On Midnight Wings

Lowering the binoculars, Purcell tossed them onto the passenger seat. He yanked open the SUV’s glove box, then pulled his pocketknife free from its cluttered depths. He flipped the blade open. Hesitated.

Dion’s instructions had been more than a little nuts, but if they got him inside the sanitarium again, then— nuts or not—okay. He’d roll with it. What other choice did he have?

All we need is a bit of blood magic to protect you from the parking lot spell.

Blood magic. Christ. Whose blood?

Your own, of course.

Shit. I had a feeling. What about the damned symbols on the building?

Not meant for you. Forget those. Concentrate on my instructions.

And Purcell had. Even now Dion’s voice ran through his mind like an irritating commercial jingle that made him groan every time he caught himself humming it.

No more stalling, he thought, drawing the blade gingerly across his palm. Blood welled. Time to man up.

Purcell cupped his stinging palm, creating a tiny well, and dipped a fingertip into its flesh-cradled ruby depths. Looking into the rearview mirror, he painted the first symbol on his forehead between his eyes.

Once symboled up and once the sun had set, he would continue to follow Dion’s instructions and strap on a small helmet-cam and make sure it fed into the mind reading prick’s cell phone so he could monitor the action as it all went down.

Motherfucker wanted to watch. No problem. Watch he would.

Purcell planned only one itty-bitty change to Dion’s S sanity-bashing plan. He’d forgo the part where Heather Wallace died at S’s programming-triggered hands and just kill the fucking little psycho instead.

Okay, sure, that was more than an itty-bitty change—it was an entirely different plan, but so fucking what? S was too dangerous to play games with, an all-important fact that Dion seemed incapable of grasping. So Purcell, good guy that he was, would help him the fuck out.

As for Heather Wallace, she could stay and die or she could walk away. Purcell didn’t really give a rat’s ass. The choice was hers. She’d never been anything more than a pawn, anyway.

And Dion—along with his mind-wiping threats—could go screw himself. The next time they met it would be with the muzzle of his Glock against the back of Dion’s skull. Purcell suspected he’d be doing the SB a favor when he pulled the trigger. He felt a dark and mocking smile tug at his lips.

Hell, they might even give him a promotion.

44 AS LOST AS I GET BATON ROUGE DOUCET-BAINBRIDGE SANITARIUM

WITH A SOFT, PAINED groan, Heather opened her eyes. She was on the floor in a corridor filled with soft red light. Emergency lighting, a more alert part of brain pointed out helpfully. With another groan, she shut her eyes again. Her head throbbed. She tasted blood at the back of her throat.

Where am I? And why the hell am I on the floor?

She rolled her thoughts backward. Texas. The man who used to be her father. The SB and Little Rock. Caterina Cortini. The rest stop. The Fallen-marked sanitarium—

Catin. Pardonne-moi.

Heather’s eyes snapped open again. “Dante,” she whispered, remembering exactly why she was on the floor, why her head felt like a coconut being pounded non-stop against a rock, why she no longer felt the hereherehere tug of the bond.

Dante had severed it.

And she hoped, prayed, wished with all she had, that he’d done so deliberately. Otherwise, it meant—

“No,” Heather growled, pushing herself into a sitting position. Pain pulsed at her temples, then faded. “No. No. No.”

The fact that she was still alive gave her hope that Dante was, as well. She was a novice where bonds were concerned—how they were made or what happened when they were unmade, but she suspected that, as a mortal, she might not survive his actual death.

Yet her traitorous mind offered a possible scenario: What if Dante severed the bond prior to death—a death he knew was coming—in order to keep her alive?

Catin. Pardonne-moi.

Heather closed her stinging eyes, refusing the tears, refusing the hard knot of grief in her chest, refusing to believe he could be gone. “Not giving up on you, Baptiste,” she rasped through a throat gone so tight, it ached. “I know you’re alive. You have to be. So you hang on. Hear me? Hang on.”

I refuse to be too late.

Opening her eyes, Heather wiped at them with angry swipes from the heel of her hand, before picking her Glock up from the floor. She rose to her feet, one hand to the wall to steady herself, wincing as a bolt of hot pain shot up from her twisted ankle. Her headache returned with her increase in altitude.

Neither would stop her. Nothing could.

Heather limped down the silent, red-lit corridor, the hair prickling on the back of her neck, her sense of horror deepening with each step she took.

Dear God. What the hell happened?

Or maybe the correct question was: Who the hell happened.

She found her answer on the third floor, in air thick with the coppery reek of blood and the ever-thickening stink of death.

Even in the dim lighting, there was no mistaking the dark smears and spatters and Rorschach splashes on the walls and floor for anything other than blood. No mistaking the forms—black-suited agents and medical staff in green scrubs, male and female—sprawled and curled like pill bugs on the polished tile. And Heather didn’t need to crouch beside the bodies for a closer look to see how they had been killed.

Each had died beneath sharp, sharp nails or fangs or merciless, pale hands.

Oh, Dante, oh, cher. Looks like you made sure no one had time or voice enough to stop you through your programming—whether they knew how or not.

A few of the agents had died with fingers locked around the grips of their guns, and judging by the faint and fading scent of cordite beneath the thick smell of blood, more than one had gotten off a few shots.

She hoped none had hit their target.

They brought him here. They had to know what could happen if he slipped their leash of drugs and pain and mental torture. They brought him here against his will. They got what they deserved.

As Heather’s gaze skipped from the black-suited bodies to the crumpled and bloodied forms in green scrubs, she realized she might be wrong, that not all had deserved what they’d received. Then she spotted syringes filled with a dark reddish substance, clutched between the stiffening fingers of two of the slaughtered medical team, and her sympathy drained away.

What do you want to bet that’s the dragon’s blood tree resin Von told me about? The True Blood poison that’s keeping Dante from healing at best and slowly killing him at worst. So much for do not harm.

Doors stood open at either side of the corridor, some lying flush against the wall as though flung or ripped open. Noticing a trail of bloody footprints leading from the nearest cell to the one across from it, then to the next, the dark prints disappearing into shadows stained red by the emergency lights, Heather felt the cold tingle of fear against her spine.

I think he’s had all he can take, doll . . .

Dante’s voice, low and husky, raw with emotion he kept shoving aside, whispered through her memory, words from another time, another place of slaughter.