On Midnight Wings

As Loki had intended.

Lucien reached for several Sleeping minds, but found only one rising from dreams—Silver’s—and filled it with the day’s grim and frustrating revelations. As he did so, he saw a car pull into the parking lot, then screech to a halt. A man in a black suit climbed out, gun in hand, his expression a blend of disbelief, determination, and shock as he stared in Lucien’s direction.

“Would blood wash away the sigils?” Lucien asked Hekate, eyeing the mortal. “Or act as a bridge across?”

“Not Elohim blood, no. It would be repelled by the spell. But mortal blood . . .”

The man’s face blanked as Loki’s spell kicked in and he started to get back into his car.

A dark smile tugged at Lucien’s lips. “Good.”

He moved.

FACE PAINTED WITH BLOOD symbols like some goddamned primitive hunter, helmet cam strapped into place, and gun in hand, Purcell made his move as the first stars appeared in the darkening sky. The shards of glass strewn on the lawn—thanks to De Noir and his pulverizing vocals—echoed the glittering starlight above.

And speaking of De Noir, he and his pals stood in the parking lot’s heart, engaged in some kind of winged confab. An unhappy one, too, judging by all the scowls.

And no wonder. They were still outside. Standing amidst all that twinkling glass.

And it was that very glass that had made Purcell abandon his original plan to slip into the parking lot, sidle over to the far edge, and use the parked cars for cover as he made his way to the sanitarium’s side entrance.

After De Noir’s little opera of destruction, Purcell had realized that he’d never make across without giving himself away as bits of ex-car windows crunched beneath his shoes. But thanks to De Noir, Purcell no longer needed a door to gain access to the building.

Skirting the parking lot altogether, Purcell stealthed his way through the overgrown field on the other side of the sanitarium’s fence to the back of the building and the truck delivery bay.

Purcell walked in careful and deliberate steps to the empty window beside the now-dented back door. A few shards of glass jutted up from the sill like broken teeth. Hands gloved for just this very reason, Purcell pulled the last bits of glass free and placed them on the pavement.

Tiny bits of pulverized glass crunched beneath Purcell’s gloves as he grabbed the windowsill and hoisted himself up and over.

He was inside.

46 FALLING APART WITH BREATHTAKING SPEED MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE LLYGAID COMPOUND

“HOLY HELL,” VON GROANED.

Taiko drummers had somehow taken up residence inside his skull and were now busy pounding the living daylights out of his brain. Slitting open one eye, he did a quick survey of his surroundings from the cold rock floor he was sprawled upon.

Moonlight trickled in through chinks in the timber and rock walls, revealing a stone-encircled well in the small, unlit building’s center. Weathered buckets and cobwebbed tools hung from nails hammered into the walls.

The cool air smelled of old wood pocked with decay and insect husks, of rust and moss and dank rock, of deep, still water—and not at all familiar.

Don’t know where I am, but at least it ain’t a jail cell. I think.

Von opened both eyes reluctantly and eased himself up into a sitting position, pulse thundering at his temples. “Crap.” Hunching forward, he closed his eyes again and rubbed his aching forehead with his fingertips.

Ain’t had a hangover in decades, what the—

He never finished the thought.

Memory poured into his mind in a nightmarish flood of images—Dante missing, Heather stolen, Merri’s stay-awake pills, Holly with her angry baby blues and her black-kilted llafnau.

Looks like you’re skipping out on me again.

One night is all I’m asking and then I’ll head straight for Memphis—as ordered. You have my word.

The same word you gave less than a week ago? The same word you gave me not two hours ago? That word, Vonushka? You made me look like a fool.

“Shanghaied,” Von muttered, thumping the back of his head against the rough-hewn wall in disgust, instantly regretting it as the taiko drummers inside his skull launched into a double-time rhythm. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

Holly and her llafnau had carted his pill-Snoozing ass back to the plantation and tucked him inside the llygaid academy’s well house for safekeeping until he awakened. He’d bet his left rim that the door wasn’t even locked. Who needed locks when you had the nightkind version of SEAL Team Six on hand?