On Midnight Wings (37 page)

Looks like I was wrong about that shift change.

The man climbed out of the Lexus and Heather saw that she was right about the scrubs—his were mint-green, the short sleeves revealing forearms thick with black hair. He locked the car with a tap of his smart key, then started across the parking lot. He stopped abruptly, frowning, his gaze on the sanitarium. He stared, his expression shifting from a puzzled frown to a blank slate. All expression vanished from his face. Swiveling around, he returned to his car in quick strides, unlocked it, slid inside, and drove off.

The hair prickled on the back of Heather’s neck. What the hell was
that
?

Heather watched as another car glided into the lot—a standard black government-issue SUV this time, driven by a man in a black suit—and the same exact events unfolded. Park, head across parking lot, freeze, go blank, then turn and leave.

Another car, then another, as staff members and agents pulled into the lot, then left again after gazing at the Fallen-marked building.

Why not me?
Heather rose from her crouch. She regarded the building for a long moment, knowing a Fallen spell had to
be the reason for the day shift’s about-face, but why hadn’t it affected her too?

Whatever the reason, maybe the caster wouldn’t be expecting anyone to saunter past the spell, and had his or her guard down. Heather could only hope.

Adrenaline flooding her system, she finished her slow-motion race across the parking lot and trotted up the long concrete steps to the entrance.

T
HE VOICE, LOW AND
urgent and as familiar as his own, encircled Dante’s awareness like a fisherman’s net and hoisted him up from the whispering depths and his haunted dreams, a gathering of the lost—Simone, Gina, Jay. Their bodies like ice, their hearts dead and empty.

He looked back as he ascended and saw their upturned faces, moon pale and expressionless, disappear one by one into the darkness like stones beneath black water. Grief coiled around his heart.

I’m so cold, sugar,
Gina called, her words like knives, each one piercing deeper than the one before.
I need you to make it right. Make them pay so I can be warm again. Torch the goddamned world, sugar. Make it burn for me.

Simone nodded as her face winked from Dante’s sight.
Make the world burn,
mon cher ami, mon ange,
and set me free.

Set things to rights,
cher, Jay urged, sinking into those black waters still clad in his blood-soaked straitjacket.
Make them pay in blood and fire.

“They’ll burn,” Dante promised in a rough whisper.

“What was that, little brother?”

Dante opened his eyes to a red-lit gloom. The overheads were out and emergency lights had winked on, giving the silent corridor an apocalyptic feel. He blinked. Someone leaned over him, someone with nut-brown hair tied back in a ponytail, someone who smelled of leather and gun oil and frost.

Someone whose voice
hadn’t
been a dream.

“Von . . .”

Or Papa in a Von-suit. Fucker won’t stay dead, remember?

“Right here, man.”

Dante forced himself up onto his elbows—or tried to, anyway. The seizure had left him drained, every muscle wrung dry despite all the blood—gallons and gallons, fucking buckets—he and/or S had sucked down. He felt hollowed out, like he had nothing left. He fell back onto the tiled floor, bathed in a cold sweat. Black pinpricks poked holes in his vision. He swallowed hard.

“Shit,” he muttered, voice hoarse. “More fucking awesomeness.”

“Here. Hold on.” Leather creaked as an arm slipped around Dante’s shoulders and gently helped ease him into a sitting position. “Better?”

“Yeah.
Merci, beaucoup
.” Blinking away more black pinpricks, Dante found himself looking into Von’s gleaming green eyes and felt an intense surge of relief. Something flickered at the back of his memory—a tall, winged figure. “Is Lucien here too? I thought . . .”

“Nah, just me, man.”

Dante reached up and cupped Von’s face between hands that seemed a little less than steady, dammit—be honest, a
lot
less—and pulled him in for a quick, grateful kiss. “Fuck, am I happy to see you,
mon ami
,” he said, releasing him. “Did you find Heather too? How the hell did you find—”

Boy needs a lesson. Boy
always
needs a lesson
.

Reality began to wheel. The corridor started to drop away.
Dante squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated with everything he had on remaining in the here-and-now, fought to grab onto it with both hands. But the here-and-now was fucking slippery as hell.

Dante-angel, run, run, run!

No escape for you, sweetie.

Welcome home, S. Welcome
back
.

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

A hand grasped Dante’s shoulder, the palm hot against his skin, and shook him gently. “Wherever you think you are, little brother, you ain’t there. Hear me? You. Ain’t. There.”

Dante seized that urgent voice and held on for all he was worth. He opened his eyes. He was still in the corridor, Von kneeling beside him.

“You okay?” Von asked, dark brows slanted down in a worried V.

Dante nodded. “For right now, yeah. What were we talking about?”

“About how I stumbled across your ass.” Von grinned. “I found a suit in the know and yanked the info—along with pretty much everything else—out of his mind. Probably needing a diaper change right about now. But”—his grin vanished as he looked Dante over, fire igniting in the green depths of his eyes—“I think the motherfucker got off easy. Looks like you’ve been through hell and then some. I’m betting you gave back as good as you got.”

“Not even close. The fucker won’t stay dead.”

“Which fucker?” Von asked, throwing a puzzled glance down the corridor. “They all look pretty damned dead to me.”

Pain pulsed at Dante’s temples. His memory blanked. “Fuck.
Je sais pas
,” he admitted. “Don’t remember.”

Von returned his attention to Dante. “Then I was right,” he said. His expression of grim resignation left Dante uneasy.

“Right? About?”

“Sending Lucien to intercept Heather, to keep her away from you. Away from what you still need to do.”

Nightmarish images swirled behind Dante’s eyes, crimson and violent.

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. . . .

“Then he’d better hurry,” Dante said through a throat gone tight. Deep within his mind, his heart, he felt a
hereherehere
tug, one that felt stronger with each passing second. “Cuz she’s real fucking close. And that means—”

Run from me,
catin. Je t’en prie.

“She’s in danger,” Von finished. “I know, little brother.
If
she finds you. But Lucien will stop her, don’t worry. He’ll keep her safe. Right now, Sleep is on the way and we’ve got a few things to discuss before we go under.”

Dante nodded. “That bit about what I still need to do, yeah?”

“Yup.” With a sigh, Von rose to his feet.. “You can’t let any of these fuckers—FBI, SB, nightkind, Fallen—get away with this shit. I know I told you in no uncertain terms that you needed to learn how to control your gifts and your past before taking action against anyone, but that was before.”

Dante stood, steadying himself with a hand against the wall when the corridor did a slow twirl. “Before what?” he asked, the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach suggesting he might not want or like the answer.

“Before you started to go nutso, little brother,” Von replied, voice husky. “Take a look around. Time’s almost up. Do you even remember doing any of this?”

Dante did as Von suggested and looked,
really
looked. Men and women in medical scrubs were included amongst the black-suited bodies sprawled and fetal-ball-curled on the floor. And the bloody footprints leading from one room to the next told him everything he needed to know. Whatever this building might’ve been once, it was now a morgue. The air alone, reeking of blood and of flesh just beginning to decompose, told him that.

Although Dante knew he was responsible for each body on the fucking floor, he didn’t remember killing a single one.

“No,” he admitted reluctantly. “I don’t.”

Trust me, bro. We had fucking fun
.

Tais-toi,
you sonuvabitch
.

Laughter.
Faites-moi.

“Soon you won’t know any of us, not even Heather,” Von said, the words low and level. “Time’s almost up, man.”

Dante slumped against the wall, feeling gut-punched and breathless. He heard only truth in his friend’s words. Trailing both hands through his hair, he whispered, “Fuck.”

“You need to set things right while you still have some sanity left. Make these motherfuckers pay—for Simone, for Gina and Jay, for Chloe, hell, for you too—before it’s too late. All you need is the courage to walk the path you were born to walk. With a friend at your side.”

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.

Dante rubbed his temples with the tips of his fingers, trying to focus past the noise and the never-ending ache. Trying to resist Sleep’s narcotic embrace.

Promises he’d made to the living whispered against the demands of the lost.

As lost as I get, I will find you, Heather. Always.

I ain’t leaving you there in that place,
ma p’tite ange.
I
will
come for you
.

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

You’ll always have a clan in me, Von,
mon ami,
in us. You’ll never ride solo
.

“I can buy you some time, sanity-wise.” Von said in quiet, earnest tones. “But you’re gonna need to close off your bond with Heather first, especially if you want to keep her safe.
Once you’ve done that, then you learn to ride that madness of yours like a bucking bronco. Make it do what
you
want. Use it to set things right.”

“No. Heather—”

“Will be safe,” Von cut in, “
if
you close the bond. You can’t risk cutting it, not with the shape you’re in, but if you seal it at your end, you’ll keep her free from mental harm—plus she won’t be able to home in on you anymore. Then Lucien won’t have a problem keeping her away.”

Heather’s voice whispered through Dante’s memory, a conversation held in the honeysuckle-and rose-perfumed courtyard as he’d struggled with Trey’s loss at his own blue-flamed hands and what that meant for everyone he loved.

I’m not leaving you. You can’t make me. You don’t have the right.

Too dangerous,
catin
. Ain’t risking you.

That’s my decision, not yours. I choose you, Baptiste, and everything that comes with you.

Dante felt a smile flicker across his lips. “Then you don’t know my pigheaded woman. Lucien will hafta tie her down. She won’t stop.”

“Maybe not. But with the bond sealed, she won’t be able to find you.”

Dante wasn’t so sure about that. Not only was Heather a damned good detective, something beyond their bond linked them—and always had—something intrinsic and soul deep. One way or another, she would
find
him.

Just as he would find her.

His finger squeezes the trigger. Heather falls and falls and falls.

Icy fingers closed around Dante’s heart.

“I know your concentration is a little fucked right now, so let me help you close the bond.”

It might not stop Heather in the end, but if he could slow her down . . .

Run from me,
catin. Je t’en prie.

Dante nodded. “
Oui
. Yeah. Let’s do it.”

The nomad wasted no time in crossing the corridor. He stopped in front of Dante and brushed the backs of his fingers against Dante’s temples. A smile ghosted across his lips, a smile Dante returned in kind. Von started speaking, but a high-pitched humming filled Dante’s ears, drowning out Von’s words.

Dante sensed the past opening up beneath him, a bottomless lake he treaded, fighting to keep his head above its dark waters. He wanted desperately to remain in this moment, to
believe
in it.

This is
Von
, goddammit . . .

You sure about that?

A determined frown furrowed Von’s brow and, for a split second, it seemed like his form rippled. A warped reflection in a funhouse mirror.

See? I told you.
Fi’ de garce
is doing it again. Fucker won’t stay dead.

Yeah? Well, then we’ll kill him as many times as it takes.

Dante stabbed his fingers into Von’s chest—
ain’t Von. Just motherfucking Papa in a Von-suit
—his fingers tearing through leather and black pearl-buttoned shirt, ribs and heated flesh. Wrapped around the pulsing heart.

Papa/Von’s mouth opened in a soundless gasp. He looked down. “Little brother—”

“No,
fuck
you, you don’t get to say that to me. Only Von can. And you fucking ain’t Von.” Dante yanked Papa’s heart from the bloodied hole in his chest and tossed it down the corridor.

Papa dropped to the floor with a heavy, boneless thud, his Von-suit rippling away to reveal not Papa but a big dude with short red hair and empty eyes.

Dante tilted his head, studied the newest body on the tiles. “Huh.”

Another suit. Papa’s like those fucking Russian nesting dolls. One skin suit after another, but I don’t know this one.