On Midnight Wings

They sat at a small table inside a Popeye’s restaurant, hidden behind an illusion woven by the Morningstar that showed a table occupied by plump fast-food aficionados instead of a trio of fallen angels engaged in a tattoo session.

“It was because you couldn’t return to Gehenna,” the Morningstar mumbled around a mouthful of red beans and rice. “At least, you couldn’t until just recently.”

Lucien glanced at him, frowning. “What was?” he asked, ignoring the Morningstar’s aggrieved why-aren’t-you-keeping-up-with-my-train-of-thought expression.

“Why you’ve remained without protective sigils for the last twenty-four years,” he sighed, pushing back from the table, his meal of red beans and rice, plus biscuits finished. “No mortal possesses the secret of our protective spells.”

“True enough,” Lucien admitted.

“How did you lose your original sigils?” Hekate asked. “I thought they were permanent, to protect us from mortal and vampire summoning spells.”

Lucien’s thoughts traveled back to Lincoln City and the tiny tattoo shop perched above the cliff-lashing Pacific, back to the woman he’d hunted, only to end up as prey himself.

With one twist of her hand, Paloma summons the ink out of Lucien’s skin, siphoning it through his pores, and unraveling his protection sigils. The silvery ink spatters to the floor, tiny beads of mercury. A heartbeat later, he finds himself trapped inside a magicked circle in a windowless room etched with powerful sigils and angelic script from wall to wall and floor to ceiling.

“They are,” Lucien finally answered, rising to his feet. “But it’s a long story and we don’t have the time. We need to get back to Dante.”

As the three of them walked out into the Popeye’s parking lot, the Morningstar commented, “Not really much need for the protection sigils anymore. Very little summoning going on these days—unlike the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Not with the Internet gods holding mortal attention.”

“True,” Lucien agreed. “And I, for one, don’t miss it.” Unfurling his wings, he leaped into the sky.

LANDING ONCE MORE IN the sanitarium’s car-dotted parking lot, Lucien folded his wings behind him, flicking beads of moisture into air smelling of distant wood smoke and dew. For a moment, he thought he caught a faint whiff of Heather’s scent, but dismissed it. Even if she had escaped and made her way to Baton Rouge, the spell would’ve turned her around and sent her home.

No, just wishful thinking.

He studied the silent and sigil-painted building, feeling an electric tingle as his protective glyphs shielded his mind from the repelling spell’s flee-flee-flee command.

All Fallen magic, whether offensive or defensive, was dark, but—he felt a fierce smile curve his lips—not half as dark or deadly or determined as a father seeking his stolen child.

Lucien arrowed a thought into Dante’s Sleeping mind: <I’m here and I’m not leaving without you.> The sending vanished like a coin into the black depths of a wishing well, yet still he hoped it had buried itself deep into his son’s dreaming subconscious.

As for whoever held him—Lucien strode straight for the sigil-tattooed doors, voicing a wybrcathl of challenge, of sharp-taloned promise, into the evening air as he approached the sanitarium.

Wings snapped and fluttered as Hekate and the Morningstar descended behind him.

“Wait,” Hekate called. “Something doesn’t look right.” But her warning came too late.

Five feet from the doors, pain exploded within Lucien, an internal pipe bomb that sucked the air from his lungs and knocked him to his knees. He bent over, forehead pressed to the sidewalk, teeth gritted, body knotted, as pain raked and clawed and burned.

He felt as though he’d walked straight into a high-voltage barbed-wire fence and swallowed broken glass—not to mention that pipe bomb full of nails. His one regret was his newfound inability to pass out.

“You need to move!” Someone shouted. Hekate, he thought, but the humming in his ears made it hard to know for certain. “Roll! Crawl! MOVE!”

Lucien wanted to snarl that she should try rolling or crawling or moving while her insides were being pureed and see how reasonable she found that particular suggestion—yet he knew she was right. He had to move.

Forcing his spasming muscles into motion, Lucien managed a one-shouldered roll toward Hekate and her father and away from the building. As he did, the pain vanished. “By all that’s holy,” he panted, staggering up to his feet. Aside from a few twinges along his spine, he felt fine. “What was that?”