On Midnight Wings

A woman’s voice: I’m here, I’m here. Stay with me, cher. She is all that stands between the creawdwr and the end of the world, all that stands between the Great Destroyer and the never-ending Road . . .

A hand wreathed in sapphire flames, blue light glinting from the rings encircling thumbs and fingers, touches the rough surface of a parking lot. A frost-rimmed hole opens beneath that burning hand, an emptiness, a void that devours the parking lot, then spreads . . .

I have promises to keep, Dante whispers, blood trickling from one nostril. Then he puts out the world’s light.

Darkness and screams filled Renata’s mind, followed by utter silence. Her pulse thundered in her ears, keeping time with her frantic heart.

She had never felt so cold.

Something had befallen Dante Baptiste, of that she had no doubt. She was less sure if he’d been seized by mortals or the Elohim or both. And, whether on purpose or accidentally, whoever had Dante would twist him into the Great Destroyer.

He is ours, not theirs. They cannot have him. This beautiful and deadly young creawdwr belongs to the vampire race; he is ours to train and guide and love.

But what frightened Renata even more than the very real possibility of Dante becoming the Great Destroyer was the fact that Dante’s mortal bondmate might hold the key to the world’s continued existence, along with everything and everyone it contained.

A fragile mortal with a butterfly’s lifespan.

Heather Wallace needs to be safeguarded at all costs. If she dies, so do we all.

Renata needed to get to New Orleans. She needed to contact Giovanni and Caterina, find out what they knew. Much needed to be set into motion and immediately. Yet no matter how aware she was, Sleep still held her body a prisoner until dusk.

But only her body.

By feeding small amounts of her blood every night to her personal domestica, she could awaken the girl with a touch of her mind through their temporary blood bond and issue orders to be carried out.

Renata did so now.

She sent to the girl curled sleeping in a cot at the foot of her bed, brushing her dreams aside like cobwebs and touching her drowsing consciousness.

<Flavia, awaken.>

Through her inner eye, Renata saw the girl stir, her dark brown eyes opening wide, all trace of sleepiness gone. Flavia raised up on her elbows, ebony locks tumbling past her slim shoulders, and gave her attention to her mistress’s Slumbering form.

“Signora?”

Renata began telling her of all the things that needed to be done or set into motion before she rose with the twilight. When she finished, Flavia threw back her quilt and rose quickly from her cot. And set about her mistress’s work.

43 A CHILD’S WHISPER ALEXANDRIA, VIRGINIA SHADOW BRANCH HQ APRIL 1

DESPITE HEATHER WALLACE’S ESCAPE from custody in Little Rock, using a coffee carafe and a field agent’s own Taser, embarrassing facts which that particular agent wouldn’t be living down anytime soon, Teodoro’s vacation remained on hold.

Only temporarily, the SB brass had reassured him. The red-haired FBI agent had vanished into the night, true. But they expected her to be quickly reapprehended once she popped up on their grid again.

And she would pop up again, but not alive.

Teodoro’s deadly little puppet would make sure of that.

Teodoro glanced at his cell phone again as he rode the elevator down to the eighth floor and frowned. Soft Muzak floated from the elevator audio panels, bland and cheerful, a neutered version of a popular rock song.

It’d been hours since he’d received a text from Caterina, a single-word message—acquired—telling him that the assassin had found Wallace. He’d received nothing from her since.

Caterina’s silence, her lack of response to his texts, left him uneasy.

He couldn’t imagine Heather Wallace escaping Caterina, but he could imagine Caterina deciding to spend some quality time with her captive, teaching Wallace the painful cost of her “betrayal” of Dante Baptiste before executing her.

Even so, the delay still troubled him.

Teodoro continued to frown at his cell, his thumbs poised above the touchscreen, as the elevator slowed to a stop. The doors glided open, revealing a brightly lit corridor leading into the medical unit.