“And who are they?” Dante asked, eyeing the snake-lizard-hummingbird things.
“Chalkydri,” the Morningstar said dismissively. “Servants and jailors.”
“You really fucking think you’re superior to everyone, don’tcha?”
An amused smile quirked at the Morningstar’s lips. “Think? No. I know I am.”
Dante snorted. “Yeah, keep telling yourself that.”
The chalkydri continued their anxious aerial darting, chittering and fluting, as the Morningstar slowed his descent, coming to a hovering position in front of Lucien’s unconscious body with strong, steady wing-beats.
Fear slipped a shiv between Dante’s ribs. With all the wybrcathl and noise bouncing around in his head, he couldn’t hear Lucien’s heart, couldn’t tell whether it still beat or not.
Before our bond was severed, I woulda known without hearing …
Dante shoved the thought away, not wanting to be drawn to the dark, empty spot in his mind where Lucien’s steadying presence had once dwelt.
Lucien’s waist-length black hair streamed past his bowed head and seemed to merge with the black kilt belted at his hips. Even though Gabriel had undone the spell that he’d laid upon Lucien—at Dante’s terse insistence—a spell that had bound Lucien’s fate to that of a dying land, his father’s strength and vitality hadn’t yet been restored. His skin was too pale, almost translucent.
A pang of guilt pierced Dante. My fault. I shoved him away.
The Morningstar’s wings swooshed behind Dante in a steady, measured rhythm as he wrapped both arms around Dante’s waist and held him securely. Sliding his arm free of the fallen angel’s neck, Dante leaned forward and pressed a trembling hand against Lucien’s bare and blood-sticky chest above his heart.
The warmth radiating into Dante’s palm did little to reassure him, since he couldn’t be sure if it was Lucien’s own or heat soaked up from the coals below.
Dante arrowed a wished-hard thought out into the night, seeking the dead.
Keep him breathing, ma mère, s’il te plaît. Keep his heart beating.
A moment later, Dante felt a slow, hard beat thump beneath his palm. He closed his eyes, exhaling in relief. “Merci beau-coup,” he whispered.
Opening his eyes, Dante pushed Lucien’s hair back from his face, and another sharp pang pierced him. The skin beneath Lucien’s closed eyes looked bruised, the smudges of darkness stark against his pallor. And the hooks …
Dante-angel?
Chloe’s soft voice whispered up from the depths within, and the pit tilted abruptly. Dante felt his world shifting, sliding, fracturing. Panic trickled like ice water along his spine as he fought to remain in the present, but another world whirled into view—a world composed of a white padded room, a steel hook bolted into the ceiling.
Ready for business.
Dante shuddered, pain spasming in his back, spiking his temples. A hook-shaped uneasiness fueled his racing pulse.
Not fucking now. Keep your shit together.
Squeezing his eyes shut, he focused on the image of Lucien’s bowed head, his too-pale face, and shoved the white room with its steel hook down below. Reality steadied. The past receded, a dark and restless sea—a sea Dante wasn’t sure he could hold back a second time.
He opened his eyes, and relief butter-flied through him when he saw only one image—Lucien’s face.
A chalkydri flitted near, its rows of delicate, gold-edged wings a blur. Dante reached out and nabbed its thick, twisting tail. It squawked in panic, its talons popping out from its paws like a startled cat’s, then it fell silent. It regarded Dante with large golden eyes.
Dante tugged it closer. Its black-scaled skin felt as smooth as velvet under his fingers. “I want you to release him.” He nodded at Lucien. “Get him off these fucking hooks and free his wings.” He then pointed in the violet-eyed chick’s—Hekate’s—direction. “Her too. Tout de suite. You can do all that, yeah?”
The chalkydri bobbed its feathered head and chittered in rapid, high-pitched tones, an aural hummingbird. Dante frowned. He’d almost understood the little demon-thing, or thought he had, anyway. It sounded like it’d said something along the lines of, Welcome, welcome, please don’t unmake me.
Dante shook his head. “You don’t need to be afraid of me. I ain’t got a problem with y’all.” He released the chalkydri’s muscular tail, then tossed a glance over his shoulder at the Morning-star, who arched a white brow. “Just your bosses.”
“I hope you aren’t including me in that comment,” the Morningstar murmured.
“Depends. Do you tell them what to do?”
“Sometimes.”
“Then you’re included.”
The Morningstar sighed.
As the chalkydri and its companion worked on removing the barbed hooks from Lucien’s shoulders and the clips from his wings, Dante cupped Lucien’s face between his hands and planted gentle kisses on his forehead, his eyelids, then his lips. As he kissed Lucien, he inhaled an earthy scent he’d thought he’d never experience again—his father’s scent of deep, dark earth and green leaves.
Lucien’s eyes fluttered open. He blinked, then gazed with disbelieving wonder at Dante, his expression that of a man who believes he’s dreaming.
“Found you, mon cher ami, mon père, and I ain’t never losing you again,” Dante said, voice husky. “We’re going home.”
A smile brushed Lucien’s lips. “I’d like that, mon fils,” he whispered. “I’d like that very much.”
5
BETWEEN THE LIES
GEHENNA,
THE PIT OF SHEOL
Night of March 27–28
“ARE YOU STRONG ENOUGH to fly?” Dante asked.
“By all that’s holy,” Lucien whispered, looking past Dante. His sleepy, half-dreaming, heavy-lidded expression vanished. “Child, you’re with the Morningstar,” he stated in the low, level, caution-please tone of voice most people reserved for saying things like, A snake is coiled at your feet about to strike. Don’t move. Hold. Very. Still.
“Totally aware of that,” Dante replied, unable to keep a smile from tilting his lips. “But we’ll discuss it later, after we’re …” He paused, stumbling over the word. “… home.” As he dropped his hands from Lucien’s face, his wings flexed involuntarily. Pain bit into his back muscles.
“Ouch,” the Morningstar said. “Stop flapping.”
“Blow me.”
Stunned wonder widened Lucien’s eyes. “You … you have wings,” he breathed. “Dante, when … I mean … how … ?”
“Just a little bit ago,” Dante replied. “I don’t know how—it just happened. Another thing we can discuss later, yeah? Heather’s waiting above and she’s alone.”
“Not anymore,” the Morningstar said.
Those words chiseled ice into Dante’s bones. He looked up and his heart skipped a beat when he saw the tall shapes ringing the pit’s mouth, their wings folded behind them. Gowns and kilts and long, silken strands of hair fluttered in the night breeze. Eyes glittered like gold stars in the diluted darkness.
Tall shapes ringing the pit … shovels ringing a grave …
Dante’s vision fractured and, for a second, he was a teenager again, fighting his way out of the grave Papa-fucking-Prejean had dumped him into, a hasty grave rimmed with shovels, blue blades buried into the mud and sawgrass, wood handles reaching into the night… . Boy needs a lesson. Boy always needs a lesson.
Heather’s sending—white silence and a grounded calm energy—nudged the puzzle pieces of Dante’s vision, his multiple realities, together again until they clicked into place to form a single image: the opening to the pit edged with wary and tensed Fallen winging out from either side of one mortal woman.
Heather knelt at the pit’s rough and sandy edge in her black trench coat and leather pants, Browning in hand
, her body taut and coiled. An aura of purple and inky gold shimmered around her like an aurora borealis—intense concentration and fierce determination, but fading energy and a deepening weariness muddied its colors.
It’d been a long and hellish night for both of them, and Dante had a feeling they were both running on fumes.
he sent.
Relief flickered across her face and a smile curved her lips. Then she glanced at the Fallen standing beside her.
“Hey, y’all with the wings,” Dante called, knowing the fallen angels could hear him, despite the distance. “Keep your distance from her and stay outta our way. As long as you’re just watching, we’re cool.”
“It shall be as you say, little creawdwr,” one of the female Fallen said, her voice soft and reverent, a hymn. “Your will shall be done.”
“Your will be done,” the other Fallen echoed, one by one, their murmured voices blending into a musical amen.
“Terrific,” Dante muttered, wondering whether to flip them off or salute or drop trou and show his ass. He settled on rubbing the side of his nose with his middle finger, not caring if they got his point or not.
Dante didn’t return his attention to Lucien until the fallen angels standing on either side of Heather—both males—had put a careful, healthy distance between them and her.
“Don’t let your guard down,” Lucien said, his black eyes searching Dante’s face. “They are only pretending obedience. Trying to lull you. My words are still true.”
The Fallen will find you. And bind you.
“Yeah, je connais,” Dante said. “I know how to read between the lies. I heard you that night in the cemetery. Even if I was pissed off, I was listening. And I meant what I said too.”
If they find me, they ain’t binding me. They’re gonna hafta kill me.
“I know you did,” Lucien said, his expression unreadable, his exhaustion-etched face still. But Dante read the truth in his eyes, the words he didn’t voice. And that’s what worries me.
“Forget all that for now, yeah?” Dante said, “Let’s get you outta here.”
“And Hekate too, she helped …”
“Yup. Already got the chalky dudes working on it.”
“Chalkydri,” the Morningstar corrected.
“Whatever.”
Dante drew in a deep, steadying breath before wrapping his arms around Lucien’s waist so he could support the angel when the chalkydri removed the hooks. Heat from his father’s tensed and fevered body radiated into him. “Here we go, mon ami,” he whispered, his mouth close to Lucien’s ear. “Hold on.”
Lucien bit back a groan as the first barbed hook was pulled out through his back with a wet, sucking sound.
“Take it easy, dammit,” Dante growled, glaring at the pair of chalkydri hovering—one with a sapphire-blue-tipped crescent of feathers on its flat head, neon-green-tipped feathers on the other—behind Lucien. One held the bloodied hook in its paws. Uneasiness, dark and cold and oily, slid through Dante again as he looked at it.
Dante caught a whiff of the blood smeared on Lucien’s skin—thick and coppery and seeded with pomegranate—before the pit’s rotten egg stink swallowed it up.
Hunger twisted through Dante, spun his thoughts.
The few mouthfuls of blood he’d gulped down from Gabriel’s torn throat couldn’t make up for all the blood he’d lost when his wings had put in their abrupt and unexpected appearance, tearing through muscle and skin and his fave NIN T-shirt.
Hunger scratched at Dante’s thoughts, reminding him of the heady vintage he’d just tasted. Pomegranate-tart blood pours between his lips and down his throat in a heated rush, strength threading into him with each ravenous swallow, flooding his veins with heat and light.
With a shudder, Dante shoved his hunger below. It would just have to wait. Like so many other things.
The chalkydri with blue-tipped feathers began snipping the bands from Lucien’s wings with what looked like dull black shears as its neon-green feathered buddy reached taloned paws for the second hook.
Dante wrapped his arms tighter around Lucien’s waist. Wanting to distract him, he said, “Fucking Mauvais had the house burned to the ground tonight.”
“What? Our house? Our home?” Lucien asked in disbelief, barely flinching when the second hook was yanked free with a wet pop, and he dropped into Dante’s tight-muscled embrace.
The Morningstar’s powerful wings swept faster through the smoky air as he balanced the added weight.
“The club’s home for now,” Dante said.
“Is everyone all right?” Lucien asked. His hair brushed against Dante’s cheek as he pulled back a bit so he could see Dante’s face.
Fire scorches her lungs. Blackens her skin. Devours her with relentless teeth.
A muscle flexed in Dante’s jaw. He met Lucien’s eyes. “No.”
Concern flickered across Lucien’s face. “Who …?”
Dante shook his head. Not now.
The chalkydri snipped the final band from Lucien’s wings and the metal halves ting, ting, tinged against the burning rocks below. Lucien’s black wings flared out, stretching and flexing.
“Hey, thanks,” Dante said to the chalkydri. “I appreciate your help.”
Two pairs of golden eyes blinked. The demon-lizard-hummingbirds glanced at one another before flitting away into one of the pit’s dark tunnels, burring wings translucent with speed.
Dante frowned. Clearly not used to being thanked.
“Here we go,” the Morningstar said. The fallen angel’s arms clamped even tighter around Dante’s waist, squeezing the air from his lungs.
The question Dante had intended to ask Lucien—Can you fly?—came out, “Can you … ooof.”
The Morningstar’s wings swept through the air in quick, powerful strokes, and without another word, he carried the three of them up through the lung-searing smoke toward the pale night beyond the pit’s mouth.
“Release me, child,” Lucien said.
“T’es sûr?” Dante asked.
“I doubt he’s strong enough,” the Morningstar said. “Between Gabriel’s spell and all the time on the hooks, he’s going to need my help.”
“I can fly. I don’t need your help,” Lucien retorted, his voice a hollow echo of its usual vibrant rumble, but buoyed with confidence all the same.
“Fine,” the Morningstar sighed, and Dante had a feeling that he was rolling his eyes as he spoke. “Fly or plummet to sizzle on the coals. I don’t care.”
“No doubt you don’t,” Lucien muttered, wings stretching out behind him. He shifted his attention to Dante. “You can let go.”
“D’accord.”
Dante opened his arms and his heart leapt into his throat when Lucien dropped toward the pit’s smoldering floor, his wings flapping weakly.
“Shit,” Dante breathed. “We gotta go back.”
“A few bruises, broken bones, and random burns won’t hurt him,” the Morningstar commented, refusing to stop, slow, or hover. “At least, not for long. Might even help him learn to accept help when offered in the future.”
Dante twisted against the Morningstar’s steel grip, intending to go after Lucien himself, figuring instinct would tell his wings what to do, but before he could wrench free, a blur of white cut through the smoke-hazed air.
The Morningstar’s daughter soared up behind Lucien, her face nearly incandescent in the gloom. Hekate stopped Lucien’s tumbling fall with her own body, bracing her hands against his back, her wings with their lavender undersides beating strong and steady as she balanced him until his wings could rediscover their rhythm and strength.
Tendrils of Lucien’s long black hair snaked across Hekate’s face, her lips, stark against her gleaming skin. Then his dark wings slashed through the air in sure strokes and her hands slid away from his back.
Lucien kited up from the depths, following
Dante and the Morningstar out of the pit, Hekate winging in his wake. Relief curled warm through Dante, slowed his pulse.
Dante sent as the Morningstar’s wings carried them out of the pit and into the night sky, its horizon stained with undulating color—blue, purple, and green—an aurora borealis viewed through a rain-streaked window.
“More than ready,” Heather replied, her voice clear and steady.
Dante had a glimpse of Heather rising to her feet as he and the Morningstar soared from the pit’s dark mouth. The Fallen standing beside her watched their ascent, their wings no longer folded at their backs, but flexing and fluttering.
The Morningstar looped through the air, heading back toward the pit and Heather. She stood at the pit’s edge, gun in hand, her lovely face tipped up to the sky, expression composed. The jasmine and myrrh scented breeze tugged at the hem of her black trench, rippled through her hair.
“She may be human, but she’s far from ordinary,” the Morningstar commented.
“Wow. Beaucoup talented at understatement,” Dante said. “With that kinda sweet-talking, I’ll bet you spend most of your nights alone. And you forgot the most important thing.”
“And that would be?”
“She’s mine.”
“Ah. Yes.”
The Morningstar glided down to the sandy ground beside Heather, wing-gust blowing her hair back from her face, her trench coat back from her body, and plastering her purple tank top against her breasts.
“Hey, catin.”
A relieved smile played across Heather’s lips. “Hey, Baptiste.” Dropping the Browning into the trench’s pocket, she stepped up beside the Morningstar and slipped an arm around the angel’s neck.
Her hand brushed against Dante’s, her fingers warm against his skin as her hand slid past his to secure her hold. Now that she was with him again, his tension eased, but only a little. As long as they remained in Gehenna and among the Fallen, the last thing they were was safe.
The Morningstar locked an arm around Heather’s waist. His powerful wings lifted them effortlessly into the air. Dante heard multiple wing whooshes as the Fallen who had watched as he’d freed his father took to the air. Ahead, he saw Lucien and Hekate—black wings and white—flying side by side toward the distant lights of the Royal Aerie.