On Midnight Wings

by Adrian Phoenix

  The sooner the better.

  She knew one thing beyond a shadow of a doubt. She couldn’t let them take her to Alexandria, Dante beyond her reach. He was south of her now; she felt it in her heart and mind—a magnetic pull directing the compass within.

  She wondered if he felt an opposite pull to the north.

  I’ll bet anything that he does.

  Going to the sink, Heather turned on the faucet and waited for the water to warm up. She ached all over. Between the struggle with James and being tased, she felt bruised and sore, exhausted. She’d managed to sleep a couple of hours during the drive over from Dallas, but it hadn’t been restful or nearly enough.

  She sighed as she looked at the white porcelain bathtub. She’d love nothing more than a long, hot shower to ease her hurts and massage the kinks out of her muscles, but no way would she risk it. Naked and vulnerable with a couple of SB agents in the next room? She snorted. Only in bad movies.

  Instead, Heather peeled off her sweater at the sink, draping it over the towel bar. Shivering in her lavender bra, she washed up with warm water and a little cake of perfumed soap, then used a soapy washcloth on her back—rinsing and resoaping until it no longer came back pink.

  “Hey, Wallace, I’m heading off on a food run to Denny’s,” DeAgostino called. “What do you want?”

  Heather straightened, relief flooding through her at hearing the words she’d been hoping for, and finished drying off with a rough, white towel. She was famished and deeply regretting the meal she’d ignored at the institute. Everything and anything sounded delicious—even the word food had her salivating.

  But if all went well, she wouldn’t be here to eat it when it arrived.

  “Grilled cheese with fries and a side salad,” she said. “A vanilla shake would be great too.”

  “A shake,” DeAgostino repeated. “Good idea. Think I’ll have one too.”

  “You about done in there?” Roberts asked.

  “Almost.” Heather quickly tugged her sweater back on.

  “You’re not the only one who needs a pit stop,” he grumbled. “So hurry up, will ya? Christ. Chicks and bathrooms.”

  Heather’s fingers curled around the sink’s cool, wet edge. He’d cuff her to a chair the moment she stepped from the bathroom. No way he’d leave her able to move around while he was using the john.

  A moment later, the front door thunked shut, then Heather heard a car engine roaring to life out in the parking lot. Her pulse kicked into high gear. She and Roberts were alone.

  Leaving the faucet running to camouflage any noise, she sidled over to the coffeemaker. She carefully pulled the carafe free. Water would give it more heft, but he would hear her filling it up. And that would put him on alert. Bring him into the doorway, Taser already in hand.

  No water. She couldn’t risk it.

  Heather tightened her grip on the carafe’s handle and leaned against the threshold, angling her body to hide the carafe. Roberts sat at the desk, checking his cell phone for messages.

  “Okay, it’s all yours,” she said, pleased that her voice remained level despite the tension thrumming through her body. “And in your case? Please feel free to close the door.”

  “Ha-ha. Another comedian.”

  “By the way, the faucet won’t turn off. At least, I can’t get it to turn off.”

  “Christ,” Roberts muttered. “Damned cheap motels.” He stuffed his cell phone into a jacket pocket, then rose to his feet and headed for the bathroom.

  Heart drumming, Heather watched his approach. “Maybe you should just call the manager,” she suggested.

  “Oh sure, you’d like that, huh?” Roberts said as he reached the doorway. “Give you a chance to claim you’d been kidnapped—”

  Heather swung up the carafe and slammed it into the SB agent’s temple. His words cut off and he staggered back a step, expression stunned, pained. She immediately clocked him again, then a third time. Roberts stumbled backward, then fell hard on his ass. Blood smeared his temple, dripped down to his jaw. A thick, coppery odor threaded into the air.

  Heather lifted the blood-smeared carafe for a fourth blow, but the handle snapped off, sending it rolling across the carpet. Roberts, dazed and blinking, scrabbled for the Taser clipped at his belt. Or for his gun.

  Roberts was supposed to bring her in alive, of that much Heather was sure. But given his current pummeled-by-a-coffee-carafe state, she had a suspicion that might be a hard fact for him to hold on to.

  A snap-kick to the chin knocked Roberts flat and clacked his teeth together. His head lolled to the side, eyes closed, out cold. Pulse roaring in her ears, Heather bent and fumbled both his Taser and Glock free from their holsters.

  A quick search of his jacket produced the handcuffs key. She quickly freed herself, then cuffed Roberts to a leg of the nearest gold comforter-draped bed. Scrambling to her feet, Heather tucked the Glock into her jeans at the small of her back, covering it with her sweater, but kept the Taser in hand.

  She hurried over to the desk and picked up Roberts’s cell phone. She could call Annie, then speak to Von, but she didn’t want to remain here while she did. And taking it with her would be too risky. GPS, sure, but she had no idea what else SB agents might have attached to their phones.

  Heather tossed the cell back onto the desk. Nope. Not worth the risk. She’d rather try her luck at borrowing a phone from a friendly stranger. Outside, a diesel engine rumbled, the sound vibrating like a heavy bass note into the room.

  Roberts groaned. Stirred.

  Time to go.

  Heather unlocked the door, then raced out into the chilly night air, teeth gritted against the bolt of pain from her ankle. She slowed to a limping walk when she saw the bus—ALL SAINTS GOSPEL TOUR!—in the parking lot and the presumed saints climbing down from it, trudging wearily to the manager’s office. The pungent odors of diesel fuel and exhaust permeated the air.

  Suddenly aware of the Taser she held, Heather stuffed it into the front of her jeans, underneath her sweater. She kept walking, edging toward the parking lot’s shadows as she wiped cold sweat from her forehead and combed her fingers through her hair in an attempt to look normal. Nonmemorable.

  A vehicle turned into the parking lot, its halogen headlights blinding Heather with blue-infused brilliance. The relief she felt when she realized it was a car and not the rented SUV the SB agents were driving died quickly. The car steered past the bus and the little knots of people from the bus and pulled alongside her.

  Heather halted, pulse pounding in her throat, and pulled the Glock free from the back of her jeans. She held the gun at her side, ready to swing it up, if necessary.

  A window hummed down.

  “Wallace,” a woman said. Faint Italian accent. A voice Heather recognized.

  “Cortini,” Heather breathed. “How the hell did you find me?” Not that it mattered, she wasn’t about to look a gift assassin in the mouth. This time her relief was so intense, it nearly took her knees out from under her.

  Caterina shrugged. “SB agents on an expense account are very predictable. Let’s get you out of here before reinforcements arrive.”

  Hurrying around to the passenger side of the car, Heather slid inside. “Talk about perfect timing,” she said with a quick smile. “Thanks.”

  “No, thank you,” Caterina countered with a smile of her own as she guided the Nissan out of the parking lot. “You just made things a lot easier for me too.”

  25

  DEEPER INTO HELL

  BATON ROUGE

  DOUCET-BAINBRIDGE SANITARIUM

  YOU’RE GONNA END UP hurting everyone around you because you can’t help it.

  You’ve done well, S. You failed to protect Chloe, but you protected yourself. No one can ever be used against you if you’re willing to kill them yourself.

  How does it feel, marmot?

  Your nose is bleeding. That’s kinda sexy.

  Dante’s fragmented dreams—little splinters of nightmare gleefully
carving up his subconscious—suddenly whirled together like filaments of razor-edged cotton candy on a thorned spindle, taking on form, shape, and substance.

  A dark and deadly window. Already jimmied. Open and waiting.

  A way out of the shattered depths, maybe.

  Or maybe a way deeper into hell.

  Dante climbed through without hesitation. Swinging his legs over the sill, he dropped down and . . .

  . . . finds himself standing on the edge of an empty, weed-choked parking lot. A car pulls in and glides into one of the slots marked in faded white paint in front of an unlit building. A faint fetid odor hangs in the cool night air—old piss and mildew and neglect. On one side of the building, a sign reads WOMEN, on the other side, MEN. And painted in huge white letters between the two sides: CLOSED DUE TO BUDGET CUTS.

  The headlights and taillights wink out and the engine shuts off. Car doors creak open, then thunk shut as two women get out—Heather from the passenger side and from the driver’s side, Caterina Cortini, the SB assassin with the nightkind mother.

  Dressed in jeans and a blue sweater, Heather stands uneasily beside the car, her gaze scanning the weathered building. She swings her right hand behind her, resting it near the small of her back and the gun that Dante figures she has tucked there into her jeans. Weariness and a fierce determination illuminate her face.

  “This is a good spot,” she says. She glances up, studying the star-sprinkled sky. “No one around to see De Noir land and get freaked out.”

  On the opposite side of the car, Caterina nods, her dark coffee-colored hair brushing against the shoulders of her black blazer. “That was the idea.”

  “When is he supposed to be here?”

  “Anytime,” Caterina replies. “In the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to check the building and make sure we’re actually alone.”

  “Good idea,” Heather agrees, pulling the gun free from the back of her jeans and holding it down alongside her leg. She heads for the shadow-shrouded restrooms, aimed for the side marked MEN.

  Caterina pulls a gun from a holster underneath her blazer. She steps up onto the sidewalk. But she doesn’t move toward the sign reading WOMEN. Instead, she follows after Heather in quick, silent strides, coming up behind her fast, lifting the gun, her face cold and hard and unforgiving.

  Dante tries to move, to blur across the neglected parking lot and rip out Caterina’s throat before her finger even finishes pulling the trigger—but his body refuses to obey. His limbs feel like they’re encased in cement. Dead weight.

  He opens his mouth to shout a warning, but no sound emerges.

  Dante keeps fighting, struggling, pouring all of his strength and concentration into moving, dammit, just . . . fucking . . . MOVE as Caterina aims the gun at the back of Heather’s skull. The dark-haired assassin’s finger curls around the trigger. Then she stops, turns her head, and looks right at him.

  And her features shift. She becomes taller. Blonde. Nightkind pale.

  Dante goes still. She is no longer Caterina.

  Johanna Moore’s ice-blue gaze meets his and her generous lips curve into a smile. “What are you waiting for?” she asks, then adds in a commanding near-whisper, “You should do the honors, my sleeping beauty.”

  Something calm and cold uncoils inside of Dante and slithers into place. Something he can’t stop. And he suddenly finds himself in Johanna/Caterina’s place, the rubber grip of the gun in his hand, the muzzle aimed at the back of Heather’s head, the trigger smooth beneath his finger.

  He draws in an easy breath, smells her—lilacs and sage and rain. He hears his own voice, low and husky, saying, “Hey, catin.”

  Heather starts to turn around.

  He pulls the trigger.

  Her head rocks forward with the first bullet, then snaps back with the second, tendrils of red hair whipping through the air. She drops like an air-gunned steer. The thick, heady smells of blood and cordite saturate the air. Hunger pulses through him.

  Voices buzz around him, annoying houseflies.

  You’re gonna end up hurting everyone around you because you can’t help it.

  No one can ever be used against you if you’re willing to kill them yourself.

  There he is. That’s my Bad Seed bro.

  How does it feel, marmot?

  S laughs. “Pretty fucking good, actually.”

  26

  A FAMILIAR AND DANGEROUS VOICE

  DANTE JERKED AWAKE, HEART hammering, his body bathed in a cold sweat. Light needled his eyes and he snapped them shut again—too late; the pain in his head intensified. Whatever he’d been dreaming was gone. The last image, tendrils of red hair sinking into a moonlit pool of blood, an image that iced his heart, vanished like smoke in the rain, leaving him with only a disturbing blankness.

  Something dark and ugly had happened in the dream. Something that scared him to his core. Something inescapable and unstoppable, a massive boulder rolling straight for a lonely highway, aimed at the single car traveling upon it.

  Tendrils of red hair whipping through the air. . . .

  Gone.

  “Shit,” Dante whispered, easing his eyes open again.

  And once again fluorescent light from the overheads spiked straight through them and into his aching brain like luminescent ice picks. Squinting, eyes tearing, he lifted a hand to shield his face—or tried to, anyway. But his arms, crossed over his chest, wouldn’t move.

  Canvas rustled. Leather creaked. His mouth dried.

  Dante didn’t have to look to know that he was strapped into a fucking straitjacket, but he lifted his head anyway and, blinking away fluorescent dazzles, took a gander and confirmed what he already suspected. Panic settled into his belly and buckled itself in for the ride.

  Shit. Fuck. Sonuvabitch.

  The straitjacket seemed weathered, flecked with old blood, a patch of fresh blood glistening on the left side, above his heart. And as if that wasn’t enough, steel bands restrained him at his chest and thighs, and his ankles were cuffed—no, make that double-cuffed—to the table.

  Dante strained against the bands holding him to the table, muscles cording in his arms and chest and thighs. The heavy steel biting into his bunched biceps and pecs and thighs refused to budge. He refused to give up. Maybe he couldn’t get out of the straitjacket, but he could sure as hell do whatever possible to get his ass off the goddamned table. He fought and battered himself against the steel, not stopping until sweat beaded his forehead and a wet heaviness filled his lungs. He sucked in a breath, the air burning his throat. Pain pulsed deep in his chest.

  Shit. Fuck. Sonuvabitch.

  What now?

  Coughing, Dante closed his eyes and tried to concentrate. At the back of his throat, he tasted blood and the bitter residue of drugs. His head felt full of broken glass and hissing sea-tide whispers, his thoughts punched full of holes.

  He was in a room with padded walls, a concrete floor, and a camera snugged into a ceiling corner—and didn’t that feel fucking familiar as hell? The door stood open. Beyond, the hall was empty, a teasing temptation out of reach.

  Where am I this time?

  As much as Dante hated that particular question, what he hated even more was knowing that the answer was most likely hidden away inside his own skull.

  Ragged pain wheeled through his mind as he struggled to think back to the last thing he remembered, fought to remember where, when. He pushed against the blankness. Shoved. Then—

  Memory ratcheted into place. Images flickered, running backward—a Halloween strobe light show.

  That’s Mr. Díon. He’s been taking care of my mommy. . . .

  A tall, black-suited prick with tawny hair and an immortal’s slow pulse.

  Tearing into warm, whiskered flesh. Running. The roof.

  A hook, slick with light. Handcuffs.

  The white padded room. Chloe—no, wait, Violet—with her black paper wings.

  Blue eyes wide with panic. C’mon, it’s me. Annie. Heather’s in tr
ouble.

  Heather, warm and drowsy in his arms, smelling of lilacs and sage, and with a desperate hope, whispering: Sleep tight, cher.

  Heather. Heather. Heather.

  Dante shoved through the pain and drug-woven fuzziness encasing his mind and reached for her—or tried to, anyway. Pain shredded his sending and, for one graying, alarming moment, his consciousness. He blinked black spots from his vision as the pain gradually eased off the pedal.

  Shit. Fuck. Sonuvabitch.

  Beneath the pain, Dante felt the steady flame of Heather’s presence through their bond, a flame currently hidden behind miles of thick, dark glass. Relief flooded through him. Heather was alive. And, as near as he could tell, not here, but somewhere north of him. Maybe hundreds of miles away, maybe just across the street.

  But just because Heather wasn’t sharing his particular hellhole, didn’t mean she wasn’t in danger. Didn’t mean she wasn’t straitjacketed into a hellhole of her own or running for her life. Whatever had happened, whatever had landed him on this table, strapped into a motherfucking straitjacket, could’ve swallowed up not only Heather, but Von and Silver and Annie, as well.

  Shit. Fuck. Sonuvabitch.

  Dante hoped to hell he was wrong—that they were all safe, unharmed—as desperation pushed him up against the steel bands again and again. A wet cough tasting of blood bubbled up from his lungs. He finally stopped, slicked in cold sweat, hoping to catch his breath, hoping to breathe, period.

  What about Lucien? Searching, he’d be searching. And sending. Over and over and over. Which meant—I can’t fucking receive either. No sending. No receiving. This party keeps getting better and better.

  “Guard your ass, catin,” Dante whispered, hoping his words would somehow find a way to her. “Do whatever it takes to keep yourself safe. Don’t waste energy on me. You and Von watch out for each other. I’ll find you again. I won’t stop until I do.”

  Find her again? Yeah? Think that’s a good idea?

  Fuck you. Absolutely.

  An image flashed unbidden behind Dante’s eyes, blowing a hole in his certainty like a shotgun blast to the chest.