On Midnight Wings

Fi’ de garce.

You should know, yeah?

Voices whispered. Wasps droned and burrowed. Dante squeezed his eyes shut, struggling to silence the internal aural storm. Stomping everything down below and kicking the door shut was no longer an option.

There was no more below. No more door to kick shut.

As the din gradually quieted, Dante realized one faint whisper didn’t come from within. He opened his eyes, gaze following the sound to the ceiling. Upstairs. Someone was upstairs still alive, still breathing and talking in a low, steady murmur. A brief silence, followed by the raspy cough of a longtime smoker.

Like maybe two packs of Winstons a day, yeah?

Time to take yo’ medicine, p’tit.

A dark smile tilted Dante’s lips. He opened his eyes.

Gotcha, Papa. Time to take your own damned medicine.

Staggering up to his feet, he moved. When he hit the third floor landing and breezed through the door, he spotted something lying on the floor, a dull metallic gleam.

A gun.

Dante stared at it, winter descending upon his heart. Unaware that he’d even moved, he found himself picking it up. His fingers curled around the rubber grip as naturally as if he’d always held a gun, been born with one in his hand. He felt the cold trickle of sweat along his temples.

Put it down. Or go back and toss it out to Heather. She’s gonna—

Low murmurs from above snagged Dante’s attention. He tilted his head, tucking the gun into the back of his leather pants, then he headed back to the landing. As he raced up the stairs, he felt a little girl’s weight in his arms, heard her black paper wings rustling, caught a glimpse of red hair. Then he was blurring through a crowded club, a woman smelling of lilac and sage, of evening rain, a woman of heart and steel, hugged tight against his side, a woman who disappeared as another little girl, red-haired and freckled, took her place as they ran through a park in the rain, trying to outrace their fates.

Laughter. You kidding me? You are their fates.

Reality wheeled, reminding him of promises made.

Make them pay so I can be warm again.

Make the world burn, mon cher ami, mon ange, and set me free.

Set things to rights, cher. Make them pay in blood and fire.

Reality wheeled yet again.

His finger squeezes the trigger. Her head rocks forward with the first bullet, then snaps back with the second, tendrils of red hair whipping through the air.

That’s my boy, a woman’s voice, Johanna Moore’s voice, whispered in the unlit, broken alleys of his mind. No one can ever be used against you if you are willing to kill them first.

Don’t listen to her, Dante-angel.

Blurring past landing after landing as he raced up the stairs following Papa’s distant voice, he whispered, “I ain’t. Don’t worry.”

But deep down, he wasn’t so sure.

And that scared him to his core.

HEATHER LEANED AGAINST THE metal exit door, afraid if she didn’t her trembling legs would dump her onto the sidewalk. She sucked in cool, moist air until her hammering heart slowed its frantic pace.

“Shit,” she breathed, closing her eyes and thumping the back of her head lightly against the door. “Shit, shit, shit.”

She’d never been frightened of Dante before—for him, yes. But never of him. That had just changed.

What have those bastards done to you, cher?

He’s had as much as he can take, doll . . .

Von, she despaired. Wish you were here.

No way she was leaving Dante alone with Loki. No way she was leaving him, period. Maybe she could find some tranks inside or a heavy dose of morphine, something that would knock him out. Maybe the sigils wouldn’t affect him if he were unconscious. Maybe—

“Heather?” A deep, incredulous rumble. A familiar and oh-so welcome voice.

Heather opened her eyes and confirmed the information her ears had just given her. Relief almost dropped her on the sidewalk despite the door’s support. “Lucien!”

Two other Fallen stood with him—the Morningstar and his daughter.

Heather frowned. Was Lucien holding a bucket? Filled with dark paint or—

A thick, coppery odor curled into her nostrils. Her throat constricted.

—blood.

“Do you have a plan,” Heather asked, nodding at the bucket in Lucien’s hand. “Or are you making it up as you go?”

A wry smile tugged at the corners of Lucien’s mouth. “I believe it’s the latter.”

Heather pushed away from the sigil-marked door. “That’s good,” she said, voice rough. “And here’s why: Dante has severed our bond and he’s falling hard and fast. We don’t have time for plans.”

50 WATER INTO GASOLINE

DANTE WALKED DOWN THE fifth-floor corridor in his stocking feet, idly trailing the fingers of his left hand along the wall as he followed the whispers to their source: last door on the left.

Yanking it open, he stepped into the padded room’s red-lit interior, attention fixed on the figure kneeling in one corner, facing in, hands clasped at chest level. Incense curled sweet and smoky into the air, but didn’t mask the smell of piss. Another figure, tall and winged, stood in one corner. Dante ignored him.

“Hey, Papa,” Dante said. “Comment ca va, you sonuvabitch?”

The soft, monotonous whispers stopped. The praying man swiveled around on his knees to face Dante, blood symbols flaking from his face. Dante grinned. Motherfucking Purcell—but he wore a priest’s purple satin stole over his charcoal gray suit. Something dangled from his hand, something Dante recognized from another time, another place—a rosary. He met Dante’s gaze with frightened olive green eyes.

“Don’t forget your lines,” the fallen angel in the corner admonished with a snap of his fingers. “Really. After all the drilling we did.”

Swallowing hard, Purcell said, “It’s time to bring forth your light.”

Dante stumbled back against the doorway as reality wheeled yet again. His vision splintered as a memory sheared up from below, a memory born here, in this place.

Facedown on a bare mattress, the smell of his own blood thick in his nostrils. The air’s cool breath paints searing pain across Dante’s back. His heart thunders in his ears.

“No one lights a lamp to cover it with a bowl or to put it under the bed,” a man’s low voice says, his words both instruction and prayer. “No, he puts it on a lampstand so that people may see the light when they come in.”

“Ain’t hiding an angel inside me, asshole,” Dante whispers for the millionth time. But Father Michael Moses—former Jesuit, current psycho—ain’t listening.

Another cut and fresh blood spills hot down Dante’s side, soaking into the mattress beneath him. He bites into his constantly healing lower lip. Black flecks whirl through his vision. He twists his wrists again