On Midnight Wings

As Merri and Annie started across the narrow street for Aunt Sally’s, Silver paused to take another look at the buzzing crowd of nightkind and mortals milling restlessly in front of the club. Excitement pulsed through him when he saw a towering figure strolling through the crowd, moving with an orca’s powerful grace through a school of sardines, thinking Lucien had returned—until the figure stepped out of the shadows, revealing short red hair. And a pair of nightkind companions.

One was a stranger with short, stylishly cut burgundy hair, wearing jeans, a short-sleeved black shirt, and an expression of knitted-brow concern on his Esquire-handsome face. Mediterranean Esquire, Silver amended, given the guy’s hawk nose. But the other Silver knew all too well—Guy Mauvais. The aristocratic shithead was dressed in an ash-gray frock coat, slacks, and fancy white shirt with lace cuffs and neckpiece, his wheat-colored hair loose about his shoulders.

“Hey,” Annie called. “You coming?”

“Yeah,” he replied, his gaze never wavering from Mauvais’s pale face. “Go grab a table and order me an Abita. I’ll be there in a minute. Just remembered something.”

“You sure?” Merri questioned, really asking, You need backup?

“Yeah. I’m sure. Just give me a minute.”

“Okay,” Merri said. “You got it, then.”

A knot of grief and cold fury and frustration tangled itself around Silver’s heart as a conversation with Von, this one about Simone’s death just five nights ago—a fiery death Silver himself had barely escaped—sounded through his mind.

We all need time.

People always say that, like time is fucking OxyContin. Like I could just down a handful of time and not worry about it hurting any more. Instant fix. But I can’t. And time takes fucking forever to heal. How’s that for ironic? Fuck time. And fuck Mauvais for taking her from us.

I hear you, bro. And trust me, Mauvais is fucked—he just don’t know it yet.

Renewed grief tightened Silver’s throat, burned behind his eyes.

He fucking will now.

Silver moved.

31 GOLD INTO DIAMONDS NEW ORLEANS THE FRENCH QUARTER

THE SMELL OF SMOKE, of scorched wood and rubber and plastic, of fire-dousing chemicals clung to Club Hell’s shutter-style green doors like a whore’s cheap perfume. Mauvais’s gaze shifted from the thick chain looped through the door handles to the hand-scrawled CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE sign nailed to the doors.

Mauvais drew a lavender-scented handkerchief from the sleeve of his shirt and breathed in its soothing scent. “Well, it seems we’ve wasted our time,” he sighed. “The place is closed and”—he paused, leaning in toward the door and listening for heartbeats, before straightening again and swiveling around—“empty.”

“So I see,” Loki murmured.

“Apparently those rumors about a fire and shootout were true, after all,” Giovanni said, his smooth Italian purr full of a regret that Mauvais suspected was every bit as false as his own. “Makes sense, then, that Dante, his household, and his father would go underground for the time being, si?”

“Perfect sense,” Mauvais agreed, taking a final sniff of lavender before tucking the handkerchief back into his sleeve. “Perhaps we should give it a week or two or three and then return.”

Giovanni nodded. “At the very least.”

Loki laughed, a low, amused chiming, his gleaming gaze flicking from Mauvais to Giovanni and back again. “You’re doing it again. Both of you.”

Mauvais arched one eyebrow. “Oui? And what would that be?”

“Playing your little vampire games. Trying to misdirect me with half-truths and outright lies. Tap-dancing madly. But all you’ve managed to do is fuel my curiosity.”

“We only wish to protect what belongs to us,” Giovanni said, his voice heated steel. “Your grudge is against this Lucien De Noir, not his son. What the Fallen do to one another is none of our business, but Dante is a True Blood—”

“And Fallen,” Loki said quietly. “Which makes him Fallen business.”

Not for the first time, Mauvais regretted the timing of the release of Dante’s announcement. He regretted even more the inadequate shields of the younger vampires aboard the Winter Rose while in the presence of a fallen angel.

A very curious fallen angel, and one adept at plucking thoughts and emotions from fledgling minds.

“No.” Giovanni shook his head. “He is vampire first. Our bloodlines are determined by the mother. Dante’s mother was vampire, not Fallen. Therefore he is ours.”

Laughing once more, Loki shook his freshly-barbered head—Time for a change. Do you happen to have a barber on board, as well?—his red locks cupping his skull and curving against his temples in a rakish cut that reminded Mauvais of long-ago highwaymen and Romantic poets.

Now there’s a dangerous combination, he mused.

“Vampire bloodlines mean nothing,” Loki said, once his musical laughter had ended. “Less than nothing. Only Dante’s Fallen bloodline matters.”

Giovanni stiffened. His sea scent, deep and stormy, intensified. When he opened his mouth for what would no doubt be a scathing—and disastrous—rebuttal, Mauvais gave the Italian’s shoulder a warning squeeze.

<Calm yourself,> Mauvais chastised, <and keep quiet. I shall handle this.>

Giovanni snapped his mouth shut. He glanced away, jaw tight, hazel irises slashed with red. <Then do so. But quickly. Before he actually finds Dante Baptiste.>

Offering Loki an apologetic smile, Mauvais said, “No one is playing games. Not now, anyway,” he amended smoothly. “I truly believe waiting a few weeks for things to cool down, to give Dante time to return, would be wisest.”

Loki regarded Mauvais with shrewd, golden eyes. “And once Dante does, what glib lie will slip from your tongue then, hmm? That by the time you realized Dante had returned, he’d already departed for a tour of Europe? Or will I need to snatch the truth from another member of your household?”

“That was unfortunate,” Mauvais admitted ruefully.

But it had allowed him the opportunity to slip a tracking chip onto the back of Loki’s torc while he’d been distracted questioning Rafe. If the immortal should catch wind of Dante’s whereabouts first, Mauvais intended to follow.

Although stunned by Dante’s little coming out announcement, Mauvais had also been pleased to realize that his suspicions about the defiant marmot had been correct.

True Blood and Fallen. And utterly invaluable to the vampire race.

And with that realization, Mauvais’s long-held desire to have one of the Fallen standing at his side transmuted into a desire to have Dante standing at his side instead, an alchemical bit of magic—not lead into gold, but gold into diamonds—crafted by equal parts ambition, practicality, and a deep-rooted instinct for survival.

We are stagnating. Our Bloodline diluted, tainted. Dante’s blood will renew us. Inject much- needed chaos into our ordered existence.

Convincing the young True Blood to overlook the fact that Mauvais had ordered his home burned to the ground, resulting in the death of a household member, could prove to be a bit of a challenge, however.

A challenge, oui. But not impossible. Not with the future of our race