On Midnight Wings

lights, condensation misted the windshields.

These cars have been here all night.

Heather didn’t see a single car in the lot that looked like it had been driven in recently. Maybe the night shift hadn’t handed the reins over to the morning crew yet. Maybe, for all she knew, they worked in forty-eight-hour shifts.

Maybe, but she didn’t think so. Something felt off, wrong.

With the Glock held down at her side, Heather walked down the street toward the parking lot in a deliberately casual stride—or as casual as a limp could be, anyway, breathing in cool air smelling of dew and distant roses, just a local out walking her insomnia in the predawn.

Stopping at the parking lot’s mouth, Heather got her first good look at the symbols painted on the front doors and windows and her heart gave one hard, startled kick before resuming its regular rhythm—but at a much faster pace.

Now she knew why the symbols seemed familiar; they reminded her of the mark the Morningstar had seared into the pale skin of Dante’s chest, his promise to return to Gehenna.

Not graffiti. Fallen sigils. Elohim glyphs—and etched in blood, not paint.

Fear burned cold along Heather’s spine. She didn’t know what the sigils were for or why they’d been placed, but she knew what they meant.

She wasn’t the first to find Dante.

While Dante was injured and doped and lost to an ever-shifting past and present, one of the Fallen (and she desperately hoped it was only one) was with him right at this very moment.

“Shit,” Heather breathed. “Shit, shit, shit.”

She had no idea how the Fallen had found Dante, let alone learned of his disappearance, but the thing that truly troubled her—even more than the how, was the why. Why were the Fallen keeping him here? Why hadn’t they taken him back to Gehenna the moment they’d found him?

A dark possibility unfolded within her mind. Maybe Dante was being kept here, because whoever ran this sanitarium—FBI, SB, a combination of both—whoever had grabbed Dante in the first place, had simply been following directions.

Fallen directions.

Maybe someone had been incapable of accepting Dante’s refusal to be a good little creawdwr and kiss Celestial ass and thought a few well-taught lessons would improve his attitude.

Maybe.

And where were the mortals who worked inside the sanitarium? Enchanted and sleeping on the floor? Dead? Vanished in a puff of angelic smoke?

Only one way to find out.

Ignoring her ankle’s protest, Heather hurried over to the first parked car and crouched down beside it. She scanned the building, looking for movement, any indication that she had been noticed, but nothing disturbed the lot’s thick blanket of silence, a silence like the first deep snowfall of winter.

Nothing moved. Nothing slow enough for her to see, anyway.

Heather straightened from her crouch, moved to the next car, then waited again. Still nothing. Just as she was about to make her limping run to the next vehicle, a car pulled into the parking lot, a forest-green Lexus.

Crouching down, Heather kept an eye on the newcomer, a man wearing what looked like scrubs, as he parked the Lexus in an empty slot.

Looks like I was wrong about that shift change.

The man climbed out of the Lexus and Heather saw that she was right about the scrubs—his were mint- green, the short sleeves revealing forearms thick with black hair. He locked the car with a tap of his smart key, then started across the parking lot. He stopped abruptly, frowning, his gaze on the sanitarium. He stared, his expression shifting from a puzzled frown to a blank slate. All expression vanished from his face. Swiveling around, he returned to his car in quick strides, unlocked it, slid inside, and drove off.

The hair prickled on the back of Heather’s neck. What the hell was that?

Heather watched as another car glided into the lot—a standard black government-issue SUV this time, driven by a man in a black suit—and the same exact events unfolded. Park, head across parking lot, freeze, go blank, then turn and leave.

Another car, then another, as staff members and agents pulled into the lot, then left again after gazing at the Fallen-marked building.

Why not me? Heather rose from her crouch. She regarded the building for a long moment, knowing a Fallen spell had to be the reason for the day shift’s about-face, but why hadn’t it affected her too?

Whatever the reason, maybe the caster wouldn’t be expecting anyone to saunter past the spell, and had his or her guard down. Heather could only hope.

Adrenaline flooding her system, she finished her slow-motion race across the parking lot and trotted up the long concrete steps to the entrance.

41 UNCOILING FROM THE ASHES

THE VOICE, LOW AND urgent and as familiar as his own, encircled Dante’s awareness like a fisherman’s net and hoisted him up from the whispering depths and his haunted dreams, a gathering of the lost—Simone, Gina, Jay. Their bodies like ice, their hearts dead and empty.

He looked back as he ascended and saw their upturned faces, moon pale and expressionless, disappear one by one into the darkness like stones beneath black water. Grief coiled around his heart.

I’m so cold, sugar, Gina called, her words like knives, each one piercing deeper than the one before. I need you to make it right. Make them pay so I can be warm again. Torch the goddamned world, sugar. Make it burn for me.

Simone nodded as her face winked from Dante’s sight. Make the world burn, mon cher ami, mon ange, and set me free.

Set things to rights, cher, Jay urged, sinking into those black waters still clad in his blood-soaked straitjacket. Make them pay in blood and fire.

“They’ll burn,” Dante promised in a rough whisper.

“What was that, little brother?”

Dante opened his eyes to a red-lit gloom. The overheads were out and emergency lights had winked on, giving the silent corridor an apocalyptic feel. He blinked. Someone leaned over him, someone with nut-brown hair tied back in a ponytail, someone who smelled of leather and gun oil and frost.

Someone whose voice hadn’t been a dream.

“Von . . .”

Or Papa in a Von-suit. Fucker won’t stay dead, remember?

“Right here, man.”

Dante forced himself up onto his elbows—or tried to, anyway. The seizure had left him drained, every muscle wrung dry despite all the blood—gallons and gallons, fucking buckets—he and/or S had sucked down. He felt hollowed out, like he had nothing left. He fell back onto the tiled floor, bathed in a cold sweat. Black pinpricks poked holes in his vision. He swallowed hard.

“Shit,” he muttered, voice hoarse. “More fucking awesomeness.”

“Here. Hold on.” Leather creaked as an arm slipped around Dante’s shoulders and gently helped ease him into a sitting position. “Better?”

“Yeah. Merci, beaucoup.” Blinking away more black pinpricks, Dante found himself looking into Von’s gleaming green eyes and felt an intense surge of relief. Something flickered at the back of his