On Midnight Wings

“Shit,” Dante repeated, shifting his gaze to Chloe. “Did you close your eyes?” he asked, hoping against hope.

“I did,” she confessed in a tiny voice. “But I could still hear . . .”

Dante sighed. “Merde. Sorry, princess.”

“That’s why you cuffed yourself to the door, huh?” Chloe said. “Why you told me to keep away from you. So you wouldn’t”—she looked at the dead man sprawled on the concrete, then swallowed hard before returning her gaze to Dante—“do that.”

Dante rose to his feet. Pain jabbed his skull, dizzying him for one brief moment. Even though he felt better after the gulped infusion of hot and heady blood, he definitely wasn’t at one hundred percent. Not even close. But it would have to be enough.

Survival for both of them depended on it.

“Oui, chere. That’s why,” he replied.

Out in the hall, Dante heard the thunder of multiple pairs of running feet. Still a fair distance away, but getting closer with each passing second. He glanced at Chloe. Wondered if she was safe with him or not. Although his hunger was currently under control, it was far from sated, leaving his control unreliable at best.

But one quick look at the hook hanging from the ceiling, at the merciless slice of curving metal, told him that Chloe was safer with him than without. Besides, safe or not, he could never leave her behind. Never leave her alone. He’d made a promise: You and me, princess. Forever and ever.

Dante shifted his gaze back to Chloe. “They’re coming like you said, princess, so we need to haul ass.” He reached for her, but she took a hesitant step away from his blood-smeared hand. The fear in her eyes was an ice pick to his heart.

“You said to keep away.”

“I did, yeah. Because I couldn’t control my hunger. I’ve got a grip on it now, thanks to him”—Dante nodded at the black-suited body cooling on the floor—“but before that, with all the blood loss and the—”

“And the owies,” Chloe finished, the fear fading from her eyes. “They made you even hungrier, huh?”

“Yup. And I’m damned fucking sure that’s why they put me in here with you in the first place. They wanted me to . . .” Dante shook his head, unwilling to finish the sentence.

But Chloe finished it for him. “Drink me all up. Monsters and fairy tales and poisoned apples.”

“?’Fraid so, p’tite.”

Footsteps pounded ever closer. Dante heard the hummingbird-pulse of mortal hearts. Heard the slide of rounds being chambered. “We need to go, princess. Now. Even if you say no, I’m taking you with me. I ain’t leaving you for them.”

Chloe nodded, her tangled red tresses dancing against her purple Winnie-the-Pooh sweater. “Okay,” she said, “here”—she extended her hand, the fingers uncurling to reveal the key resting on her palm—“I kept it.”

Dante accepted the key with a quick smile and unlocked the cuff with its dangling door handle charm from around his wrist. Cuffs, key, and door handle hit the concrete, the room’s padded walls swallowing the musical clang.

Chloe’s paper wings rustled and her sweet strawberry-and-soap scent washed over Dante as he snugged her securely against his side. She looped an arm around his waist, instinctively tucking her fingers through his belt. Anchoring herself.

He frowned, wondering when he’d grown so much taller than her and, taking in the leather pants and boots he wore, he also wondered where his jeans and duct-taped Converse sneakers had vanished to. Not that he was complaining, but . . .

Wrong. This is still all wrong. Wake the fuck up.

Dante shoved the troubling thought aside. It would have to wait.

“Hold on tight, chere,” he warned, snugging her even closer.

“?’Kay.”

After aiming a dark and savage fuck-you smile at the camera, Dante moved. He sped out into the hall, streaking past rows of closed steel doors and security/medical monitoring stations, and bewildered faces as he blurred past, a cool and unexpected gust of wind—one most likely smelling of fresh blood, death, and strawberries.

“It feels like we’re flying,” Chloe said happily. “Even without your wings.”

Dante was about to remind her that he wasn’t an angel and therefore lacked wings in the first place, when he heard determined shouts behind them, followed by muted thwips as bullets or trank darts breezed past. Whatever they were—bullets or darts—one breezed through his hair. Then pain burned across the top of his shoulder as another grazed his flesh. Blood trickled hot down his back.

“No bullets!” someone shouted, voice tight and furious. “You might hit the girl.”

Surprised that anyone gave a damn, but still not risking a glance over his shoulder to see who, Dante tightened his grip on Chloe and kept moving.

He’d survive a bullet. Chloe wouldn’t.

He surged forward, pushing for more speed, and hung a left at the next corridor T. More doors and surprised/puzzled faces blurred past. The shouts and sounds of pursuit faded, then vanished.

A glowing red EXIT–STAIRS sign appeared on the right and instinct insisted he take the stairs even while a more rational part of his mind warned him he’d have nowhere to go but down—the hard way—if he did.

Grabbing the handle, Dante yanked the door open and followed his instincts. An alarm blared and he winced as the steady shriek pierced his eardrums and his aching head. By the time the steel door thunked shut behind them, thankfully muffling the alarm, he’d already vaulted up the first flight of stairs.

He’d just rounded the fourth flight of concrete stairs when he heard the door bang open again below.

“Baptiste!”

The same determined voice from before. How was the fucker keeping up? Frowning, Dante mulled over the name said fucker had used—not Prejean, not goddamned S, but Baptiste. . . .

“There’s no way out, Baptiste. You’re boxing yourself in.” Closer, the voice.

Ignoring it, Dante kept going until he hit the final door, wrenched it open, and raced onto the roof and into a night smelling of old tar and damp blacktop and, faintly, of dewed grass. A sudden pain spiked behind his eyes.

<Baptiste.>

A star, cool and white, burned at his mind’s core. A bond. A familiar and constant presence buried beneath pain and broken glass and barbed wire. The sending carried with it the scent of rain and lilacs and sage, a scent he knew intimately.

<Baptiste. I’m here, cher. Right here in the here-and-now. Find me.>

He saw her then—waves of red hair. Twilight blue eyes, that brightened to moonlit cornflower when she laughed. Lovely, heart-shaped face. Deadly aim with a gun. A woman of heart and steel.

Heather.

10 CARNIVAL BARKER

THE WORLD TREMORED VIOLENTLY beneath Dante’s feet, cracked open. The past receded. And the here- and-now poured in like storm-frothed water through a breached levee.

Lucien soaring through a star-jeweled sky—

Von feeding his blood to Heather—

Guy Mauvais and Lake Pontchartrain—

Trey transformed beneath his hands in blue fire—

Annie slapping his face, telling him, Heather’s in trouble—

A cold-eyed man in a tan trench coat, pulling a trigger—

Dante’s breath caught rough in his throat. Heather’s in trouble. A dark and chilling