On Midnight Wings

by Adrian Phoenix

  “Shanghaied,” Von muttered, thumping the back of his head against the rough-hewn wall in disgust, instantly regretting it as the taiko drummers inside his skull launched into a double-time rhythm. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  Holly and her llafnau had carted his pill-Snoozing ass back to the plantation and tucked him inside the llygaid academy’s well house for safekeeping until he awakened. He’d bet his left rim that the door wasn’t even locked. Who needed locks when you had the nightkind version of SEAL Team Six on hand?

  With a disgusted sigh, Von opened his eyes. His headache intensified, the nearly translucent slivers of moonlight creating and stuffing another enthusiastic taiko drummer into his already crowded skull.

  Von winced and resumed rubbing his forehead. He remembered his conversation—decades ago, it felt like—about the pill and its consequences with pretty little Conseil du Sang spy Merri Goodnight.

  No wonder she’d given him that amused smile. She’d known exactly what he was in for and knew he wouldn’t need anyone to remind him of his consequences-we-don’t-need-no-stinking-consequences bravado or to say “I told you so.” Nope. Not when she knew he’d be kicking his own ass repeatedly and hard.

  Besides, his own personal drummers were oh so busy, busy, busy pounding those consequences into his skull. Literally. Motherfuckers.

  Taking the damned stay-awakes had been worth it since they’d allowed him to contact Heather before their temporary link dissolved, but he had no intention of ever downing another.

  Von shut his eyes again and waited for the pain to dial down a notch or five. How the fuck did Dante do it? Deal with, live with, his monster migraines?

  A quicksilver thought flowed into his mind and Von’s eyes opened in surprise.

 

 

  Von frowned.

 

 

 

 

  And Silver did just that, filling Von’s mind with images as he brought him up to speed on everything that had happened since the stay-awakes had dropped him on the sidewalk at Holly’s booted feet.

  Mauvais and his companions outside the club.

  The shape-shifting fallen angel.

  Giovanni and his offer of help from the High Priestess of the Cercle de Druide.

  Heather’s escape; her call.

  The decision to drive to Memphis on nomad rescue detail.

  Lucien’s return with the Morningstar and his daughter in tow.

  The magic-grafittied sanitarium.

  Heather inside with Dante. Lucien outside and unable to get in.

  One image in particular chilled Von.

  Dante’s heated hands cup Silver’s face and he leans in close, a dark and wicked light glittering in his kohl-rimmed eyes. He brushes fevered lips against Silver’s. “Let me in,” he whispers. “Let me in, mon ami.”

  Chilled, yes. But not for long. Fury surged molten through Von’s veins. The pain in his head lessened. Shape-shifting motherfucker. But at least they now knew what they were up against. The whole forewarned, yada, yada thing.

  Von sent.

 

  It was a good plan, simple, and just might work because of those two facts.

  Von knew he had to face the music where the filidh were concerned, and under normal circumstances, would do just that. Under normal circumstances he would simply thank Silver but remind him that this was llygaid business and llygaid business only. He would stand and take his lumps.

  He was guilty of breaking his oath, after all.

  But circumstances were just about as far from fucking normal as you could get and remain in the real world. He had no idea how long it would take the master bards to hear his case, strip him of his rank, and send him packing, but he couldn’t afford the time it would take to find out.

  Not with Dante a good six or seven hours away.

  Not with Dante and Heather trapped with a shape-shifting fallen angel inside an Elohim-magicked building.

  It wasn’t enough to hope that Heather had managed to stabilize Dante, not as bad as Dante had been slipping; it was asking too much of one mortal woman.

  She needed help.

  And she’d fucking get it.

 

 

 

 

  Von grinned.

  Promising to see him in a few minutes, Silver ended the conversation.

  Von slipped a hand into a jacket pocket, felt the glide of paper beneath his fingers—the charcoal sketch of Dante he’d picked up from the street in front of the club. At least he hadn’t lost that.

  he sent.

  But this sending didn’t snag or rebound from barriers created by drugs and pain and madness. Instead it went through, unhindered even by Dante’s personal shields. Hell, he was still Sleeping.

 

  Chaos and pain swirled through Dante’s sending—and more than a little madness. The buoyant relief Von felt turned to lead and plummeted into his belly.

 

  Von-suit? Holy hell, the shape-shifting fallen angel.

  Panic burned cold through Von’s veins.

 

  Out of nowhere, a comet slammed into Von head-on, hammering him deep into the earth in an explosion of white light and furious song—music unlike any he’d ever heard before. Blinking away the black spots stitching across his vision, he realized he was facedown on the cool stone. His headache pulsed with renewed life and he tasted blood at the back of his throat.

  With a low groan, Von pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. He wiped away the blood trickling from his nose. “Holy hell.”

  With no effort at all, Dante had eighty-sixed him from his mind with a savage, mouth-drying power. Silver’s trickster fallen angel hadn’t wasted any time in messing with Dante’s fragmented sense of reality. He no longer knew who was true and who was pretending. Was even Heather safe? Had to be. Von refused to think otherwise. Even out of his head, Dante would never ever hurt Heather.

  But if he believed she was Papa wearing a Heather-suit? What then?

  Fear ice-picked his heart.

  My best friend, my companion, my little brother, is losing his mind and he has the power to take us and the world with him.

  Hold on, you stubborn sonuvabitch. Hold the fuck on.

  But Von had a sinking feeling that, no matter how stubborn he was, Dante couldn’t hold on much longer; that things were falling apart with breathtaking speed and it might already be too late.


  47

  TO HELL IN AN EXPRESS LANE HANDBASKET

  HIS EYES PROTECTED BY the smoke-lensed matte black goggles he’d picked up in the Quarter before they’d hit the road, Silver pressed up against the compound’s thick river rock wall and watched as rapidly approaching headlights starred the night.

  Silver’s muscles coiled. His heart picked up speed. This had to work.

  “Get ready,” he whispered.

  “Shit, they’re moving fast,” Merri murmured. “I hope to hell they’re wearing their seat belts.”

  Silver nodded in silent agreement. He’d tried to talk Annie out of participating and, for a moment, when she had rested a hand against her still-flat abdomen, her night-shadowed eyes thoughtful, he thought he’d succeeded. Then she’d shaken her head.

  Why should everyone else take all the risks?

  Everyone else ain’t knocked up.

  Annie had surprised Silver by laughing.

  True enough. But I’m no good at being on the sidelines, Zero mine. I always end up getting into trouble.

  And that had been that. Annie had jumped into the back of the van, an active participant in what Silver hoped would be a daring and successful nomad rescue.

  As the van barreled through the compound’s black iron gates in an explosion of screeching metal, Silver and Merri scaled the wall.

  VON ROSE TO HIS feet when the well house door opened suddenly, ushering in evening-cooled air sweet with the scents of magnolias, pear blossoms, and fresh-mown grass from the plantation’s massive yard and myriad gardens. Moonlight outlined the curves of the figure standing in the doorway—Holly Miková.

  Her hair framed her pale face in silken waves. She’d changed her rose-red miniskirt for a pair of curve-hugging jeans and her black sweater for a lacy, cobalt-blue blouse. She regarded Von with shadowed eyes, all trace of smiles—smug, chiding, or otherwise—absent from her garnet-red lips.

  Von sent to Silver.

  “Put this on,” Holly said. She extended what looked like a black silicone bracelet—if silicone bracelets hummed with electricity.

  But Von knew what it was, had expected it. A telepathy blocker. No sending could go out or be received as long as it was worn.

  Hoping Silver had set his plan into motion, Von took the slim bracelet from Holly and slipped it on his right wrist. His skin prickled beneath the protected current. He reached out a hand to balance himself as mild vertigo spun through him, then vanished.

  “I hope this means we’re only going steady,” Von drawled, dropping his hand from the wall. “Cuz I’m much too young to be getting engaged. My mama would never say yes.”

  Holly rolled her eyes. “Next time I’ll just hit you with a Taser.”

  Grinning, Von followed Holly outside onto the flagstone walkway leading through lush lawns to the moonlight-silvered plantation house. Holly said nothing, the silence thick between them, a silence Von decided not to break—not yet, anyway. Instead, he listened to the soft sound of their boots against the stones and the lonely songs of night birds in the trees.

  No guards trailed after them—at least, none that he could see, hear, or sense. Which didn’t mean they weren’t there, but he had a feeling he and Holly were alone. And when it came right down to it, there was no place for him to run and no point in doing so. He’d never get past the currently unseen llafnau.

  Not unless something distracted them.

  Von mentally crossed his fingers for luck. C’mon, Silver-boy.

  As Von walked the meandering stone path, he felt a pang of nostalgia as memories decades old stirred and dusted themselves off, reminding him that once this had been home, his instructors and fellow students a family that he had loved as a newborn nightkind as much as he’d loved his mortal nomad clan.

  Soft light gleamed in the windows of the three-story house, spilling across the porch with its graceful Grecian columns and onto the immaculately trimmed lawn. He and Holly walked past the garden maze and the training field, now occupied by a handful of students in navy blue sweats blurring through the obstacle course under the careful scrutiny of their instructor—a tall, ginger-haired woman dressed in forest green.

  Von grunted in sympathy, remembering his own time on that same grueling course. “Some things never change.” He paused to watch, stalling for time. Listening for Silver’s distraction.

  “Some things, da,” Holly agreed, halting beside him.

  From the street beyond the compound’s walls, Von heard the roar of an engine hauling ass. He turned just in time to see a black van—Lucien’s van—batter through the gates with a squeal of ripping metal. Headlight glass flew through the air. Brakes screeched, filled the night with the scorched smell of burning rubber.

  As if Scotty had just beamed them down from the fricking Enterprise, figures in black leather kilts and boots blurred across the lawns and down the driveway to the now-stopped van.

  Von froze when Holly jammed the muzzle of her gun against his temple.

  “Don’t move,” she said. “Not a muscle.”

  “Ain’t moving, darlin’.”

  Von watched, heart hammering, as Annie popped out of the back of the van, shrieking, claiming that the men inside had kidnapped her, were going to force her to marry one of them since she was pregnant, but wouldn’t name the baby-daddy.

  Jack and Thibodaux exited the van with their hands up, surrounded by stone-faced llafnau, both alternating between apologies for the gate and berating the hysterical Annie for grabbing at the wheel and causing the accident in the first place.

  “I’ve seen that van before,” Holly said softly. “Friends of yours, Vonushka?”

  “If they are, they deserve a reality TV show of their own—Redneck Shotgun Weddings, maybe. Could be a hit.”

  “That’s not an answ—” A blur of cinnamon-scented movement, then Holly’s head twisted sharply to the right. The gun slid away from Von’s temple as she collapsed, neck broken, to the ground. Merri scooped up Holly’s gun and tucked it into a pocket of her suede jacket.

  “Cutting it close,” Von growled, peeling off the blocker from his wrist.

  Silver flashed him a quick, fanged grin just as Von caught another streak of motion, then another. His stomach dropped to his socks. Too late. Too fucking late.

  “Run,” he yelled, hoping the llafnau would be content with just him.

  But they weren’t.

  Before Silver could even turn or before Merri could swing up her gun, both of them crumpled to the dewed grass beside Holly, necks equally broken.

  One strong, cool, implacable hand braced against the back of Von’s skull while the other grasped his chin. He heard, “Looks like now we get to carry you, asshole.” The hands twisted his head to the right.

  One sharp pain.

  Then nothing.

  48

  BECOMING

  BATON ROUGE

  DOUCET-BAINBRIDGE SANITARIUM

  HEATHER BLINKED UNTIL THE ceiling came into focus again. She felt like she’d taken a shotgun blast to the head, her brain full of holes, her memory Swiss-cheesed. She wiped blood away from beneath her nose with a shaking hand. Tasted it bright and coppery on her tongue.

  Let me in, chère.

  Her stomach clenched. No, make that she wished—desperately and hard—that her memory had been Swiss-cheesed. She remembered Loki’s mental assault all too well.

  Where is your bond? What has that beautiful, insane little half-breed done? I told him to close it, not sever it. If he’s damaged himself—

  Heather knew what Dante would’ve said to that and repeated it now in a barely audible whisper: “Blow me.”

  Pain pounded a red-hot spike through the center of her forehead when she tried to turn her head to see Dante. She swallowed back a groan and held utterly still until the pain eased. She could feel Dante on the floor beside her, felt her arm against his, the iciness of his skin chilling her own.

  How much po
ison have the sons of bitches pumped into him?

  Carefully and oh-so-slowly, Heather turned her head. Dante still Slept even though she was pretty sure the sun had set. His pale, blood-streaked face seemed troubled, uneasy. The skin beneath his eyes was smudged blue with exhaustion. He was Sleeping, yes, but he sure as hell wasn’t resting. Her heart kicked hard against her ribs when she noticed the blood pooled inside his ear.

  He’d knocked her on her ass when he’d severed the bond. Maybe he’d knocked himself on his ass too—and when he could least afford it. As much as she hated to admit it, maybe Loki had been right to be concerned.

  The fallen bastard.

  “Baptiste,” she said, gingerly sitting up. “Hey, cher.” Her vision grayed and she lowered her head until she no longer felt faint. She watched as little blood flowers blossomed on her jeans. Nose is still bleeding, dammit.

  Something small and hard, like a pebble, pinged off Heather’s shoulder.

  “Hey there, pumpkin.”

  Not possible. Maybe I’m not awake.

  But she was.

  Heather followed the voice to her right, hand automatically sliding to the small of her back and the backup she hoped was still there, tucked into her jeans; then froze, heart in her throat, when her gaze locked onto the trench-coated speaker. Gray-threaded blond hair, hazel eyes hidden behind glasses, a fatherly smile, the sharp scent of Brut.

  James Wallace.

  But what was he sitting on? A chair—no, a goddamned throne—made out of . . . Heather’s mouth dried, unable to believe what she was seeing. James Wallace lounged upon a throne composed of the contorted and broken bodies of the dead, colorful scrubs alternating with black suits. She swallowed back her nausea.

  Dear God.

  James Wallace lifted a hand and tossed another pebble at her. It landed near her hip, skittering away on the tile and her stomach clenched again as she realized it wasn’t a pebble, but a small piece of bone. “Oh, I hope I didn’t awaken you,” he said.

  “I was stunned, not unconscious—as you well know,” Heather replied. Her nausea melted away beneath a surge of surprised relief when she felt the comforting weight of the SIG still tucked into her jeans at the small of her back.