On Midnight Wings

  Keep away. Run from me—

  “I am what you made me / no matter where you hide, where you run,” Dante heard himself singing, “I will find you . . .”

  “Dante?”

  Dante whirled at the sound of his name, song dying in his throat. A tall figure stood motionless in the shadows at the corridor’s far end. A tall figure with wings arching above his head and eyes burning like stars.

  Lucien.

  Relief flooded through Dante. Lucien would keep Heather safe. Keep her far from S and his-ours-no-his itching trigger finger. Keep her—

  Electricity arced through his mind, short-circuiting his thoughts, locking his muscles, and dropping him to the floor as the seizure blossomed full flower. He felt himself gathered into strong arms, caught a glimpse of long, black hair, golden eyes, but Lucien’s scent of deep earth and green leaves eluded him. All he smelled was blood and ozone and crackling lightning. Pain seared his joints, wrung his muscles like wet rags.

  Warm fingers brushed at his temples.

  There was no need to ask, his shields were already falling. But this Lucien’s psionic touch was different. Unfamiliar. Wrong.

  The fallen angel holding him wasn’t his father.

  Deep inside, someone laughed and laughed.

  Pain pierced Dante’s mind, stuttered his heart as someone searched through the mountainous debris of his fractured memories, creating a kaleidoscope of ugly images whirling into one another, each set of foster parents blurring into the next, an infinite looping montage of casual cruelty and heart-hollowing loss.

  —Papa and Mama Prejean.

  —Chloe and her plushie BFF Orem.

  —Gina and Jay.

  —The Perv (another Bad Seed bro, yeah?) and his van of horrors.

  —Ronin’s fingernail slicing across Jay’s throat.

  —Johanna Moore and the white-coated man with the blurred face.

  —Simone and Trey.

  —The sanitarium.

  —Heather. Heather. Heather.

  The fallen angel breathed blue fire into Dante and he felt his thrashing body go limp, but the storm crackling through his mind raged unabated.

 

  Dante’s vision narrowed onto the blood-freckled ceiling, then whited out as entire constellations were born behind his rolled-back eyes in explosions of icy light.

  39

  PLANTING SEEDS

  SO EASY. FAR EASIER than he’d ever imagined.

  Loki withdrew from the blood-drenched creawdwr’s oh-so-broken mind and laughed, the sound of it floating down the corridor like a cheerful birthday balloon.

  All that fretting for nothing.

  He’d flown from New Orleans following the faint and dying echoes of a song he’d barely heard, pondering the best ways to manipulate Dante’s trust and fretting over how to get the Nightbringer’s son to drop his shields. To let him in.

  Just to take a peek at a creawdwr’s inner workings.

  Or those of the Great Destroyer.

  Loki had a fertile imagination, one he employed constantly, but he never could’ve imagined arriving at a better moment—just as a seizure dropped Dante right into his arms, his shields already crumbling thanks to a near-lethal mix of vampire tranquilizers, True Blood poison, and pure, simple exhaustion—mental, emotional, and physical.

  Fate had finally landed on Loki’s side.

  And no wonder Dante—or S, as he sometimes thought of himself—was exhausted. Loki grinned in approval as he drank in Dante’s handiwork.

  He’s been a very busy boy.

  Crumpled into dark pools of their own thickening blood, bodies clad in either black suits or medical scrubs littered the blood and gore-festooned corridor. Then there were the doors flung open on either side of the corridor and leading into rooms full of silence and the rich reek of coppery blood and musky fear.

  Nothing like a little slaughter to perk up a place. Child has talent.

  Loki looked at Dante, still held within his arms, with genuine fondness. The first mixed-blood creawdwr in history—a pale-skinned reality in leather pants and blood-smeared flesh that no one had ever thought possible—if they’d given it any thought at all.

  Mine to guide. Mine to wind-up and turn loose. Mine alone.

  Well, perhaps not completely, Loki reflected sourly as he regarded the intricate and raised white scar high on the left side of Dante’s chest. The Morningstar’s mark. And—as gleaned from Dante’s unprotected mind—a blood pledge to return to Gehenna to restore the fading land.

  A pledge the narcissistic Morningstar would live long enough to regret. Deeply.

  Loki pushed Dante’s blood-and sweat-dampened hair back from his face. Drew in an appreciative breath. Wild and fey, Dante’s beauty, burning with a dark and mesmerizing heat and all the deadlier for it. Helen’s beauty launched only a thousand ships; Dante’s would ignite worlds.

  The Great Destroyer.

  How long have I waited for this? How many eons?

  More than he cared to count. But no longer. The waiting was finally done.

  Lifting his gaze, Loki studied Dante’s first dark miracle—a secret, government-run sanitarium/brainwashing facility transformed into a silent abattoir. And all while drugs and poison had been busy short-circuiting his power, not to mention his sanity.

  “Bravo,” Loki whispered.

  I can’t wait to see what he does next. And I’ve got a ringside seat.

  Once the drugs wore off, once Dante had healed, and once he had full use of the creu tân again, Loki had a feeling that a certain quote from the dusty Old Testament would once more ring true—a promise like a searing white nuclear light, one that left nothing but shadows in its wake: And there shall be great wailing and gnashing of teeth.

  And when the Elohim finally heard Dante’s song and came winging down from the heavens into the sanitarium’s parking lot—excuse me, apologies, abattoir—and discovered themselves blocked from entering the building due to the spell Loki had carefully cast in his own blood before going inside?

  Furious would only be the start.

  Loki laughed, a happy sound brimming with anticipation. Lowering his head, he pressed his lips against Dante’s in a gentle kiss. Tasted copper and salt. Breathed in the scent of burning leaves, November frost, and bone-deep grief.

  He yearns to turn back the hands of time, to save those he’s lost, to protect the mortal woman, the red-haired lovely, who is drawing ever nearer. He yearns for what he can never have. Ah, but he is young and still foolish and doesn’t know better. Yet.

  Beyond the sanitarium’s thick walls, Loki felt the increase in Louisiana’s vibration as the night waned, giving way to the approaching dawn. But before Sleep claimed Dante, Loki needed to plant a few seeds.

  Thanks to Dante’s fallen shields, he knew just how to do it.

  Closing his eyes, Loki exhaled, then shifted. Energy prickled over his skin, a hundred million bee stings all at once, a familiar and much loved sensation. Once his new form had settled into place, he opened his eyes, adjusted his transformed clothing, then lowered his head and breathed a stream of energy between Dante’s slightly parted lips. The creawdwr’s long-lashed eyelids fluttered but remained closed.

  Loki patted Dante’s cheek, then said in a low, concerned drawl. “Dante, hey. C’mon, man. Hey. Can you hear me? Wake up, little brother.”

  40

  NORTH STAR

  BATON ROUGE

  DOUCET-BAINBRIDGE SANITARIUM

  AS THE NIGHT BLED away, fading to gray as predawn stretched rosy fingers along the horizon, Heather slowed the Nissan to a stop, parking on the quiet, somewhat secluded street in front of a tall building—a quick count tallied eight stories—glowering with institutional grimness. The inward North Star pull she’d been feeling and following since Dallas now pulsed with an urgent, feverish inten
sity.

  Hereherehereherehere . . .

  Locking her fingers around the steering wheel in order to keep herself from just bolting from the car and dashing into God-knows-what, Heather forced herself to sit still and study the building and its surroundings. She knew her bond with Dante had guided her true when she read the sign posted in the modest green swath of lawn between the front doors.

  Doucet-Bainbridge Sanitarium

  Medical Research & Treatment

  PRIVATE

  Heather’s knuckles blanched white against the steering wheel. She had no doubt this was another FBI/SB run facility like the one in D.C., another circle of hell masquerading as psychological research for the public good.

  And Dante was here.

  Again, something deep inside her whispered and cold fingers closed around her heart. Heather tucked Cortini’s confiscated SIG Sauer into her jeans at the small of her back, then regarded her borrowed Glock and Taser.

  Seems I have a regular arsenal, she mused. An arsenal I’m definitely going to need against a building full of security and who the hell knows how many random SB, maybe even FBI, agents, research techs, and medical staff.

  Heather’s pulse drummed a little faster. Sweat dampened her palms. Despite the odds, she knew she wouldn’t wait. She would go inside and she would stop at nothing to bring Dante back out again. The trick would be managing to do so without triggering every alarm in the building or winding up as another involuntary resident in a padded room.

  At least Dante’s Sleeping now—or soon will be. The bastards can’t hurt him while he’s Sleeping.

  Can they?

  She hoped the answer was no, but the cold knot in her belly suggested otherwise.

  How the hell do you plan to carry him if you do find him? Into the morning light? Wrapped in what? You need to wait for nightfall.

  Sighing, Heather trailed her fingers wearily through her hair. Exhaustion was nibbling away at the adrenaline that was keeping her on her feet. Siphoning her clarity of mind.

  Hereherehereherehere . . .

  The internal tether linking Heather to Dante continued to pull and tug and pulse. Dante’s presence burned at the back of her mind, blazed in her heart, a blue-white star.

  She’d thought the bond-GPS would switch off once she’d found him, but maybe she needed to touch him before that could happen. Maybe she needed to make her way past the thorns and kiss his lips, a reversal of roles, the Princess breaking the spell enchanting the pale, black-haired Sleeping Beauty.

  No waiting. She was going inside.

  But first, I need to let the others know where I ended up.

  When Annie answered her phone, Heather filled her in, wishing her sister was safe in New Orleans, not driving a van of Sleeping nightkind (and a pair of awake mortal males) to Memphis, but short of requesting that Jack and Thibodaux stuff her kicking and screaming onto a NOLA-bound Greyhound, Annie was in for the long haul.

  But the alternative, Annie alone with her grief and her guilt, wasn’t an option either. Maybe finding Von and hauling his tattooed bacon out of the fire might help Annie focus, channel her frantic energy.

  A pang cut Heather heart-deep. Von. Small comfort that Silver and Merri believed the nomad wasn’t in danger of losing his life, just his status as llygad.

  They might kick him out. Maybe even wipe out his memory. I don’t think they’d execute him for being an oath breaker, but I don’t know that for sure. Llygaid are real fucking secretive, Red. Wish I knew more.

  Red, huh? That’s new.

  Yeah, well, obvious nicknames are better than none, right?

  I suppose. Which reminds me, Silver-boy, what’s your real name, anyway?

  What was that? Couldn’t hear you. You’re breaking up . . .

  “Do you know if Silver has heard anything from De Noir yet?”

  “Nothing so far,” Annie replied. “We figure he’s still at Fallen Central. But don’t worry, as soon as the big guy makes contact, we’ll make sure he knows right where you are.”

  “Thanks,” Heather said. “Keep safe, okay? I’ll call as soon as I can.”

  “I wish you’d fucking wait for De Noir, but I know you won’t,” Annie said. “So you keep fucking safe too, hear me?”

  “Loud and clear,” Heather replied, her throat suddenly tight. Ending the call, she switched off the cell and slid it into her pocket.

  Don’t need it going off at an inopportune moment.

  Tucking the Taser into the front of her jeans beneath her sweater, she grabbed the Glock, then got out of the car. Pain stabbed up from her ankle, a white-hot blade. She bit her lower lip, waiting it out. She felt pretty sure that it wasn’t broken but badly sprained and in desperate need of ibuprofen, elevation, and an ice pack.

  Heather sighed. Yeah, in a perfect world—which this definitely isn’t.

  Once the pain had returned to a dull throb, she closed the Nissan’s door quietly and studied the sanitarium parking lot and entrance.

  Wait. Was that graffiti painted on the doors and windows?

  Heather frowned. How had the taggers even managed to shake their cans of paint before security swarmed over them and shoved said cans up their artistic urban asses, let alone practically tag the entire building? And something about the graffiti seemed familiar, something itching at the back of her weary mind.

  Her gaze skipped from the dark paint to the eerily silent parking lot. Beneath the pinkish glow of the lot’s lights, condensation misted the windshields.

  These cars have been here all night.

  Heather didn’t see a single car in the lot that looked like it had been driven in recently. Maybe the night shift hadn’t handed the reins over to the morning crew yet. Maybe, for all she knew, they worked in forty-eight-hour shifts.

  Maybe, but she didn’t think so. Something felt off, wrong.

  With the Glock held down at her side, Heather walked down the street toward the parking lot in a deliberately casual stride—or as casual as a limp could be, anyway, breathing in cool air smelling of dew and distant roses, just a local out walking her insomnia in the predawn.

  Stopping at the parking lot’s mouth, Heather got her first good look at the symbols painted on the front doors and windows and her heart gave one hard, startled kick before resuming its regular rhythm—but at a much faster pace.

  Now she knew why the symbols seemed familiar; they reminded her of the mark the Morningstar had seared into the pale skin of Dante’s chest, his promise to return to Gehenna.

  Not graffiti. Fallen sigils. Elohim glyphs—and etched in blood, not paint.

  Fear burned cold along Heather’s spine. She didn’t know what the sigils were for or why they’d been placed, but she knew what they meant.

  She wasn’t the first to find Dante.

  While Dante was injured and doped and lost to an ever-shifting past and present, one of the Fallen (and she desperately hoped it was only one) was with him right at this very moment.

  “Shit,” Heather breathed. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  She had no idea how the Fallen had found Dante, let alone learned of his disappearance, but the thing that truly troubled her—even more than the how, was the why. Why were the Fallen keeping him here? Why hadn’t they taken him back to Gehenna the moment they’d found him?

  A dark possibility unfolded within her mind. Maybe Dante was being kept here, because whoever ran this sanitarium—FBI, SB, a combination of both—whoever had grabbed Dante in the first place, had simply been following directions.

  Fallen directions.

  Maybe someone had been incapable of accepting Dante’s refusal to be a good little creawdwr and kiss Celestial ass and thought a few well-taught lessons would improve his attitude.

  Maybe.

  And where were the mortals who worked inside the sanitarium? Enchanted and sleeping on the floor? Dead? Vanished in a puff of angelic smoke?

  Only one way to find out.

  Ignoring her ankle’s protest, Heather hurried ov
er to the first parked car and crouched down beside it. She scanned the building, looking for movement, any indication that she had been noticed, but nothing disturbed the lot’s thick blanket of silence, a silence like the first deep snowfall of winter.

  Nothing moved. Nothing slow enough for her to see, anyway.

  Heather straightened from her crouch, moved to the next car, then waited again. Still nothing. Just as she was about to make her limping run to the next vehicle, a car pulled into the parking lot, a forest-green Lexus.

  Crouching down, Heather kept an eye on the newcomer, a man wearing what looked like scrubs, as he parked the Lexus in an empty slot.

  Looks like I was wrong about that shift change.

  The man climbed out of the Lexus and Heather saw that she was right about the scrubs—his were mint-green, the short sleeves revealing forearms thick with black hair. He locked the car with a tap of his smart key, then started across the parking lot. He stopped abruptly, frowning, his gaze on the sanitarium. He stared, his expression shifting from a puzzled frown to a blank slate. All expression vanished from his face. Swiveling around, he returned to his car in quick strides, unlocked it, slid inside, and drove off.

  The hair prickled on the back of Heather’s neck. What the hell was that?

  Heather watched as another car glided into the lot—a standard black government-issue SUV this time, driven by a man in a black suit—and the same exact events unfolded. Park, head across parking lot, freeze, go blank, then turn and leave.

  Another car, then another, as staff members and agents pulled into the lot, then left again after gazing at the Fallen-marked building.

  Why not me? Heather rose from her crouch. She regarded the building for a long moment, knowing a Fallen spell had to be the reason for the day shift’s about-face, but why hadn’t it affected her too?

  Whatever the reason, maybe the caster wouldn’t be expecting anyone to saunter past the spell, and had his or her guard down. Heather could only hope.