On Midnight Wings

AN ANGRY BUMBLEBEE BUZZ drew Teodoro up from dreamless sleep. It seemed as though he’d just shut his eyes, but he received a shock when he glanced at the sleepbay’s bedside clock and realized hours had passed—long hours. It was almost 6 p.m.

So much for a short nap.

“Mierda,” Teodoro muttered, sitting up and scooping the buzzing cell from the end table. Must be Caterina—at last. His frown deepened when he looked at the screen. The number displayed belonged to Richard Purcell, not his little wind-up assassin.

“We’ve got problems,” Purcell said without preamble once Teodoro answered the call. “I can’t get into the building.”

“You’re calling me to tell me that you’re locked out?”

“I wouldn’t call if I was just locked out of the fucking building. I’d phone someone inside. But, you know what? No one inside is fucking answering. I’m calling because every time I drive into the parking lot or walk in—I’ve tried both ways—I find myself back at the motel a short time later, thinking about my wonderful day at work. Something goddamned weird is going on down here. There’s graffiti on the sanitarium doors and windows, more like some kind of symbols, actually.”

The chill Teodoro had felt earlier in Violet’s room returned in full force. What Purcell was describing, his inability to enter the sanitarium’s parking lot for more than a few moments before finding himself at home again, stank of Elohim magic. A blood spell designed to keep mortals away.

“What kind of symbols? Describe them,” Teodoro ordered, standing. He grabbed his neatly draped trousers from the chair back, tucked his phone between chin and shoulder, and pulled them on.

“I’ll do you one better. I’m sending over a picture of one.”

By the time Purcell’s photo had finished loading on his phone, Teodoro’s heart was pounding hard and fast and his chill had deepened into glacial ice. He stared at the image of the blood sigil—a No Trespassing, No Admittance sign—and realized that the Fallen had found Dante Baptiste.

If they force-bonded their unstable, young creawdwr before Heather Wallace died, then all of Teodoro’s hard work would be for nothing. He frowned, studying the image. If the Fallen had found Dante, why would they put up sigils to keep out other Fallen?

Maybe it was vampires who had stumbled across Dante, not Fallen. Or maybe the Fallen had split into warring factions. Again.

“You still there?” Purcell’s voice rose from the phone, a fly’s irritating buzz.

“Of course.” Teodoro mentally thumbed through his options, gradually realizing that if the Fallen were indeed on the scene, he had next to none.

“Oh, there’s one other little thing you should know.”

“And that is?”

“Heather Wallace. I think she’s inside.”

“Impossible,” Teodoro said flatly. “You’re mistaken.”

“I don’t think so. I checked out a car parked down the street. It was unlocked and the rental agreement in the glove box was signed by Caterina Cortini, of all people. And judging by the cracker crumbs on the passenger seat, Cortini wasn’t alone. Now what would she be doing in Baton Rouge, let alone Doucet-Bainbridge?”

Teodoro went still. A very good question. Had Heather somehow managed to override Caterina’s conditioning and convince his assassin that Dante was missing and in need of their assistance?

“I wouldn’t know,” Teodoro lied smoothly. “I’m not her handler. But how does Heather Wallace figure into this? All you have is a car rented by Cortini. An empty car.”

“I pulled fingerprints from the steering wheel, Díon. Used my laptop to scan and upload them to the SB database. They matched what we have on file for Caterina Cortini and Heather Wallace.”

“Are you saying Cortini is helping Wallace?”

“Who the hell knows? All I do know is that I found a Little Rock gas receipt in the car. Cortini knows the SB travel routes and she does have bloodsucker relatives—some pretty damned powerful ones. Or maybe you sent her to intercept Wallace.”

“Why would I do that?”

“To break S. You keep yapping about that, right? So maybe when you learned that our people had found Wallace, you decided to use a little of that Jedi mind-trick bullshit of yours to convince one of our own wetwork specialists to kill Wallace or maybe you just bribed Cortini or whatever, but, yeah, I’m pretty damned sure you’re behind this.”

Teodoro didn’t like how close Purcell had come to the truth. He suspects too much. I need to remedy that.

“So where are they, then? Both are mortal, they wouldn’t be able to go inside anymore than—” Teodoro stopped speaking abruptly, as a memory gleaned from his sojourn inside Dante’s firestorm of a mind popped into his thoughts; a memory of Dante healing Heather when she had been mortally wounded in D.C., making her whole with song and blue flames.