On Midnight Wings (21 page)

Two dark sedans pulled to a stop in front of the Lexus. One—the decoy—stopped behind. Doors opened and suited
figures sheltered behind them. Air curled in front of the headlights like blue twists of smoke.

“Heather Wallace,” a man’s voice called, muffled through the windshield. “Toss out your weapons, then slowly step out of the vehicle.”

Guns lifted. Aimed.

Wiping her sweaty palms against her jeans, Heather considered her options. If the Bureau had wanted her dead at this particular moment, they could’ve arranged for a car accident instead of an EMP guaranteed to stop her without harm. And the guns might actually be trank guns or Tasers.

She’d just escaped from one institution. She’d be damned if she’d just surrender and allow herself to be taken to another—one with top-level security and no visitors allowed. Heather blew out a breath. Okay. She’d started the day with a gamble. No point in stopping now. It was all in or nothing.

Picking up the tin snips, Heather opened the door, and tossed them out as though they were her gun. They hit the pavement with a hard
tunk
. “All right,” she called. “I’m coming out.”

“Slowly,” she was reminded.

She stepped out of the Lexus. Then swung up the Colt and fired several rounds at the lead cars. She whirled, ignoring the twinge in her ankle, and ran for the woods. Startled shouts slashed into the air behind her.

She felt something bite into the backs of her shoulders and, just like the Lexus had, her muscles shut down as an electrical pulse thrummed through her. She flopped to the ground like a dynamite-stunned fish.

Heather heard footsteps in the dry grass, then the rustle of cloth as someone crouched beside her. The Colt was wrenched from her rigid grasp. Polished black shoes moved into her field of vision.

“Here’s another taste,” a male voice grumbled. Her muscles contracted as another surge of electricity danced through them.
“Shoot at us, will you? Damned fed. I should zap you all the way to Alexandria.”

“Knock it the hell off, Roberts. Just cuff her, okay? Let’s get moving. We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”

A grunt of acquiescence, then Heather felt her arms pulled behind her back, felt handcuffs ratchet shut around her wrists. A cold sweat iced her body as she was hauled to her unsteady feet. Her muscles quivered.

Damned fed. Alexandria.

She’d been intercepted by the SB,
not
the FBI.

Heather never dreamed she would wish that James Wallace had reached the Colt before she had. As a steel-fingered hand locked around her biceps and forced her forward, she wished so now. She walked, stumbling, toward one of the dark sedans, knowing she was well and truly screwed.

D
ALLAS
, T
EXAS

A
PRIL
1

L
UCIEN LANDED BESIDE THE
abandoned Lexus, his wings flaring once before folding shut behind him. The car was parked at a slant on the highway’s shoulder, the driver’s-side door open wide, the interior dark.

A quick glance at the license plate number confirmed that it was James Wallace’s rented Lexus, the vehicle Lucien had seen on the Strickland Deprogramming Institute’s gate security tapes as Wallace had driven away hours ago with Heather in the backseat instead of the passenger seat—as though he were transporting a prisoner.

Question was, where was he taking her? Or, Lucien reflected grimly as he studied the night-shadowed car, where had he
intended
to take her?

Lucien had arrived at the institute shortly after midnight and, using a bit of power, persuasion, and suggestion—
FBI Special Agent Lucas Black checking on Heather Wallace’s
progress
—he had learned from the night nurse that Heather had been unexpectedly checked out by her father hours earlier.

He seemed real unhappy that y’all were going to transfer her to a different facility in the morning. I tried to reason with him, but he refused to be reasoned with. Legally, we couldn’t stop him. I’m sorry no one contacted you about this yet but, to be honest, we thought it was the responsibility of Strickland’s director, not ours . . .

That verified what Lucien had suspected—James Wallace hadn’t known the Bureau had used him to get to Heather. Had let him do all the work and face all the danger, just so they could swoop in and seize the prize—his daughter.

And quietly end her life.

Of course, it would be impossible for the Bureau to know that by ending Heather’s life, they would most likely trigger the world’s end as well when Dante laid waste to it transforming what remained into a funeral pyre for Heather.

Unless I stop him.
Lucien’s hands knotted into fists at his sides.
Like I stopped Yahweh.
Unbidden and unwelcome, a memory thousands of years old played behind his eyes.

Lucien cradles Yahweh’s body against his chest. Light no longer blazes from the
creawdwr
’s face. Tiny drops of scarlet blossom on his skin, blood from Lucien’s nose.

Outside, the ground ripples and quakes and it feels as though Gehenna will tear itself apart. With Yahweh dead, it just might
.

“What have you
DONE
?” Lilith screams the last word. She drops to the floor beside Lucien, hands at her temples. She grabs at Yahweh’s shoulder.

Lucien smacks her hand away and looks at her. Her hand freezes in midair. She stares at him with stunned purple eyes. “You’ll never use him again,” he says. He returns his gaze to Yahweh’s pale, lifeless face. “He’s free . . .”

Headlights shafted through the darkness as a car approached from the opposite lane. It started to slow, a potential
Good Samaritan, until Lucien spared it a single molten glance. Taking in the glowing golden gaze, the dragon-winged silhouette, the driver’s eyes widened. The car sped away.

Darkness rolled in once more across the road—and across Lucien’s heart.

If
it gets that far.
If
it comes to that. I
will
find Dante before it does.

A breeze fragrant with the smells of sagebrush and winter-dried scrub fluttered through the length of Lucien’s hair, whispered cool against his wings. He walked over to the Lexus’s open door, gravel gritting beneath the soles of his shoes.

He knew the car was empty even before he ducked his head inside for a peek. No heartbeats. No faint odor of death. Even so, a keen disappointment knifed through him as he searched the Lexus for any clue as to what had happened to Heather.

An open glove box, an empty gun holster, rental-car paperwork.

A blood-smeared fork on the floorboards.

Severed flex-cuffs.

A few small drops of blood flecking both front seats.

Car keys still in the ignition.

Lucien could read the story easily enough. Heather had used a secreted fork to get the drop on her father, one or both had been slightly injured; she’d managed to get her flex-cuffs off; and someone had grabbed the gun. But nothing—except the flung-open door—hinted at what had happened to Heather or her father after the car had stopped.

They got out, yes, but where did they go?

A chilling possibility occurred to Lucien—maybe it was a mistake to assume that Heather had left the Lexus voluntarily. What if the car had been intercepted, its occupants seized?

No tire marks were scorched black on the highway, no broken bits of red plastic from the taillights or paint scrapes on the bumpers. No flat tires. Nothing to indicate that the Lexus had been forced from the road.

Nothing and more nothing.

Frustration burned through Lucien, strung his muscles wire-tight. He climbed back out of the Lexus and studied the scrub and the woods beyond the road. Closing his eyes, he listened. He heard the small, rapid pulse of animal hearts, of birds, but nothing that indicated a mortal sheltered amongst the trees, hiding in the darkness.

Heather had disappeared. His only link to Dante, gone.

And Lucien no longer knew where to look for her. He felt something deep inside of him crack, then sheer away, like tons of ice sliding from a glacier into the sea.

The truth is never what you hope it will be.

Hearing a metallic double
whomp
, Lucien opened his eyes and watched impassively as both fists slammed again into the Lexus’s roof, crumpling it inward. The windshield exploded, spraying shards of glittering glass into the gravel.

Even while a part of himself insisted that this wasn’t productive behavior, his fists kept pounding into the car, over and over, until the roof finally merged with the seats. Metal groaned, then shrieked as he wrenched the door off its hinges and tossed it toward the woods. He heard a distant
whump
as it landed.

Lucien stared at the remains of the shattered, pummeled car, his taloned hands flexing. Aching to destroy something else. Anything else. It was better than admitting he’d been defeated. And with that realization, his savage fury and despair drained away like radioactive water from a broken core, leaving behind a simple, unavoidable truth.

He needed to ask for help.

I’m running out of options, out of time, and I can no longer afford to keep Dante’s and Heather’s disappearances secret. Not when every world, every life, is at stake.

Especially my son’s.

Lucien’s wings flared, sweeping through the cool air, and he rose into the night. Closing his eyes, he forced himself to
take deep, even breaths. Forced his pulse to slow, his heart to calm.

he sent, <
Heather and her father have vanished. I’m afraid I can’t meet you. Have you arrived in Dallas yet?
>

Silence.

Frowning, Lucien sent again, a psionic ping to check Von’s state of consciousness. He felt the submerged and dreaming rhythm of Sleep—albeit an unusual Sleep given that it wasn’t even close to dawn. Yet Von’s Sleep seemed to be natural, no drug static blurred his consciousness. How was that possible?

And then he remembered the stay-awake pill Von had taken back at the house while trying to reach Heather. He suspected that the consequences Merri Goodnight had warned about had caught up with the nomad.

“By all that’s holy, not now,” Lucien muttered.

Contacting Silver, Lucien learned that he’d left Von at the club, preparing to head to Louis Armstrong International to catch a flight to Dallas. Silver hadn’t heard from Von since, and when he tried at Lucien’s insistence, met with the same result. And came to the same conclusion: stay-awake pill consequences.

<
I’ll go look for him
,> Silver sent. <
Make sure he’s Snoozing someplace where he won’t be crispy-crittered when dawn comes.
>

<
Good. Thank you
.>

<
You pick up Heather yet?
> Silver asked.

Lucien drew in a deep breath of sage-sharp air and folded up his own fears, quietly putting them away. <
Not yet,
> he admitted. <
Things haven’t worked out the way I’d hoped.
But I have another plan, one that involves a trip to Gehenna
.>

<
Gehenna
?> Uncertainty shadowed Silver’s sending. <
Is that smart? If they find out—
>

<
Don’t worry, I don’t plan on spreading the word
.>

Lucien ended the conversation with a promise to keep Silver informed, now that Von was down for the count.

Abandoning the now-ruined Lexus as a lost cause, Lucien
unfurled his wings and took to the air. As he soared higher and higher in the star-pierced sky, frost iced his hair into translucent tendrils, glittered on his wings, burned cold in his lungs. He flew through the night, arrowing himself toward the gate high above the Gulf of Mexico, the smell of brine and deep water in his nostrils.

He’d briefly considered flying to New Orleans and St. Louis No. 3, to the gate Dante had punched into the wall of a white marble tomb, hammering a hole between worlds with just his flame-swallowed fist and a son’s determination to bring his father home again. Lucien’s throat tightened.

He went to Gehenna for me, I can do no less for him.

All out of options, yes. Nearly out of time, true. But he would be careful, all the same. If the Elohim in general learned that their
creawdwr
was not only injured but stolen, most likely by ill-intentioned mortals who planned to use him, the Fallen would declare war on the human race.

And if that seat-warming pretender to the throne, Gabriel, or any member of what remained of the Celestial Seven, should learn the truth, they would lead the winged and righteous brigade into mortal skies, setting it ablaze with their wrath.

Once Dante had been found, and the human world reduced to ruin and pockets of trembling survivors, he would be returned to Gehenna and never be allowed to leave again.

And whoever freed Dante during this holy war and kicked the most mortal ass would be bonded to him.

Lucien thought of the lie Astarte had told Dante.

No one can bind you against your will, nor would anyone wish to.

Anyone strong enough
could
bind him against his will, and each would slaughter the other for the chance to do so. Gabriel especially, given his precarious perch upon the black-starred throne because of Dante’s violent rejection of him and of his authority. Binding the
creawdwr
would guarantee his continued rule.

Not to mention being a sweet bit of revenge on both father and son.

Lucien absolutely couldn’t allow any of them to know what had happened to Dante or Heather. He needed to pretend that everything was fine, that Dante would return to Gehenna as pledged when the time came. As symbolized by the sigil on his chest.

And that very sigil was the only option left. Lucien winged through the night until he caught a glimmer of color in the frozen dark. Where once a golden gate had spun, visible only to Elohim eyes, now there was only an untethered rip in reality. One awaiting Dante’s restorative touch.