On Midnight Wings

“Keeping Michael company inside his tomb—in theory, anyway. Besides, as you said, it may not even work on a True Blood–Fallen creawdwr at all. A creawdwr we still need to find.”

“That we do,” Lucien agreed. “So name your damned price.”

“Let’s think of it as a penalty, not a price. A penalty in two parts.”

“You can call it whatever you want, just name it.”

“First, I want Lilith back, restored once more to flesh.”

Lucien nodded, surprised, but not unpleasantly so. For a deal with the devil, that particular request/penalty was more difficult than morally challenging. “I’ll do my best to convince Dante. But no guarantees. He’s stubborn under the best of circumstances.”

“I’ve noticed,” the Morningstar said dryly.

“And the second part?”

“To ensure a lasting alliance between our houses, I want a hostage.”

And there it was, the moral compromise, the true deal with the devil.

Lucien regarded the Morningstar for a long, silent moment. He caught a flash of white in his peripheral vision, heard the rush of wings beneath the wind. Hekate.

“Dante will never give up Heather,” Lucien warned.

“Of course not,” the Morningstar said. “She’s bondmate and cydymaith both. I had no intention of asking for her.”

“Who, then?”

“Her sister, Annie. The mortal you were so busy rescuing.”

“No. Impossible. She’s pregnant. Choose another. Choose me.”

“Pregnant?” The Morningstar’s eyes shone with a speculative light. “Truly? Well, that changes everything. Annie no longer interests me as a hostage.”

Relief flooded through Lucien. He was just about to offer himself again as hostage, when the Morningstar’s next words stole the air from his lungs.

“I want the child in her womb, once born.”

“Are you mad?” Lucien asked, voice flat, disbelieving. “This is no longer the ancient world. You can’t lay claim to newborns. No.”

The Morningstar shrugged. “As you wish. I shall find and free Dante without you, then. And I will do whatever I deem necessary to stabilize his sanity.” His alabaster wings unfurled, sweeping through the air. He lifted into the brine-and storm-scented night.

“Damn you, wait!”

The Morningstar paused, hovering, his wings beating through the air. He tilted his head, regarding Lucien with shadowed eyes. “I’m waiting, but not for long. I have a creawdwr to salvage. And please keep in mind that any promise you make will be sealed in blood—unbreakable.”

Lucien tasted something dark and bitter at the back of his throat. He knew Dante would never forgive him for the vow he was about to make. Suspected he would never forgive himself.

I would lay the world to waste for my son. What is one mortal infant?

Lucien realized in that moment that he and Leviathan weren’t so very different.

For I shall claim your firstborn as my own—to kill or to love, as I deem fit.

Eyes burning, Lucien slashed a talon across his palm. Blood welled up, dark and fragrant, binding him to the words he now spoke in a low voice. “The child shall be yours. Now take me to my son.”

The Morningstar revealed his sharp teeth in a dark and wolfish grin. “With plea—”

“Father!”

Hekate landed on the cliff in a frantic flurry of wings. As she swiveled to face them, Lucien’s gut knotted at the panic and uncertainty he saw darkening her eyes and leaching color from her face. From above and all around, cries sounded through the rain-lashed night like frightened sea gulls. As Lucien listened, he closed his eyes, pulse pounding at his temples.

“They’re gone,” the Morningstar said, voice stunned, a man learning his cancer is terminal. “The skygates have unraveled.”

38 WELCOME TO THE HORROR SHOW BATON ROUGE DOUCET-BAINBRIDGE SANITARIUM

THE AIR REEKED OF blood and pissed-pants death.

Blood glistened on the walls.

Slicked the tile floor in long, dark smears.

And on the alarm panel ripped from the wall beside the security desk—a bloody left handprint that Dante studied like a stark and mysterious paleolithic cave painting from where he lay sprawled on the floor. He lifted his bloodstained left hand. Compared.

Probably mine.

Lowering his hand, Dante wearily closed his eyes. His head pulsed with pain, a never-relenting, white-hot pressure as though his head was caught between tons of shifting rock. Trapped beneath the rubble of a cataclysmic internal earthquake, despite having escaped the shattered depths—for now, anyway—when a seizure had knocked S’s ass to the blood-smeared floor.

Just taking a time-out. Catching my breath.

Got a full schedule of killing ahead.

A chill touched Dante soul-deep. He no longer knew if his thoughts were his alone or belonged to S. Figured it no longer mattered at this point. Words Lucien had said to him in the back of the Perv’s van popped into his aching head.

S doesn’t exist. Only Dante. S is a part of you, child. The rage you deny, the pain you ignore. You are Dante Baptiste, son of Lucien and Genevieve. Not S. Not the child of monsters.

Dante had a feeling the fucking FBI and SB—not to mention everyone cooling on the floor—would heartily disagree.

Opening his eyes and wishing for a pair of shades, Dante squinted as light from the overheads needled into them. He rolled up onto his hands and knees. He needed to haul ass. Needed to find an exit, then Heather.

Sure about that?

Memory coughed up an ugly image.

His finger squeezes the trigger. Her head rocks forward with the first bullet, then snaps back with the second, tendrils of red hair whipping through the air.

Dante shivered, suddenly cold, the nightmare image refusing to fade. Sweat beaded his forehead, dampened the hair at the nape of his neck. White light strobed furiously at the edges of his vision. He needed to warn Heather away. He couldn’t trust himself—and neither should she. Until he had himself—including the part of him that was S—under control, she wouldn’t be safe.

No one would be.

Hoping the blood he’d gulped down (Nah, make that S. Credit where credit’s due, yeah?) during the sanitarium slaughter had diluted the drugs in his system enough to keep his sending from bouncing around the inside of his skull like a rubber bullet, Dante reached for Heather through their bond.

Catin, keep away. Run from me. Run as far—

The floor tilted beneath his knees, interrupting his sending, and scattering black flecks across his graying field of vision. An intense spinning sensation pureed his thoughts. Blanked his mind. Pain needled his temples, blowback from the sending.

“Boy, you need to get your ass down to the basement and now,” Papa said, his voice bayou bred and two- packs-of-Winstons-a-day gravelly. “Enough with dat school nonsense. Someone coming to see you. And trust me,