On Midnight Wings

She’s right behind him, close enough to touch. She feels the cool night air against her face, smells old tar, coppery blood, and Dante’s scent of frost and burning leaves. But when she tries to grasp his arm, to pull him against her and to safety, her fingertips brush a smooth, invisible barrier—like a one-way observation mirror in an interrogation room.

So she reaches for him through their bond instead, to let him know that he’s not alone and that she’s okay, to guide him back, to anchor him in the present.

He stumbles. Nearly falls to his knees. Blood trickles from his nose. His face blanks and his shocked gaze turns inward—and seeing that, she knows he was mentally locked into the past, her psionic touch triggering an avalanche of now inside him.

cher. Right here in the here-and-now. Find me.>

She hears Dante’s breath catch in his throat as an expression of stunned revelation washes over his face, sweeping the blankness away. Then he looks around, his expression sharp and aware and troubled, a dreamer awakening to find himself on the floor beside a bed he doesn’t recognize.

She has a feeling Dante reaches back—or tries to—but scalding pain blasts through the bond and he disappears from her sight as the mirror ripples, then shatters into thousands of glittering pieces.

HEATHER AWAKENED, HEART THUDDING hard against her ribs, temples throbbing as the lights overhead pierced her eyes.

“Found you,” she whispered. Closing her eyes again, she draped an arm across them to seal in the darkness and to prevent any last needles of light from sliding in. Her headache dimmed.

Found Dante, yes, but where? An institutional building of some kind, judging by the stairwell and the big air-conditioning units on the roof. Heather realized that the urgent, insistent tug she felt to the east was now defined as southeast.

It she truly was in Texas, then maybe, just maybe, Dante was still in Louisiana.

And what had happened, anyway? What had she just experienced?

Not a dream—or not just a dream.

Or maybe it was a vision like the ones she had of her murdered mother’s last walk. But while those were glimpses into a twenty-year-old past, Heather felt in her gut, that what she’d just seen—vision, dream, farsight, whatever the hell you wanted to call it—was actually happening as she watched.

Heather was pretty damned sure that she’d been connected to Dante, that for a moment, the drugs and/or resin in his system had receded enough for her to reach him. But not enough for him to reach back, to send to her.

And attempting to had cost him—a lot.

Heather’s throat tightened as she replayed the details she’d seen. Partially healed bullet wounds on Dante’s chest. Blood smeared on his face, the bare skin of his chest. Bluish shadows bruising the skin beneath his eyes. Dilated pupils. A sense of wrongness, his frost and burning leaves scent tainted with a bitter undertone.

She attributed the sense of wrongness she detected to the dragon’s blood tree resin and whatever drugs were being pumped into his veins, to his injuries and the muffling of their bond, to his worry for her and the others. To his goddamned captivity.

At least she tried to, anyway. But Von’s warning looped through her memory, a grim whisper: I think he’s had all he can take, doll. Heart and mind . . .

Throat tight, Heather silently agreed.

Rubber soles squeaking against tile brought Heather’s arm down from her eyes. As she cautiously opened them, she discovered that her headache was gone and the light no longer bothered her.

A nurse with short, dark hair and wearing blue scrubs met Heather’s regard with a quick smile. Her name tag read RN Sue Bieri.