On Midnight Wings

He’d waited too long. Committed too many crimes to simply shrug and walk away. Not after subverting minds and ending lives to reach this very moment.

A moment the Fallen had brought down upon themselves when they’d sentenced his daughter to death by poison simply for speaking out for change, for a better place in Elohim society.

His Felicia had also been beautiful, and ill-used, and innocent. No sudden sympathy had spared her life. As she’d died in his arms while the Fallen had idly watched, Teodoro had given her a promise: I will take everything from them, mi hija, just as they have taken everything from us.

No, Dante’s beauty and power and unique bloodline would end with him.

It was nothing personal. Just a knife into the cold, dark heart of the Fallen.

Wheels. Circles. Cycles. The Elohim’s long-overdue Second Fall lay strapped to a steel table, fate incarnate in leather pants and ringed collar.

Teodoro slid his fingers up to Dante’s temple. He bowed his head, closed his eyes, then inhaled deeply. He slipped through the creawdwr’s drug-thinned shields, pushing into his mind with ease, and entered—

—Hell. Searing heat engulfs Teodoro in a fiery maelstrom of nightmarish images, of angry droning and mocking whispers and molten pain, scorching his thoughts, his senses—

Metallic wasps burrow beneath milk-white skin . . .

I’ll make sure you regret every breath you’ve ever drawn . . .

An anarchy symbol cut into a pale torso . . .

A fire-blackened and broken window stretches across an endless horizon . . .

No escape for you, sweetie . . .

A face composed of blue neon ones and zeros flickers between glowing hands . . .

We ain’t done, you and me . . .

Wearing shades and a wide, cheerful grin, the Perv lifts a blood- smeared knife into the air, then slashes it back down . . .

That’s my Bad Seed bro . . .

Holy, holy, holy . . .

Teodoro retreated—no, fled—snapping back into his own body with a jolt that left his heart pounding and his mouth dry. ?Madre de Dios! He felt Dante stir beneath his fingers, his blood-smeared face troubled, and Teodoro fought against the instinctive urge to snatch his hand away.

Any regret he still felt withered and died. Dante had been doomed even before Teodoro had found him. All he had done was speed up the process.

Whether it was because of the implanted programming, the memory fragmentation, the countless cruelties he’d endured, or all of the above, Dante’s mind was irreparably damaged and he already walked the path to madness. Stood near the mouth of the abyss, in fact, his walls and defenses beginning to crumble around him.

All Dante needed was one more good shove.

Teodoro had no idea—absolutely none—how Dante managed to remain on his feet and functioning, let alone coherent. His ability to do so hinted at a stubborn strength that Teodoro respected—even as it left him feeling just a tad uneasy.

Just how hard would that shove need to be?

Fumbling his handkerchief from his trouser pocket, Teodoro wiped the sweat from his brow as he imagined the sigil scarring Dante’s chest. He still hadn’t learned what pledge had been made between Dante and the Morningstar.

Unlike Purcell, who didn’t give a rat’s ass about certain details—the identity of Dante’s father, the reason for his seizures, to name a couple—Teodoro preferred to be armed with every bit of information available. That way, some missing piece of knowledge wouldn’t sneak up behind him and bite him on the ass later.

No choice—Teodoro would have to go back inside. Tucking his handkerchief back into his pocket, he drew in a deep breath, carefully shielded his mind, then took the plunge back into Dante Baptiste’s mind.

The second time wasn’t any easier—the raging chaos still hit like a brass-knuckled fist. But this time Teodoro noticed a cool, blue-white light radiating calm and quiet and stillness at the firestorm’s furious heart.

A bond. Someone had bonded the creawdwr.

Teodoro’s stomach sank. What do you want to bet that someone is the Morningstar? No wonder Dante wears his mark.

Teodoro negotiated his way past waves of never-ending whispers and swarms of droning wasps, their metallic wings ablaze and trailing drops of molten steel; skirted around memories rippling from past to present and back like a deck of cards in a magician’s sleight-of-hand flourish—first the faces, now only the backs—presto, chango.

When Teodoro reached the steady, but muted—the resin and/or drugs?—flame of the bond, he made an exciting discovery. The bond belonged to Heather, not the Morningstar.

Something else never before seen: a creawdwr taking a mortal as bondmate— Dante had claimed a human as calon-cyfaill.

It made him vulnerable.

All Teodoro needed to do was forge a temporary link to the bond; then, even outside Dante’s mind, he could tap into it and follow the ethereal tether straight to the former FBI agent—like a Heather-centric dowsing rod.

And the beautiful redhead would become that last good, hard shove.

Just as Teodoro reached for the bond’s cool light, he heard laughter, low and dark and amused from the ember-lit depths below. Smelled frost and burning leaves and cold, cold rage. He froze.

“Hey, motherfucker.” From right beside him. “I don’t remember inviting you.”

Teodoro caught a glimpse of a pale, hard-knuckled fist, orange flames glinting from silver rings on the fingers and thumb, then an explosion of electricity shocked through his skull and whited out his mind.

TEODORO BLINKED. THE SQUARE white ceiling tiles swam into focus. He was no longer in his chair, but flat on his back on the hard, concrete floor. He sucked in a mouthful of ozone-flavored air, trying to calm his triple- timing heart.

Had he just been sucker punched by an unconscious subject? Tossed out of a doped and damaged mind and onto his ass?

An icy finger trailed the length of Teodoro’s still-tingling spine. Imposible. He sat up, then eased to his feet, holding on to the back of the chair for support like an old man, an unbalanced man, a weak man, in need of a walker. He fisted his other hand at his side to destroy any illusion that it was shaking. He stared at Dante.

Dante hadn’t moved. Was still out cold. Still cuffed to the table. Head still turned toward Teodoro, breathtaking face still partially veiled by tendrils of black hair. Fresh blood trickled from one nostril.

Nothing about him had changed from a moment ago.

Everything had changed.

Despite being ice-cold, sweat plastered Teodoro’s shirt to his back, beaded his forehead. As he scrutinized the unconscious creawdwr, he realized that he needed to get back on the horse, so to speak, before his shock and dread deteriorated into belly-knotting fear. He needed to link to that bond, to follow it to Heather.

But first, he’d shoot Dante full of more resin and tranquilizers. No more dark laughter or blurring fists, then. Never mind the fact that there shouldn’t have been this time either. Maybe the drugs were wearing off—

Teodoro’s cell phone buzzed, interrupting his speeding train of denial. He pulled it from a trouser pocket and frowned when the ID showed Webster’s number. Why would his supervisor be calling? Sinking into the chair, he thumbed the Talk button.

“Dion.”

“Sorry to interrupt your vacation,” Webster said, sounding—to his credit—vaguely apologetic, “but a situation