On Midnight Wings

that? Sounds like bullshit to me.”

“A reliable source, one close to Baptiste.”

Meaning Dion plucked the information from someone’s mind, someone in the know where S was concerned. But that didn’t make it true. Didn’t make it stink any less of bullshit. S could’ve easily fooled the unintentional informant into believing that he actually gave a rat’s ass about Heather Wallace.

But, devil’s advocate and all, what if it was true?

“Why the hell is it so important to break him, anyway? I don’t understand what your goal is here. If you succeed, then what? What’s in it for you?”

All expression vanished from Dion’s face. His gaze turned inward. “I get to fulfill a promise I made a very long time ago.”

Purcell frowned. “Not good enough. Not this time. I need you to be a little less cryptic for a change. What promise? To who?”

“I could tell you, but then I’d have to erase it from your memory after I did. Are you sure you want those answers?”

A chill rippled down Purcell’s spine. Despite Dion’s teasing smile, he suspected the interrogator meant every word. Dion would tell him, and then he’d take the knowledge away again. “Think I’ll pass,” he managed to say through a mouth gone dry. “Thanks, anyway.”

Dion shrugged as if he didn’t care either way. Bastard probably didn’t either. Purcell twitched upright in his chair when a voice buzzed into his ear over the com set. Holding up a wait-a-moment finger, he listened as Bronson reported in, then repeated the information being relayed to Dion.

“They’re in. And you were right—S cuffed himself to the door handle. The kid is quiet at the moment, coloring on the wall.” Purcell directed his gaze to the empty monitor and increased the volume on the audio. “Camera should be working in—ah, there it is.”

Images sprang to life on the monitor as a black-suited man with a blond buzz-cut—FA Bronson—tossed S’s T-shirt onto the concrete floor. Behind him, S was sprawled on his side on the floor, one arm stretched up above him, wrist cuffed to the door handle. A small puddle of bright blood encircled his pale face, stained his lips, like water forced from the lungs of a drowning victim.

Bronson’s partner, a tall and rangy black man named Holland, was bent over the handle, trying to unlock the cuff. Across the room, Violet watched silently with red-rimmed eyes, her box of crayons clutched in her hands.

Bronson stepped away from the camera, touching a finger to the com set hooked around one ear. “You receiving the feed now?” he asked, the monitor’s audio echoing the words Purcell heard directly in his ear.

“Yes, and you need to secure—” A sudden movement near the door caught Purcell’s eye and stopped his words cold. It hit him then—like water forced from the lungs of a drowning victim. His heart leapt into his throat.

It was already too late.

S moved. Twisting up from the concrete floor with deadly grace and speed, his fangs slashed into Holland’s throat with all the unerring accuracy of a preternatural predator—a true, natural-born killer.

Blood sprayed the air in a glistening crimson arc as S ripped his fangs free of Holland’s throat, then shoved him away. Eyes wide, mouth a stretched and silent O, Holland was still crumpling to the floor, one hand futilely clutching his ruined throat, when S curled his cuffed arm, hard biceps bunching, and yanked.

With a screech of metal, the steel handle wrenched free of the door to dangle like a charm from the cuff still encircling the bloodsucker’s wrist.

The handcuffs were vampire-proof. The door handle, not so much.

S was on his feet. He blurred up behind Bronson in a streak of leather and blood-smeared white skin, just as the agent, a frown pinching the skin between his eyes, was starting to whirl around, his hand reaching inside his jacket for his gun.

“J’ai faim.”

S buried his fangs in the man’s throat.

Bronson never even had the chance to fire a single shot.

“Madre de Dios,” Dion breathed, stunned. “Even with the resin . . .”

“No, he’s slower than usual. You were right about that, anyway.”

“That’s slower?”

Purcell didn’t waste time on words like I told you so. Not now. Instead, he sounded the alarm and tersely issued kill orders through his com set while he watched S turn a human being into a meal. Again.

“No more attempts to break the psychotic little bastard,” Purcell snapped when Dion started to protest. “Those were my men he killed. S dies. He’s too goddamned dangerous.”

“I’m sorry, truly,” Dion said quietly.

Before Purcell could decide if the interrogator was referring to the idiocy of his plan or apologizing for the men who’d just died needlessly because of it, he felt warm fingers brush against his temple. Panic surged through him, only to vanish as his mind blanked like a T-shirt-blocked monitor. A request, quiet and reasonable, and made in a faintly European-accented voice, dominated his awareness.

“You need to rescind that order.”

9 BENEATH PAIN AND BROKEN GLASS

“THEY’RE COMING. WE NEED to hurry.”

The voice, small and tremulous but insistent, tugged at Dante, drew him up from his unfinished feast, from the coppery, adrenaline-peppered taste of the blood flooding into his mouth and pouring strength and energy into his veins. The cold icing him from the inside melted away. The liquid weight eased from his lungs—not gone, no, but less.

Pulling his fangs free of the warm, whisker-stubbled flesh beneath, Dante lifted his head. He swiveled around on his knees, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, then—her blood spills hot and fragrant and crimson over his fingers . . .

—reality shifted and a cold hand squeezed around his heart.

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.

Dante sucked in a sharp, painful breath and squeezed his eyes shut. Pressing his fingers against his temples, he desperately scrubbed the image from his mind.

“They’re coming,” the dead girl repeated. “What do we do?”

His answer came without hesitation, a rough whisper. “Make ’em pay.”

“Or run. We could try running. I think that’d be better.”

“Yeah?”

Dante opened his eyes. Relief flooded through him at what he saw, knocked him back on his heels. Not dead. Chloe stood a few feet away, freckles stark on her pale face, her blue eyes huge, red-rimmed as though she’d been crying. She hugged the box of crayons tightly against her chest instead of Orem.

“Dante-angel? You . . . um . . . okay?”

“Oui. Ca va bien. Now. But where’s—” Dante looked down for the plushie orca and his words jammed up in his throat. A man in a blood-soaked black suit lay sprawled on the floor, throat savaged, a cooling and unfinished not-so-happy meal. “Shit.”

He remembered taking the asshole down as he reached for his gun, remembered tearing into his throat with ravenous relish. Remembered the panicked, fire hose intensity of the blood pulsing between his lips.

All while Chloe watched.