On Midnight Wings

“Ain’t listening,” Dante muttered, even though he was—he couldn’t help it. He stumbled back out into the corridor, into air thick with the reek of death, of coppery blood and pungent piss. The silence soothed the ache in his head.

Silence.

He paused, taking in the flung-open doors on either side of the corridor, doors that had been closed and locked the last time he’d stood in the corridor, feeling cold to his soul—and listened.

No thumping, no pounding, no steel-muffled shouts.

No heartbeats but his own.

Bloody footprints trailed from one flung-open door to the next. Remembering the heart he’d held in his hand, Dante didn’t need to look inside the rooms to know what he’d find.

Had to be done. They were locked up just like you, yeah? For the same reasons.

Little fucking psycho.

Dante swallowed hard. He had to haul ass out of this fucking place, and he had to make sure he kept away from Heather and everyone else that he cared about.

Smart move. But first we need to wait for that asshole Purcell.

Dante shook his head. “No. I’ll deal with him some other time. Ain’t staying.” But he noticed his socked feet remained motionless. Noticed that his blood-grimed hands flexed restlessly at his sides. Noticed with a deepening sense of frustration and despair that his body seemed to have no intention whatsoever of searching for an exit.

Welcome back, S. Welcome home.

Ain’t finished here. Not by a long shot.

For true, that. Maybe waiting wasn’t such a bad idea, after all. Give the drugs time to wear off. And once they had, he’d be able to reach Heather, Von, Lucien—everyone. But that realization snaked cold and uneasy around his heart.

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. <Child, let me in. Let me help you.>

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.

<So beautiful, little creawdwr, and so damaged. I like that. We shall do wondrous and terrible things together, you and I. Awful things.>

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.