On Midnight Wings

save her, you know. You’ll fail.

And from deeper within: Again.

Dante’s eyes flew open. Black specks pinpricked his vision. The brilliant overheads spiked jagged shards of light through his pupils and into his brain and, wincing, he lifted a hand to shield his eyes.

“Goody! You’re awake!”

He blinked until the specks vanished and Chloe’s freckled face, framed by long tendrils of red hair, swam into focus above him. Given his perspective, Dante realized that he had to be lying on the floor, the eight-year old kneeling beside him.

“What’s wrong, princess? You okay?” Dante asked. His words sounded slurred—even to himself, as fuzzy as the thoughts shuffling through his aching head. And he didn’t feel like he was waking up at twilight, hungry and alert; he felt more like he did at dawn, just before Sleep rushed over him in a cool, dark wave and yanked him under.

Worse, he felt shaky and weak, like he’d hadn’t fed in days.

Another voice whispered: This is all wrong. You need to wake your ass up.

“I’m okay, but you’re bleeding again, Dante-angel,” Chloe announced, touching her nose, then her ears to demonstrate from where. “I don’t think the doctor fixed your owies right.”

Fixed my owies? Dante rubbed a hand gingerly along his chest and felt an aching tenderness under his T-shirt on the left side, near the pec. Right at heart level. A bullet, maybe, or—an image wavered behind Dante’s eyes like a raindrop-dimpled pond.

A blond man in a tan trench coat aims a big-ass gun, his finger already squeezing the trigger. Behind his glasses, his glittering eyes are cold and implacable, a guillotine’s falling blade. . . . Pain smoothed the pond, erasing the image, and leaving him wondering what the hell he’d just been thinking about.

Dante coughed, tasted blood. That’s right. Something bad had happened. He just fucking didn’t know what. He sucked in a breath of air and felt it drown in the wet, heavy depths of his lungs. A completely new and messed-up sensation.

“Awesome,” he muttered, pushing himself up into a sitting position, then onto his knees. The room gave a couple of lazy twirls around him, then pirouetted to a slow stop. That, he reflected, could only be a good thing. Unlike how he felt.

Waking up from Sleep with his head aching as though an elephant had used it as a trampoline—heavy emphasis on the tramp—wasn’t all that unusual, unfortunately, but drowning in his own blood most definitely was.

Whether he’d been shot, stabbed, staked, or skewered with a cocktail umbrella, he should’ve healed. The disturbing fact that he hadn’t, that he couldn’t even remember how he’d gotten hurt in the first place, let alone where he was, coiled like a rattlesnake in his mind—waiting with venomous fangs.

“Doctor? T’es sur, princess? I don’t remember a doctor,” Dante said, another blood-kissed cough punctuating his words. Behind the blood, he tasted something else at the back of his throat— amber-thick, woody, and ice-cold—something he couldn’t name. But whatever it was, it left him feeling uneasy. “Hell, I don’t even remember yesterday. Is this a hospital or—”

His words jammed up in his throat as he stared at the steel hook bolted into the white-tiled ceiling. Light slid like hot grease along its wicked curve. Not a hospital, no.

Dante felt the floor shift beneath him. Cold dread twisted through his gut.

You can do this hard or easy, kid.

Welcome back, S. We’ve missed you.

His vision blurred once again while memories flipped back and forth as though someone in his head couldn’t choose between two favorite channels.

Flip: Himself as a punk-ass kid in a Muse tee, jeans, and duct-taped sneakers bolting from Papa Prejean’s ramshackle foster home of fucked-up delights, Chloe tucked tight against his side and squeaking with surprise . . .

Flip: Himself as a smart-ass adult in leather and buckle-strapped mesh fighting beside a tall man with a crescent moon tattoo beneath his right eye and a red-haired woman with twilight eyes, who smells of sage and rain-fresh lilacs, a woman of heart and steel, a woman who tells him, Stay with me, Baptiste. Stay here-and-now—

Flip: The newborn evening races past punk-ass kid Dante in a cool, rain-wet blur as he moves, his fingers practically welded around Chloe’s wrist, determined that she’ll never have to pay a visit to Papa and Mama Prejean’s shadow-eaten basement/pimp crib. Never have to learn the things he has in its depths . . .

Flip: Hands, warm and callused, grasp smart-ass adult Dante’s shoulders and steady him. A calm male voice, one achingly familiar, says, Gotcha, little brother—

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