On Midnight Wings by Adrian Phoenix Page B

ass to S. Just a way of literally fucking authority.”
    Díon folded his arms over his chest. “No, she’s more than that to him. I have reason to believe he loves her. His hold on reality is slipping and Heather Wallace balances him, anchors him. If he loses her, he loses everything.”
    Purcell regarded the interrogator skeptically. “Loves her? Anchors him? How the hell do you know any of that? Sounds like bullshit to me.”
    “A reliable source, one close to Baptiste.”
    Meaning Díon plucked the information from someone’s mind, someone in the know where S was concerned. But that didn’t make it true. Didn’t make it stink any less of bullshit. S could’ve easily fooled the unintentional informant into believing that he actually gave a rat’s ass about Heather Wallace.
    But, devil’s advocate and all, what if it was true?
    “Why the hell is it so important to break him, anyway? I don’t understand what your goal is here. If you succeed, then what? What’s in it for you?”
    All expression vanished from Díon’s face. His gaze turned inward. “I get to fulfill a promise I made a very long time ago.”
    Purcell frowned. “Not good enough. Not this time. I need you to be a little less cryptic for a change. What promise? To who?”
    “I could tell you, but then I’d have to erase it from your memory after I did. Are you sure you want those answers?”
    A chill rippled down Purcell’s spine. Despite Díon’s teasing smile, he suspected the interrogator meant every word.Díon would tell him, and then he’d take the knowledge away again. “Think I’ll pass,” he managed to say through a mouth gone dry. “Thanks, anyway.”
    Díon shrugged as if he didn’t care either way. Bastard probably didn’t either. Purcell twitched upright in his chair when a voice buzzed into his ear over the com set. Holding up a wait-a-moment finger, he listened as Bronson reported in, then repeated the information being relayed to Díon.
    “They’re in. And you were right—S cuffed himself to the door handle. The kid is quiet at the moment, coloring on the wall.” Purcell directed his gaze to the empty monitor and increased the volume on the audio. “Camera should be working in—ah, there it is.”
    Images sprang to life on the monitor as a black-suited man with a blond buzz-cut—FA Bronson—tossed S’s T-shirt onto the concrete floor. Behind him, S was sprawled on his side on the floor, one arm stretched up above him, wrist cuffed to the door handle. A small puddle of bright blood encircled his pale face, stained his lips, like water forced from the lungs of a drowning victim.
    Bronson’s partner, a tall and rangy black man named Holland, was bent over the handle, trying to unlock the cuff. Across the room, Violet watched silently with red-rimmed eyes, her box of crayons clutched in her hands.
    Bronson stepped away from the camera, touching a finger to the com set hooked around one ear. “You receiving the feed now?” he asked, the monitor’s audio echoing the words Purcell heard directly in his ear.
    “Yes, and you need to secure—” A sudden movement near the door caught Purcell’s eye and stopped his words cold. It hit him then— like water forced from the lungs of a drowning victim . His heart leapt into his throat.
    It was already too late.
    S moved . Twisting up from the concrete floor with deadly grace and speed, his fangs slashed into Holland’s throat withall the unerring accuracy of a preternatural predator—a true, natural-born killer.
    Blood sprayed the air in a glistening crimson arc as S ripped his fangs free of Holland’s throat, then shoved him away. Eyes wide, mouth a stretched and silent O, Holland was still crumpling to the floor, one hand futilely clutching his ruined throat, when S curled his cuffed arm, hard biceps bunching, and yanked.
    With a screech of metal, the steel handle wrenched free of the door to dangle like a charm from the cuff still encircling the bloodsucker’s