On Midnight Wings

As she draped an arm over her eyes, a dark and terrifying scenario popped into her mind. Crackled ice through her veins. Suppose Shadow Branch operatives had been watching the club and, witnessing James Wallace’s little snatch, murder, and burn routine, had decided to take advantage of what must have seemed like the perfect opportunity.

A black ops version of a Powerball win.

And what if the SB discovered that Dante was much more than a True Blood? Discovered he was also a creawdwr? That he could not only Make and Unmake anyone and anything, but open gates to other worlds as well?

With just one whispered word, the SB could trigger Dante’s programming and twist him, force him, into becoming—

An image flickered to life in the darkness behind Heather’s eyes, an image infused with Dante’s scent of burning leaves and November frost; a recurring vision of a possible future, of a destiny embraced.

Tendrils of Dante’s black hair lift into the air as though breeze-caught. Gold light stars out from his kohl-rimmed eyes. He looks up as song—not his own—rings through the air. The night burns, the sky on fire from horizon to horizon.

—the Great Destroyer.

Heather still didn’t know which path her vision revealed—Dante as never-ending Road fighting to save the mortal world and everyone in it or as Great Destroyer leading the Fallen to war—but it wouldn’t matter if Dante didn’t survive what James Wallace had done to him. And Dante’s survival was all that mattered. The rest could wait.

<Stay with me, Baptiste.>

But that sending also vanished, a single rain drop into a vast, black lake. Despite the cold fear knotted around her heart, exhaustion could no longer be denied. Sleep swept over Heather in a relentless tide, claiming her as she sent to Dante one more time.

<Stay, cher. Please.>

6 ONCE ONLY PORTLAND, OREGON FBI WEST COAST FORENSICS LAB

LUCIEN, DECKED OUT IN a black Prada suit and a scarlet silk tie, offered the receptionist a warm smile before swiveling and short-circuiting the security camera with a tiny arc of electric blue fire flicked from his fingertip, the movement too swift for human eyes. The sharp scent of ozone cut into the air.

“May I help you, sir?” the receptionist asked cheerfully.

“Yes, you certainly may.”

Crossing to her desk, Lucien leaned over it and, before she had time to do more than widen her brown eyes in alarm, he touched two fingers to the center of her forehead. Blue light glowed cool against her skin.

“Sleep,” Lucien commanded in a low voice.

The receptionist’s eyes fluttered shut. She slumped into her chair, head lolling against her shoulder. A soft sigh escaped her lips. Lucien removed his fingers from her forehead, then straightened, his gaze on the door that she and her desk had guarded.

Etched in delicate gold letters on its frosted upper panel: Special Agent-in-Charge Oscar Heyne. James Wallace’s direct supervisor, the person who had needed to approve his leave of absence, and the person most likely to know exactly where to find Wallace and the daughter he’d drugged and kidnapped.

And the very man Lucien sought.

After Annie’s attempts to call her father had ended in voice-mail messages, Lucien had gently interrogated the guilt-and bourbon-numbed young mortal about her father, his habits, and his role in the FBI. Then Lucien had taken to the sky, winging for Portland.

As Lucien grasped the door handle, a conversation he’d had with Heather not even a week ago played through his memory.

I’m not with the Bureau anymore. According to the FBI, I’m a much-valued agent, but one now lost to paranoid delusions, due to a hereditary mental illness, and in desperate need of treatment.

Are you expected to survive said treatment?

I’m sure it’ll end in a tragic suicide.

And Dante?

Snipped as the final loose end linking the Bureau to Bad Seed.

Perhaps Wallace had been doing the Bureau’s dirty work when he’d shot Dante.

With a flip of the handle, Lucien opened the door and stepped inside. Heyne’s office was modest, full of clean lines and masculine leather furniture and framed forest scenes. The desk was neat, the chair behind it unoccupied. On the west wall hung a six-by-six foot painting of forested hills wreathed in ragged mist.

Oscar Heyne stood in front of that primal and lonely scene, gun in hand.