On Midnight Wings (33 page)

“Burn, you motherfucking
fi’ de garce
.”

A high-pitched wailing pierced the night, a siren of agony vibrating from his own throat. Choking on the acrid reek of his own roasting flesh, Mauvais raced, flailing, across the deck to the railing and hurtled overboard

He plummeted, blazing, an April bonfire, into the cold, night-black waters of the Mississippi.

G
EHENNA

A
MOIST, BRINE-SCENTED WIND
whipped through Lucien’s hair, pushed at his folded wings. He studied the night-darkened sea crashing around the weathered rocks far below, ghostly spume spraying into the air. Beneath his feet, he felt the booming vibration as the sea crashed into a cave hollowed below into the cliff face.

“How much longer?” he asked.

“He’ll be here soon,” Hekate’s soft voice answered from beside him.

Lucien said nothing, a muscle ticking in his jaw. Leave it to the Morningstar to take his own sweet time even while the trumpets blew and the stars fell from the skies.

Enough time had already been wasted presenting himself to Gabriel and assuring the royal pretender that everything was fine with Dante, that his visit to Gehenna had been prompted merely by a desire to see, once more, a certain silver-haired enchantress.

But engrossed in directing the cleaning of the
creawdwr
’s receiving chamber, a room unused since Yahweh’s death more than two thousand years, Gabriel had barely paid any attention to Lucien’s presence, let alone the reason for his visit.

Finally waving Lucien away like an annoying summer fly, Gabriel had said only, “Why should I care? She’s no longer my hostage. She may do as she pleases. And if that includes becoming entangled with her mother’s former lover, the murderer of our previous
creawdwr
, then so be it. I have better things to worry about.”

Hekate’s silver bell of a voice pulled Lucien away from his thoughts. He looked at her, certain she’d asked him a question, one he hadn’t heard. Pale moonlight rippled along her looped and coiled—and now salt-spray-beaded—tresses. Night hollowed her cheeks, pooled deep in her hyacinth eyes. Drew him in.

“Forgive me,” he murmured. “I’m afraid I didn’t—”

Hekate shook her head. “Nothing to forgive. I know you have a lot on your mind—including whether you can trust my father to do the right thing.”

“There is that. But I believe he will. It’s in his own best interests.”

“For now.”

“What did you ask me while I was woolgathering?”

Hekate hesitated, then turned her gaze to the restless sea. “If you knew why Dante refused to restore my mother. She was helping you, after all. Trying to protect him from the others. It makes no sense.”

Lucien shook his head regretfully. “I don’t know the answer to that. I haven’t had time or opportunity to discuss the matter with Dante. But I will, I promise, once he’s home and safe.”

“Thank you.” Hekate flashed Lucien a quick, grateful smile before giving her attention back to the sea. “So restless,” she murmured. “When I was a child, my mother told me that Yahweh’s mother, Leviathan, lived in the ocean and that when it stormed and the sea was wild and restless, it was just Leviathan grieving her only child.”

Leviathan. A chill touched the base of Lucien’s spine. “Do you still believe that?”

“When I was young, yes. But now, of course not. For the longest time though, storms like this made me think of death and loss and a mother’s tears.”

Watching the white-capped waves, Lucien nodded. “I can understand that.”

“I’ve only heard stories about her—Yahweh’s mother. She left Gehenna for the mortal world centuries before I was born.”

“To hunt her son’s killer.”

“You.” Hekate’s voice was soft, absent of accusation, simply stating a fact.

“Me,” Lucien agreed. He drew in a deep breath of chilled, briny air. Underneath, he caught Hekate’s sweet scent—apple blossoms and cool, shaded water.

“How have you managed to elude Leviathan all this time?”

“I haven’t,” Lucien replied, shifting his attention from the sea back to Hekate’s lovely face. “She found me once, nearly ten years ago. After I summoned her.”

“By all that’s holy, why would you do such a thing?”

“Desperation. Fifteen years imprisoned within an
aingeal
trap will do that to you.”

Hekate stared at him. “Imprisoned? Where? How?”

Lucien shook his head and shifted his gaze back to the heaving dark waters below. “How? My own foolishness. Where? A tattoo shop on the Oregon coast. As to the question you
didn’t
ask—why—as Nightbringer, I often forced mortals to face the consequences of their own selfish actions and greed.”

“I take it that
you
were those consequences?”

“That I was.” A wry smile pulled at the corners of Lucien’s mouth. “Your mother used to accuse me of being judgmental and arrogant. She wasn’t wrong. Once I left Gehenna, I continued my work as Nightbringer. I continued
very
diligently, forcing the mortal world to face what I would not—God was dead. I left entire cities in ruin, the air choked with the ashes of the dead.”

“All to forget Yahweh,” Hekate said slowly. “To forget what you had done. What you
had
to do.”

“To escape,” Lucien corrected, old sorrow tightening his throat. “There
was
no forgetting.”

Not the whispered sound of Yahweh’s weary voice:
Let them have me, my
calon-cyfaill
. Let them bind me, chain me to their will. Let it be done before it’s too late. Let it finally be over
.

Nor the weight of Yahweh’s lifeless body in his arms.

“And did it work?” Hekate asked softly.

“It did. For centuries. Until I hunted down a woman who enjoyed scamming the bereaved out of their pensions and savings. She was to be the last before I began my new life in New Orleans.”

“New life?” Hekate’s voice dropped into a husky, knowing murmur. “Ah. Dante’s mother. So that’s who reawakened your heart.”

Lucien nodded. “Genevieve.” He studied the foam-tipped waves below. “My scammer turned out to be nephilim and not mortal. She’d also laid a trap for me—one I walked right into—and forced me to recount my own sins in detail for fifteen very long years.”

Fifteen years—unaware that Genevieve was pregnant, unaware that she had been murdered after their son’s birth, leaving the newborn in the hands of monsters. A son Lucien had no idea even existed.

“So you summoned Leviathan to free yourself.” Hekate’s voice was stunned. “Or was it atonement you sought, not freedom?”

“Both, perhaps,” Lucien replied. In truth, he was no longer certain. Behind his eyes, memory stirred.

Leviathan answers in a violent storm that shakes the cliff. She rises from the deep, a valley of endless folds and marine darkness and cascading water that never touches the sea or ground. Her
wybrcathl
, a furious subsonic bellow, shatters the tattoo shop’s windows and fractures the building itself.

As sea spray washes away the sigils and angelic script encircling him, Lucien is freed. He battles Paloma and both are
injured, but before he can finish the fight, Leviathan envelops them both in an undulating dark tide that slides over them like a bowl.

Lucien realizes that he owes Leviathan the story that Paloma had demanded; the story of his murder of her only child—Yahweh. Standing in an oceanic night lit only by the phosphorescent flashes from bizarre creatures swimming within Leviathan, Lucien gives the transformed and fallen angel the last moments of her son’s life. And the reasons for his death.

At the end of it, she asks,

Leviathan pulls away, recedes, and returns to the seething sea, leaving Lucien untouched. Physically, at least.

After he’d discovered Dante’s existence, Lucien had often wondered at Leviathan’s silence, eventually coming to believe that, with her long search for her son’s killer finally over, Leviathan slept in lightless ocean depths, hibernating beneath tons of watery pressure, and beyond the reach—so far—of Dante’s
anhrefncathl
. Or so Lucien hoped with each beat of his heart.

A wind-chilled hand touched his shoulder, the fingers nearly cold as ice against his skin. He shivered.

“Lucien, tell me the story from the beginning.”

Turning his head to look at her, Lucien wrapped Hekate’s icy fingers in his, then lifted them to his lips. Kissed them. “It’s a long story, one for another time.”

“I like long stories,” she murmured, stepping closer. The wind molded her moss-green gown against her curves, coaxed rosy color from her cheeks.

“So do I,” a voice said from above them. “And I hear you have a good one.”

Lucien looked up to see the Morningstar kiting down from the night sky, moonlight gleaming along his alabaster wings
as they slashed through the brine-laden air. Giving Hekate’s fingers one more kiss, Lucien released her hand. He swiveled to face her father.

“Good isn’t the word I’d use,” Lucien said. “Bad, with the potential for worse.”

The Morningstar landed with ease, despite the wind. He folded his wings behind him with a graceful flutter. He was dressed for the sea weather in black plaid trousers over sturdy black boots. Regarding Lucien with golden eyes, he said, “Let’s hear it, then.”

In a voice prickly with his own swallowed pride, Lucien obliged him.

F
INISHED WITH HIS GRIM
recitation, Lucien watched as the Morningstar paced along the cliff’s rocky edge in long, furious strides, pebbles gritting beneath his boots. The wind—heavy with the smell of impending rain—whipped through his short white hair and plucked at his trousers. Anger radiated from him in dry ice waves, scorching his bitter orange scent.

“I
knew
Dante should’ve remained here,” the Morningstar growled.

“He didn’t want to,” Lucien reminded. “And no one could’ve forced him without suddenly needing to adapt to additional or perhaps fewer body parts.”

“Will you help or not?” Hekate asked. “You sealed the blood pledge, therefore you can use it to track Dante.”

“Yes, I can,” the Morningstar agreed. He ceased his pacing and turned around to face them both, winter frost in his eyes. “But once I do, what shape will his sanity be in?”

“What makes you question his sanity?” Hekate asked.

The Morningstar waved a negligent hand. “We’ve all witnessed his seizures, his odd tumbles into a past he doesn’t seem
to remember. He was already standing at the crumbling edge of the abyss. He might’ve already fallen.”

Lucien shook his head. “You have no idea what Dante’s endured.”

“I know more than you think.
Much
more. Mortal minds are so easy to read.”

Lucien stared at the Morningstar, chilled to the bone.

Mortal minds
.

Heather
.
Annie
.

If the Elohim should learn about Dante’s past, about Bad Seed, about what had been done to him—the programming implanted within their
creawdwr
, they would kill him before allowing a mortal agency to control him.

“Dante’s stronger than you think,” Lucien said.

“Dante may be strong, but he’s also exhausted. Even I could see that.”

“So, are you saying it’s too late?” Hekate asked her father. “That you won’t even try? We can’t just give up, we need—” Her words trailed away, her gaze turning inward as she received a sending. She blinked, frowning.

Lucien glanced at the Morningstar and saw that he shared his daughter’s introspective expression and was most likely the source of the sending.

Hekate blew out an exasperated breath. “Fine. I’ll give you ten minutes.”

“For what?” Lucien asked.

“A bit of privacy,” the Morningstar answered. “So we can discuss arrangements.”

“Ah. Arrangements,” Lucien murmured. “Of course.”

Lucien watched as Hekate stepped away to unfurl her creamy white wings. They glimmered ghost-pale in the darkness, their undersides the iridescent lavender of seashells. She rose into the night, then quickly flew out of sight.

“Wise,” Lucien said. “Can’t have your daughter seeing you for who you really are.”

The Morningstar laughed, genuine amusement in his voice. “The child is five centuries old. Trust me, she has no illusions on that score.”

“No. I suppose not,” Lucien agreed, turning to face the Morningstar. “Let’s have it, then. How much is your help going to cost me?”

“Now, now,” the Morningstar chided, his lips curving into a mocking smile. “My
help
is freely given.” He stepped forward until he’d narrowed the distance between them to a mere handspan. “It’s your
failure
—as a guardian, as a father—that will cost you.”

Lucien’s hands knotted into fists. He barely felt the bite of his talons against his palms. Holding the Morningstar’s now gold-flecked gaze, he growled, “Name your price. But know this before you do—I’ll never agree to anything that negates Dante’s free will.”

“Such as putting a mortal—like Annie—ahead of his well-being? That’s exactly what you did when you rescued her while your son was being stolen from inside the club.”

Angelic power crackled electric along Lucien’s fingers, snapping the sharp smell of ozone into the briny air. “Consider your next words carefully,” he warned.

An answering thrum of power vibrated from the Morningstar and into Lucien. Elohim challenge. The ozone scent thickened. Then the Morningstar’s expression shifted from anticipation to regret as he took a reluctant step back.

“Before we play any Elohim games, we have a
creawdwr
to find.”