On Midnight Wings

merged. Took a new shape within his heart.

Shadows clung to the tomb’s moon-washed marble like black-leafed ivy. Beneath the sweet perfume of graveyard flowers and cherry blossoms, Dante caught a whiff of bones moldering behind old marble, of ice and cold stone and fallow hearts.

From within the tomb’s dank depths, something stirred. He heard the dusty grit of time, of ashes and bone, beneath sandal soles. Then: “I’ve missed you, cher.”

Dante’s breath caught rough at the sound of that voice—Cajun-musical and wistful, it pierced his heart like a knife.

Simone appeared in the tomb’s open mouth, darkness sluicing away from her like black water. She knelt upon the threshold in fire-crisped tank top and cut-offs, hair tumbling over her shoulders in long, golden spirals that framed her pale, soot-streaked face in luminous curls. Her magnolia scent was scorched and blackened, all sweetness seared away.

Dante took another step forward, then dropped to his knees on the stone walk in front of her. “Miss you too.” He started to reach for her hair, but before his fingers could so much as graze a silken strand, he stopped, then knotted his hands into fists atop his leather-clad thighs. He couldn’t trust himself.

Didn’t dare.

Down in the wasp-droning shattered depths, someone laughed.

A cold finger pressed against his lips, hushing the words he’d been about to say—My fault, chere. I failed you and Trey both. You died because of my fucking mistakes.

“I don’t want you taking blame or refusing comfort. I only want you to make them pay. Make them burn for me, Dante.”

Shadows crept from the tomb’s arched mouth and slithered over Simone, stealing the light from her golden curls and veiling her face in inky darkness. Only her voice remained, a fierce but fading whisper.

“Make every single bastard burn, make the world burn, mon cher ami, mon ange, and set me free.”

Dante grabbed for Simone, his desperation—to keep her from the tomb’s icy darkness, to hold her safe— outweighing his self-distrust. His fingers closed tight around her arm. He yanked her free from the fetid shadows, free from fiery death, from the unalterable past.

And back onto a bed in the sanitarium, once again buckled into a straitjacket.

“How about getting me out of this thing, buddy?” she asked in a deep voice mysteriously empty of Cajun rhythm.

But that was okay. She was alive. She’d never burned, never—

Pain scraped across Dante’s thoughts. He sucked in a breath as a warning floated up from the droning, whispering depths.

Ain’t Simone. That’s Papa in a Simone-suit playing possum.

Dante’s heart kicked hard against his chest. He narrowed his eyes. Oui. Made sense. The masculine voice. The questions, all innocent and confused. He could see it now. Papa playing him for a motherfucking fool, just waiting to snap the cuffs around his wrists and trap him once more in the basement’s moldering darkness.

Fucker won’t stay dead. How many times do I need to tear out his goddamned throat?

Dante shook his head, laughing low, the padded walls soaking up the smoked whiskey and velvet music of his voice, exposing the cold, knowing tone underneath. “You must really think I’m an idiot.”

“What? I don’t—”

Dante laughed again. “Sure you do. ‘Boy needs a lesson,’ right? Ain’t those your words? ‘Boy always needs a lesson.’?”

Papa’s voice turned desperate, but Dante heard the slyness crouched beneath the words. “I don’t know who you’re looking for, but you’ve got the wrong—”

Thick shadows drifted like dark smoke across the padded walls, transforming them into cold and dank concrete blocks. In the basement’s corner, the furnace rumbled to life, a comforting sound despite the furnace’s predatory, shadow-twisted posture.

Welcome home, S. Welcome back, petit.

“Yeah? I don’t think so.” Dante pinched Papa’s doughy chin between his fingers. Fury knotted the muscles in his chest. “And you know what? Fuck you.”

Deep within the basement’s dark and water-stained heart, Dante set to work. And Papa screamed and screamed and screamed.

THE PUNGENT SMELL OF blood, thick and wet and fresh, filled Dante’s nostrils. Blinking, he stared at the body sprawled upon the blood-soaked mattress—a man buckled into a straitjacket. A man he didn’t recognize. Blond hair lay across his openmouthed face in lank strands. Fear looped icy coils around Dante’s belly. He couldn’t remember who he thought he’d been killing.

Something about playing possum in a Simone suit. Holy fucking Christ.

A bloody hole cratered the dead-dead-dead inmate’s chest right at heart level. Pulse drumming at his temples, Dante looked down at his hand. At what he held tight between his blood-sticky fingers.

Not the stuff of valentines, maybe, but kinda cool all the same, yeah?

Tais-toi, you.

The pale heart spilled from Dante’s hand, hitting the concrete floor with a soft, fleshy splat. The high-pitched buzzing returned, erasing the silence. He rose to his feet slowly, wiped his hands against his leather pants.

Plucking a heart from some deserving motherfucker’s chest was one thing—

—and who says that cooling corpse on the bed wasn’t deserving? He was locked in here, after all. Might’ve been an SB experiment just like you. Me. Us.

—but ripping it from some straitjacketed fi’ de garce? What if it had truly been Simone? Or Heather? How about Violet or Von?

No one can ever be used against you if you’re willing to kill them yourself.

Fuck you.

The truth is never what you hope it will be.

“Ain’t listening,” Dante muttered, even though he was—he couldn’t help it. He stumbled back out into the corridor, into air thick with the reek of death, of coppery blood and pungent piss. The silence soothed the ache in his head.

Silence.

He paused, taking in the flung-open doors on either side of the corridor, doors that had been closed and locked the last time he’d stood in the corridor, feeling cold to his soul—and listened.

No thumping, no pounding, no steel-muffled shouts.

No heartbeats but his own.

Bloody footprints trailed from one flung-open door to the next. Remembering the heart he’d held in his hand, Dante didn’t need to look inside the rooms to know what he’d find.

Had to be done. They were locked up just like you, yeah? For the same reasons.

Little fucking psycho.

Dante swallowed hard. He had to haul ass out of this fucking place, and he had to make sure he kept away from Heather and everyone else that he cared about.

Smart move. But first we need to wait for that asshole Purcell.

Dante shook his head. “No. I’ll deal with him some other time. Ain’t staying.” But he noticed his socked feet remained motionless. Noticed that his blood-grimed hands flexed restlessly at his sides. Noticed with a deepening sense of frustration and despair that his body seemed to have no intention whatsoever of searching for an exit.