On Midnight Wings

Flip: Punk-ass kid Dante pulls a small ninja-type metal star from his throat, its points blood-slicked. It tumbles from his fingers. Chloe yells at him to run, tugs on his arm. He tries, but his feet refuse to move. His thoughts ice over as well. The night whirls around him, a streak of pale clouds and glimmering stars and skeletal branches . . .

Hadn’t he awakened in a room just like this one? Or was this the first time?

Pain wheeled through Dante’s mind, stole his breath. Shivved his heart.

Wrong. This is all wrong. Wake the fuck up.

Bad news: he was pretty damned sure he was wide awake. Dante tried to grab hold of the broken memories and the voices that had followed, but everything faded, disappearing back into the aching ball of cotton that was currently his brain. Gone. He felt the warm ooze of blood from his nose, felt it pool in his ears.

“Fuck.” He blinked. Rubbed at his temples. What had he been thinking about?

Feeding.

Hunger scraped. Clawed. Shook him like a baby in the remorseless hands of a jonesing tweaker. Blood pulsed hot and berry-sweet right next to him. He smelled it beneath Chloe’s skin. Heard it—a fast-paced shush-shush, rhythmic and primal and seductive. Sweat sprang up along his hairline.

You can’t save her.

Yeah? Fucking watch me.

Dante kicked and stomped his hunger back into the hollowed-out depths within, funneling every bit of strength he still held into the effort. And prayed like hell it would stay there until he could get Chloe out of—wherever the hell they were.

“Dante-angel?”

“Chloe.” He swallowed hard before continuing. A cold sweat slicked his skin. “Where are we?” Lifting the hem of his T-shirt, he wiped at his face. Smearing the blood, more than cleaning it, he suspected. “Did Papa take us someplace? Did that fucking asshole hurt you?”

Chloe sucked in a sharp breath. “My mommy says never to use bad words even if they might be the best words for the situation.” Her carrot-colored brows knitted together, perplexed, as she admitted, “But I don’t know what that means. Not exactly.”

Dante frowned. “Your mommy? Since when, princess? You never knew her . . .”

Chloe pressed a finger against her lips, then shook her head, her hair swinging against her back. Someone’s listening. Moving in front of him, she looped her arms around his neck. Dante looked past her to the camera tucked into a corner near the ceiling.

Motherfuckers wanna watch, huh?

Dante pulled Chloe closer, slipping his arms around her as he held his left hand up behind her back for prime camera view. Extended the middle finger and turned it slowly so it could be admired from every angle—a not-so-still life masterpiece of fuck-youitude.

“What are you doing?” Chloe whispered.

“Perking up someone’s boring day.”

Dante hugged her tight, his arms crinkling the black paper wings—those were new, yeah?—taped to the back of the Winnie-the-Pooh sweater he’d swiped for her from Walgreens. She radiated a banked-coal heat and smelled of strawberries and baby shampoo and waxy crayons. He shivered as his chilled body drank in her warmth.

Why am I so goddamned cold? I’ve always burned hot—hotter than other nightkind.

Wait. Nightkind? What the hell?

Dante felt Chloe’s fingers tuck a lock of his hair behind his ear, then her breath warmed the ear’s icy shell as she whispered into it. “I got a secret to tell you . . . again. My name isn’t Chloe, it’s Violet, remember? You were pretty sick when I told you yesterday after you came back from the operating room.”

Operating room?

Dante pulled back just enough so he could look at her, his heart drumming a drunken Motorhead solo against his ribs. “No. I don’t remember. Where’s Orem, p’tite?” he asked, scanning the concrete for her plushie orca, and ignoring the desperate edge to his voice. “Did you drop him?”

“I never had an Orem,” she said, voice a solemn, but patient whisper. “I’m not Chloe. I’m Violet. You saved me when I died and floated away from my mommy. You changed me with blue fire—made me look like this.”

Electricity prickles through him. Crackles along his fingers. His song sweeps up from his heart, a dark and intricate aria, dancing in time to the blue flames flickering around his hands . . .