On Midnight Wings

21 A SIMPLE, UNAVOIDABLE TRUTH DALLAS, TEXAS APRIL 1

LUCIEN 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.

Voicing his wybrcathl as he winged through the rip and past the guards on the other side, Lucien flew into the shimmering colors of the faded aurora borealis undulating across Gehenna’s pale night sky. He breathed in the smells of jasmine and smoky myrrh and salt air. The scent of home, yes. For thousands of years. But no longer.

Wings cutting through the air in sure, strong strokes, Lucien aimed himself toward the Royal Aerie. Landing on the marble terrace, he warbled a call to the healer with hyacinth eyes and hair the color of a blue-frosted winter moon—the Morningstar’s beautiful daughter.

Hekate’s musical response came almost immediately.