On Midnight Wings

My kingdom for a syringe full of morphine to ease my prince into Sleep.

“Time to go,” Lucien said. “I’ll carry Dante—but not you or we run the risk of him changing you as well.”

Coughing, Heather shook her head. Smoke stung her eyes. “You don’t need to risk it either. Not yet. Let me try to reach him through the blood link.”

Lucien studied the buckling ceiling. “Hurry.”

Heather nodded and closed her eyes.

PAIN AND WHITE LIGHT pinwheeled through Dante’s mind as reality wheeled and circled and wheeled again. Electricity spasmed through every muscle. Splintered memories shifted together, forming pictures that broke his heart. Voices whispered and demanded, wasps droned and burrowed and he’s fucking had enough, enough, ENOUGH.

<Baptiste. I’m here.>

The pinwheels slowed as the image of a beautiful red-haired woman flared behind his eyes, an image that smelled of sage and lilacs in the rain, a fragrant midnight garden.

It’s quiet when I’m with you.

I’ll help you stop it forever.

We’re in this together, face-to-face and back-to-back.

I trust you.

Don’t.

<Baptiste.>

As lost as I get, I will find you, Heather. Always.

Dante reached back, pouring himself through the blood link and forging a new bond as he did. The blue-white star of Heather’s presence suddenly appeared, burning bright and unobstructed at the bruised center of his mind, radiating a cool, white light. Silence poured in, hushing the noise, quieting the internal storm.

His convulsions stopped.

Dante opened his eyes.

Grasping his hand, Heather helped him up to his feet. He touched his forehead to hers, his hands on her hips, trying hard not to think of what he’d almost done to her, the gun against her temple, his finger on the trigger. “J’su ici, catin,” he whispered, throat tight. “J’su ici.”

“And you found me,” she whispered back. “Like you promised.”

“Always.”

“We need to go,” Lucien said. “And we need someplace safe from—”

A subsonic bellow blasted through the air, hitting the sanitarium like a fertilizer bomb. Dante wrapped himself and his wings around Heather as the building collapsed in a roar of stone and screeching metal. Waves of midnight water doused the fire.

Leviathan descended.

52 A DARK PATH MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE LLYGAID COMPOUND

VON DECIDED THAT HE preferred getting his neck broken to being interrogated. Worse, he wasn’t even being questioned by the filidh.

“I suggest you start talking,” Galiana said. She sat in one of the Bards’s great chairs, the tops of each carved into stag horns. “Otherwise it will be one of the mortals who will pay the price.”

On his knees, hands cuffed behind his back, Von slid a sidelong glance at Merri. Her stiff posture and frozen expression spoke volumes. She had no idea her mère de sang had been using her. Silver was beside Merri, also on his knees, also cuffed.

Jack, Thibodaux, and Annie had been stashed elsewhere. But Von had been assured all three were safe and unharmed. He didn’t know if he believed that.

Dammit. They’d all be safe if I’da nixed the rescue plan.

Von drew in a deep breath of smoky air fragrant with myrrh. He remembered the feel of the charcoal sketch beneath his fingers, remembered the image it bore and the penciled-in title—Secrets. Felt precious time slipping away.

Remembering the rage, loss, and madness simmering in Dante’s sending—I ain’t playing your game, Papa—Von realized that the time for secrets was over. Too much was at stake.

Forgive me, little brother.

In a low voice, he started speaking, holding nothing back.

“CREAWDWR,” GALIANA BREATHED, BOTH wonder and worry chiseling her dark face. “A vampire Maker. But a damaged one.”

“He just needs time to heal,” Von said. “And I need to get to him, move him somewhere safe. Somewhere quiet. And I need to go now. We all do.”

“I have a private jet,” Galiana mused. “We could be in Baton Rouge in a little over an hour.”

The floor started shaking. A chair toppled over. Light fixtures swayed.

“Outside!” someone yelled.

Von jumped to his feet and ran, dodging falling furniture and broken lightbulbs on his way out the front door. He raced down the steps and onto the lawn, then looked up. His mouth dried. His vision—if that’s what it was—was coming true.

An aurora borealis of fire danced across the southern sky. The ground shuddered, then quieted once more. The Great Destroyer had awakened. Von’s heart sank. Dante had chosen a path. A dark one.

Galiana stared at the sky in horror. “What does it mean?” she whispered.

“We’re going to need that plane,” Von said. “Now.”