On Midnight Wings

  “Foolish child,” he whispered. “What bargain did you make with the Devil?”

  Dante’s head was turned toward Teodoro, his pale, pale face half hidden beneath a fall of night-black hair. Blood glistened beneath his nose, smeared his cupid’s-bow lips, its coppery odor mingling with the autumn sharp scent of frost and burning leaves. Teodoro moved his hand up from Dante’s chest and trailed a finger along his smooth jawline. Brushed the pad of his thumb across that full kiss-me-bite-me lower lip.

  Breathtaking.

  Even bloodied and unconscious, the creawdwr’s beauty scorched. Hinted at tangled sheets and hungry moans. Moonlight and fire seemed to pulse white-hot through his veins, smoldering beneath his alabaster skin, skimming the length of his lean-muscled body—intoxicating and deadly.

  Tempting.

  A unique creature—even in beauty and power and bloodline.

  And the only creawdwr in existence.

  Teodoro felt a sharp, unexpected pang of regret. He planned to shatter a creawdwr’s fragile sanity and reshape him into the Great Destroyer, leaving the Fallen no choice but to kill the Maker they’d spent thousands of years yearning and searching for before he unmade the mortal world and their own.

  But no matter how beautiful Dante was, or how brutally he’d been used by others, no matter how innocent of long-ago Elohim crimes, Teodoro refused to let his sudden sympathy sway him from his course.

  He’d waited too long. Committed too many crimes to simply shrug and walk away. Not after subverting minds and ending lives to reach this very moment.

  A moment the Fallen had brought down upon themselves when they’d sentenced his daughter to death by poison simply for speaking out for change, for a better place in Elohim society.

  His Felicia had also been beautiful, and ill-used, and innocent. No sudden sympathy had spared her life. As she’d died in his arms while the Fallen had idly watched, Teodoro had given her a promise: I will take everything from them, mi hija, just as they have taken everything from us.

  No, Dante’s beauty and power and unique bloodline would end with him.

  It was nothing personal. Just a knife into the cold, dark heart of the Fallen.

  Wheels. Circles. Cycles. The Elohim’s long-overdue Second Fall lay strapped to a steel table, fate incarnate in leather pants and ringed collar.

  Teodoro slid his fingers up to Dante’s temple. He bowed his head, closed his eyes, then inhaled deeply. He slipped through the creawdwr’s drug-thinned shields, pushing into his mind with ease, and entered—

  —Hell. Searing heat engulfs Teodoro in a fiery maelstrom of nightmarish images, of angry droning and mocking whispers and molten pain, scorching his thoughts, his senses—

  Metallic wasps burrow beneath milk-white skin . . .

  I’ll make sure you regret every breath you’ve ever drawn . . .

  An anarchy symbol cut into a pale torso . . .

  A fire-blackened and broken window stretches across an endless horizon . . .

  No escape for you, sweetie . . .

  A face composed of blue neon ones and zeros flickers between glowing hands . . .

  We ain’t done, you and me . . .

  Wearing shades and a wide, cheerful grin, the Perv lifts a blood-smeared knife into the air, then slashes it back down . . .

  That’s my Bad Seed bro . . .

  Holy, holy, holy . . .

  Teodoro retreated—no, fled—snapping back into his own body with a jolt that left his heart pounding and his mouth dry. ¡Madre de Dios! He felt Dante stir beneath his fingers, his blood-smeared face troubled, and Teodoro fought against the instinctive urge to snatch his hand away.

  Any regret he still felt withered and died. Dante had been doomed even before Teodoro had found him. All he had done was speed up the process.

  Whether it was because of the implanted programming, the memory fragmentation, the countless cruelties he’d endured, or all of the above, Dante’s mind was irreparably damaged and he already walked the path to madness. Stood near the mouth of the abyss, in fact, his walls and defenses beginning to crumble around him.

  All Dante needed was one more good shove.

  Teodoro had no idea—absolutely none—how Dante managed to remain on his feet and functioning, let alone coherent. His ability to do so hinted at a stubborn strength that Teodoro respected—even as it left him feeling just a tad uneasy.

  Just how hard would that shove need to be?

  Fumbling his handkerchief from his trouser pocket, Teodoro wiped the sweat from his brow as he imagined the sigil scarring Dante’s chest. He still hadn’t learned what pledge had been made between Dante and the Morningstar.

  Unlike Purcell, who didn’t give a rat’s ass about certain details—the identity of Dante’s father, the reason for his seizures, to name a couple—Teodoro preferred to be armed with every bit of information available. That way, some missing piece of knowledge wouldn’t sneak up behind him and bite him on the ass later.

  No choice—Teodoro would have to go back inside. Tucking his handkerchief back into his pocket, he drew in a deep breath, carefully shielded his mind, then took the plunge back into Dante Baptiste’s mind.

  The second time wasn’t any easier—the raging chaos still hit like a brass-knuckled fist. But this time Teodoro noticed a cool, blue-white light radiating calm and quiet and stillness at the firestorm’s furious heart.

  A bond. Someone had bonded the creawdwr.

  Teodoro’s stomach sank. What do you want to bet that someone is the Morningstar? No wonder Dante wears his mark.

  Teodoro negotiated his way past waves of never-ending whispers and swarms of droning wasps, their metallic wings ablaze and trailing drops of molten steel; skirted around memories rippling from past to present and back like a deck of cards in a magician’s sleight-of-hand flourish—first the faces, now only the backs—presto, chango.

  When Teodoro reached the steady, but muted—the resin and/or drugs?—flame of the bond, he made an exciting discovery. The bond belonged to Heather, not the Morningstar.

  Something else never before seen: a creawdwr taking a mortal as bondmate—Dante had claimed a human as calon-cyfaill.

  It made him vulnerable.

  All Teodoro needed to do was forge a temporary link to the bond; then, even outside Dante’s mind, he could tap into it and follow the ethereal tether straight to the former FBI agent—like a Heather-centric dowsing rod.

  And the beautiful redhead would become that last good, hard shove.

  Just as Teodoro reached for the bond’s cool light, he heard laughter, low and dark and amused from the ember-lit depths below. Smelled frost and burning leaves and cold, cold rage. He froze.

  “Hey, motherfucker.” From right beside him. “I don’t remember inviting you.”

  Teodoro caught a glimpse of a pale, hard-knuckled fist, orange flames glinting from silver rings on the fingers and thumb, then an explosion of electricity shocked through his skull and whited out his mind.

  TEODORO BLINKED. THE SQUARE white ceiling tiles swam into focus. He was no longer in his chair, but flat on his back on the hard, concrete floor. He sucked in a mouthful of ozone-flavored air, trying to calm his triple-timing heart.

  Had he just been sucker punched by an unconscious subject? Tossed out of a doped and damaged mind and onto his ass?

  An icy finger trailed the length of Teodoro’s still-tingling spine. Imposible. He sat up, then eased to his feet, holding on to the back of the chair for support like an old man, an unbalanced man, a weak man, in need of a walker. He fisted his other hand at his side to destroy any illusion that it was shaking. He stared at Dante.

  Dante hadn’t moved. Was still out cold. Still cuffed to the table. Head still turned toward Teodoro, breathtaking face still partially veiled by tendrils of black hair. Fresh blood trickled from one nostril.

  Nothing about him had changed from a moment ago.

  Everything had changed.

  Despite being ice-cold, sweat plastered Te
odoro’s shirt to his back, beaded his forehead. As he scrutinized the unconscious creawdwr, he realized that he needed to get back on the horse, so to speak, before his shock and dread deteriorated into belly-knotting fear. He needed to link to that bond, to follow it to Heather.

  But first, he’d shoot Dante full of more resin and tranquilizers. No more dark laughter or blurring fists, then. Never mind the fact that there shouldn’t have been this time either. Maybe the drugs were wearing off—

  Teodoro’s cell phone buzzed, interrupting his speeding train of denial. He pulled it from a trouser pocket and frowned when the ID showed Webster’s number. Why would his supervisor be calling? Sinking into the chair, he thumbed the Talk button.

  “Díon.”

  “Sorry to interrupt your vacation,” Webster said, sounding—to his credit—vaguely apologetic, “but a situation has come up that requires your special expertise.”

  Teodoro sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose. Leave it to the SB to ruin even pretend vacation plans. “Can’t you put whoever it is on ice for a few more days? I’m leaving for Barcelona tomorrow. If I miss the flight, I’ll be out the money.”

  “Afraid not. This one comes directly from the Oversight Committee. And”—Webster lowered his voice—“I hear it involves the director.”

  Teodoro sat up straight, suddenly more interested in the conversation. It sounded like the file he had left on the table following his meeting with the very-soon-to-be-dead-facedown-in-her-pancakes Underwood had been found. And studied.

  Just as he’d intended—but the timing was unfortunate.

  Given that the file revealed that SB Director William Britto had sold his soul, not to mention the SB’s integrity, to the powerful Renata Alessa Cortini, high priestess of the vampire Cercle de Druide, in exchange for new dusk-to-dawn life for his terminally ill son, Teodoro imagined it had made for fascinating reading.

  And it wouldn’t take much deductive skills for the members of the Oversight Committee to realize that the only thing the Cercle would be interested in would be intel about a True Blood known as S. And where to find him.

  “You’re expected at HQ by midnight,” Webster informed Teodoro.

  “And my vacation?”

  “Reinstated the moment you’ve finished with the interrogation.”

  “Well, then. I guess I’ll see you at midnight.”

  “Not me, you won’t. I hope to be in bed asleep by then. Too damn old for vampire hours,” Webster grumbled. “I’ll let the OC know you’re on the way.”

  Conversation finished, Teodoro stood and slipped the cell phone back into his pocket. When he returned from HQ, he’d tap into the bond between Dante and Heather, follow it back to the FBI agent. Then sever it. He stepped over to the table, his strength and balance restored—no longer a tottering old man—and gently brushed the strands of black hair away from Dante’s face.

  “Beautiful,” he whispered.

  A dark satisfaction curled through him. Soon. Very soon. With a severed bond and a creawdwr’s deep sea dive into madness, the Second Fall would begin—and then the air would fill with weeping and wailing and gnashing of Elohim teeth.

  Turning, Teodoro strode from the room.

  13

  THE FIRST BREATH OF WINTER

  NEW ORLEANS

  THE WINTER ROSE

  THE FALLEN ANGEL WAS gone.

  Guy Mauvais stood in the doorway of the riverboat’s workroom, his fingers clenched around the crystal goblet of stove-warmed blood he held—never microwaved, since the damned contraption destroyed what little flavor and nutritional value bagged blood possessed—as he stared in disbelief at the wooden table.

  Empty—save for bits of white stone scattered across its surface and the melted stubs of candles left by the hoodoo woman, hardened tendrils of wax hanging like pale icicles from the table’s edge.

  The smoky aroma of incense and wax mingled with the fading scent of the hoodoo woman’s hex-removal potion—mint and wintergreen, salt, and the lavender-clove-citrus spice of Florida Water.

  “Mon Dieu,” Mauvais breathed. “It actually worked.” Excitement tingled electric along his spine. He entered the room, powdered stone gritting beneath the soles of his dress shoes as he hurried over to the table. “It actually worked,” he repeated.

  It’d been nearly three nights since Mauvais had chiseled the stone from the fallen angel’s nude body, revealing black leathery wings, waist-length red hair, and taloned fingers and toes. Celtic designs—concentric circles, triskelions, delicate loops—were silver-inked along the motionless figure’s right side from torc-collared throat to hand.

  Freed of stone, then, but not the spell that had trapped him within it, the fallen angel’s mouth had remained frozen in a silent scream, the moss-green eyes unseeing, the tight-muscled body locked in a crouch.

  So, last night, refusing to give up or admit defeat, but lacking any magic useful to the situation, Mauvais had ordered the riverboat’s return to New Orleans. Once the Winter Rose had docked at the Esplanade Avenue wharf, he’d sent his mortal servants into the Quarter and out into the bayous to find someone—be it hoodoo conjurer, Vodou mambo, or nomad shuvano—possessing the necessary magical skills to shatter the thrice-damned spell.

  Mauvais’s servants had returned first with a Vodou houngan who’d taken one look at the Winter Rose, then declared it and its master cursed. Refusing to step on board for any amount of money, the houngan had shouted his sincere condolences up to Mauvais, then turned and walked away without another word.

  From where he stood against the wood railing, Mauvais regarded his chagrined servants with thin-lipped displeasure as they scurried away to resume their search.

  They returned a few hours later with Clèmentine, a slender hoodoo dressed in chocolate brown cords and a mustard-yellow sweater. In her mid-thirties with a wild mass of auburn curls and sky-blue eyes, she seemed to have no qualms about working for a man rumored to be a vampire or about breaking a hex on what appeared to be a fallen angel.

  She’d studied Mauvais for a long moment, her blue gaze taking in the wheat-blond hair tied back at the nape of his neck with a black satin ribbon, the aristocratic features, his elegant, if old-fashioned suit, the pale skin and lambent eyes.

  “Well, madame?” he’d finally inquired. “Do you also believe I am cursed?”

  “Oh, without a doubt, M’sieu Mauvais. You got an angry loa on dis here boat, one I want nuthin’ to do wit’, but I’ll take the job.”

  Mauvais had arched a skeptical eyebrow. “Even with an angry loa on board?”

  “Got a mortgage, me,” Clèmentine had replied with a philosophical shrug of her shoulder.

  Mauvais had chuckled. “I appreciate your forthright and practical nature.”

  Clèmentine’s lips had curled into a smile. She’d extended her hand, palm up. “And I appreciate cash, m’sieu.”

  Once she’d been paid, and paid well, she’d immediately gone to work with her potions and powders and gris-gris, her juju bags and holy water and oil-anointed candles, promising Mauvais that his fallen angel would rise once again.

  But when the conjurer had finally left shortly before dawn after murmuring one last Psalm over the angel’s utterly unchanged form, Mauvais had been disappointed, and believed himself duped perhaps.

  The empty table was proof that he’d been wrong.

  Which begged the question—where had the angel gone?

  Mauvais drained his cooling breakfast, grimacing at the blood’s flat, lifeless taste, then set the goblet down on the table as he glanced around the room. Faint glimmers of light from the wharf filtered in through the porthole—more than enough to see that he was alone in the room. The taste of blood turned bitter on his tongue.

  He picked up the chisel. Particles of pale stone still dusted its end. If, after everything, the damned angel had simply flown away without even a word. . . .

  Mauvais hurled the chisel across the room. It struck the wood paneling at the far wall, driving
in deep, handle quivering.

  From the corner of his eye, Mauvais caught a flicker of blue light and spun to face it. He saw only the stone-littered table, the goblet glinting with ruby light from the porthole, and shadowed shelves filled with boxes and coils of rope and tools.

  No blue flickers. No ghostly movement. Nothing.

  He was merely jumping at shadows—or, more accurately, blue light. Again.

  Ever since they’d docked in New Orleans last night, he’d been catching odd glimpses of blue light in his peripheral vision, along with disturbing whiffs of ozone and heated metal. On a couple of occasions, his skin had prickled as though lightning crackled in the air right above him, filling him with an odd and inexplicable dread.

  You got an angry loa on dis here boat . . .

  “Non,” Mauvais refused with a shake of his head. “Pas ici. Pas possible.”

  He marched over to the light switch and slapped it on. Nothing. He uselessly hit the switch a few more times, as if that would make a difference. Annoyed with himself, he dropped his hand and blew out a long, frustrated breath.

  Yet another thing that had happened ever since they’d docked at the Esplanade Avenue wharf—lights blew out, equipment short-circuited, and computers—navigational and otherwise—glitched.

  And now the fallen angel, the one he’d rescued from being a good-luck charm for tourists, drunks, and the desperate visiting St. Louis Cemetery No. 3, the one whose mere presence (grateful, of course) at his side could’ve elevated Mauvais in status far beyond Lord of New Orleans, was just . . . gone.

  This riverboat and its master are cursed. My sincere apologies . . .

  No damned curse—not unless the houngan or conjurer had hexed him in hopes of making more money, which seemed unlikely, since the problems had begun before either one had arrived. And no angry loa. Just a run of mechanical problems and bad luck.

  Closing his eyes, Mauvais rubbed his temples, forcing his body to relax, coaxing the tension from knotted muscles. Like it or not, the angel was gone, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  He needed a good stiff drink of fine bourbon, then he would go into the Quarter and dine. Perhaps a naïve tourist as an appetizer, followed by a full-course meal, in the form of the hunt, chasing down a more canny New Orleans native, and feasting on their fear and adrenaline-simmered blood.