On Midnight Wings

both.”

“I’ll let him know,” Lucien replied, pausing in front of the smooth-edged hole marring the corridor’s south wall.

“Perhaps an honor guard—”

The Morningstar laughed. “By all means—if you want Dante to refuse. Have you forgotten his disdain for authority?” His gaze settled on Gabriel. “I imagine you haven’t—brother.”

Gabriel folded his arms over his bare chest and leveled a cool, green gaze on the Morningstar. Lamp light glinted from the braided silver torc curled around his throat. “No, I haven’t, indeed.”

“We don’t wish to antagonize the boy,” Uriel said to Lucien. “All we ask is that you impress the urgency of the situation upon him.”

“Of course,” Lucien said, promising nothing.

Dante’s well-being came first, as far as he was concerned. Even at the expense of Gehenna’s existence.

Gabriel stepped forward, his unbound hair—a rich, warm caramel—brushing against his narrow hips and the scarlet kilt belted over them. “How can we trust you?” he asked. His gaze skipped from Lucien, to Hekate, to the Morningstar. “Any of you?”

Lucien met and held his gaze. “What choice do you have?”

Without waiting for an answer, Lucien ducked through the gate, folded wing tips scraping the top rim, and stepped into the creawdwr-shattered cemetery. St. Louis No. 3 should’ve smelled of dewed grass and young cherry blossoms, of the dawn. Should’ve, yes. If it were dawn.

But it wasn’t.

Instead the sun was hanging over the western horizon and the warm, late afternoon air vibrated with the rush of heavy traffic on the street beyond the cemetery’s broken walls. The faint, sun-warmed fragrance of cherry blossoms wasn’t enough to mask the odor of decay and old death released from tombs that Dante had unintentionally cracked open like eggs with his power.

Fear spiked through Lucien.

Time was stalling in Gehenna, unraveling like its skygates.

The Morningstar’s grim voice echoed Lucien’s realization, “It’s worse than we thought.”

“It is,” Lucien agreed, turning to see Hekate and her father standing beside him amongst the crumbled crypts and broken cypress and oak trees that gave mute testimony to a creawdwr’s power and a son’s desperate determination.

Found you, mon cher ami, mon pere, and I ain’t losing you again.

Unfurling his white wings, the Morningstar took to the sky. The lowering sun chiseled radiant diamond dazzles from his wings as he soared ever upward. Lucien followed, Hekate at his left wing.

Now I will find you, mon cher fils. And no one will ever take you again.

Not even if it meant the end of Gehenna.

ROME, ITALY

RENATA ALESSA CORTINI STIRRED on her bed, suddenly restless beneath her cool linen sheets. Even locked in Sleep’s iron grip, she knew she was no longer dreaming; she was Witnessing, her inner vision unfurling images that chilled her to the bone, quick flashes of nightmare, glimpses into that-which-may-be.

In a hallway gleaming with faint red light, a fallen angel with black wings and short, ginger locks lounges upon a throne composed of dead and stiffening bodies . . .

The night burns, the sky on fire from horizon to horizon . . .

Dante Baptiste uncoils from a bloodied tile floor, his pale, breathtaking face smeared with blood, his eyes dark wells of madness, loss, and simmering rage . . .

A tattoo of a running black wolf inked beneath a desperate green eye . . .

Pale blue flames explode out from around the Great Destroyer’s lean body in transforming tongues of cool fire. His kohl-rimmed eyes open as his song rakes the burning night . . .

A sign emblazoned with the words: Doucet-Bainbridge Sanitarium; Fallen sigils painted in blood upon glass . . .

A woman’s voice: I’m here, I’m here. Stay with me, cher. She is all that stands between the creawdwr and the end of the world, all that stands between the Great Destroyer and the never-ending Road . . .

A hand wreathed in sapphire flames, blue light glinting from the rings encircling thumbs and fingers, touches the rough surface of a parking lot. A frost-rimmed hole opens beneath that burning hand, an emptiness, a void that devours the parking lot, then spreads . . .

I have promises to keep, Dante whispers, blood trickling from one nostril. Then he puts out the world’s light.

Darkness and screams filled Renata’s mind, followed by utter silence. Her pulse thundered in her ears, keeping time with her frantic heart.

She had never felt so cold.

Something had befallen Dante Baptiste, of that she had no doubt. She was less sure if he’d been seized by mortals or the Elohim or both. And, whether on purpose or accidentally, whoever had Dante would twist him into the Great Destroyer.

He is ours, not theirs. They cannot have him. This beautiful and deadly young creawdwr belongs to the vampire race; he is ours to train and guide and love.

But what frightened Renata even more than the very real possibility of Dante becoming the Great Destroyer was the fact that Dante’s mortal bondmate might hold the key to the world’s continued existence, along with everything and everyone it contained.

A fragile mortal with a butterfly’s lifespan.

Heather Wallace needs to be safeguarded at all costs. If she dies, so do we all.

Renata needed to get to New Orleans. She needed to contact Giovanni and Caterina, find out what they knew. Much needed to be set into motion and immediately. Yet no matter how aware she was, Sleep still held her body a prisoner until dusk.

But only her body.

By feeding small amounts of her blood every night to her personal domestica, she could awaken the girl with a touch of her mind through their temporary blood bond and issue orders to be carried out.

Renata did so now.

She sent to the girl curled sleeping in a cot at the foot of her bed, brushing her dreams aside like cobwebs and touching her drowsing consciousness.

<Flavia, awaken.>

Through her inner eye, Renata saw the girl stir, her dark brown eyes opening wide, all trace of sleepiness gone. Flavia raised up on her elbows, ebony locks tumbling past her slim shoulders, and gave her attention to her mistress’s Slumbering form.

“Signora?”

Renata began telling her of all the things that needed to be done or set into motion before she rose with the twilight. When she finished, Flavia threw back her quilt and rose quickly from her cot. And set about her mistress’s work.