On Midnight Wings

“Beyond repair. He’s already becoming the Great Destroyer.”

“Wouldn’t it be safer to kill him before he does?”

“Safer—yes. But not nearly as satisfying as forcing the Fallen to kill him instead.”

Seraphina cupped a hand to his face, her palm warm against his skin. Sympathy gleamed in her eyes. “I know how much you want this, but how long will the Fallen merely wait and watch? How many mortals will have to die before they put an end to their maddened creawdwr?”

“As many as it takes, querida.”

Seraphina frowned. “But that’s wrong. We can’t allow it, that’s—” Teodoro tenderly brushed his fingers against her temple and her words stopped mid-sentence. Her hand fell away from his face.

Despite the natural shields provided by her nephilim bloodline—diluted as it was by generations of mortal descendants—Teodoro made his way easily into Seraphina’s mind, erased her lingering doubts and fears, then withdrew again.

Seraphina blinked, rubbed her forehead, then said, “Um . . . I’ll do my best to stall the committee where S is concerned.”

“Thank you. That’s all I ask,” Teodoro said, lowering his hand from her temple. He glanced at the jammer. “Is that everything?”

“Yes.” Swiveling around with stiletto grace to face the statues again, Seraphina rested a hand against a Fallen male’s stone chest. “I can still feel their hearts. A distant boom like when the ocean surges against a cliff.” She cast a winter-gray glance at Teodoro from over her shoulder. “Have you noticed?”

Teodoro nodded. “I’ve also noticed that the time between beats gets a little longer with each passing day.” He smoothed his hand along one cool stone limb, wondering—not for the first time—if the aingeal within was aware of his predicament, an immortal trapped in stone. Counting each and every endless second.

Teodoro certainly hoped so.

23 DEADLY LITTLE PUPPET GERMANTOWN, TENNESSEE THE BLUE MAGNOLIA INN

CATERINA CORTINI STRAPPED ON her shoulder rig, then tucked her SIG Sauer P220 into the holster before pulling on her black blazer. After zipping up her overnight bag, she took one final glance around the motel room with its blue magnolia wallpaper to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything.

Doing this was normally second nature. Done without thought.

But, given the distracting nature of the headaches she’d been enduring off and on over the last week, she made herself look again, more slowly. There. On the nightstand. Her black leather gloves.

Shaking her head in disgust, Caterina grabbed the butter-soft leather gloves and stuffed them into a pocket of her blazer. That never would’ve happened a week ago. Something was wrong—very wrong. She could feel it.

The headaches. Her difficulty sleeping, concentrating.

Her mind felt full of writhing worms.

Could be a brain tumor, a budding aneurysm. I should see a doctor.

She should, yes. And she would. But it would have to wait until after she’d finished her assignment and Heather Wallace was no longer capable of betraying anyone—let alone Dante Baptiste—ever again.

Díon had said that the intercept team was scheduled to stop in Little Rock, but he hadn’t known where they’d be staying with their unwilling guest. Caterina knew from experience that only certain motels were SB authorized and approved—by the accounting department, anyway. And in Little Rock, there wouldn’t be more than four or five authorized motels. She would simply check each one.

That would be the easy part. Getting to Heather without killing fellow SB agents would be harder. Of course, if she had no other choice, then she wouldn’t hesitate to end their lives as well. But she hoped it wouldn’t come to that this time.

Words once given to her by her mentor in black ops—a man recently killed in a vicious home invasion—were words she believed in and lived by.

With each life we end, we alter the future, end possibilities. We become agents of destiny. Severing some, fulfilling others. A hard and honorable duty.

Yet sometimes, it simply felt hard.

Grabbing up her bag, Caterina left her room, checked out of the motel, then went to her rented Nissan Sentra. Unlocking it, she tossed her bag into the backseat, then slid in behind the wheel. She sat there for a moment, motionless, one hand on the steering wheel, the other hand on the door, questions and doubts prickling like thorns at the back of her mind.

I’ve seen Heather Wallace fight at Dante’s side, seen her risk her life for him. Seen him risk life and sanity for her. I truly believed that she loved him, would always stand beside him.