A little taste as a thank you for your patience. I hope to post more before long!

“Christ,” Von muttered, shifting restlessly. He heard the crunch of paper beneath his foot. Glancing down, he saw what looked like a charcoal sketch now bearing his sneaker print, a sketch with a very familiar face. He bent and picked it up.

 “So now what?” Merri asked as he straightened, sketch in hand. “You got a plan B in mind?”

 “Looks like waiting to hear from Lucien is plan B,” Von said, not liking it, but not knowing what else they could do. Heather might be waiting, unsure if her message had even made it through, but more likely she was trying to find a way to escape—provided they didn’t drug and restrain her again—and Dante . . . He looked at the sketch.

 Dante in charcoal—with his eyes closed, jaw tight, caught in the act of wiping a dark trickle of blood from his nose with a hoodie sleeve, moonlight glinting from the ring in his collar.

 A simple drawing, not yet completed, or so it looked to Von, but somehow Vincent had managed to capture not only Dante’s beauty, tension, and pain in bold strokes of gray and black, but had symbolized in that casual swipe of a hoodie sleeve, the quiet will that kept Dante on his feet, kept him moving, kept him fighting.

 And at the sketch’s bottom, printed in charcoal letters: Lost.

 “Is that Dante?” Merri asked, leaning beside Von, her scent electric with interest. She’d only seen Dante in photos, Von realized, had never met him. “And you’re right about the artist being good.”

 “Yup, it’s Dante,” Von replied, his voice rough. He quickly folded up the sketch, then slipped it into his jacket pocket as he sent to Dante one more time.

 <Keep fighting and stay stubborn, you sonuvabitch, or I’ll kick your ass when I find you, little brother. Kick your ass into tomorrow.>

 But all he received was more silence slathered thick in barbed-wire and pain.

AUGUST 2013