Etched in Bone (46 page)

“Follow Wallace if he removes his daughter from the club, then confiscate her and proceed with the plan,” Díon said.

“What if Papa Wallace gets in the way of said confiscation?”

“Whatever it takes, Purcell. Wallace’s daughter is intrinsic to our plan.”

“We’ve still got the kid. She might be enough.”

“
Might be
is
not
acceptable. We need Heather Wallace. Understood?”

“Yeah, understood,” Purcell grumbled, ending the call. He tucked his cell phone back into his pocket, then peered over the roof’s edge down into the street again.

What he saw sent his pulse skyrocketing through his veins. Two of Wallace’s goons were carrying Heather out of the club on a gurney. Her wrists were flex-cuffed and she appeared to be unconscious, her head turned to the side, her hair a spill of sunlight-sparked orange across her face. They loaded her into the back of one of the vans, then climbed inside the vehicle. It drove away, heading west down Saint Peter.

Purcell fumbled a pen from his jacket pocket and jotted down the van’s license plate number on the inside of his wrist.

Shit, shit, shit.

Things were going south fast and in a big way. He rubbed a gloved hand over his face, wondering if there was still a way to salvage the situation. By the time he climbed down from the roof of Club Hell and sprinted to his car, the van would be long gone and impossible to follow.

But he could always pull up the license plate number and track the vehicle back to its registered owner and, hopefully, to Heather Wallace. He had no doubt Wallace planned to take his daughter somewhere other than home. The man had to be worried about S hunting him down and reclaiming her.

Or not
, Purcell reflected as muffled gun cracks echoed from within the building. He counted six shots. Sounded like payback was on Wallace’s agenda and the man was spreading a little bullet love around.

Good luck with that, man.

Purcell shook his head, a smile playing across his lips. He couldn’t blame the man, but it wouldn’t do him much good unless he knew how to kill a True Blood.

Purcell watched as James Wallace—followed by his two remaining henchmen—strode out of the club, his other daughter, Annie, slung like a rag doll over his shoulder. But as Wallace crossed the sidewalk, headed for the remaining van, an outraged shout echoed from down the street.

“Hey! What the hell y’all doing? Put her down, you!”

Hot coffee steamed on the sidewalk as two men tossed aside their to-go cups and raced toward the van, both with guns in hand. One was the heavy-muscled drummer, Jack Cheramie, and the other—Purcell felt a cold shock as recognized the drummer’s tall, ginger-haired companion.

AWOL field agent Emmett Thibodaux.

Well, well, well. What do you know? Wonder if HQ knows this is where their rogue agents landed?

Thibodaux halted, snapped his gun up, and squeezed off a round. The gunshot cracked through the quiet morning like an anvil dropping on glass. The smell of cordite wafted into the air.

James Wallace unceremoniously dropped his daughter onto the pavement and returned fire. From behind the van’s opened doors, Wallace’s uniformed henchmen did the same. Thibodaux shoved Cheramie into the doorway of a pizza parlor, then ducked down behind a rust-pocked old Crown Vic parked on the street.

A heart-pounding possibility lit up Purcell’s mind. Maybe the situation could still be salvaged. Without Heather Wallace, there was no guarantee that S would pay the sanitarium a visit—provided he was still breathing.

And if the little psycho
was
still breathing, why not just cart his bloodsucker ass to Doucet-Bainbridge and toss him inside instead of trying to lure him to the sanitarium? Bring Mohammed to the mountain, as it were. Or however that saying goes.

Adrenaline pulsed into Purcell’s veins. He liked that idea. Liked it much better than the thought of leaving a Sleeping and wonderfully unguarded S behind while he searched for a woman he might never find.

Everyone seems to be busy, so it’s now or never.

Rising to his feet in a half-crouch, Purcell hurried back across the roof to the fire escape and climbed down to the third floor again. He paused in front of the French windows, deciding there was no need for stealth since everyone still inside was either Sleeping or dead. No need to worry about noise.

Purcell broke one of the window’s panes with his Glock, shattered glass tinkling against the iron stairs, then reached in and unlocked it. He pulled the window open and stepped inside, his gaze riveted by a white figure lying on the floor halfway down the dim hallway.

The pungent smell of gasoline saturated the air. Acrid smoke drifted along the hallway, twisting up from the floors below. James Wallace had apparently ordered the place, and all the bloodsuckers it contained, put to the torch.

Good man. But lousy timing.

Coughing, Purcell hurried down the hall to the white form lying half on his side on the Persian carpet, blood glistening on chest and face, drenching his black hair. A helluva lot of blood.

S. And it looked like he’d taken more than one bullet.

Purcell stepped into the bedroom and grabbed the red velvet comforter from the bed. Something hissed at him, launching his heart into his throat, then an orange streak of fur raced out from underneath the bed and into the hall.

With a twitch of self-disgust, Purcell realized that the orange lightning bolt had been a cat. Just a goddamned cat. Scooping up some clothing scattered on the floor—shirt, pants, boots—Purcell carried everything into the hall.

The smoke was thickening. Purcell drew in careful and shallow breaths, but even those seemed to squeeze the oxygen from his lungs. Pulling handcuffs from his jacket pocket, he knelt, cuffed S’s wrists, then rolled his limp, blood-smeared body into the comforter along with the clothes.

Sweat streaked Purcell’s face, trickled down his temples and into his eyes. Grunting and sweating and coughing, he finally managed to get S draped over his shoulder. He rose to his feet, grateful that the fucking little psycho wasn’t six-three and two-twenty. Small favors.

Once out the window and into the cool, fresh air, negotiating the fire escape with dead weight slung over his shoulder was tricky as hell, but the adrenaline pumping through his veins gifted him with a dexterity he normally lacked.

Slipping out of the courtyard gate with his burden, Purcell carried S to his car, rolled him into the trunk, then slammed it shut. He slipped behind the steering wheel, blood thrumming with adrenaline and exhilaration.

At long last, S would soon be where he belonged.

The Doucet-Bainbridge Sanitarium in Baton Rouge.

Purcell keyed on the engine, pulled the car out of the alley and into the street. As he circled around past the club, he saw De Noir’s black van screech to a slanted halt behind Wallace’s van, blocking it in—at least partially.

Purcell wished James Wallace luck.

47
IN THE CARE OF MONSTERS

N
EW
O
RLEANS
C
LUB
H
ELL
March 30

L
UCIEN ABSORBED THE SCENE
beyond the windshield, numbering the combatants and their positions in one quick glance as he brought the van to a rubber-smoking stop behind the white NOPD-marked van angled in front of the club.

A van unlike any other NOPD vehicle he’d ever seen.

At the driver’s side door—a man in a generic black uniform and ski mask.

At the passenger side door—another man in generic black uniform and ski mask crouching behind the door along with a middle-aged man in glasses and a tan trench coat. All were sheltering behind the doors and returning fire through the shattered windows.

Up the sidewalk and down a few doors, Jack was pressed up against the narrow doorway of DaVinci’s Pizza. He whirled around, red braids flying, and squeezed off a couple of rounds at the van, before ducking back again.

Emmett Thibodaux popped off a shot as well from his half-kneeling position behind an old rust-tattooed junker parked at the curb, his face a study in cool concentration.

And crumpled on the sidewalk in an utterly motionless tangle of limbs, fuzzy bathrobe, and wild blue/black/purple hair, was Annie. Somehow she’d ended up outside and in the cross-fire. And that
somehow
was troubling. Lucien could only hope she hadn’t taken more than one bullet or a fatal shot.

But it was what Lucien’s studied glance
hadn’t
shown him that troubled him the most: Where was Heather? Why wasn’t she in the club’s doorway, gun in hand? Even if she was busy protecting Dante as he Slept, she’d do everything in her power to keep her sister safe as well.

Another dark and chilling possibility pranced uninvited through his mind—Heather lying in a pool of her own blood, her gun on the floor just beyond the reach of her fingers.

I refuse to accept that possibility.

Throwing his door open, Lucien jumped from the van, and
moved
.

“W
E NEED TO LEAVE
,” James said, squeezing off a final round into the pizza parlor’s doorway. Brick splintered into the air. “Cops will be showing up soon.” He ejected the magazine from his Colt and pulled a fresh one from the pocket of his trench coat and slammed it home.

“That’d definitely be a FUBAR cherry on top of the tasty FUBAR sundae this mission just became,” Stevenson agreed, his voice almost cheerful, as if firefights on city sidewalks were as ordinary and to be expected as road construction and driving delays. “Time to haul ass, Mr. Wallace.” He ducked into the driver’s seat and started the engine.

A bullet starred the windshield.

Just as James slid into the passenger seat, the sound of screeching tires whipped his head around. A black van had skidded to a stop behind them. The stink of scorched rubber smoked the air.

Prejean’s mysterious friend/mentor/personal ATM machine, Lucien De Noir.

James nodded at Annie. “Grab her,” he said to Zimmer, his fellow door-sheltering companion. “Toss her in back and let’s go.” A heated breeze suddenly blew past James, fluttering his hair.

Zimmer nodded, and that was the last thing he ever did—aside from die. A blur of movement, a sharp snap, then Zimmer dropped to the street, his head canted at an unnatural angle as De Noir released him.

James blinked, his brain trying to process the fact that one second ago De Noir was inside his van, and now he stood over Zimmer’s body, his eyes glowing with a golden and unearthly light.

“Jesus Christ,” James whispered, heart jackhammering in his chest.

De Noir’s nostrils flared as he reached for James, then alarm flickered across his face. He spun away, facing the club’s entrance.

Survival instinct sucker-punched James’s rational brain, duct-taped it, then tossed it into a closet. Grabbing the van’s door, James yanked it shut. He started to lock the door, then, doubting it would do one ounce of good, his hand skittered away from the lock-tab.

“Go,” James urged, keeping his gaze riveted on De Noir. “Go now.”

“What about your daughter?” Stevenson asked, voice shaky.

“Leave her. She’ll be fine. Just go. Now.” James clenched his hands against the urge to shove Stevenson out of the driver’s seat and take charge of the steering wheel himself.

Stevenson yanked off his ski mask and tossed it onto the floorboards. Sweat beaded his face, glistened in his hair. He slammed the transmission into drive, then goosed the van onto the sidewalk.

De Noir whirled around, and James’s heart leap-frogged into his throat. He wondered if his gun with its current crop of ordinary bullets would do anything more than inconvenience De Noir.

But De Noir didn’t come after them as Stevenson bulldozed over baskets of flowers, plowing down newspaper racks and trash cans before bouncing the van back into the street where he floored it. Instead, De Noir scooped Annie up from the sidewalk and out of harm’s way—namely their frantic, pedal-to-the-metal path.

James shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead, feeling sick. He’d just abandoned his youngest child, left her in the care of monsters, and the ironic part? They’d done more to protect her and keep her alive than her own father had.

“I’ll be back for you, sweet pea,” James vowed under his breath. “Count on it.”

T
UCKING HIS GUN INTO
the back of his jeans, Jack trotted up the sidewalk to Lucien, worry creasing his face. “Is she okay, her?” he asked.

“You’ll have to find out yourself,” Lucien said, shifting the unconscious woman from his arms and into the drummer’s. “I’ve got to go. The club’s on fire.”

Jack stared at him. “What?”

But Lucien whirled away, leaving his question unanswered, and raced up the sidewalk to the club, the acrid smell of smoke and gasoline fumes stinging his nostrils.

Inside, he found the bar and some of the tables ablaze, along with Dante’s bat-winged throne. Fire flowed hungrily along the hardwood floor, gobbling up splashed gasoline trails. Reflected orange light glowed from the Cage’s steel bars as its fetishes burned. A flaming gasoline path snaked up the stairs.

Choking black smoke billowed through the club’s interior. Lucien’s eyes stung.

He looked up at the ceiling. Why weren’t the sprinklers working?

“Goddamn,” a low, grim voice said, then coughed. Thibodaux. “This ain’t good. Where’s your fire extinguishers?”

“The bar, the restrooms, at each wall and on each landing,” Lucien called over his shoulder as he sprinted away to the utility closet stationed in the restroom hallway. A quick check confirmed that the water had been shut off. Lucien twisted the knob back to
on
and held his breath until water gushed from the ceiling sprinklers, hissing against the flames and soaking him to the skin.

More smoke thickened the air. Thibodaux’s coughing intensified.

Lucien heard a fire extinguisher
whoosh
, adding a chemical stink to the smoke as the former SB agent tackled the more stubborn blazes, but as far as Lucien could see, the sprinklers were dousing the fire—on all floors.