On Midnight Wings

6 ONCE ONLY PORTLAND, OREGON FBI WEST COAST FORENSICS LAB

LUCIEN, DECKED OUT IN a black Prada suit and a scarlet silk tie, offered the receptionist a warm smile before swiveling and short-circuiting the security camera with a tiny arc of electric blue fire flicked from his fingertip, the movement too swift for human eyes. The sharp scent of ozone cut into the air.

“May I help you, sir?” the receptionist asked cheerfully.

“Yes, you certainly may.”

Crossing to her desk, Lucien leaned over it and, before she had time to do more than widen her brown eyes in alarm, he touched two fingers to the center of her forehead. Blue light glowed cool against her skin.

“Sleep,” Lucien commanded in a low voice.

The receptionist’s eyes fluttered shut. She slumped into her chair, head lolling against her shoulder. A soft sigh escaped her lips. Lucien removed his fingers from her forehead, then straightened, his gaze on the door that she and her desk had guarded.

Etched in delicate gold letters on its frosted upper panel: Special Agent-in-Charge Oscar Heyne. James Wallace’s direct supervisor, the person who had needed to approve his leave of absence, and the person most likely to know exactly where to find Wallace and the daughter he’d drugged and kidnapped.

And the very man Lucien sought.

After Annie’s attempts to call her father had ended in voice-mail messages, Lucien had gently interrogated the guilt-and bourbon-numbed young mortal about her father, his habits, and his role in the FBI. Then Lucien had taken to the sky, winging for Portland.

As Lucien grasped the door handle, a conversation he’d had with Heather not even a week ago played through his memory.

I’m not with the Bureau anymore. According to the FBI, I’m a much-valued agent, but one now lost to paranoid delusions, due to a hereditary mental illness, and in desperate need of treatment.

Are you expected to survive said treatment?

I’m sure it’ll end in a tragic suicide.

And Dante?

Snipped as the final loose end linking the Bureau to Bad Seed.

Perhaps Wallace had been doing the Bureau’s dirty work when he’d shot Dante.

With a flip of the handle, Lucien opened the door and stepped inside. Heyne’s office was modest, full of clean lines and masculine leather furniture and framed forest scenes. The desk was neat, the chair behind it unoccupied. On the west wall hung a six-by-six foot painting of forested hills wreathed in ragged mist.

Oscar Heyne stood in front of that primal and lonely scene, gun in hand.

As he studied the silent FBI agent, Lucien skimmed one hand along the back of a leather chair parked in front of Heyne’s desk. The buttery aroma of sunblock filled the room. Beneath that, he detected another familiar, but surprising, scent.

SAC Heyne wasn’t mortal. He was nightkind.

And using stay-awake pills like those Merri Goodnight had given Von.

Slim and of average height, Heyne’s skin was a shade lighter than his dark coffee eyes, his short-cropped hair flecked with gray. Given the lack of lines in Heyne’s face, Lucien suspected the gray came courtesy of Clairol in an attempt to mimic the passage of time.

“I admit, I didn’t expect a vampire,” Lucien commented. “I must applaud the FBI’s efforts at diversity.”

“Who are you?” Heyne looked Lucien over, speculative gaze drinking in and weighing details. “Suit’s too expensive, too fine for government wear, so I think I can safely eliminate you from the SB rank and file.” His nostrils flared. “What are you? You’re not mortal, not vampire—”

“No, I’m not,” Lucien agreed, unknotting and removing his tie. He draped it over the back of the chair. “Who I am doesn’t matter. As for what, perhaps it’d be best if I demonstrated. Save us a little time in pooh-poohing, denials, and demands for proof.”

Heyne arched one eyebrow. “Color me intrigued,” he said in a dry baritone, keeping the gun—what looked like a standard-issue Glock—aimed at heart level.

“You might as well put that away, it won’t do a bit of good.”

“I think I’ll keep it.”

Lucien shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“If this is a stripper-gram, supernatural or otherwise,” Heyne said as Lucien continued to undress, “I’m all out of cash.”

“It’s not. And keep your wallet in your pants.”

Once his suit jacket and shirt had joined the tie on the back of the chair, he flexed his shoulders and unfurled his wings, fanning the smoky incense scent of wing musk and deep, dark earth into the air.

Heyne’s gun dropped from his hand to thud against the carpet. His eyes widened in mingled disbelief and fascination. “Fallen,” he whispered.

Blue flames arced around Lucien’s body, electrifying the air, and glowing as reflections from picture frames, the polished leather, and in Heyne’s eyes. Lucien’s hair, tied back in a ponytail, snaked into the air on the currents of Fallen power.

“What do you want?” Heyne asked with surprising calm.

“Information,” Lucien said. “And I’ll ask each question once and once only.”

“And if I refuse to answer?”

“You have a choice: pain free or not. To be honest, I hope you choose not. It’s been a long time since I’ve delivered a bit of Old Testament–style wrath.”

Heyne’s face turned the color of ashes. “Ask, then. If I know, I’ll tell you.”

“Does James Wallace know that he was the Bureau’s Trojan horse?”

Heyne scooped up the Glock, but by the time he fired a split second later, Lucien was already on him, wrenching the gun from his fingers and enfolding the vampire within his smooth black wings.

Lucien smiled. “Old Testament it is, then.”