On Midnight Wings

“Bastard.” She glanced down, unsettled by the sudden fluidity of Loki’s shape. After a moment, she risked a look up and her heart lodged in her throat at who Loki had become. Dark brown eyes full of mischief, milk-white face framed by silken black hair, cupid’s-bow lips curved into a wicked and knowing grin. His frost and burning leaves scent perfumed the air.

Dante—but minus his heart, his warmth.

“Hey, catin.”

“You need to work on your Cajun accent. You sound nothing like him,” Heather lied, chilled by just how much he did sound like Dante.

The grin widened, revealed fangs. “I believe he would say ‘bullshit’ to that.”

“I believe he’d tear your heart out again, play a little kickball with it.”

“Not quite twilight, chèrie. Looks like we have a little time. Whaddaya say we get to know each other a little better?”

Heather’s hands tightened around the Glock, desperation and despair pouring through her in equal measure. How the hell do I keep a fallen angel away? “You’re not going to win any points with Dante—”

Heather’s words died in her throat as Loki dissolved into a blur of motion that ended with him bending over her, his face—Dante’s face—three inches from her own.

“I think he’s going to be too busy unraveling the world to worry about me,” he whispered. A golden fire lit his eyes. “Besides, I’m not exactly interested in winning points.”

Heather squeezed the Glock’s trigger and kept squeezing, emptying the magazine of its ten remaining rounds. The gunshots boomed and roared in the close confines, echoing like cannon fire down the corridor, and leaving her ears ringing. Dark blood bloomed in a tightly spaced circle of wounds just beneath Loki-as-Dante’s pale sternum. Wounds already healing.

The dark brows slanted down. “Ow,” he growled, wrenching the Glock from Heather’s grip and tossing it down the corridor to clatter against the floor tiles. “That actually hurt.”

“Good. It’ll hurt even more when Dante—”

Loki-as-Dante pressed taloned fingertips against Heather’s temples. The lightning storm scent of ozone crackled into the air. The hair lifted on her arms, the back of her neck. Her skin tingled beneath his talons. Fear iced her spine, stole her breath. A smile tilted the oh-so familiar lips.

“I like a good fight, catin. So keep it going,” Loki murmured in Dante’s voice. “I hope you’re telling the truth about others being on their way—especially the Elohim. I feel in a mood for a little chat with my brethren. But first, let’s learn all about you.”

Let me in, chère. Let me in.

Electricity surged through Heather’s mind, a mushroom cloud of devastating white light. Her shields blew apart, Tinker-toys caught in a nuclear wind, and darkness—eager and gleeful—rushed inside. She felt her body convulse, no longer under her control. She couldn’t even scream.

But she tried. Again and again.

45 FALLEN MAGIC

“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” the Morningstar called from behind Lucien. “Dante is behind us.”

The spell’s repelling force—like hands shoving at his chest, like a frantic voice endlessly yelling, Darkness comes and death, flee-flee-flee!—vanished as soon as Lucien had flown beyond its range.

“Lucien, wait!” Hekate’s concerned voice. “Your son is in that sanitarium.”

Wings slashing the air like knife blades, Lucien wheeled around to face Hekate and the Morningstar. “Don’t you think I know that?” he answered, his voice harsh even to his own ears. “Dante is Sleeping inside a sanitarium sealed with Elohim blood sigils, alone with whoever put them there. And I couldn’t think, let alone act, because of that damned spell. I had to pull free of its influence.”

“How very odd,” the Morningstar murmured. Late afternoon sunlight transformed the ice melting from the edges of his alabaster wings into hundreds of tiny, fiery prisms. He tilted his head, curious, cataloguing potential weaknesses for future use. “We need to figure out why you were affected and we weren’t.”

Lucien already knew why. The answer burned like bitter acid at the back of his throat. “My protection sigils are gone. Have been for nearly twenty-four years.”

Comprehension blossomed in Hekate’s hyacinth eyes. “The story you told me earlier while we waited for my father.” Swallowing back the questions she no doubt yearned to ask, she touched the small leather bag looped through the belt around her waist and said, “We must remedy that, then.”

“THERE. ALL PROTECTED,” HEKATE said, wiping silver ink from her opalescent talons with a napkin. The ink’s wild mint aroma scented the air, cutting through the smell of spicy fried chicken.

“Thank you.” Lucien studied Hekate’s handiwork. The protection sigils inked into his chest, above his heart and solar plexus, glimmered like moonlit winter ice and tingled cool against his skin like camphor, a sensation already fading.