On Midnight Wings

39 PLANTING SEEDS

SO EASY. FAR EASIER than he’d ever imagined.

Loki withdrew from the blood-drenched creawdwr’s oh-so-broken mind and laughed, the sound of it floating down the corridor like a cheerful birthday balloon.

All that fretting for nothing.

He’d flown from New Orleans following the faint and dying echoes of a song he’d barely heard, pondering the best ways to manipulate Dante’s trust and fretting over how to get the Nightbringer’s son to drop his shields. To let him in.

Just to take a peek at a creawdwr’s inner workings.

Or those of the Great Destroyer.

Loki had a fertile imagination, one he employed constantly, but he never could’ve imagined arriving at a better moment—just as a seizure dropped Dante right into his arms, his shields already crumbling thanks to a near-lethal mix of vampire tranquilizers, True Blood poison, and pure, simple exhaustion—mental, emotional, and physical.

Fate had finally landed on Loki’s side.

And no wonder Dante—or S, as he sometimes thought of himself—was exhausted. Loki grinned in approval as he drank in Dante’s handiwork.

He’s been a very busy boy.

Crumpled into dark pools of their own thickening blood, bodies clad in either black suits or medical scrubs littered the blood and gore-festooned corridor. Then there were the doors flung open on either side of the corridor and leading into rooms full of silence and the rich reek of coppery blood and musky fear.

Nothing like a little slaughter to perk up a place. Child has talent.

Loki looked at Dante, still held within his arms, with genuine fondness. The first mixed-blood creawdwr in history—a pale-skinned reality in leather pants and blood-smeared flesh that no one had ever thought possible—if they’d given it any thought at all.

Mine to guide. Mine to wind-up and turn loose. Mine alone.

Well, perhaps not completely, Loki reflected sourly as he regarded the intricate and raised white scar high on the left side of Dante’s chest. The Morningstar’s mark. And—as gleaned from Dante’s unprotected mind—a blood pledge to return to Gehenna to restore the fading land.

A pledge the narcissistic Morningstar would live long enough to regret. Deeply.

Loki pushed Dante’s blood-and sweat-dampened hair back from his face. Drew in an appreciative breath. Wild and fey, Dante’s beauty, burning with a dark and mesmerizing heat and all the deadlier for it. Helen’s beauty launched only a thousand ships; Dante’s would ignite worlds.

The Great Destroyer.

How long have I waited for this? How many eons?

More than he cared to count. But no longer. The waiting was finally done.

Lifting his gaze, Loki studied Dante’s first dark miracle—a secret, government-run sanitarium/brainwashing facility transformed into a silent abattoir. And all while drugs and poison had been busy short-circuiting his power, not to mention his sanity.

“Bravo,” Loki whispered.

I can’t wait to see what he does next. And I’ve got a ringside seat.

Once the drugs wore off, once Dante had healed, and once he had full use of the creu tân again, Loki had a feeling that a certain quote from the dusty Old Testament would once more ring true—a promise like a searing white nuclear light, one that left nothing but shadows in its wake: And there shall be great wailing and gnashing of teeth.

And when the Elohim finally heard Dante’s song and came winging down from the heavens into the sanitarium’s parking lot—excuse me, apologies, abattoir—and discovered themselves blocked from entering the building due to the spell Loki had carefully cast in his own blood before going inside?

Furious would only be the start.

Loki laughed, a happy sound brimming with anticipation. Lowering his head, he pressed his lips against Dante’s in a gentle kiss. Tasted copper and salt. Breathed in the scent of burning leaves, November frost, and bone-deep grief.

He yearns to turn back the hands of time, to save those he’s lost, to protect the mortal woman, the red-haired lovely, who is drawing ever nearer. He yearns for what he can never have. Ah, but he is young and still foolish and doesn’t know better. Yet.

Beyond the sanitarium’s thick walls, Loki felt the increase in Louisiana’s vibration as the night waned, giving way to the approaching dawn. But before Sleep claimed Dante, Loki needed to plant a few seeds.

Thanks to Dante’s fallen shields, he knew just how to do it.

Closing his eyes, Loki exhaled, then shifted. Energy prickled over his skin, a hundred million bee stings all at once, a familiar and much loved sensation. Once his new form had settled into place, he opened his eyes, adjusted his transformed clothing, then lowered his head and breathed a stream of energy between Dante’s slightly parted lips. The creawdwr’s long-lashed eyelids fluttered but remained closed.

Loki patted Dante’s cheek, then said in a low, concerned drawl. “Dante, hey. C’mon, man. Hey. Can you hear me? Wake up, little brother.”