On Midnight Wings

From within the Aerie’s depths, cries and wails and anxious chalkydri flutings filled the sandalwood-and-hyacinth-scented air, a Greek chorus of despair. The skygates had vanished. What part of their world would unravel next? Where was the creawdwr?

Good question, Lucien thought grimly. One I hope to answer very soon.

“Tell your son that his human bondmate is welcome also,” Astarte said as they reached the gate Dante had created, literally punched his way in from one world to the next. “I have servants preparing chambers for them both.”

“I’ll let him know,” Lucien replied, pausing in front of the smooth-edged hole marring the corridor’s south wall.

“Perhaps an honor guard—”

The Morningstar laughed. “By all means—if you want Dante to refuse. Have you forgotten his disdain for authority?” His gaze settled on Gabriel. “I imagine you haven’t—brother.”

Gabriel folded his arms over his bare chest and leveled a cool, green gaze on the Morningstar. Lamp light glinted from the braided silver torc curled around his throat. “No, I haven’t, indeed.”

“We don’t wish to antagonize the boy,” Uriel said to Lucien. “All we ask is that you impress the urgency of the situation upon him.”

“Of course,” Lucien said, promising nothing.

Dante’s well-being came first, as far as he was concerned. Even at the expense of Gehenna’s existence.

Gabriel stepped forward, his unbound hair—a rich, warm caramel—brushing against his narrow hips and the scarlet kilt belted over them. “How can we trust you?” he asked. His gaze skipped from Lucien, to Hekate, to the Morningstar. “Any of you?”

Lucien met and held his gaze. “What choice do you have?”

Without waiting for an answer, Lucien ducked through the gate, folded wing tips scraping the top rim, and stepped into the creawdwr-shattered cemetery. St. Louis No. 3 should’ve smelled of dewed grass and young cherry blossoms, of the dawn. Should’ve, yes. If it were dawn.

But it wasn’t.

Instead the sun was hanging over the western horizon and the warm, late afternoon air vibrated with the rush of heavy traffic on the street beyond the cemetery’s broken walls. The faint, sun-warmed fragrance of cherry blossoms wasn’t enough to mask the odor of decay and old death released from tombs that Dante had unintentionally cracked open like eggs with his power.

Fear spiked through Lucien.

Time was stalling in Gehenna, unraveling like its skygates.

The Morningstar’s grim voice echoed Lucien’s realization, “It’s worse than we thought.”

“It is,” Lucien agreed, turning to see Hekate and her father standing beside him amongst the crumbled crypts and broken cypress and oak trees that gave mute testimony to a creawdwr’s power and a son’s desperate determination.

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

Unfurling his white wings, the Morningstar took to the sky. The lowering sun chiseled radiant diamond dazzles from his wings as he soared ever upward. Lucien followed, Hekate at his left wing.

Now I will find you, mon cher fils. And no one will ever take you again.

Not even if it meant the end of Gehenna.

ROME, ITALY

RENATA ALESSA CORTINI STIRRED on her bed, suddenly restless beneath her cool linen sheets. Even locked in Sleep’s iron grip, she knew she was no longer dreaming; she was Witnessing, her inner vision unfurling images that chilled her to the bone, quick flashes of nightmare, glimpses into that-which-may-be.

In a hallway gleaming with faint red light, a fallen angel with black wings and short, ginger locks lounges upon a throne composed of dead and stiffening bodies . . .

The night burns, the sky on fire from horizon to horizon . . .

Dante Baptiste uncoils from a bloodied tile floor, his pale, breathtaking face smeared with blood, his eyes dark wells of madness, loss, and simmering rage . . .

A tattoo of a running black wolf inked beneath a desperate green eye . . .

Pale blue flames explode out from around the Great Destroyer’s lean body in transforming tongues of cool fire. His kohl-rimmed eyes open as his song rakes the burning night . . .

A sign emblazoned with the words: Doucet-Bainbridge Sanitarium; Fallen sigils painted in blood upon glass . . .