On Midnight Wings

But circumstances were just about as far from fucking normal as you could get and remain in the real world. He had no idea how long it would take the master bards to hear his case, strip him of his rank, and send him packing, but he couldn’t afford the time it would take to find out.

Not with Dante a good six or seven hours away.

Not with Dante and Heather trapped with a shape-shifting fallen angel inside an Elohim-magicked building.

It wasn’t enough to hope that Heather had managed to stabilize Dante, not as bad as Dante had been slipping; it was asking too much of one mortal woman.

She needed help.

And she’d fucking get it.

<Let’s do it. But if things go south, split. Don’t try to take on the llafnau. You’ll fail and might even end up with an actual stake in your heart.>

<As Thibodaux would say: Roger that.>

<Y’know, that phrase has a totally different meaning for the British.>

<Shut up. Do you want to be rescued or not?>

Von grinned. <Yes, please.>

Promising to see him in a few minutes, Silver ended the conversation.

Von slipped a hand into a jacket pocket, felt the glide of paper beneath his fingers—the charcoal sketch of Dante he’d picked up from the street in front of the club. At least he hadn’t lost that.

<Little brother,> he sent. <You there?>

But this sending didn’t snag or rebound from barriers created by drugs and pain and madness. Instead it went through, unhindered even by Dante’s personal shields. Hell, he was still Sleeping.

<Von?>

Chaos and pain swirled through Dante’s sending—and more than a little madness. The buoyant relief Von felt turned to lead and plummeted into his belly. <Here. Just hang tight, okay? We’re gonna get you out of there.>

<Oh, I’ll bet. I ain’t playing your game, Papa. I saw through your Von-suit and I ain’t falling for this either. Fuck you.>

Von-suit? Holy hell, the shape-shifting fallen angel.

Panic burned cold through Von’s veins. <Ain’t no trick or game, Dante. It’s me. Whoever is there with you—besides Heather, that is—is a shape-shifter. He’s the one playing games with you, little brother.>

<I told you once already, motherfucker, you ain’t got the right to call me that.>

Out of nowhere, a comet slammed into Von head-on, hammering him deep into the earth in an explosion of white light and furious song—music unlike any he’d ever heard before. Blinking away the black spots stitching across his vision, he realized he was facedown on the cool stone. His headache pulsed with renewed life and he tasted blood at the back of his throat.

With a low groan, Von pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. He wiped away the blood trickling from his nose. “Holy hell.”

With no effort at all, Dante had eighty-sixed him from his mind with a savage, mouth-drying power. Silver’s trickster fallen angel hadn’t wasted any time in messing with Dante’s fragmented sense of reality. He no longer knew who was true and who was pretending. Was even Heather safe? Had to be. Von refused to think otherwise. Even out of his head, Dante would never ever hurt Heather.

But if he believed she was Papa wearing a Heather-suit? What then?

Fear ice-picked his heart.

My best friend, my companion, my little brother, is losing his mind and he has the power to take us and the world with him.

Hold on, you stubborn sonuvabitch. Hold the fuck on.

But Von had a sinking feeling that, no matter how stubborn he was, Dante couldn’t hold on much longer; that things were falling apart with breathtaking speed and it might already be too late.

47 TO HELL IN AN EXPRESS LANE HANDBASKET

HIS EYES PROTECTED BY the smoke-lensed matte black goggles he’d picked up in the Quarter before they’d hit the road, Silver pressed up against the compound’s thick river rock wall and watched as rapidly approaching headlights starred the night.

Silver’s muscles coiled. His heart picked up speed. This had to work.

“Get ready,” he whispered.

“Shit, they’re moving fast,” Merri murmured. “I hope to hell they’re wearing their seat belts.”