booted feet. “It isn’t called the Shadow Branch for
nothing.”
“Sing it, sistah. Wanna bet that even the director’s
dumps are classified?”
Merri shook her head. “Man, that’s nasty. What’s the
matter with—” She straightened, her hand sliding free of
his, her alert posture reminding Emmett of a hunting dog
on point. She swiveled smoothly to face the doorway. “Our
people are here.”
Emmett heard the front door open, then click shut. A
cold draft of air swept into the room and goosebumped his
skin. He heard the squeak of wheels underneath the back-
ground noise of the TV, felt the thud of footsteps coming up
the hall.
“Three,” Merri murmured. “And Gillespie’s reeking of
Jō van Musk as usual. Maybe that’s why his wife left him.”
“Christ, Merri.”
“Just saying.”
A white-uniformed medic with a neat ’fro and hipster
black-framed rectangular glasses paused at the doorway. He
nodded at Rodriguez’s body. “He ready to go?”
“More than ready,” Merri said.
The medic stepped aside as Merri and Emmett walked
from the room. They passed the gurney parked in the hall
waiting to receive Rodriguez’s remains and the blonde fe-
male medic standing at its head. She nodded as they passed,
a nod Emmett returned.
SB Section Chief Sam Gillespie stood in front of the

Beneath the Skin 15
sofa, his hair buzz-cut to black stubble, the outline revealing
a hairline in high retreat. At six one, he stood two inches
shorter than Emmett, his skin just a shade lighter than
Merri’s. Beads of rain glistened on his wire-framed glasses
and on the shoulders and collar of his deep blue Gore-Tex
jacket. He held the handle of a black satchel in his right
hand.
Gillespie’s lips stretched into the taut line that he consid-
ered a smile. “Thibodaux,” he greeted. “Goodnight.”
“Chief,” Emmett returned, stopping beside the sofa. His
gaze fell upon a mug resting on the coffee table. The red
letters etched upon its white surface read GROUCH, a mug
Rodriguez was most likely sipping from just a few hours ago,
unaware that death was climbing in through the laundry
room window.
“Chief,” Merri muttered as she strode past him to the
front door. She flung it open, drawing in deep breaths of the
moist air in noisy, drama-queen style. Rain pattered against
the front steps and along the crime-scene-taped-off paving
stones leading to the front door.
Gillespie was a little heavy-handed with the cologne,
but at the moment, Emmett was grateful to smell some-
thing besides blood and piss and death.
“How’s Rodriguez’s daughter doing?” Emmett asked.
“Okay, I imagine,” Gillespie said. “Her memory’s been
scrubbed by now.”
“Christ,” Merri muttered from the doorway. “She’s just
a kid.”
“One who’s still alive,” Gillespie said, “because of the
memory scrub. In the bad old days, she would’ve been
turned into another victim of this official and tragic ‘bur-
glary gone wrong.’ ”
Emmett nodded, and shoved his hands into the pockets
of his trousers. True enough. Lost time, missing memories,

16 Adrian Phoenix
and a few misfiring synapses were a helluva lot better than
the cold and permanent alternative.
But nothing said he had to like either option.
“Seems the Bureau has a few rotten apples in the pro-
verbial barrel.” Gillespie dropped the satchel onto the car-
pet. “The daughter positively IDed the suspects as FBI SAC
Lyons, SA Wallace, and Dante Prejean—a vamp member
of some top secret project.”
Emmett whistled. “Wallace? Wasn’t she just named as a
hero by the Bureau a couple of weeks ago for taking down
that serial killer?”
“The Cross-Country Killer—Elroy Jordan,” Merri sup-
plied from the doorway.
Gillespie nodded. “She was. But she ran into Prejean
during the course of that investigation. It’s now believed he
corrupted her.”
Merri snorted. “If he did, then he was only working
what was already inside her.”
Gillespie lanced a cold, icicle-sharp gaze her way.
“Wallace just kicked her career into the gutter, Goodnight,
and after she’d been offered the Seattle SAC position. Her
service record was sparkling with intelligence, ability, and
drive—full of promise. I think corrupted by bloodsucker is as
good an explanation as any.”
Emmett agreed, but he kept that opinion unvoiced. A
rush of cold air smelling of cloves and rain swirled to a stop
beside him.
“No offense,” Gillespie said.
Merri held his gaze for a moment before asking in a
crisp voice, “So what’s the lowdown, Chief?”
“We’re confiscating all evidence gathered by the SPD
and the FBI,” Gillespie said, his gaze traveling around the
living room, as if envisioning how the scene would be of-
ficially reimagined and restaged. “We’re making sure that

Beneath the Skin 17
statements already given to the SPD and the feds by the
Rodriguez girl and her neighbors vanish.”
“Any of the neighbors facing a wipe?” Merri asked.
Gillespie shrugged. “Could be. That’s for someone else
to decide.”
“What kinda TSP was Prejean a part of ?” Emmett asked.
“HQ’s playing this one real close to the vest,” Gillespie
replied. “All I was told was that it was a joint project—us
and the feds—devoted to the study of sociopaths.”
The image of Rodriguez’s ravaged throat and empty
eyes popped into Emmett’s mind. The study of sociopaths. A
chill touched his spine.
“In other words, their monster slipped its leash and they
want us to fetch it. Do I have that right, Chief?” Merri said.
Gillespie nodded. “Pretty much.”
Emmett nudged the satchel with the brown toe of his
Dingo boot. “What’s that?”
A wry smile tugged up one corner of Gillespie’s mouth.
“It’s your monster-catching kit. Cuffs, drugs, chains.”
“We know how to handle vampires,” Emmett said.
“Monster or not.”
“Not this vampire. He’s enhanced.”
“Enhanced?” Merri asked. “You fucking kidding me?”
She dropped a hand to her hip, her dark brown gaze direct
and challenging. “Why the hell would anyone enhance a
vamp? It’s not like we need it.”
“I wasn’t enlightened on that account,” Gillespie said.
He removed his glasses, held them up to the overhead
light, and peered at the rain-spotted lenses. “But I was told
that adrenaline implants to boost his speed, dexterity, and
strength had been installed. So be prepared—he’s going to
be a helluva lot faster than you’ll expect.”
The chief had never been a good liar and his little oh-
look-my-glasses-are-dirty routine gave away the lie. He knew

18 Adrian Phoenix
a lot more than he’d just handed out about the enhanced
vamp. Emmett tapped a listen close finger against the back
of Merri’s hand.
“Our assignment, Chief?” Emmett said.
Gillespie slid his glasses back on. “Intercept and detain
our perps. Prejean is priority one, Wallace priority two, Lyons
number three.” He slipped a hand inside his Gore-Tex jacket
and withdrew a plastic-encased flash drive that he handed to
Emmett. “All pertinent data including files, photos, destina-
tion, and instructions. Study it on your way to Damascus.”
The medics, the blonde in the lead, wheeled the gurney
and its dark, plastic-body-bagged contents through the living
room and out the open front door, wheels thumping down
the steps. The male medic pulled the door shut behind him.
Even through the fog of Jō van Musk, Emmett caught
the nostril-pinching stench of blood and death.
“Our perps are in Damascus, Oregon?” Emmett asked,
curling his fingers around the flash drive, tucking it tight
against his palm.
Gillespie nodded. “We have reason to believe that
Lyons might’ve taken Prejean home. Satellite scans of the
area and of Lyons’s home in particular revealed Wallace’s
Trans Am and Lyons’s Dodge Ram parked in the driveway.”
“A safe bet that Prejean’s with them,” Merri commented.
“HQ’s thought too,” Gillespie said as he walked around
the sofa to the hallway. He stopped in front of the murder
room. “And they’ve got a good five or six hours’ head start,
so move your asses. We’ve got a plane waiting for you at
Sea-Tac. Rendezvous with Holmes and Miklowitz at the
airport and bring them up to speed. You got stay-awake pills,
Goodnight?”
Merri nodded. “I do.”
“Good.” Gillespie’s jacket rustled as he folded his arms
over his chest. He stared into the office.

Beneath the Skin 19
Slipping the flash drive into his trouser pocket, Emmett
bent and wrapped his fingers around the satchel’s handle.
“Chief,” he said, straightening. “Is there anything else we
should know about the project or Prejean’s enhancements?”
Gillespie swiveled around to face them, the lenses of his
glasses reflecting light, his arms still folded over his chest. “I
wish I knew,” he said quietly. “Be careful out there. Don’t
take any chances—especially with Prejean. Hell, not even
with Wallace and Lyons. I know HQ wants them alive, but
it’s not worth your lives. Not to me.”
“Might be better to take our time and wait for Prejean to
Sleep,” Merri said.
“Maybe so,” Emmett said. “But then he could hole up
someplace we won’t find him. So I think moving our asses
is our best option.”
“Then let’s hit the friendly skies and catch us some bad
mofos.”
“Truth, sistah.”
“Be careful,” Gillespie said again, voice low. His gaze
once again fixed on the office’s blood-spattered interior.
“And that’s a direct order.”
“Roger that, Chief.” Emmett exchanged a glance with
Merri as he strode for the front door and the fresh air be-
yond. Doubt and a frown pinched the skin between her
eyes. A dark realization glimmered in her eyes, the same
realization rolling around in Emmett’s skull.
He and Merri were being ordered into the forested hills
of Damascus on a goddamned bureaucratic ass-covering
operation without knowing the truth of what they were up
against.
A monster waited for them in the forest’s dark heart, a
monster who savaged a man in his own home, but left his
daughter untouched.
A monster named Dante Prejean.

1
city of the dead
New Orleans, St. Louis No. 3
March 15
“S o where’s this weird- a ss bit of hoodoo

supposed to be?” Von asked.
“Beside a tomb,” Dante said as they scaled the cem-
etery’s locked, wrought-iron fence, both vaulting with
ease over the black bars and onto the path below.
“Yeah, but which tomb?”
“Baronne, I think,” Dante said, pushing his hood
back. He chose the paved central path and followed it
past gleaming white crypts. He drew in a deep breath
of cherry-blossom-scented air. But beneath the sweet
scent, he caught a whiff of decay, moldering bones, and
old, old grief.
“These N’awlins cemeteries are creepy as hell,” Von
commented. “I can’t imagine what they’d look like in
daylight.”
“Didn’t you ever check ’em out when you were still
mortal?”
IntheBlood_1-452_3p_jdh.indd 12 6/10/09 3:58 PM

I n th e B lo o d 13
“Hell, no,” Von snorted. “Like I said, creepy. Espe-
cially for a delicate flower like moi.” He paused, touching
a finger to his ear. “Wait . . . breaking news. Correction,
seems I ain’t a delicate flower.” He shrugged. “Who
knew? Mama musta lied.”
Dante laughed. “Yeah, you’re gonna be fun on the
tour bus.”
“Man, I’m fun anywhere. And we should be heading
to the airport soon.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
Dante read the names on the tombs as he passed:
DUFOUR, GALLIER, ROUQUETTE, and listened for
the quiet pulse that had drawn him to St. Louis No. 3.
When he caught the letters BA, he stopped, his heart
kicking against his ribs.
He hears the sound of his own voice, raw and demanding,
the words echoing in the cathedral’s vaulted silence. “What
was her name? Genevieve . . . what?”
Dante’s hands clenched into fists as he struggled
with the memory. He closed his eyes. His breathing
quickened and fire flickered to life within his veins.
Smoldered within his heart. He opened his eyes. Pale
moonlight shafted through the thick, twisted oaks,
dripped from the Spanish moss.
“Baptiste,” he whispered.
<You okay, little brother?> Von sent.
Dante nodded. He looked at the tomb and finished
reading the name chiseled into the white stone: BAS-
TILLE. He released his breath. His hands unknotted
and an emotion he couldn’t name curled through him,
damping the flames into embers.
Did his mother even have a grave?

14 A d rian Ph o e n i x
A hand squeezed his shoulder and he looked up into
Von’s moonlit, green eyes. The nomad had shoved his
El Diablo shades on top of his head.
“You sure, man? No pain? Cuz I thought I felt—”
Dante cupped Von’s whisker-rough face between his
hands. He brushed his lips against Von’s, tasted him,
whiskey and road dust, then smoothed his thumbs
along the edges of the mustache framing the nomad’s
mouth.
“I’m good, mon ami,” Dante replied. Dropping his
hands, he twisted free of the nomad’s grip. “And I don’t
need a fucking nanny.”
Von extended a middle finger. Arched an eyebrow.
“How about that? You need that?” Extended the finger
on his other hand. “How about some more?”
“I’ll take it all,” Dante said, “gêné toi pas.”
Dropping his El Diablos back over his eyes, Von
shook his head and sighed. “Boy’s hopeless as hell.”
“Merci.”
As they resumed walking the moonlit path, a hush
swirled through the city of the dead, isolating it from
the world beyond the wrought-iron fence like a deep
black moat. The air was so still the muffled clink of the
chains on Dante’s leather jacket and the creak of Von’s
leather chaps echoed in the silence.
But beneath the hush, Dante caught the faint
rhythm that had—for the last couple of weeks—filled his
mind just as Sleep swept over him. Primal. Like a tribal
drum beating within the earth’s heart.
Like the wordless song that poured, at times, from
Lucien and into him, its complicated melody meshing
with the refrain of his answering song. Similar, yeah,

but not the same. This rhythm reminded him of the
unfamiliar song that had rung through his mind that
night in Club Hell.
The night Jay had been murdered, dying as Dante
had struggled to reach him.
I knew you’d come.
The same night he’d found Lucien broken and im-
paled on the checkered floor of St. Louis Cathedral,
his wings torn, his song nothing but cooling embers.
And had learned that Lucien, his closest friend, his ami
intime, was something else altogether.
You look so much like her.
Pain prickled at Dante’s temples. Send it below. Focus
on now. Focus on here.
The song wisped into his mind again like smoke. A
muted, desperate rhythm. Beckoning him. He moved,
racing past whitewashed and time-weathered statues
guarding tombs, standing sentinel to loss. Trees and
marble monuments blurred into one flickering shadow
as he picked up speed.
The song’s deep-earth drumming pulsed in time
with the blood flowing through his veins, increasing in
intensity until he felt it resonate within his own chest.
Then the sound vanished.
Dante slowed to a stop. He stood next to a tomb
marked BARONNE. And crouched beside it, holding
a bouquet dead and dried, its wings curved forward,
mouth wide-open, was a stone angel.
The one rumored on the streets to have appeared in
the cemetery overnight.
Magic, some said. Gris- g ris, others believed. A sign.
So mortals whispered, yeah.

And nightkind said nothing, their silence uneasy.
A gust of cool air smelling of leather, frost, and old
motor oil fluttered his hair as Von stopped beside him.
“Well, there ya go,” the nomad said. “Weird-ass hoodoo
shit.”
“Ain’t just hoodoo shit, llygad,” Dante murmured,
his gaze on the stone angel. He felt Von step back a few
paces as he took up his duties as Eye.
Observing. Safeguarding. Composing.
Candles in glass holders burned before the stone
angel. The smell of vanilla and wax curled into the air.
Plastic Mardi Gras beads hung from the wing tips and
around the corded throat. Good luck xs chalked in
blue, yellow, and pink decorated the path in front of
the statue, and curled scraps of paper nestled against
the taloned feet.
“One of the Fallen, looks like,” Dante said. Some-
thing else Lucien hadn’t bothered to mention. “And
someone’s turned him to fucking stone.”
Dante knelt, picked up one of the pieces of paper
and read it. Loa of the stone, grant me protection from evil.
Keep me safe in the night. He returned the prayer to its
place beside the stone foot.
He studied the squatting shape. Moonlight glim-
mered and sparkled like ice along faint patterns etched
into the wings. But not feathered wings, no. Like Lu
cien’s, these wings would be black and as smooth as
warm velvet to the touch, the undersides streaked with
purple. Waist-length hair framed the screaming face.
The figure was nude, except for some kind of thick
collar-bracelet twisted around the throat and a bracelet
around one bicep. And most definitely male.

Von sent an image of the collar-bracelet. <Torc.
Celtic. Ancient.>
<Merci, llygad.>
Moonlight illuminated a dark stain on the statue’s
forehead. It looked swiped on, a blood symbol of some
kind, maybe a hoodoo vévé. Dante leaned forward,
leather jacket creaking, and touched the stain. Residual
power crackled against his fingertips like static electric-
ity. A tiny blue flame arced in the space between his
hand and the statue.
Fallen magic.
Catching a whiff of Lucien’s pomegranates-and-
dark-earth scent from the blood symbol, Dante pulled
his hand back and regarded the angel, wondering what
Lucien had done and why. To turn one of his own kind
into stone . . .
Then he remembered Lucien’s words from that night:
Shield yourself. Shut it out. Promise me you won’t follow.
Dante would bet anything he was looking at the
reason why for that promise. Touching a finger to the
collar—torc—around the angel’s throat, he closed his eyes
and listened. Song whispered in through his fingertips.
His breath caught in his throat as his own song, chaotic
and dark, answered. The stone beneath his fingers trem
ored like a rung bell.
Pain suddenly bit into his mind. White light strobed
behind his closed eyes. Migraine storm warning. Dante
opened his eyes and started to rise, then hesitated, one
knee still down on the pavement. The fading song
plucked at him like desperate fingers.
Promise me . . .
He wrapped his left hand around the angel’s dead

bouquet. The sun-dried stems and shriveled petals
crackled beneath his fingers. Flaked away like cindered
wood. Like unspoken truth.
You look so much like her.
You knew all this time? And you never said a word?
Anger swept through Dante and music pulsed white-
hot at his core. He poured energy into the wasted bou-
quet’s remains. Song, dark and driven and wild, raged
through his mind, from his heart, and spiraled around
the skeletal stems. Blue fire kindled in his palms and
shimmered against the stone.
The cupped stone fingers now held green stems
topped by tightly closed buds. But pain shafted through
Dante’s mind again and his rhythm shifted, blasted
harsh and dissonant notes, and his song spilled away
into the night.
His hand slid from the angel and he staggered up
to his feet. Pain twisted through his mind, snagged his
thoughts like barbed wire. He clenched his jaw. Tried to
will the pain away.
Send it below.
The cemetery spun; the moonlit tombs wheeled
white beneath the cypress. Blood trickled from his
nose. Spattered the pavement at his feet.
Behind, he heard Von calling his name.
Within, voices whispered. Dante- angel?
Above, he heard a rush of wings.
Dante closed his eyes and touched fingers to his
temples. Sweat slicked his skin. A familiar, cool touch
pressed against his mind, seeking admittance. Lucien.
He tightened his shields, refusing.
Fingers squeezed his shoulder. “How the hell do you

do that?” Von’s voice, low and tight, sounded uneasy.
Dante opened his eyes. A black-f lowered and
thorned bouquet swayed within the angel’s stone grip
as though caught in a gentle breeze. Or as if it moved
on its own, dancing to the song cupped within the heart
of each dark blossom.
“Fuck.” He’d done it wrong. Pain throbbed behind
his eyes. “Not what I intended.”
“Intended or not,” Von said, “that gift ain’t night-
kind, least not that I’ve ever heard. Must come from
your dad’s side of the family.”
“Yeah, my thought too.”
Von gently turned Dante around. “How’s your
head?” he asked.
Dante shrugged and wiped his nose with the back of
his hand. Blood smeared his skin. “I’m okay.”
Sliding his shades up, the nomad cocked an eyebrow
and regarded him dubiously. “Uh-huh,” he said, then
dropped the shades back over his eyes.
Dante glanced at the stone angel and the midnight
twist of flowers in its hand. “Why?” He nodded at the
offerings tucked at the angel’s feet. “Why do mortals
pray this way? What do they hope to gain?”
Von stroked his mustache, considering. “Hard to
say,” he replied. “A lot of different reasons. Some might
be prayers for a friend or relative who’s in trouble,
maybe for protection or success, or to be healed from
something.”
Dante’s gaze returned to the candles. He stepped for-
ward and fingered a loop of smooth beads dangling from
one wing tip. “Did you do stuff like this? When you were
mortal? Pray, I mean.”

“No, not like this,” the nomad replied. “And I never
prayed to anyone, ya know? I just kinda said things
that I really hoped would happen, like wishing a friend
safe on a long journey or saying good-bye to one that’d
died.”
“Who hears the wishes and good-byes?”
“I forget you don’t know this stuff.” Von shook
his head. “Who hears the wishes and good-byes? The
speaker does,” he said, voice quiet, reflective. “And you
hope that what you say from the heart has power. Power
to protect, power to reach the ears of the dead. A spoken
thing or a wished-hard thing takes a shape within the
heart, man. Takes shape. Becomes real.”
“Becomes real,” Dante repeated. “And the good-
byes?”
“Good-byes can heal the hurt. Or at least start the
healing.”
This doesn’t need to be good- bye.
Heather’s words whispered through Dante’s mem-
ory. An image of her filled his mind: Rain-beaded
red hair, black trenchcoat, cornflower-blue eyes, she’d
looked into him with her steady gaze. She was a fed,
yeah, but a woman of heart and steel too. He remem-
bered telling her: Run from me.
She had and now she was safe.
From him, maybe. But was she safe from the Bu-
reau? She’d uncovered a nasty secret in D.C. Now she
was caught between the truth and a hard fucking place.
She was on her own in Seattle, without backup.
But not for long.
The West Coast leg of the tour ended with two gigs
in Seattle followed by two weeks of downtime before

the tour picked up again. Trey had already ferreted
Heather’s address, had teased it free from the Seattle
DMV’s online records with a deft touch.
Easier than rolling a tourist on Bourbon Street, Tee-Tee.
Dante let go of the Mardi Gras necklace, the beads
clicking against the stone wing, and turned to face Von.
“You got paper? A pen?”
Von frowned. “Fuck, I dunno.” He patted his jacket
pockets, leather creaking with his movement. “I hope
you ain’t planning on me taking dictation.” He pulled a
Bic pen from an inside pocket.
Dante took the pen, holding it between the fingers
of his left hand as the nomad fished a wadded-up re-
ceipt out of his front jeans pocket and handed it to him.
Kneeling on the pavement in front of the stone
angel, Dante smoothed the crumpled piece of paper
against his leather-clad thigh. His pulse raced as he
scrawled his prayer on the receipt, wondering if it had
the power to protect, the power to reach the ears of the
dead.
Dante folded the piece of paper, then raised it to
his lips and kissed it. Blood from his nose dotted the
prayer with dark color. He laid it at the angel’s taloned
feet among all the other paper prayers and chalk wishes.
Dante stood, glanced at Von. Wondered at the ex-
pression on his face, shadowed and a little sad. A smile
touched the nomad’s mustache-f ramed lips as he took
his pen back and tucked it away again.
“You ready, little brother?” he asked, voice low.
“What time does the plane leave?”
“In about two hours.”
Dante nodded. “Let’s go.”

A sudden gust of vanilla- and wax-scented air blew
Dante’s hair into his eyes. The candles flickered wildly
and a few dimmed to blue, then died. Von’s gaze shifted
up and his brow furrowed. Dante’s muscles knotted.
Pain pulsed at his temples. He saw his own tension mir-
rored in the nomad’s face.
Hoped we’d slip away without a scene. But maybe I need
to play this out.
“Child, wait.” Lucien’s deep voice resonated from
the sky above.
Pushing his hair back with both hands, Dante drew
in a deep breath, swiveled around, and watched as Lu
cien descended from the star-f lecked night, black wings
stroking gracefully through the air.
Dressed only in expensive black slacks, Lucien De
Noir touched bare feet to the flagstones bordering the
Baronne tomb. His wings flared once more before fold-
ing behind him, their tips arching above his head. He
straightened to his full six-eight height, his black hair
spilling over his tight-muscled shoulders to his waist.
His handsome face was composed, watchful. Gold light
glimmered in the depths of his eyes.
“Wait, huh?” Dante shifted his weight to one hip
and crossed his arms over his chest. “Give me one fuck-
ing reason why.”
“You can’t go on tour.”
“That’s a command, not a reason. And fuck you.”
“You’re not well. Your control slips more every day.
You’re dangerous.”
Fire blazed to life, fused with the pain in Dante’s
head, the ache within his heart. “Fuck you twice,” he
said, voice low and strained.

Lucien’s face remained impassive, but tendrils of his
black hair lifted as though breeze-caught. “You know I
speak the truth.”
“Wow.” Dante’s gaze locked with Lucien’s. “Is that
like a first for you?”
A muscle jumped in Lucien’s jaw. Shifting his at-
tention to Von, he said, “I need to speak alone with my
son.”
<You want me to stay? Play referee?> Von sent.
<No, I’m cool. Don’t worry. I’ ll meet you at the bike.>
<Your nose is still bleeding, little brother.>
“Merde,” Dante muttered, wiping his nose against
the sleeve of his jacket.
Von studied him for another moment before nod-
ding. “Okay. See you in a few.” He walked down the
path past moon-washed crypts to the cemetery gates.
“Play nice, you two,” he called over his shoulder.
“I didn’t lie to you,” Lucien said, voice tight.
“D’accord, you didn’t lie. But you kept the fucking
truth from me and that’s the same as lying. Happy
now?”
“How can I be when your search for the truth is
tearing you apart?”
“My problem, not yours. Stay outta my business.”
“Impossible. You are my business!”
“Fuck you! I ain’t your business, never was!” Pain
fractured Dante’s vision, throbbed at his temples. Blood
trickled hot from his nose. “We were friends, remem-
ber?”
Lucien looked away. His fingers reached for the pen-
dant that no longer hung at the base of his throat—the
rune for friendship, for partnership, that Dante had

given him—then closed into a fist. Dante wasn’t sure
when Lucien had lost the pendant or how, but its loss
seemed somehow karmic to him.
“I made a mistake, one I regret,” Lucien said, return-
ing his gaze to Dante’s. Amber fire flared in his eyes.
“But I refuse to keep apologizing.”
“I never asked for a fucking apology.” Rubbing his
temples, Dante closed his eyes. Nothing looked right.
Blurry. Distorted. “And I ain’t asking for one now ei-
ther. Quit pushing! Leave me the fuck alone so I can
find what I’m looking for. I need the truth or the past
will always control me.”
“The truth is never what you hope it will be, Dante.
And the cost is always higher than you imagine. Much
higher,” Lucien said, his deep voice as low as a sigh. “I
thought I could keep you safe in silence. I thought I
could hide you, help you heal from all the damage done
to you.”
Dante opened his eyes and lowered his hands. Safe
in silence?
“I thought I could contain your song or at least muf-
fle it so it couldn’t be heard.” Lucien closed the distance
between them with one long stride. His dark-earth scent
curled around Dante. “But I was wrong.”
Dante straightened, suddenly uneasy—something
he’d never felt with Lucien before. “Hide me? From
who? Are you talking about Bad Seed?”
“I didn’t know Bad Seed even existed. No, I hid you
from others. Powerful others who would use you with-
out mercy.”
“Others . . . like him?” Dante nodded at the stone
angel hunched on the path.

Lucien’s gaze flicked to the statue, resting for a mo-
ment on the flowers swaying in its hand, then back to
Dante. “Yes, like Loki. I trapped him to protect you.”
“Yeah?” Dante questioned softly. “From what?”
“The Fallen.”
Lucien’s golden gaze pierced Dante to the core, iced
his heart. “What the hell are you talking about? Why
would I need protection from them?”
“You aren’t merely True Blood and Fallen, child.
You’re much more.”
“And that is . . . ?”
“Creawdwr.” A reverent note sounded in Lucien’s
voice. Pride gleamed in his eyes. “You’re a Maker. The
only one in existence.”
A chill rippled down the length of Dante’s spine. He
looked at the bouquet bobbing in Loki’s hand. “Is that
why I can do shit like this?”
“Yes. You can create anything and everything. Your
song carries the chaos rhythm of life. And you can un-
make, as well.”
Dante’s memory flipped back. The center. Johanna
Moore screams as his song pulls her apart, divides her into
elements . . .
Dante returned his gaze to Lucien, his hands curling
into fists. “And how long have you known this? That I
was a . . . Maker?”
“From the first moment I met you,” Lucien admit-
ted quietly. “Your song, your anhrefncathl drew me. Just
like it drew Loki. Just like it will eventually draw the rest
of the Elohim. Unless I teach you—”
“Forget it. No,” Dante said, throat tight, heart
pounding out a furious rhythm. “Instead of pretending

to be my friend, you shoulda told me the fucking truth!
Shoulda offered to teach me then. Now’s a little late.”
Pain prickled behind Dante’s eyes and suddenly it
was as if he was looking through a shattered window
as Lucien’s image fractured and multiplied. Alarm
flickered across Lucien’s now diamond-faceted face.
“Child . . . ?”
Something abruptly shifted inside Dante, something
long broken, carving into his mind with white light and
molten pain. The world spun, the stars streaking the night
with gossamer ribbons of light, and he felt himself fall-
ing, tumbling down, down, down as memory sheared up,
sharp and slick and edged with whispers.
You wanna take her punishment, p’tit? D’accord, take it
if you so hellfire eager.
He’s quiet now. Take him down.
Little fucking psycho.
Pain wrenched Dante apart and his vision winked
out in an explosion of incandescent light—
Wings rustled.
Dante tasted blood, pomegranate-tart and heady.
Felt heated flesh against his cheek. He opened his eyes
and looked up into Lucien’s shadowed face. He tried
to remember where he was and why he was cradled in
Lucien’s lap, held tight within his arms. Lucien’s wings
curved forward and purple-tinged darkness folded
around them, creating a warm shelter smelling of dark
earth and green leaves, of wing musk.
“I was falling . . .” Dante said, then stopped, uncer-
tain. Or had that been a dream?
“Shhh, mon fils. You’re safe. Rest.” Gold motes
danced in Lucien’s dark eyes.

“You need morphine, little brother?” Von asked,
voice pitched low.
Ice frosted the base of Dante’s spine. There were
only two reasons Von would spike him full of dope.
Migraine or . . .
Another fucking seizure.
“No, mon ami.” The lingering taste of Lucien’s blood
on Dante’s tongue, his lips, told him why red-hot pain
wasn’t needling his joints and muscles, why he wasn’t
sapped of strength. “Did you give me blood? Or did I
jump you?”
A smile quirked up the corners of Lucien’s mouth.
“I gave.”
“Merci,” Dante murmured. He felt Lucien gently
tapping against their closed bond, urging him to reopen
the link. Shaking his head, he pushed free of Lucien’s
embrace. As he rolled to his knees, kneeling within the
circle of Lucien’s wings, the where and why suddenly
poured into his mind like water from a broken levee.
The cemetery.
I tried to keep you safe in silence.
The bead-draped stone angel.
Yes, like Loki.
Creawdwr.
Dante’s hands clenched into fists on his leather-clad
thighs as his rage re-ignited. He met and held Lucien’s
gleaming gaze.
To Von he sent, <How long was I down? Did we miss
our flight?>
<Only a few minutes. We’re good to go—if you still
wanna.>
<I wanna.>

Lucien’s wings swept back and folded behind him.
He uncrossed his legs, rising to his feet in one smooth
motion. “You are ill, Dante, and hurt. You need time
to heal.”
Dante stood. “Don’t tell me what I need.”
A muscle ticked in Lucien’s jaw. “Let the past go.
Cancel the tour and let me teach you what you need to
keep safe.”
“No.” Dante turned and headed down the path, his
fingernails biting into his palms.
“The Fallen will find you, one night,” Lucien said
quietly. “And, if I’m not with you to prevent it, they will
bind you.”
Dante paused on the path. Deep inside, wasps
droned. “If they find me, they ain’t binding me,” he
said, his voice low and taut. “They’re gonna hafta kill
me.”
“Not if, Dante. When.”
“Peut- être que oui, peut- être que non. Same ending.”
“Not if I can help it.”
“You ain’t got a say,” Dante said, his throat almost
too tight for speech. “And we’re done here.” He moved,
racing down the path, the night streaking past in a blue-
white ribbon, the smells of moss and weathered marble
deep in his lungs.
A few moments later, astride Von’s Harley, his hands
on the nomad’s hips, the wind cold against his face,
Dante wondered if Lucien followed. Wondered if any
of the Fallen followed. Wondered if Lucien had finally
given him the truth.
I hid you from others. Powerful others who would use you
without mercy.

The Fallen will find you. And bind you.
No, they wouldn’t. Not ever. Not unless they knew
how to bind a corpse.
One way or another, he would be free—his life, his
own.
Dante glanced up. The sky was empty but for stars
and moon and pale streamers of clouds. Nothing
winged above. Not that he could see. And the Harley’s
deep-throated rumble swallowed any sound he might
hear.
Like a rush of wings.

1
voice for the dead
T he sweet, cloying odor of blood and honeysuckle

hung in the rain-misted courtyard like rancid smoke. A
nude figure was curled against the courtyard’s ivy-draped stone
wall, his bound hands tucked beneath his face like those of a
sleeping child, a stark counterpoint to his swollen and battered
face. A dark mesh shirt was twisted around his throat and night-
blackened blood pooled around his body. Gleamed upon skin
and stone.
And on the wall above scrawled in blood—
WAKE UP
Heather Wallace’s muscles, knotted from her long flight

from Seattle, kinked even tighter. The message was a disturbing
addition if this was the work of the Cross-Country Killer. A
warning? A command? A dark, ironic joke aimed at his dying
victim?
Drawing in a careful breath, Heather stepped from the back
door of DaVinci’s Pizza and walked into the shadowed court-
RushOfWings_1-408_3p_cl.indd 1 10/29/07 2:15:20 PM

A d rian Ph o e n i x
yard. She skirted the numbered evidence placards dotting the

old stone floor.
“Daniel Spurrell, age nineteen,” Detective Collins said from
the doorway. “From Lafayette. LSU student. Disappeared three
days ago. Discovered in the courtyard about noon by an em-
ployee.”
Tortured somewhere else, then dumped, Heather thought.
Why here?
Old-fashioned gaslit lanterns cast pale, flickering light across
the courtyard. Beneath the blood stink, Heather caught a whiff
of jasmine and ivy, thick and wintergreen, a white-flowered bou-
quet unable to mask the smell of death.
Three years she’d been tracking the CCK. And dealing with
his victims never got any easier.
She knelt beside all that remained of Daniel Spurrell. Tor-
tured. Raped. Slaughtered. Posed. Latest victim of a wandering
sexual sadist.
A deep, thudding vibration emanated from next door, snaked
up her spine. “What’s on the other side of the wall?” she said,
her gaze on Daniel’s bruised face.
“Club Hell,” Collins answered. “Music venue. Bar.”
He paused, then added, “And a vampire hangout. Pretend,
y’know?”
“Do you mean Goths? Or gamers?”
Collins chuckled. “Shit, you tell me. Sounds like you’re more
in the know.”
“My sister fronted a band,” Heather said. “I met all kinds at
her gigs.”
Long, midnight-blue hair veiled the boy’s face. NightGlo,
Heather mused. A hair color Annie’d often used when she and
WMD hit the stage in all their hard-edged punk glory. Before
Annie’d flamed out in a spectacular bipolar meltdown and sliced
her wrists onstage.
Heather focused on a mark on the boy’s chest—something

A Ru s h o f Wi n g s
cut or scorched into the flesh. She leaned in closer. Blackened
skin. Blistered. A series of circles—burned with a car lighter?
The anarchy symbol.
Cold frosted Heather’s veins. The symbol was also new. Like
the blood message. If this was the work of the Cross-Country
Killer, then his signature, his reason, his drive for the kill had
changed from an insular intimacy, his victim’s final desperate
moments his and his alone, to an overt act inviting attention.
Impossible. Theoretically. But if it had changed, what then?
Then she needed to find out why.
Heather studied Daniel’s face, the midnight-blue hair, the
twist of cloth embedded into his throat, knotted around it.
Breathed in the lingering smell of death and tasted it.
Why you? Chosen? Or wrong place, wrong time? Why here?
She heard her father’s voice, deep and low, his tone reveren-
tial: The dead speak only through evidence. Through evidence alone are
you a voice for the dead.
Heather stood. S.A. James William Wallace—the Bureau’s
leading forensic specialist and world’s lousiest father.
The dead aren’t the only ones seeking a voice, Dad.
Ah, Pumpkin, they found their voices the moment they picked up a
gun, a knife, a rope, or a baseball bat, the moment they killed. Through
evidence you will silence them.
Heather turned away from Daniel’s curled body. She pushed
rain-damp strands of hair back from her face, listened to the
pounding bass beat coming from Club Hell.
Daniel’s killer spoke loud and clear. He was an organized
killer, deliberate. So it was no accident that he chose the wall
next to the club. Had Daniel met his killer in there? So why
leave his body here and not in the club’s courtyard, on the other
side of the wall?
And if this was the work of a copycat?
Then the Cross-Country Killer was still out there, enjoying
his little jaunt across the States, casually selecting victims—male

and female—like a Bermuda shorts–wearing tourist picking out

postcards.
Still out there. Still needing to be silenced.
As Heather crossed the courtyard, a familiar truth burned
bright in her mind: She’d never allow a case to go cold to pro-
tect the reputation of a loved one; never bury evidence no mat-
ter how much it hurt.
Unlike the famous James William Wallace.
Heather joined Collins at the threshold leading into
DaVinci’s. She read the unasked question in the detective’s eyes:
Is the Cross-Country Killer in New Orleans?
“Signature’s different,” she said. “The message . . . I’ll know
more once we have the autopsy report and the DNA workup.”
“What’s your gut say?”
Heather glanced at the body. Huddled. Praying hands. Na-
ked in the rain. Stabbed over and over. Strangled. Young and
pretty, once.
Heather looked at Collins. Six one, she judged, and lean.
Midthirties. She noted the tension in his shoulders, his jaw.
“How deep in the shit did you get buried for calling in a fed?”
A flicker of surprise crossed his eyes. “They made you special
agent for a reason. Neck deep and it’s still piling up.”
“I’ll do what I can to dig you out,” Heather said. “I appreci-
ate your call.”
Collins regarded her for a long moment, his hazel eyes weigh-
ing, considering. He nodded. “Thanks. But I’ll dig myself out.”
“Fair enough.” Heather met his gaze. “My gut tells me this is
the CCK’s work. But that’s off the record.”
A faint smile touched Collins’s lips. “Fair enough.”
“He’s probably long gone.”
Collins nodded, face bleak. “Traveling man.”
Shrieks of laughter and sharp jazz riffs drifted in from the
street. And underneath it all, the steady thump-thump-thump
of music from Club Hell.

“Mardi Gras,” Collins said. “Well, almost. Still three days out
and it’s crazy.” He shook his head. “Y’ever been?”
“No, this is my first trip to New Orleans.”
“Let me thank your gut by treating you to a N’awlins-style
dinner.” Collins pushed away from the doorway. His clean,
spicy cologne cut through the courtyard’s thickening smell of
death and blood.
“Thanks, but I’ll take a rain check. I want to look into a few
things, maybe catch a little sleep.” Heather offered her hand. “I
appreciate your time and help, Detective.”
Collins grasped her hand and shook it. Strong grip. An hon-
est man. “Call me Trent. Or Collins, if you’re old-school. I’ll
contact you soon as I hear anything.”
“Sounds good, Trent.”
Releasing Collins’s hand, Heather walked back into the piz-
zeria, headed for the front door. A thought circled around the
anarchy symbol burning in her mind.
The pattern has changed. He’s communicating. But with whom,
and why now?
Sitting at the small, lacquered desk in her room, Heather

connected her laptop to the hotel’s Internet service. She tabbed
open a can of Dr Pepper and took a long swallow of the cold,
sweet plum–flavored soda. It hit her empty stomach like a chunk
of ice.
WAKE UP.
A challenge? To law enforcement? The Bureau? Her? None
of the above?
Drunken laughter and shouts—“Dude! Wanna get a bite?
Duuuude!”—boomed past her door and down the corridor, fad-
ing as the revelers found their rooms.
Heather worked her iPod’s headphones into her ears and
thumbed the volume down low so she’d hear it if anyone called.

Knocking back another long swallow of Dr Pepper, she typed in

an online search of Club Hell.
The Leigh Stanz bootleg she’d downloaded into her iPod
curled into her ears and focused her thoughts. Low and intense,
accompanied by acoustic guitar, Stanz’s voice was husky and
worn, like the voice of a man emptying his heart out for the last
time.
I long to drift like an empty boat on a calm sea / I don’t need light /
I don’t fear darkness . . .
Checking the links pulled up on her search page, Heather
learned that the very hip Club Hell had opened nearly four
years earlier and was frequented by a Goth/punk/wannabe-
vampires crowd. The kind of place Annie would’ve gigged at
with WMD.
A lot of local bands and underground acts performed at the
club, especially Inferno, an industrial/Goth band fronted by a
young man rumored to also be the owner of Club Hell. He ap-
peared to be known only as Dante.
Heather shook her head. Dante’s Inferno. Cute. Good for
marketing, no doubt. Hoping to find out more about the club’s
possible owner, she Googled Inferno and received a trillion hits.
Scrolling down to the band’s official Web site, she clicked on
tour dates—none in the last year; albums—two, with the third
due to be released in a few days; photos. She paused, studying
the captured images.
Three men in their early to midtwenties—dreads, faux hawks,
hard bodies pierced and tattooed—stood in one of New Orleans’s
cities of the dead, each of them looking in a different direction.
Behind them stood a fourth figure in black jeans and baggy
sweatshirt, hood pulled up. Head bowed, fingers holding the
hood’s edges, his face unseen, he seemed to be contemplating
the seashell and gravel path beneath his boots.
But what caught Heather’s attention was the pendant hang-
ing at his throat. The anarchy symbol. She sat up straighter and

enlarged the photo. Stared at a circled letter A fashioned out of
what looked like barbed wire and strung on a black cord.
Heart pounding, Heather checked the photo’s caption. The
figure was Dante. She clicked on the next photo. Dante’s back
was to the camera. No visible anarchy symbol. In the next pho-
to, she caught a glimpse of the barbed-wire pendant dangling
like a charm from a twist of wire around his wrist.
Heather scrutinized each photo. The anarchy symbol wasn’t
always present or visible. But she did notice one thing: Inferno’s
front man was never the focus of the photos. Dante stood be-
hind the other members or off to the side or knelt in front, head
bowed. Not once did she see his face. A flash of black hair in
one, a pale cheek in another, but that was all.
Another marketing ploy? The oh-so-mysterious front man?
Or genuine reluctance to be front and center—except when on-
stage?
Heather scrolled through online band interviews and wasn’t
surprised to discover nearly all were conducted with the other
members of Inferno. “In the studio” was the usual reason given
for Dante’s absence.
Heather finished her can of Dr Pepper, then lined down to
the last article and opened it. This time, Dante wasn’t “in the
studio”; he sat, alone, for the interview. Clunking the empty can
onto the desk, Heather leaned forward to read.
Dante spoke intelligently about music and the state of the
music industry, French or Cajun words spicing his comments,
his tone often dark and humorous.
DANTE: It’s time to return to the days of the guil-

lotine. If you don’t have passion for mu-
sic, if you don’t have le coeur, and you’re
only in it for the money, the fame, or the
chicks, then off with your head.
AP: Are you serious?

DANTE: Yeah. At least that’d be honest entertain-

ment. You need to bleed for your audi-
ence one way or another.
AP: Why don’t you give more interviews?
DANTE: I want the focus to be on the music. Not
me.
AP: But people want to know more about
you. You are the music. Why did you
open Club Hell?
DANTE: (Tense) To showcase musicians, new tal-
ent.
AP: How do you address the rumors that
you’re a vampire?
DANTE: (Standing) Wrong focus. We’re done.
Vampire? Was that a joke? More marketing? Heather sud-

denly remembered Collins saying: And a vampire hangout. Pre-
tend, y’know?
Using Bureau ID codes, Heather tapped into city records and
looked up all pertinent info on Club Hell. The owner was listed
as one Lucien De Noir, a French entrepreneur. All licenses and
deeds were in his name, but based on that last interview and her
own gut feeling, Heather believed De Noir was only the money
man. Club Hell was Dante’s baby.
Heather plugged into the NOPD’s system with her guest se-
curity code and searched for Dante, though with no last name,
she didn’t hold a lot of hope for a hit. The search spat up a list
of Dantes as first names and last names and she worked her way
through them quickly. She came to a halt on Dante Prejean.
No social security number. No driver’s license. Age estimated to
be twenty-one. Refused to give a birth date. No legal surname.
Prejean was a name tacked on from the family who’d fostered
him as a kid in Lafayette.
Lafayette. Daniel Spurrell’s hometown. Connections clicked

and whirled through her mind like a slot machine. The bars all
snapped to a stop in a line.
Anarchy symbol. Lafayette. Club Hell.
Heather skimmed Dante Prejean’s file—criminal mischief,
vandalism, trespassing, loitering—all misdemeanors. She
scanned for a mug shot, but didn’t find one posted. Frown-
ing, she scrolled through case notes and arrest records. Camera
malfunction was usually listed as the reason for no mug shot
being taken, but one officer had jotted a different reason alto-
gether:
Little shit won’t hold still. He moves so goddamned

fast, every time we snap his picture, he’s fucking gone.
This happens every freaking time with this asshole. This
is the only picture he’s ever stood still for.
Heather clicked on the photo. A bowed, hooded head. And

a hand in front of the hidden face, middle finger extended. Defi-
ant, even under arrest, playing games. She stared at the photo
for a long time. The only mug shot Dante ever stood still for?
Were the arresting officers plain inept?
Let me go, bro, let me go . . .
Leigh Stanz’s hoarse voice and sad, yearning words ended.
In the ensuing silence the unasked question in Collins’s eyes
looped through Heather’s thoughts: Is the Cross-Country Killer in
New Orleans?
And is he . . . what? . . . identifying with Dante Prejean?
Now? Suddenly? After three years?
An instant message from her SAC, Craig Stearns, blipped
onto the laptop’s screen: Wallace, consultation progress?
Heather typed: Consultation continuing. Looks like the CCK, but
not positive. She stopped, fingers poised over the keyboard.
Should she mention the records glitch she’d run into on the
flight from Seattle? The inability to access ViCAP and NCAVC

files on the CCK’s victims? A problem she’d never experienced

before in working this case?
Heather rubbed her face. She glanced at the window. Rain
poured outside, streaking the glass with ribbons of neon-lit col-
or. Maybe she was being paranoid. Human error. Server mal-
function. Shit happens. Maybe she needed to upgrade her com-
puter.
And yet. A change in the CCK’s pattern. A computer glitch.
Heather returned her gaze to the monitor and the blipping
cursor. A knot of unease nestled in her belly.
And if the glitch was deliberate? Could it have been Stearns?
She shook her head. Her SAC was a stand-up guy, hard but
honest. He’d even helped her with Annie when Dad refused.
That kind of deception wasn’t Stearns’s way.
Heather’s fingers dropped onto the keys: Checking leads. Near-
ly finished. Will contact you tomorrow. She hit send.
Scooting her chair back from the desk, she shut the lap-
top down and switched off her iPod. Heather shrugged on her
trenchcoat. Scooping her Colt .38 up from the desk, she slipped
it into the trench’s specially designed inside breast pocket.
Time to go to Hell.

One
Crossed Dead
“C’mon, scoot your gorgeous ass over, Gage,” Kallie Rivière

whispered, climbing onto the shadowed bed. “I feel like
shit. How much goddamned champagne did we—” She
froze when her fingers touched the hot, wet sheets.
She blinked in the dawn light filtering into the New
Orleans hotel room. Not shadows. She caught a faint
whiff of coppery blood. Something else altogether dark-
ened the sheets.
Nausea flipped through her belly. Swallowing hard,
she lifted her hand and forced herself to push the blood-
soaked sheets back from the man they covered. Gage.
The good-looking and hard-bodied nomad conjurer she’d
hooked up with last night after the May pole dance.
Playing with him had been a bendy, bouncy, naked
trampoline act; a free fall into pleasure. One part Gypsy-
style outlaw biker, one part pagan conjurer, and one part
hot-blooded explorer—all sexy nomad. Man was beaucoup
skilled.
Or had been.
Kallie stared at the dead man in her bed. He lay on his
belly, his face turned to the side. Blood masked his fine
Phoenix Black Dust Mambo_4pREV_jdh.indd 1 4/20/10 9:55 AM

2 Adrian Phoenix
features, glittered in his black curls. It looked like blood
had poured from Gage’s eyes, nose, mouth, and—given the
blood staining the sheets beneath him—from elsewhere,
like a spigot turned on full blast. All color had drained from
his espresso-brown skin, leaving his swirling blue-inked clan
tattoos stark on his muscular back, ass, and thighs.
Kneeling on the bed, Kallie reached over, intending
to touch her fingers to his throat and check his pulse,
but her hand stopped just a few inches above his blood-
streaked neck.
Just a few hours ago, he’d devoured her lips with rough
and hungry kisses as they had tumbled together on the
carpeted floor, her legs wrapped around his waist—so
white against his dark skin. The thought of his skin cold
and lifeless beneath her fingers kept her hand in the air,
motionless.
His empty, unblinking eyes told her he was dead. Gage
was gone. She didn’t need to touch him. Kallie stared at
her trembling hand, wondering if she even could.
She’d seen plenty of dead things at home in Bayou Cyprès
Noir, but never a dead person, let alone one she knew.
Well, hey, Kallie-girl, that isn’t quite right, now is it? Shouldn’t keep
lying to yourself like that.
Memory tugged at Kallie, taking her back to another
morning nine years ago.
Mama pulls the gun’s trigger and the side of Papa’s head explodes
in a spray of blood and bone. He slumps down in his chair, a bottle of
Abita still in his hand.
Kallie stands in her bedroom doorway, frozen—just like now.
Mama turns and faces her, aims the gun carefully between her shaking
hands. Her hands shake, but her face is still, resigned.
“Sorry, baby. I ain’t got a choice.”

Black Dust Mambo 3
Mama pulls the trigger again.
Kallie touched trembling and blood-sticky fingers to
the scar on her left temple. Traced the lightning stroke of
the bullet’s path, just as her gaze traced the contours of
Gage’s face. Pain and shock had widened his hemorrhag-
ing eyes, had twisted his fingers into the sheets.
How had he died? When had he died? While she lay
curled on the bathroom floor, sick on too much wine and
champagne?
She hadn’t heard a goddamned thing.
Kallie reached up and closed her fingers around the
pendants her aunt had hung around her neck nine years
ago—a tiny onyx coffin marked with a silver X and a
medallion for Saint Bernadette—and closed her eyes.
It was too late to call 911, but she needed to contact
someone. Report this. Maybe the coordinators of the oh-so-
exclusive May Madness Carnival would know what to do,
especially when it came to dealing with a dead member of
one of the freewheeling ain’t-bound-by-your-squatter-laws
nomad clans.
Maybe, yeah, but she thought a friend’s calming
advice might be the way to go first. She gave her pen-
dants a quick squeeze for luck before releasing them, then
opened her eyes.
Kallie’s gaze fell on the small stylized fox black-inked
beneath Gage’s right eye—the tat naming his clan. She
wanted to grab a clean section of the sheet and wipe the
blood away, wanted to smooth his eyes shut, but her hands
remained knotted on her thighs.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, the sound of her words
hollow and inadequate even to herself. “Eternal rest grant
unto him, O bon Dieu. And let perpetual light shine upon

4 Adrian Phoenix
him. All flesh must come to you with all its sins; though our
faults overpower us, you blot them out. Baron Samedi, I ask
you please to accept this man into Guinee. Guide him safe
from the crossroads and from the land of the living.”
Course, it might be nice if God and the loa actually
listened to prayers without needing a rum-soaked bribe first.
Kallie sighed. Still, old habits and all that bullshit.
Kallie scooted off the bed and, not sure where her cell
phone was, grabbed the room phone. Her finger shook as
she punched in the number to Belladonna’s room.
“Whazz?” Belladonna slurred, her voice thick with
sleep.
“It’s me.” Kallie cupped her hand around the receiver’s
mouthpiece like she was trying to keep her conversation
private or trying to curl her fingers around something nor-
mal and real. “Something bad’s happened . . . beaucoup
bad, Bell. I need you to come over right now.”
All the sleep evaporated from Belladonna’s voice. “I’ll
be right there. You alone?”
“Yes and no.”
An exasperated snort. “Which is it, girl? Do I need to
bring muscle or a spell?”
“Just you, dammit. Please.”
The line went dead. Kallie re-cradled the receiver,
then sat down on the carpet, amid the wreckage of her
clothes and Gage’s, her arms wrapped around her bare
legs. She shivered, teeth chattering, caught in a cold trem-
bling that vibrated up from her core.
Mama’s hands shake, but her face is still, resigned.
“Sorry, baby. I ain’t got a choice.”
Kallie thought she’d put all that aside, all the darkness
and fury and tight-throated hurt, when she’d gone to live

Black Dust Mambo 5
with her ti-tante Gabrielle; had sworn she’d never let her
goddamned mama steal another moment of her life.
Looks like I just broke that promise.
Knuckles rapped against her door, and Kallie’s heart
jumped into her throat. “Hold on,” she said, unfolding her
shaking limbs and climbing gracelessly to her feet. Bel-
ladonna must not’ve even bothered to dress, must’ve just
thrown on a robe and hustled her ass into an elevator.
Kallie padded to the door, unlocked it, and eased it
open. “Thanks for getting here so—” The words withered
in her throat.
Not Belladonna in a robe, but a tall and fine-looking
guy wearing a hastily tugged-on sage-green tank, jeans,
and scooter boots with painted flames licking up from the
soles. Blue-inked Celtic tattoos swirled from beneath the
shoulders of his tank and down his arms. Thick, honey-
blond dreads coiled nearly to his waist, and sideburns,
stiletto-thin and sharp, curved along the lines of his jaw.
A shock went through her as she met his pine-green
gaze. For a second, everything quieted inside of her as
though he’d pressed a soothing finger against her lips and
whispered, “Shhh.” His eyes widened a little as though he felt
the strange connection too; then Kallie noticed the small
black fox inked beneath his right eye, and her heart sank.
“Hey, you must be Kallie, Gage’s hoodoo honey, yeah?
Sorry to bug you so early, but is he still here?” the nomad
asked. His gaze slid past her and into the room. “I really
need to talk to him.”
“Now?” Ice sheared off from the glacier encasing Kal-
lie’s heart and flowed into her veins, froze her thoughts.
On pure instinct, she stepped into the hall, pulling
the door shut behind her. Too late, she realized she was

6 Adrian Phoenix
wearing only her red lace please-undress-me bra and
bikini-cut panties. Face burning, she pulled one dangling
strap back up onto her shoulder.
An appreciative but teasing smile curved the nomad’s
lips. “Rosy cheeks to match the undies. You wear ’em
well, sunshine. I’m Layne, by the way.”
Kallie opened her mouth, unsure of what to say, but
knowing she needed to say something, anything. But before
a single word could emerge from between her lips, the
nomad’s gaze locked onto her hands. He sucked in a sharp
breath. She looked down. Blood smeared her fingers. Her
pulse thundered in her ears.
“I don’t know what happened,” she stammered, look-
ing up at him. “He was dead when I—”
Layne stared at her, all expression gone from his face.
“Dead?”
Temples throbbing with hangover pain, Kallie nodded,
holding his pine-green gaze, unable to think of a single
worthwhile word to say.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“I wish I was,” Kallie said.
Shoving past her, the nomad pushed open the door
and walked into the sunlight-laced room.
“Wait, hold on.” Kallie hurried into the room after
him. Her belly knotted as she drew in a breath of air
tainted with the coppery scent of blood and, underneath,
something she’d missed earlier—the faint brimstone stink
of discharged magic; scents that seemed to register on
Layne too.
He swung left and stopped in front of the rumpled and
blood-drenched double bed. The color drained from his
face. “Gage. No. Oh, shit. Shit.”

Black Dust Mambo 7
The shocked grief on Layne’s face tightened Kallie’s
throat. “I’m so sorry.” She desperately wished her hung
over brain would toss her words a little less trite, give her
a verbal lifeline. But no. The only other thing it coughed
up was: Sorry for your loss.
“You’re sorry,” Layne repeated, voice flat. “My draíocht-
brúthair—my brother-in-magic and my best friend—lies
dead in your bed. And you’re fucking sorry?”
“Look, I had nothing to do with Gage’s death.”
Layne spun around and grabbed Kallie by both arms,
his road-callused fingers clamping around her biceps.
“Nothing? Ain’t that his blood on your fingers?”
“Get your goddamned hands off me before I forget
you’re grieving.” Kallie met his eyes, glare for glare, her
hands knuckling into fists.
“Or what? You’ll hex me to death too?”
“Too? Oh, hell, no. Is that what you think? I told you—I
found him like that. I sure as hell didn’t kill him!”
“I smell spent magic. If you didn’t kill him, who did?”
“I don’t know, dammit!” Kallie wrenched free of
Layne’s grip, suspecting—given the strength of his
hands—that he’d let her go. Chin lifted, she held his
gaze and pulled her bra strap back onto her shoulder
again.
Layne folded his arms over his chest. “So where the
hell were you when it happened, anyway? The only blood
I see on you is on your hands, so you couldn’t have even
been in the goddamned bed with him.”
“We never made it to the bed, per se, not together,
because we downed a ton of champagne and wine, and I
passed out in the bathroom. When I woke up . . .”
“Passed out. Pretty damned convenient, huh?”

8 Adrian Phoenix
“A damned relief at the time, truth be told, consider-
ing all the puking.”
“You okay, Shug?” another voice said, all purring vel-
vet tones; a voice Kallie knew well. “Or am I looking at a
soon-to-be-dead nomad?”

Adrian Phoenix Sampler

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1

E mmett Thibodaux stood at the threshold of the

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“S o where’s this weird­- ­a ss bit of hoodoo

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T he sweet, cloying odor of blood and honeysuckle

Heather ­Wallace’s muscles, knotted from her long flight

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yard. She skirted the numbered evidence placards dotting the

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and female—like a Bermuda shorts–wearing tourist picking out

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Sitting at the small, lacquered desk in her room, Heather

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Knocking back another long swallow of Dr Pepper, she typed in

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DANTE: It’s time to return to the days of the guil-­

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DANTE: Yeah. At least ­that’d be honest entertain-­

Vampire? Was that a joke? More marketing? Heather sud-­

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Little shit ­won’t hold still. He moves so goddamned

Heather clicked on the photo. A bowed, hooded head. And

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files on the ­CCK’s victims? A problem ­she’d never experienced

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“C’mon, scoot your gorgeous ass over, Gage,” Kallie Rivière

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“S o where’s this weird- a ss bit of hoodoo

Heather Wallace’s muscles, knotted from her long flight

DANTE: It’s time to return to the days of the guil-

DANTE: Yeah. At least that’d be honest entertain-

Vampire? Was that a joke? More marketing? Heather sud-

Little shit won’t hold still. He moves so goddamned

files on the CCK’s victims? A problem she’d never experienced