On Midnight Wings

he ain’t interested in whether or not you know yo’ ABCs.” The fi’ de garce’s raspy laughter ended in a cough. “Waste o’ time, anyway. Chloe should be doing her homework insteada teaching you dat bullshit.”

Hands curling automatically into fists at the sound of Papa’s voice, Dante blinked until his vision cleared. For a moment, he thought he saw a gore-splashed corridor graffitied with a primitive and bloody handprint—then it was gone.

A dream, maybe. A really fucked up dream. But no more fucked up than Papa Prejean and his motherfucking basement-prison bordello.

“Fuck you,” Dante said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

He was kneeling beside Chloe’s bed, facing Papa who stood in the doorway in jeans and a fresh, white wifebeater bracketed by suspenders. Despite a liberal dosing of Florida Water, Dante still smelled Papa’s sweat underneath the cologne’s sweet orange, cloves, and lavender fragrance.

Papa frowned, deep lines furrowing his forehead. “Dere you go, running dat foul mouth o’ yours again. Sounds like I should rinse it out with somet’ing stronger dan soap. Mebbe dat gasoline out in the garage’ll do the trick.”

“Leave him alone,” Chloe said from behind Dante. He heard her heart beating hard and fast, speaking up despite her fear, and with each frantic, hummingbird beat, Dante heard the rhythm of her courage.

Papa slanted a sour look at her over the top of Dante’s head. “Hush, you. Or I’ll put my hand upside your head.”

Reaching back, Dante squeezed Chloe’s knee, then rose to his feet. The room wobbled, became a corridor dotted with crumpled bodies, a trail of bloodied bread crumbs underscored by a steady and muffled whomp-whomp-whomp and leading to—

Chloe’s room. Papa in the doorway, a Winston smoldering between his fingers and curling pale smoke into the air to battle it out with sweat and Florida Water.

Dante swayed on his feet, pain a sledgehammer pounding against the inside of his skull. “You’re gonna need more than handcuffs—”

Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!

The sound reverberated through Dante’s aching head. The booming heartbeat of a giant or the smack of furious fists into a punching bag or—

The room wobbled again and Dante stumbled, thumping shoulder-first into the wall.

—or the thud of feet kicking in desperation against a thick, steel door.

Dante blinked. Chloe’s room vanished. A corridor replaced it, one full of bodies and blood and the stink of death and cordite. A paleolithic handprint. The SB sanitarium. He sucked in a breath, concentrated on remaining in the here-and-now.

Guns were scattered across the tile. Medical staff in white-and mint-green scrubs lay entangled among the bodies of black-suited agents. Whether S’s work or his own, and pretty sure it didn’t fucking matter in the long run, Dante felt no regret. Not when he thought of little girls in Winnie-the-Pooh sweaters deliberately locked into rooms with wounded and starving nightkind.

I’ve got promises to keep.

Wiping blood from his nose with the back of his hand, Dante pushed himself away from the wall.

From within their locked rooms, inmates pounded against the steel doors with fists and feet and anything not bolted to the concrete, their violent and desperate drumming an aural gauntlet that Dante passed as he staggered unsteadily down the corridor, looking for an exit sign and hoping against hope he found one before the past played python and swallowed him down its dark gullet again.

I could unlock the doors.

I could let them all go.

I could play with them.

Until Purcell returns.

“No,” Dante whispered. “Ain’t stopping. I’m getting the hell out of here.” Pain pounded and drummed in his head, keeping time with all the thumping fists and feet.

Wantitneeditkillitburnitburnburnburn . . .

Darkness nibbling at his vision like a hungry mouse, Dante stumbled to a stop. He leaned against the wall and rubbed his temples with trembling fingers. He struggled to shut out the fucking noise, to dampen the pain. To think.

Send it below or fucking use it.

Problem was, below was full to the brim and hands crawling with wasps were locked around his ankles, fingers digging in to yank him down again.

Underneath the kicking and hammering and muffled yells, he heard someone singing—hey, that’s one of my songs—voice husky and low and simmering with a barely contained rage. A voice he recognized.

“I am what you made me / no matter where you hide / where you run / I will find you / I am what you made me / nothing can stop me / I have nothing left to lose / I’m coming for you . . .”

Purcell.

The SB and the FBI.

The psychotic assholes locked behind those doors.

The motherfucking world.

They have it coming in fucking spades, yeah?

Letting the song trail away, unfinished, Dante whispered, “Oui, for true.”

Then let’s give it to them.

Dante opened his eyes and his heart jumped into his throat. He was no longer leaning against the wall. Instead, he stood in the wide-open doorway of an inmate’s room, his blood-grimed fingertips resting on the door’s keypad. He hadn’t realized that he’d even moved, let alone keyed open the door.

“Shit,” he breathed, jerking his hand away from the keypad.

Light from the corridor spilled into the room, revealing someone curled on the stark and narrow bed in the white-padded room’s center. Someone with golden curls spiraling to her straitjacketed waist. The mattress creaked as she struggled to sit up. She looked at Dante, blinking in the light, her pale face uncertain, her brown eyes drug-dilated.

Dante’s breath caught in his throat, his stunned heart pulsing hard and fast.

Fire scorches her lungs. Blackens her skin. Devours her with relentless teeth.

“Simone?” he whispered.

“What did you say? Who . . . who are you?” she asked in a tremulous voice, a voice deeper than her own had ever been. Somehow masculine. But that was okay. She was alive. And that was all that mattered.

Wrong. This is all wrong. She burned. You felt her die. Wake the fuck up.

Maybe she didn’t. Maybe someone stole her before it was too late.

You fucking felt her die.

But Von’s words, spoken in the graveyard hush of St. Louis No. 3, filled Dante’s mind: A spoken thing or wished-hard thing takes a shape within the heart.

“Takes shape,” Dante continued aloud. “Becomes real.”

“Who are you?” Maybe-Simone asked again. “What was going on out there?”

Feeling light-headed, like the floor was dropping away from beneath his feet, Dante stepped into the room. A high-pitched buzzing filled his ears. The room wheeled, spinning like a merry-go-round caught in a Category 5 blow-down.

Dante snapped his eyes shut. Steadied himself with a hand to the padded wall and waited for the gut- wrenching dizziness to pass. Once it had and once the floor was motionless beneath his socked feet again, he opened his eyes.

And found himself standing in front of a tomb in the silent heart of St. Louis No. 3. But this St. Louis was whole and intact, not the shattered ruin he still needed to set right.

How did I get here?

Like stove-warmed taffy, reality and dreams stretched beyond their normal shapes and boundaries and