Adrian Phoenix - On Midnight Wings

And filled his waking mind with Annie’s dark and bitter pearls.

When the nomad sucked in a sharp breath, Lucien ended the kiss and lifted his head to look into vivid green eyes wide with shock.

“Holy hell.” Von’s voice was a hoarse whisper. He struggled to rise, but, weakened by blood loss and the disorienting effects of interrupted Sleep, he fell back against the mattress, sweat beading his forehead. “We gotta find them.”

“We will,” Lucien promised. “Once we locate Heather through your link with her, her bond with Dante will lead us straight to him.”

“Shit. My link. Their bond. Yeah.”

“But right now I need you to regain your strength and clear your head.” Lucien extended his arm to Von, offered his already healed wrist. “Feed, then we’ll get to work.”

Without another word, Von grabbed the proffered arm, tore hungrily into the taut flesh with his fangs, and drank deep.

SNATCHING JEANS FROM THE small pile of clothing Jack had left for him on top of the bureau, Von yanked them on over his gray pin-striped boxers, zipping them up with a furious jerk of his wrist. His pulse pounded in his temples as he counted the many ways in which they’d been fucked over in just a few short hours.

Heather drugged and nabbed by her own goddamned father.

Dante shot and left to burn, before some mysterious asshole slipped into the building, bundled him up, then carted him out into the blazing noontime sun. And disappeared.

Silver and himself shot. Annie, tranked. The club torched.

Oh, and don’t forget the other little revelation Lucien had plucked from Annie’s mind: Heather’s little sister was pregnant. As for how far along she was, the identity of the baby-daddy, and whether or not she even planned to keep the squatter in her womb, that information was still tucked safe inside Annie’s head, hers to keep.

Von wondered if Heather even knew about her sister’s pregnancy. A worry for another time, like after he’d found Heather, hauled her lovely ass out of the fire, then followed her psionic GPS of a bond straight to Dante.

Von had made his first attempt to contact Heather right after he’d fueled up on Lucien’s blood—the Fallen/angelic stuff was like nitrous oxide to nightkind. A blast of furious energy had exploded through Von’s every cell, lighting his mind up like a Las Vegas casino marquee, and thrumming like electricity through his veins. Despite that intoxicating rush, his attempt had been only partially successful. And, thus, a complete disappointment.

“Keep trying,” Lucien commands in a voice of edged steel.

“No shit,” Von growls. “I know you’re worried sick, man, me too. But you’re driving me nuts staring holes through me. Why don’t you go raid Jack’s liquor cabinet and give me some space?”

Lucien stares a few more holes through him with narrowed eyes before swiveling and stalking silently from the room.

Attempts two through ten had ended with the same frustrating results. And Von had decided to give it a rest, give the drugs in Heather’s system a little bit of time to wear off. But he had also learned a few very important things.

One: his link with Heather was definitely still intact.

Two: Heather was drugged and unconscious, her mind wrapped up in a cotton ball of static and currently beyond his reach.

Three: he’d better keep his fingers crossed and wish with everything he had that whatever she’d been doped with would wear off before their blood link unraveled.

Grabbing the neatly folded olive-green T-shirt from the bureau, Von tugged it on, then went over to the bed to check on Silver before leaving to join the others. Dried blood darkened the right side of his midnight purple hair—thanks to goddamned James Wallace. Bastard would pay. And not just for Silver.

I’ve come for you, pumpkin.

He won’t be getting up again, not with those bullets inside of him.

Hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, Von left the bedroom. When he stalked into the darkened kitchen with its blanket draped windows, AWOL Shadow Branch agent Emmett Thibodaux—long, lean, and looking like a young, ginger-haired Clint Eastwood—took one look at Von’s chest, then quirked up an amused eyebrow.

“Sorry I missed that,” Thibodaux drawled, folding his arms along the back of the chair he straddled. His assessing blue-iris gaze grew thoughtful. “ Real damned sorry.”

Frowning, Von looked down at the borrowed T-shirt, then groaned. It read GATOR FEST WET BOXERS CONTEST CHAMPION, each letter shaped out of tiny green and brown gators. He aimed a glare at an innocent-looking Jack. “Cajun smart-ass,” he muttered. “Or maybe Cajun clairvoyant, given the title and all.”

The drummer grinned. “More like Cajun delusional, given the title and all.”

“I second that,” Lucien put in. He leaned against the counter in front of the sink, expression neutral, pretending to be relaxed, despite the tension cording nearly every muscle on his six-eight frame.

“Sad how the truth can be too much for some people,” Von offered with a long-suffering shake of his head.

Thibodaux made a sound that was halfway between a snort and a cough, then got up and went to the refrigerator for a beer. Von watched him closely as he returned to his chair, a frosty bottle of Dixie in hand. He caught a whiff of the man’s scent—fresh ice and anise, sharp and cool—which mingled uneasily with the faint odor of smoke and acrid chemicals clinging to his clothes.

Fire extinguisher, I’m betting. Lucien said Thibodaux helped him put out the blaze at the club.

So throw confetti and pin a medal on the fucker. Didn’t mean he could be trusted.

“We know James Wallace took Heather,” Von said quietly, sauntering over to the table to stand opposite Thibodaux. He folded his arms over his gator-afflicted chest. “But who the hell grabbed Dante? I find it damned curious that all this shit went down right after you and your partner showed up bearing gifts for Dante.”

Yeah, a Pandora’s flash drive of a gift, one that should probably be left unopened—Dante’s past from the moment he’d been born into Bad Seed.

Thibodaux set the condensation-dewed beer bottle down carefully on the Formica table, then met Von’s gaze, his own wary. “Bad timing. Me and Merri had nothing to do with any of this.”

“He’s telling the truth,” Lucien said. “I had the same concerns, so the first thing I did when I arrived here was scan his mind. Thoroughly. He’s clean, llygad —no deception, no hidden agenda. That’s not to say that the SB wasn’t behind Dante’s abduction—just that Thibodaux and his partner had nothing to do with it.”

Thibodaux’s expression tightened, chiseling his features into razor-sharp angles, hard planes, and narrowed blue eyes. “The bastards wiped my memory of everything I’d learned about Baptiste and Bad Seed for a reason. Could be they’re planning to use him again, trigger his programming and have him waste another FBI agent like they did in Seattle.”

“And want to keep him invisible,” Von growled. “Out of sight, out of mind.”

“ If they took him,” Lucien pointed out in a deep rumble.

“If,” Thibodaux agreed. Lifting the beer bottle, he tipped it against his lips, took a long swallow.

“We’ll sort out the who and why after we find him,” Von said. He abandoned the table to join Lucien in front of the sink. “You got the bullets?”

Lucien answered him by unfolding his arms from his bare chest, extending one hand, and uncurling the taloned fingers. Cradled in his cupped palm were two bits of skull-mangled brass.