On Midnight Wings

A nurse in blue scrubs pads into the room carrying an IV bag, which she starts to connect to the IV stand positioned beside the bed. “You’ll feel much better once the drugs start to work,” the nurse assures Heather. “It’ll make the therapy easier, as well.”

And there they were—the magic words.

Welcome to the Strickland Deprogramming Institute.

Heather quickly sent the memory to Von with its priceless nugget of information, then realized with a hollow feeling that he was gone once again. Hoping against hope that it was just a brief glitch like last time, she continued to send the memory to him on a repeating loop.

<Von. Come in, Von . . .>

Heather opened her eyes, then rose to her feet. Maybe she could gather a little more intel for him—provided it wasn’t too late. Hurrying to the window across the room, her slippers whispering across polished tile, she looked out through glass and steel mesh into a parking lot surrounded by forested green and a high fence. Several dozen cars, SUVs, and pickups populated the blacktop, bumpers glinting in the sunshine. She narrowed her eyes trying to make out a license plate. Was that Texas?

<Doll . . .>

Heather exhaled in relief. The link was still working—for the moment, anyway. <Did you get it?>

Frustration sliced through the nomad’s sending. <Only bits and pieces . . . full of holes . . . again . . .>

Gripping the smooth wood of the windowsill, Heather poured everything she had into sending the memory one more time, knowing it might be her last chance. Focused on the most important part: Welcome to the Strickland Deprogramming Institute and Texas.

<Did you get it this time?>

But once again, Von’s energy had disappeared, leaving only silence behind. Heather had a sinking feeling that the link had finally unraveled. Sighing, she rested her head against the sun-warmed glass and wearily closed her eyes. She had no way of knowing if the information had reached Von or not. While she hoped it had, she needed to plan as if it hadn’t.

She needed to steal a Taser and a phone. A tight smile curved her lips. Hell, a nail file had saved her ass in the past, maybe she’d get lucky again. She also needed to find a way out of Strickland, a path past all the security escorts and door guards, past the alarms she knew had to be rigged into every entrance and exit.

She’d bet anything the fence outside was electric—not a lethal charge, but one strong enough to stun. And even though she hadn’t seen it from the vantage provided by her window, she had no doubt that there would be security personnel patrolling the grounds and guarding the front gate.

Stealing a car would be difficult—unless she could find an older, pre-computerized model. Possibilities streamed through her mind. Maybe a hostage. Maybe a fire. She could attempt to slip away during the confusion that was sure to happen when the facility was evacuated.

Heather felt an urgent tug to the east through the bond connecting her to Dante, a restless drive to go now, and knew—down to the bone, heart-deep, and gut-sure—that if she followed that intuitive eastward pull, she’d find Dante at the end of it.

Living, breathing GPS, Von had called her. Maybe, but Heather sensed only a general direction, nothing specific like ‘left turn in two point five miles.’ She had a feeling another analogy was more accurate—she was a compass and Dante true north.

All she needed to do was start walking.

But the cold prickling along Heather’s spine warned her that she needed to hurry. A timer set to an unknown hour was ticking away the minutes. A deadline with an unspecified but looming date was breathing down her neck.

Words Dante had said only two nights ago returned to her. Stark, whispered words she was determined to prove wrong—a lie.

I feel like I’m running out of time, catin.

No, cher, no. I refuse to lose you.

But if she remained sitting on her butt in Strickland gambling that Von had received her last transmission, that was exactly what would happen, she would lose Dante. Lose the man— nightkind/Fallen/creawdwr—she’d chosen to stand beside, come Gehenna, Molotov cocktails, government assassins, or even her own damn father.

I feel like I’m running out of time, catin.

<Stay with me, Baptiste,> Heather sent to him. <Stay here- and-now. Show me just how pigheaded you truly are.>

This time her sending vanished instead of bouncing back unheard, but Heather had no idea whether that meant Dante had actually received it or if his pain and nightmares had simply devoured it.

It didn’t matter. She would keep trying. Just like he had in the club. As she’d seen through her sister’s eyes in the images Von had poured into her mind.

Dante half slides, half falls to his knees on the Oriental carpet in front of their room, his black- painted nails scraping furrows along the threshold on his way down. “J’su ici, catin,” he whispers, his words Sleep-slurred. “Je t’entends.”

I’m here. I hear you.

Heather had believed it impossible to reach Dante while Sleep embraced him, but when James Wallace had sauntered into the club she’d hammered a warning against his shields anyway. And he’d heard her. He’d fought his way free from Sleep’s talons for her. Stubborn will. Quiet strength. Fierce.

She would do no less for him.

Prying her fingers loose from the windowsill, Heather turned away from the tempered glass and the lowering sun and shadowed grounds beyond it, and headed back to the bed. Hours and hours of forced sedatives and emotional stress had taken their toll. She wouldn’t be any good to anyone, let alone herself and Dante, if she keeled over from exhaustion.

Heather kicked off her slippers and slipped beneath the bed’s flowered comforter. She’d rest for a little bit, then eat. Despite having no appetite, she needed to refuel, to build up her strength. She had no idea how far “east” might turn out to be.

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