On Midnight Wings

46 FALLING APART WITH BREATHTAKING SPEED MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE LLYGAID COMPOUND

“HOLY HELL,” VON GROANED.

Taiko drummers had somehow taken up residence inside his skull and were now busy pounding the living daylights out of his brain. Slitting open one eye, he did a quick survey of his surroundings from the cold rock floor he was sprawled upon.

Moonlight trickled in through chinks in the timber and rock walls, revealing a stone-encircled well in the small, unlit building’s center. Weathered buckets and cobwebbed tools hung from nails hammered into the walls.

The cool air smelled of old wood pocked with decay and insect husks, of rust and moss and dank rock, of deep, still water—and not at all familiar.

Don’t know where I am, but at least it ain’t a jail cell. I think.

Von opened both eyes reluctantly and eased himself up into a sitting position, pulse thundering at his temples. “Crap.” Hunching forward, he closed his eyes again and rubbed his aching forehead with his fingertips.

Ain’t had a hangover in decades, what the—

He never finished the thought.

Memory poured into his mind in a nightmarish flood of images—Dante missing, Heather stolen, Merri’s stay-awake pills, Holly with her angry baby blues and her black-kilted llafnau.

Looks like you’re skipping out on me again.

One night is all I’m asking and then I’ll head straight for Memphis—as ordered. You have my word.

The same word you gave less than a week ago? The same word you gave me not two hours ago? That word, Vonushka? You made me look like a fool.

“Shanghaied,” Von muttered, thumping the back of his head against the rough-hewn wall in disgust, instantly regretting it as the taiko drummers inside his skull launched into a double-time rhythm. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

Holly and her llafnau had carted his pill-Snoozing ass back to the plantation and tucked him inside the llygaid academy’s well house for safekeeping until he awakened. He’d bet his left rim that the door wasn’t even locked. Who needed locks when you had the nightkind version of SEAL Team Six on hand?

With a disgusted sigh, Von opened his eyes. His headache intensified, the nearly translucent slivers of moonlight creating and stuffing another enthusiastic taiko drummer into his already crowded skull.

Von winced and resumed rubbing his forehead. He remembered his conversation—decades ago, it felt like—about the pill and its consequences with pretty little Conseil du Sang spy Merri Goodnight.

No wonder she’d given him that amused smile. She’d known exactly what he was in for and knew he wouldn’t need anyone to remind him of his consequences-we-don’t-need-no-stinking-consequences bravado or to say “I told you so.” Nope. Not when she knew he’d be kicking his own ass repeatedly and hard.

Besides, his own personal drummers were oh so busy, busy, busy pounding those consequences into his skull. Literally. Motherfuckers.

Taking the damned stay-awakes had been worth it since they’d allowed him to contact Heather before their temporary link dissolved, but he had no intention of ever downing another.

Von shut his eyes again and waited for the pain to dial down a notch or five. How the fuck did Dante do it? Deal with, live with, his monster migraines?

A quicksilver thought flowed into his mind and Von’s eyes opened in surprise. <Von, your ride is here. Wake your tattooed nomad ass up.>

<My tattooed nomad ass is wide awake, along with the rest of me, and regretting the fact, big-time. And what the hell do you mean by ‘my ride is here’? You saying you’re in Memphis?>

<Wow. Sharp as ever. Seriously. No one would ever suspect that you took a bullet to the head. Yes, we’re in Memphis. Just a few blocks west of the compound. And we’ve got a plan to spring you.>

Von frowned. <How the hell did you find the compound and who’s we?>

<Me and Annie, Jack, Merri, and her partner. And as for how, Merri’s mère de sang gave us the location.>

<And what about Heather? Dante? Did Lucien . . . >

<Heather found Dante, and Lucien’s there now too, but—>

<But? Christ, I hate that damned word. Go ahead, give me the bad news.>

And Silver did just that, filling Von’s mind with images as he brought him up to speed on everything that had happened since the stay-awakes had dropped him on the sidewalk at Holly’s booted feet.

Mauvais and his companions outside the club.

The shape-shifting fallen angel.

Giovanni and his offer of help from the High Priestess of the Cercle de Druide.

Heather’s escape; her call.

The decision to drive to Memphis on nomad rescue detail.

Lucien’s return with the Morningstar and his daughter in tow.

The magic-grafittied sanitarium.

Heather inside with Dante. Lucien outside and unable to get in.

One image in particular chilled Von.

Dante’s heated hands cup Silver’s face and he leans in close, a dark and wicked light glittering in his kohl-rimmed eyes. He brushes fevered lips against Silver’s. “Let me in,” he whispers. “Let me in, mon ami.”

Chilled, yes. But not for long. Fury surged molten through Von’s veins. The pain in his head lessened. Shape-shifting motherfucker. But at least they now knew what they were up against. The whole forewarned, yada, yada thing.

<Wasn’t your fault, Silver,> Von sent. <Remember that. Coulda—woulda—happened to any of us. Now, you mentioned something about a plan?>

<Yeah, man.>

It was a good plan, simple, and just might work because of those two facts.

Von knew he had to face the music where the filidh were concerned, and under normal circumstances, would do just that. Under normal circumstances he would simply thank Silver but remind him that this was llygaid business and llygaid business only. He would stand and take his lumps.

He was guilty of breaking his oath, after all.

But circumstances were just about as far from fucking normal as you could get and remain in the real world. He had no idea how long it would take the master bards to hear his case, strip him of his rank, and send him packing, but he couldn’t afford the time it would take to find out.

Not with Dante a good six or seven hours away.

Not with Dante and Heather trapped with a shape-shifting fallen angel inside an Elohim-magicked building.

It wasn’t enough to hope that Heather had managed to stabilize Dante, not as bad as Dante had been slipping; it was asking too much of one mortal woman.

She needed help.

And she’d fucking get it.

<Let’s do it. But if things go south, split. Don’t try to take on the llafnau. You’ll fail and might even end up with an actual stake in your heart.>

<As Thibodaux would say: Roger that.>

<Y’know, that phrase has a totally different meaning for the British.>

<Shut up. Do you want to be rescued or not?>

Von grinned. <Yes, please.>

Promising to see him in a few minutes, Silver ended the conversation.

Von slipped a hand into a jacket pocket, felt the glide of paper beneath his fingers—the charcoal sketch of Dante he’d picked up from the street in front of the club. At least he hadn’t lost that.

<Little brother,> he sent. <You there?>

But this sending didn’t snag or rebound from barriers created by drugs and pain and madness. Instead it went through, unhindered even by Dante’s personal shields. Hell, he was still Sleeping.

<Von?>

Chaos and pain swirled through Dante’s sending—and more than a little madness. The buoyant relief Von felt turned to lead and plummeted into his belly. <Here. Just hang tight, okay? We’re gonna get you out of there.>

<Oh, I’ll bet. I ain’t playing your game, Papa. I saw through your Von-suit and I ain’t falling for this either. Fuck you.>

Von-suit? Holy hell, the shape-shifting fallen angel.

Panic burned cold through Von’s veins. <Ain’t no trick or game, Dante. It’s me. Whoever is there with you—besides Heather, that is—is a shape-shifter. He’s the one playing games with you, little brother.>

<I told you once already, motherfucker, you ain’t got the right to call me that.>

Out of nowhere, a comet slammed into Von head-on, hammering him deep into the earth in an explosion of white light and furious song—music unlike any he’d ever heard before. Blinking away the black spots stitching across his vision, he realized he was facedown on the cool stone. His headache pulsed with renewed life and he tasted blood at the back of his throat.

With a low groan, Von pushed himself up onto his hands and knees. He wiped away the blood trickling from his nose. “Holy hell.”

With no effort at all, Dante had eighty-sixed him from his mind with a savage, mouth-drying power. Silver’s trickster fallen angel hadn’t wasted any time in messing with Dante’s fragmented sense of reality. He no longer knew who was true and who was pretending. Was even Heather safe? Had to be. Von refused to think otherwise. Even out of his head, Dante would never ever hurt Heather.

But if he believed she was Papa wearing a Heather-suit? What then?

Fear ice-picked his heart.

My best friend, my companion, my little brother, is losing his mind and he has the power to take us and the world with him.

Hold on, you stubborn sonuvabitch. Hold the fuck on.

But Von had a sinking feeling that, no matter how stubborn he was, Dante couldn’t hold on much longer; that things were falling apart with breathtaking speed and it might already be too late.