On Midnight Wings

47 TO HELL IN AN EXPRESS LANE HANDBASKET

HIS EYES PROTECTED BY the smoke-lensed matte black goggles he’d picked up in the Quarter before they’d hit the road, Silver pressed up against the compound’s thick river rock wall and watched as rapidly approaching headlights starred the night.

Silver’s muscles coiled. His heart picked up speed. This had to work.

“Get ready,” he whispered.

“Shit, they’re moving fast,” Merri murmured. “I hope to hell they’re wearing their seat belts.”

Silver nodded in silent agreement. He’d tried to talk Annie out of participating and, for a moment, when she had rested a hand against her still-flat abdomen, her night-shadowed eyes thoughtful, he thought he’d succeeded. Then she’d shaken her head.

Why should everyone else take all the risks?

Everyone else ain’t knocked up.

Annie had surprised Silver by laughing.

True enough. But I’m no good at being on the sidelines, Zero mine. I always end up getting into trouble.

And that had been that. Annie had jumped into the back of the van, an active participant in what Silver hoped would be a daring and successful nomad rescue.

As the van barreled through the compound’s black iron gates in an explosion of screeching metal, Silver and Merri scaled the wall.

VON ROSE TO HIS feet when the well house door opened suddenly, ushering in evening-cooled air sweet with the scents of magnolias, pear blossoms, and fresh-mown grass from the plantation’s massive yard and myriad gardens. Moonlight outlined the curves of the figure standing in the doorway—Holly Miková.

Her hair framed her pale face in silken waves. She’d changed her rose-red miniskirt for a pair of curve-hugging jeans and her black sweater for a lacy, cobalt-blue blouse. She regarded Von with shadowed eyes, all trace of smiles—smug, chiding, or otherwise—absent from her garnet-red lips.

<Better hustle your ass, kiddo,> Von sent to Silver. <They’re moving me.>

“Put this on,” Holly said. She extended what looked like a black silicone bracelet—if silicone bracelets hummed with electricity.

But Von knew what it was, had expected it. A telepathy blocker. No sending could go out or be received as long as it was worn.

Hoping Silver had set his plan into motion, Von took the slim bracelet from Holly and slipped it on his right wrist. His skin prickled beneath the protected current. He reached out a hand to balance himself as mild vertigo spun through him, then vanished.

“I hope this means we’re only going steady,” Von drawled, dropping his hand from the wall. “Cuz I’m much too young to be getting engaged. My mama would never say yes.”

Holly rolled her eyes. “Next time I’ll just hit you with a Taser.”

Grinning, Von followed Holly outside onto the flagstone walkway leading through lush lawns to the moonlight-silvered plantation house. Holly said nothing, the silence thick between them, a silence Von decided not to break—not yet, anyway. Instead, he listened to the soft sound of their boots against the stones and the lonely songs of night birds in the trees.

No guards trailed after them—at least, none that he could see, hear, or sense. Which didn’t mean they weren’t there, but he had a feeling he and Holly were alone. And when it came right down to it, there was no place for him to run and no point in doing so. He’d never get past the currently unseen llafnau.

Not unless something distracted them.

Von mentally crossed his fingers for luck. C’mon, Silver-boy.

As Von walked the meandering stone path, he felt a pang of nostalgia as memories decades old stirred and dusted themselves off, reminding him that once this had been home, his instructors and fellow students a family that he had loved as a newborn nightkind as much as he’d loved his mortal nomad clan.

Soft light gleamed in the windows of the three-story house, spilling across the porch with its graceful Grecian columns and onto the immaculately trimmed lawn. He and Holly walked past the garden maze and the training field, now occupied by a handful of students in navy blue sweats blurring through the obstacle course under the careful scrutiny of their instructor—a tall, ginger-haired woman dressed in forest green.

Von grunted in sympathy, remembering his own time on that same grueling course. “Some things never change.” He paused to watch, stalling for time. Listening for Silver’s distraction.

“Some things, da,” Holly agreed, halting beside him.

From the street beyond the compound’s walls, Von heard the roar of an engine hauling ass. He turned just in time to see a black van—Lucien’s van—batter through the gates with a squeal of ripping metal. Headlight glass flew through the air. Brakes screeched, filled the night with the scorched smell of burning rubber.

As if Scotty had just beamed them down from the fricking Enterprise, figures in black leather kilts and boots blurred across the lawns and down the driveway to the now-stopped van.

Von froze when Holly jammed the muzzle of her gun against his temple.

“Don’t move,” she said. “Not a muscle.”

“Ain’t moving, darlin’.”

Von watched, heart hammering, as Annie popped out of the back of the van, shrieking, claiming that the men inside had kidnapped her, were going to force her to marry one of them since she was pregnant, but wouldn’t name the baby-daddy.

Jack and Thibodaux exited the van with their hands up, surrounded by stone-faced llafnau, both alternating between apologies for the gate and berating the hysterical Annie for grabbing at the wheel and causing the accident in the first place.

“I’ve seen that van before,” Holly said softly. “Friends of yours, Vonushka?”

“If they are, they deserve a reality TV show of their own—Redneck Shotgun Weddings, maybe. Could be a hit.”

“That’s not an answ—” A blur of cinnamon-scented movement, then Holly’s head twisted sharply to the right. The gun slid away from Von’s temple as she collapsed, neck broken, to the ground. Merri scooped up Holly’s gun and tucked it into a pocket of her suede jacket.

“Cutting it close,” Von growled, peeling off the blocker from his wrist.

Silver flashed him a quick, fanged grin just as Von caught another streak of motion, then another. His stomach dropped to his socks. Too late. Too fucking late.

“Run,” he yelled, hoping the llafnau would be content with just him.

But they weren’t.

Before Silver could even turn or before Merri could swing up her gun, both of them crumpled to the dewed grass beside Holly, necks equally broken.

One strong, cool, implacable hand braced against the back of Von’s skull while the other grasped his chin. He heard, “Looks like now we get to carry you, asshole.” The hands twisted his head to the right.

One sharp pain.

Then nothing.