On Midnight Wings

fire deep into his lungs. He coughed, deep and harsh, blood bubbling up in his throat. Pain throbbed at his temples, behind his eyes.

“Won’t that make them mad?” Chloe asked.

Dante nodded, then touched a finger to his lips, then to one ear, tilted his head toward the now-blind eye and mouthed, Let ’em wonder. Chewing her lower lip, Chloe glanced at the T-shirt draped camera before returning her attention to him. She mouthed, Okay.

Vision wavering, Dante stumbled, but managed—barely—to keep his balance. Paper wings rustled. Sneakers scraped against concrete, and he knew that Chloe was hurrying over to help him. He threw out his arm, palm extended, and shot her a dark scowl.

Chloe stopped short with a frustrated sigh that sounded decades older than the both of them put together. Dante flapped another vite-vite hand at her. Not waiting on her, he turned around, steadying himself with a hand to the wall, and made his careful way to the thick gotta-keep-the-monsters-inside door—and the steel handle welded to its surface.

He hoped it would be strong enough.

Even though Chloe turned and went to the opposite side of the room, the hypnotic rush of the blood through her veins plucked at Dante, as did her scent—strawberries and soap—and the flush of her freckled skin.

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

Throat tight, eyes burning, Dante refused the image and kept moving.

Hunger kept insisting that he was going the wrong way, that he needed to turn his ass around and follow his nose to the appetizer now sitting glumly in the far corner with her arms wrapped around her purple corduroy–clad legs.

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Ain’t listening. And we ain’t feasting until some curious asshole opens that door and saunters inside.

Laughter, dark and knowing, sounded from the depths below. Jaw tight, Dante blocked it out, stubbornly adhering to his ain’t listening declaration.

Just as Dante reached the door, the room took a gleeful, stomach-dropping plunge, before spinning around him again with wild Tilt-A-Whirl abandon. Stumbling, he slammed against the door shoulder-first, before falling to his knees on the concrete. A high-pitched humming filled his ears. Darkness oozed like oil across his sight.

“Pas encore,” he said, his voice a barely audible growl, “pas fucking encore.”

Fumbling the open cuff around the door’s steel handle, he snapped it shut with a shaking hand. The cuff tunked as he sat back on his heels. Then he sagged against the door, his captive right arm bent at the elbow and stretched up alongside him. Dante shivered, the door’s steel like ice against the bare skin of his shoulder and side.

“Dante-angel?” A worry-thick whisper.

Dante’s vision was tunneling down, swallowed by deepening shadows, as he focused on Chloe. He held a finger against his lips, reminding her. She mirrored his motion, a finger to her own lips, freckles and dismay stark upon her face. He tried to offer her a reassuring smile, but given her unaltered expression, he had a feeling he hadn’t pulled it off.

Behind her, he saw the cheerful red balloon she’d drawn on the padded wall. A small stick figure with black wings held the balloon’s string.

You saved me when I died and floated away from my mommy.

Creawdwr . . .

The word and its meaning itched at the back of his mind; hidden beneath miles of cotton, an itch he couldn’t reach. Dante dragged in another gurgling breath of air, then coughed, lungs spasming. Choking. A heavy weight crushed down on him as though the sky had fallen on his chest, bringing the moon with it. He couldn’t breathe.

But he could drown. Could suffocate on his own blood. Even sitting up. Sinking into cold and darkness and high-pitched humming, Dante fought to suck in one more breath.

And failed.

8 FULL OF SURPRISES

RICHARD PURCELL’S GAZE SKIPPED along the patient room monitors set into the wall above the observation booth’s control panel until it came to rest once more on the only monitor that interested him, the only monitor that also happened to be blank—blindfolded by a goddamned T-shirt.

Smug little bloodsucking bastard.

No visual, but the audio worked just fine, and at the moment Purcell was listening to wet choking sounds as someone quietly drowned in their own blood. Sweet music—damned sweet—given it was S doing all that quiet drowning.

A little less sweet were Violet’s frantic cries for help, her words punctuated by fists banging against the steel door, but hey, you couldn’t have everything. Such as a working camera feed when it mattered most. Such as watching a certain smug little bloodsucking bastard go down for the count. Even if it was only temporary.

“We need a doctor! Please, Mr. Purcell! Please, please, please! Open the door!”

The wet choking sounds slowed, then stopped.

For a second, nothing but silence crackled through the speakers. A slight pause, just long enough for someone to suck in a shocked breath, then Violet intensified both her fist assault against the door and the decibel level of her shouts.

“Mr. Purcell, please, pretty please, open the door! Tyler! Joe! Help!”

With a grimace of annoyance, Purcell lowered the volume, reducing Violet’s distraught cries to faint background noise. “Christ.”

“I knew this wouldn’t work. We need the Wallace woman,” Teodoro Dion said, a faint European accent giving his words a sophisticated flow that almost hid the accusation beneath them—you fucked up and wasted my time.

A quiet fury curdled in Purcell’s belly and he tasted bile, bitter and hot, at the back of his throat. In an effort to keep his anger in check, he stared at the green telltales winking and glowing on the control panel.

No one could’ve predicted that James Wallace would show up at the club—and on the same goddamned day, no less—with hired assault-rifle wielding thugs to snatch his daughter before Purcell could grab her. He’d been given no choice but to make the best of a bad situation, which had meant improvising.

And that’s exactly what he’d done.

Purcell had snatched an unconscious S—already pumped full of bullets and bleeding like a motherfucker— from the burning club, instead of doing as Dion had insisted and chasing after the van carrying Heather Wallace, a van burning rubber all the way to the interstate. No. Instead, he’d brought S here. Where he belonged.

Much to Teodoro Dion’s displeasure.

Fuck Teodoro Dion.

This unofficial and unsanctioned little mission had originally been Special Operations Director Celeste Underwood’s baby, a mission she’d entrusted to Purcell alone, a mission he’d accepted without hesitation, even though he knew it would mean the end of their careers—hell, the end of their lives—if discovered.

Both he and SOD Underwood viewed themselves as loyal SB agents, even though they hadn’t always agreed with certain policies—such as allowing a dangerous killer like S to roam free. Both agreed the world would be a better, safer place with S turned to ash.

The plan had been for Purcell to quietly see it done.

But then SOD Underwood’s socialite daughter-in-law had been acquitted of the murder-for-hire death of Underwood’s only son, Stephen. Not unusual when the bastard charged with the actual killing conveniently hangs himself in his jail cell (with shoelaces he wasn’t supposed to have), leaving an equally convenient note behind