On Midnight Wings

25 DEEPER INTO HELL BATON ROUGE DOUCET-BAINBRIDGE SANITARIUM

YOU’RE GONNA END UP hurting everyone around you because you can’t help it.

You’ve done well, S. You failed to protect Chloe, but you protected yourself. No one can ever be used against you if you’re willing to kill them yourself.

How does it feel, marmot?

Your nose is bleeding. That’s kinda sexy.

Dante’s fragmented dreams—little splinters of nightmare gleefully carving up his subconscious—suddenly whirled together like filaments of razor-edged cotton candy on a thorned spindle, taking on form, shape, and substance.

A dark and deadly window. Already jimmied. Open and waiting.

A way out of the shattered depths, maybe.

Or maybe a way deeper into hell.

Dante climbed through without hesitation. Swinging his legs over the sill, he dropped down and . . .

. . . finds himself standing on the edge of an empty, weed-choked parking lot. A car pulls in and glides into one of the slots marked in faded white paint in front of an unlit building. A faint fetid odor hangs in the cool night air—old piss and mildew and neglect. On one side of the building, a sign reads WOMEN, on the other side, MEN. And painted in huge white letters between the two sides: CLOSED DUE TO BUDGET CUTS.

The headlights and taillights wink out and the engine shuts off. Car doors creak open, then thunk shut as two women get out—Heather from the passenger side and from the driver’s side, Caterina Cortini, the SB assassin with the nightkind mother.

Dressed in jeans and a blue sweater, Heather stands uneasily beside the car, her gaze scanning the weathered building. She swings her right hand behind her, resting it near the small of her back and the gun that Dante figures she has tucked there into her jeans. Weariness and a fierce determination illuminate her face.

“This is a good spot,” she says. She glances up, studying the star-sprinkled sky. “No one around to see De Noir land and get freaked out.”

On the opposite side of the car, Caterina nods, her dark coffee-colored hair brushing against the shoulders of her black blazer. “That was the idea.”

“When is he supposed to be here?”

“Anytime,” Caterina replies. “In the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to check the building and make sure we’re actually alone.”

“Good idea,” Heather agrees, pulling the gun free from the back of her jeans and holding it down alongside her leg. She heads for the shadow-shrouded restrooms, aimed for the side marked MEN.

Caterina pulls a gun from a holster underneath her blazer. She steps up onto the sidewalk. But she doesn’t move toward the sign reading WOMEN. Instead, she follows after Heather in quick, silent strides, coming up behind her fast, lifting the gun, her face cold and hard and unforgiving.

Dante tries to move, to blur across the neglected parking lot and rip out Caterina’s throat before her finger even finishes pulling the trigger—but his body refuses to obey. His limbs feel like they’re encased in cement. Dead weight.

He opens his mouth to shout a warning, but no sound emerges.

Dante keeps fighting, struggling, pouring all of his strength and concentration into moving, dammit, just . . . fucking . . . MOVE as Caterina aims the gun at the back of Heather’s skull. The dark-haired assassin’s finger curls around the trigger. Then she stops, turns her head, and looks right at him.

And her features shift. She becomes taller. Blonde. Nightkind pale.

Dante goes still. She is no longer Caterina.

Johanna Moore’s ice-blue gaze meets his and her generous lips curve into a smile. “What are you waiting for?” she asks, then adds in a commanding near-whisper, “You should do the honors, my sleeping beauty.”

Something calm and cold uncoils inside of Dante and slithers into place. Something he can’t stop. And he suddenly finds himself in Johanna/Caterina’s place, the rubber grip of the gun in his hand, the muzzle aimed at the back of Heather’s head, the trigger smooth beneath his finger.

He draws in an easy breath, smells her—lilacs and sage and rain. He hears his own voice, low and husky, saying, “Hey, catin.”

Heather starts to turn around.

He pulls the trigger.

Her head rocks forward with the first bullet, then snaps back with the second, tendrils of red hair whipping through the air. She drops like an air-gunned steer. The thick, heady smells of blood and cordite saturate the air. Hunger pulses through him.

Voices buzz around him, annoying houseflies.

You’re gonna end up hurting everyone around you because you can’t help it.

No one can ever be used against you if you’re willing to kill them yourself.

There he is. That’s my Bad Seed bro.

How does it feel, marmot?

S laughs. “Pretty fucking good, actually.”