On Midnight Wings

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 . . .

The memory fragment vanished, winking out like a match beneath a pair of pursed lips. Dante blinked. What the hell had he been thinking? Remembering?

“My name is Violet.”

A deep unease uncoiled within Dante. He searched her eyes for any sign of a prank in their blue depths, but saw only truth. He also noticed what he didn’t see, hadn’t heard—Chloe’s bright smile, her giggles when he swore. And that scared the holy loving shit out of him. Tore a hole through the middle of him. A hole that threatened to swallow him whole.

You won’t save her, you know. You’ll fail.

“Bullshit,” Dante whispered, and wasn’t entirely sure if he was answering the voice in his head or the little girl in his arms. He swallowed back the blood rising in his throat, stealing his oxygen, then coughed. If she wasn’t Chloe, then where was—

She lies on the concrete floor, staring up at the hook, her blue eyes as wide and empty as a doll’s. The blood from her slashed throat stains her hair a deep red.

As her life, already cooling, soaks in through the knees of his jeans, Dante stares at his blood- sticky hands, his fingers, his sharp, sharp nails. He struggles to breathe.

A woman laughs, the sound low and throaty and pleased: That’s my boy.

“No.” One simple blood-soaked word, repeated over and over in a strained voice, a voice thick with guilt and grief and denial, and only the raw ache in Dante’s throat told him that the voice belonged to him.

The copper and tart-berry smell of her blood still hung heavy in the air, saturated his every breath. Glistened on his nails. Hunger glided like a gator to the surface. Ravenous. His heart slammed against his ribs. “No. No. No.”

“Are you okay, Dante-angel?”

He didn’t know how to answer that, didn’t know if he even could. But he knew what he had to do. He let go of Chl—Violet, gently pulling her arms free from around his neck, then shoving her away.

Her blood spills hot and fragrant and crimson over his fingers . . .

“Are you mad at me?” Violet asked in a small voice. “I know I can’t be your princess, but I made wings so I could be your angel.”

Dante started to reach for her, to hug her tight, but stopped himself at the last second. His hands knotted into fists at his sides, sharp nails biting into his palms. “No, p’tite, no. That ain’t it, not at all. This ain’t your fault. But you gotta keep the fuck away from me,” he said, his voice low and husky and more than a little desperate—even to his own ears. “You gotta keep yourself out of reach.”

“But why?” Violet stood under the hook and Dante wanted to yank her from beneath its curved shadow. But he couldn’t trust himself to let go again.

“Cuz you ain’t safe with me, p’tite. Now get away.” Dante scowled as he flapped his hands in a dismissive, move-your-ass-already motion. “Vite-vite.”

But despite the hurt darkening her blue gaze, hurt that Dante regretted, no matter how necessary, Violet refused to move, the stubborn tilt of her jaw declaring loud and clear: You’re being a butthead, so I’ll be a butthead right back. So there.

Fine. So he’d move instead.

Coughing, the sound harsh and liquid, Dante staggered up to his feet. He managed—just—to keep his balance as the room did one dizzying Tilt-A-Whirl spin and dip, before steadying beneath his boots. But before he could take step numero un, his vision suddenly fractured like ice beneath too much weight and split into jagged halves. His breath caught rough in his throat.

He saw both Chloes at the same time: Chloe dead on the floor, snow-angeled in a thickening pool of her own blood. Chloe standing several feet away from him, still regarding him with complete trust, despite the confusion darkening her eyes.

The room took another Tilt-A-Whirl spin and Dante stumbled. He closed his eyes, jaw tight. His head felt full of broken glass, his heart full of ash. Images of Chloe dipped and fluttered through his mind like fast-winging night birds.

—Chloe happily brushes his long black hair, then pulls it into a ponytail while she teaches him— the boy who can’t go out into the daylight—how to read and write.

—He awakens at twilight to find Chloe curled up and napping against his side, Orem tucked between them. And for that moment, they are just a boy and the chosen little sister he protects, instead of a monster cuffed to his bed to keep him from murdering his child-pimping foster parents in their sleep, and a little girl who doesn’t know any better.

—He stands in front of Chloe, hissing, as the door swings open. Three men in black suits—bad fucking men like Papa Prejean, like all the groping assholes who walk down the basement steps—spread out in the white padded room.

When Dante opened his eyes again, he saw only Chloe standing in front of him with her paper wings colored black; the other Chloe had vanished from the concrete floor. A wary hope unfolded within him. Maybe it hadn’t happened yet. Maybe he could make sure it never did. Could make sure he kept his promises.

I won’t let anyone hurt you, princess.

Himself included.

Dragging in another wet breath of air, Dante snatched up the discarded handcuffs from the floor and ratcheted one steel bracelet shut around his right wrist, leaving the other cuff open and dangling. He wiped automatically at the blood trickling hot from his nose, smearing dark color across his pale skin.

He was aware of Vi—Chloe’s gaze, her watchful silence, as he prowled the padded room, searching for something solid to latch the other cuff around. He was running out of time. Black spots pixilated the air. His vision was graying at the edges.

But his hunger remained, all razor teeth, unhinged jaws, and endless gullet.

And Chloe’s fast and steady heart was a pulsing dinner bell, one that reverberated through all the spaces hunger had hollowed out within him. A hunger that even unconsciousness might not stop. Dante couldn’t— wouldn’t—pass out until he’d made goddamned sure she was beyond his reach.

Of course, the motherfuckers who had locked him in here with Chloe had intended otherwise. Bastards. Dante regarded the camera spying on them, a pale spider motionless in the corner. He tilted his head, wondering.

What would happen if the camera no longer worked? If they could no longer see?

Let’s fucking find out.

Dante peeled off his Mad Edgar tee, handcuffs clanking together as he pulled them through the armhole. Then he tossed the black cotton blindfold over the camera. The movement cost him, stabbing splinters of frost and