On Midnight Wings

Promises he’d made to the living whispered against the demands of the lost.

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

I ain’t leaving you there in that place, ma p’tite ange. I will come for you.

Found you, mon cher ami, mon père, and I ain’t losing you again.

You’ll always have a clan in me, Von, mon ami, in us. You’ll never ride solo.

“I can buy you some time, sanity-wise.” Von said in quiet, earnest tones. “But you’re gonna need to close off your bond with Heather first, especially if you want to keep her safe. Once you’ve done that, then you learn to ride that madness of yours like a bucking bronco. Make it do what you want. Use it to set things right.”

“No. Heather—”

“Will be safe,” Von cut in, “if you close the bond. You can’t risk cutting it, not with the shape you’re in, but if you seal it at your end, you’ll keep her free from mental harm—plus she won’t be able to home in on you anymore. Then Lucien won’t have a problem keeping her away.”

Heather’s voice whispered through Dante’s memory, a conversation held in the honeysuckle-and rose-perfumed courtyard as he’d struggled with Trey’s loss at his own blue-flamed hands and what that meant for everyone he loved.

I’m not leaving you. You can’t make me. You don’t have the right.

Too dangerous, catin. Ain’t risking you.

That’s my decision, not yours. I choose you, Baptiste, and everything that comes with you.

Dante felt a smile flicker across his lips. “Then you don’t know my pigheaded woman. Lucien will hafta tie her down. She won’t stop.”

“Maybe not. But with the bond sealed, she won’t be able to find you.”

Dante wasn’t so sure about that. Not only was Heather a damned good detective, something beyond their bond linked them—and always had—something intrinsic and soul deep. One way or another, she would find him.

Just as he would find her.

His finger squeezes the trigger. Heather falls and falls and falls.

Icy fingers closed around Dante’s heart.

“I know your concentration is a little fucked right now, so let me help you close the bond.”

It might not stop Heather in the end, but if he could slow her down . . .

Run from me, catin. Je t’en prie.

Dante nodded. “Oui. Yeah. Let’s do it.”

The nomad wasted no time in crossing the corridor. He stopped in front of Dante and brushed the backs of his fingers against Dante’s temples. A smile ghosted across his lips, a smile Dante returned in kind. Von started speaking, but a high-pitched humming filled Dante’s ears, drowning out Von’s words.

Dante sensed the past opening up beneath him, a bottomless lake he treaded, fighting to keep his head above its dark waters. He wanted desperately to remain in this moment, to believe in it.

This is Von, goddammit . . .

You sure about that?

A determined frown furrowed Von’s brow and, for a split second, it seemed like his form rippled. A warped reflection in a funhouse mirror.

See? I told you. Fi’ de garce is doing it again. Fucker won’t stay dead.

Yeah? Well, then we’ll kill him as many times as it takes.

Dante stabbed his fingers into Von’s chest—ain’t Von. Just motherfucking Papa in a Von-suit—his fingers tearing through leather and black pearl-buttoned shirt, ribs and heated flesh. Wrapped around the pulsing heart.

Papa/Von’s mouth opened in a soundless gasp. He looked down. “Little brother—”

“No, fuck you, you don’t get to say that to me. Only Von can. And you fucking ain’t Von.” Dante yanked Papa’s heart from the bloodied hole in his chest and tossed it down the corridor.

Papa dropped to the floor with a heavy, boneless thud, his Von-suit rippling away to reveal not Papa but a big dude with short red hair and empty eyes.

Dante tilted his head, studied the newest body on the tiles. “Huh.”

Another suit. Papa’s like those fucking Russian nesting dolls. One skin suit after another, but I don’t know this one.

Sleep washed over Dante in a numbing, narcotic tide and he stumbled back a step, shaking it off—or trying to, anyway—like a dog from a leash. He had one crucial thing to do yet before Sleep claimed him, one crucial thing to protect his woman of heart and steel.

Before he forgot who she was.