“Don’t try me, Gandalf, I’m imagining you, me, and a snake right now.”
Mischief moaned, frantically scrabbling to back away from me along the sharp edge of the Lower Vault, shaking his head as if to deny the image…him, me, snake…
I was a wallad.
“That was my Thoughtless-1000 moment, all right? I’d never do that to you.” I held out my hand, but Mischief’s fingers tremored, as he clawed at his pale chest like he could still feel the snakes coiled there. I bit the inside of my cheek to hold back the raging of the powers inside. “I’m the Monster Princess: the other monsters may think they’re the Big Bads, but I’m the bitch who slays them. And I promise, I will.”
Mischief huffed, but he stopped ripping his skin. “Insufferable arrogance. Has it taught you nothing?”
“That I’m kickass?”
This time he spluttered with laughter, before collapsing onto his back; I sprawled next to him. “When I was a child, snakes held no terror for me.” He swirled the blood on his chest into letters: VIOLE… He peeked at me. “Yet since I was brought to this castle, Mage Drake has shut me in with them. It’s remarkable how fear can be cultivated because where there’s magic, there’s nightmares.”
“Way to bring down the mood.”
“My mistake, I hadn’t imagined we’d hit the candlelit romance stage. Now,” he raised an imperious eyebrow, “put me back.”
I spluttered, straightening my wings to their full intimidating glory as I stood. “No way, bro.”
Mischief merely tilted up his chin: looked like my swag had deserted me. “At once, queen.’
That was how to burn with a single inflection.
I flinched, and Mischief suddenly looked wary and lost, before his expression shuttered.
“I disobeyed three Codes, ganked a phoenix, and became infested with shadows, just so I could haul your ungrateful arse out of the sea,” I growled. “What’s an escape attempt if the prisoner won’t leave their cell?”
“One where no one dies because of their stupidity.” Mischief rolled sideways back into the water.
I pounded my fists against the steel, peering down into the freezing black.
Was Mischief truly more terrified of Rahab than the snakes? What did he fear would happen if he didn’t wall himself back into the tomb?
What did he know that I didn’t?
Arf, arf, arf.
I leant forward, staring at a silver Harbour Seal, which wiped a front paw over its whiskers. It batted its long eyelashes, curling its mouth into a smile. Then snorted water straight into my face.
I yelped, batting away the spray.
Mischief’s voice curled from the seal’s cute mouth, “That’s seal for be off with you, sailor. Don’t you have treasure to be plundering?”
“More like a Disney pirate.” I narrowed my eyes. “What’s seal for help, she’s about to kick my arse?”
The seal’s V-shaped nose flared in panic but it was too late. I’d dived into the water, clutching Mischief by his furry neck before he could propel himself away.
Except, he could still shift.
Finding myself holding nothing, my heart spiked with the same panic as when I’d thought Mischief dead.
I couldn’t lose him. Not after he’d come back to life…
I burst my magic through the rippling water, netting Mischief in the cold, which had blackened now in the tar of the shadows, then I trawled him towards me. I ignored his chattered name-calling, cupping my hands around him instead and raising him to eyelevel.
I glared at the tiny equine seahorse, which glittered iridescent silver. Somehow Mischief still managed to look regal. And how could a seahorse pout? “Will you stop…trying to stop me rescuing you?”
The seahorse did all but shrug. “Only if you stop trying to rescue me.”
“Not in the land of yodelling werewolves.”
“Why?” He sounded more fragile than before. And suddenly Mischief was transformed back to his angelic self. Except, his arms were wrapped around my shoulders, and his lustrous scaled tail wound around me.
My merman.
When Mischief’s tail rubbed against me, I shivered. Was it as sensitive as my wings or claws?
“Come back to land,” I whispered.
“So you can gut me?” He shook his head. “You would sacrifice for Rebel, Ash, or your Blood Familiars, but not for me: the spy and traitor.”
“You learnt about me in the Underworld and you’re right: I’m no hero. I wouldn’t sacrifice for a traitor.’
Mischief’s eyes closed, as he shuddered. He gave a tight nod.
“But you’re not a traitor: you’re fam. And I’ve learnt that I’ll sacrifice everything for fam. You chose to stand by my side; I told you I wouldn’t forget.”
Mischief’s eyes snapped open. He pulled me closer, tentatively touching our lips as if I’d be the one to pull away, then he snogged me hard, caressing me with his tail in time with the strokes of his tongue. I quivered, caught in his hold. He was strong, I suddenly realised, as he spun me in the water, and if he truly wanted to get away, I’d never stop him.
He had to want to be caught….or surrender.
Why did he hide his strength?
He chuckled against my lips. “The water is my land. Here? I’m the king.”
“Then I’m the Kingslayer.” I shot the shadows around Mischief, catching him in their sticky embrace.
Mischief cast me a panicked glance. “What happened to you?”
“I became strong too. Enough to do this…” I dragged us both out of the water and into the air, before tumbling us onto the ground. Mischief’s challenge had awoken something dominant and dark inside me: it growled to force Mischief to his knees. He alone of my blokes had never called me princess or queen and meant it: had never knelt.
As Mischief’s tail transformed back into legs, I wound my hand in his hair and tried to force him down.
He shook me off. “I am not one of your boys.”
He’d paled; his hands tidied his hair in quick, furious motions.
I pinked. “I wasn’t—"
“We are both aware of what you were. Your spark does not incite undying loyalty in me, unlike your doe-eyed followers. I’m not under your spell and what I think of angel princesses…” He caught himself, before crossing his arms. “I will not be forced.”
“And what about me?” I couldn’t meet his eye. “Not princess or queen. Just Violet?”
Mischief startled, picking at the edging of his tunic. “I think that I stopped you perpetrating an apocalypse and that now I have a duty to keep you from becoming Mage Drake’s creature.” I took a careful step backwards, unable to hide the same devastation that I’d earlier seen flash on Mischief’s face. “I also believe you less of a beast than I’d been taught,” he added more softly. Then his gaze became steely. “But here? You’re not my ruler. Does it hurt to be returned to the ranks of the ordinary?”
My fists clenched. “I was never ordinary, and neither were you.”
He flinched. “That’s why you must allow me to return to my punishment. Everything here is in balance; my freedom will have a price — for you. I’m not the damsel: you are. Lucifer’s games are like a kid’s compared to the adult tortures on this island of the dead. Excuse me if I don’t intentionally call down Mage Drake…” Mischief caught my eye, before he shuddered, pressing his fingertips together as if to stop himself shooting magic out at me. “You mean to call his attention by this stunt?”
“What can I say? The Bitch of Utopia doesn’t do ignored.”
The scent of creamy sandalwood suddenly filled the vault. For a bloke who wouldn’t kneel for me, Mischief knelt like his strings had been cut.
“I apologise for neglecting you then, little apprentice,” Mage Rahab Drake’s cool call from the shadows made me jump. “You shall have my personal attention from now on, just as Lucifer is receiving from your mother. Intriguing, it seems like father, like daughter.”
Rahab swo
oped from above, glorious and terrifying, his violet wings flaming through the slashes in the back of his emerald silk shirt.
I growled, but Rahab shot a sizzling blast at me, hurling me onto my back in a stink of scorched feathers. Then the angel who acted as daddy for the Brotherhood landed on top of me, and every bone in my wings broke.
2
Wingtips, feathers, and every fused bone in my wings howled with chilling agony. It spasmed me back to awareness after my nightmare flight out of the Lower Vault caught in Rahab’s eagle embrace.
When I rubbed my cheek along the surface that I was sprawled on, it was no longer cold and wet but bouncy, warm, and buzzing. It wrapped me in the scent of candyfloss, like I’d fallen into the machine at the fair.
I’d better hope Rahab didn’t have a sweet tooth.
I tried to flap my wings, but they only flopped in a boneless comedy routine. Slowly, I cracked open my eyes, then yelped, wishing that I hadn’t.
A low chuckle behind me.
I bottom shuffled away, then stopped as the…nothing…underneath me swayed.
I hung in mid-air, as if held up by fairy magic, in a rugged cavern high above a pool of seawater: fish darted like jewels, sea snakes eel-slithered across the surface, and star-fish spiked the rocks. The seaweed, seagrass, and algae that was thick across the pool pulsed with an eerie emerald glow. I held out my hand because I should be able to touch — or should be falling into that unnatural pool — but instead my fingers crunched against the same foamy, buzzy something that was holding me up.
“My Invisible Bridge,” Rahab’s amused voice explained from behind me. “One of the first things I ever created in my castle. Aren’t you intrigued to discover what you could imagine?”
“Chocolate sausages, dinosaur ballet, and a world where sarcasm doesn’t exist, except I still wield it, so I rule. Already got it covered, bro.”
I spun around on my arse, dragging my broken wings after me with a wince. Then I stiffened.
Rahab leant, mid-air, as if leaning on the hidden rail of his Invisible Bridge. His golden curls, which matched his silk harem trousers, were threaded with silver. They hung over his eyes, as he scrutinized me. And his strong hands rested around Mischief’s slender neck.
Mischief squirmed in Rahab’s hold but he didn’t try to break free. He wrapped his silvery-violet wings around himself protectively like a kid wrapping his arms around his knees and huddling behind his bed, as if that made the monsters go away.
It didn’t; I bastard knew that.
Rahab rubbed his thumb in a lover’s caress along Mischief’s fluttering pulse. The way Mischief shuddered, however, and Rahab’s loose grip like he didn’t want to taint himself, was anything but loving.
I craved to tear Mischief away from Rahab, so he’d never have to wrap his wings around himself like that again…
Hide me, Feathery-doll. Build a wall around me and don’t let it come tumbling down.
Busy right now, J.
You’ll be dead right now if the Mage breaks your mind as he broke your wings.
I’m your secret. Your true family who raised you. You can trust me, can’t you?
I hesitated.
J was part of me: I’d learnt my life lessons in London at his knee. No one else had ever looked out for me. But…trust?
Since the supernatural had broken into my world, J had tempted me into danger, almost as much as he’d forced me into the hard choices that’d saved my arse. Devil or angel…? I didn’t bastard know. But he was my secret: what would anyone think about a voice inside my head, which I’d hidden from even my fam?
I threw up the walls that I’d spent months practising, whilst held captive on Angel World.
When Rahab’s thumb caressed across the back of Mischief’s neck, however, and Mischief cringed, I growled before I could stop myself. Rahab let out a laugh in surprise. “Be silent. I wonder what services Zophia has rendered to garner such loyalty from a Glory?” I flushed at the same time as Mischief. And how had I missed the chance to take the piss out of Mischief’s girlie angel name? “Kunel has taken four weeks to coax nothing out of you but an entire lack of dedication to the Legion, but with Zophia as motivation you’ve blazed to new heights.”
My blush spread down to my chest: was it that Rahab had praised me? No bastard way was he playing the surrogate dad role. I bristled. “I wasn’t looking for a gold star.”
Rahab raised his pale eyebrow. “Are you certain? You’ve earnt one. Such a shame, however, that you waste your devotion on an Underserving.”
I ran my hand through my damp hair. “You’ve lost me.”
“It’s no matter,” Mischief’s smile was too thin. “I imagine that’s a condition with which you’re shockingly intimate.”
Rahab tightened his hands around Mischief’s throat, and he gasped. I gritted my teeth, struggling to my knees.
“The Underserving,” Rahab continued calmly, as if Mischief wasn’t dangling now from his grasp and choking, as he scrabbled at his hands, “are members of the Brotherhood who haven’t fitting mental powers to become even apprentices or who’ve tried to become mages and failed. They’re servants to the Legion. Do you imagine I don’t understand the boys I choose?” His gaze was considering, as I dragged myself across the bridge. I sucked in breaths to steady myself against the dizzying drop beneath me: the fishes swarmed in metallic chaos under my shadow. “The only question was when you’d pull Zophia from the water. Imagine my horror when it took twenty-eight rotations of the sun.”
Thwack — I struck at Rahab’s bare feet with my fists, sizzling flames and searing his ankles.
He hissed, dodging backwards and hurling Mischief at me like an unwanted kid in a custody battle.
For a moment, I held my breath, expecting him to plummet into the pool below.
Thud — Mischief bounced on the hidden bridge with a startled yelp.
“Maybe,” Rahab examined the nails on his elegant fingers, “the Underserving simply wasn’t as charming as I’ve taught him…?”
Mischief and I both winced.
“And maybe you’re more freakshow than fanboy material on a stick?” I shoved myself up with a shaky hand. “I’ve been doing the apprentice thing for a month, whilst you’ve been doing the vanishing act.”
Rahab’s expression softened. When he crouched down in front of me, Mischief hunched away from him. “Hush, little apprentice, I’ve been a bad father not giving you my love and time.”
My breath caught in my throat; I couldn’t meet his intent gaze. “You’re not my dad.”
Why the hell did I have to sound like a kid bitching to her step-dad?
“I’m the true father to every Brother in the Legion. You’ve acted out and now you’ve ensured my guidance and discipline. It would’ve come earlier, but your mother demanded my attendance in Angel World for some sessions with Lucifer. Your father has but one use, just like my own son.”
I looked away.
Rahab had given up his son, Drake, to the Matriarch to be used as a Marked Wing, just like my own dad: a sex slave in the bedroom and a Commander on the battlefield.
Yeah, not sure there was a Father’s Day mug for that.
“It’d appear,” Rahab waved his hand lazily in the air, “that Lucifer is still defiant, despite the loss of his fire.”
I glanced at Mischief. His gaze was carefully blank, but I didn’t miss his stifled smile at Lucifer’s defiance.
Why did it fill me with such righteous joy that the birth dad I’d deposed and handed to his enemy as Marked Wing hadn’t been broken?
Yet.
Because for the first time, I didn’t want to break anyone.
Mischief’s eyes widened, as if catching my thought. Understanding it.
The shadows shifted inside me. I caught Mischief’s hand between mine, pulling him closer.
Rahab’s eyebrows raised, as if he’d understood me as well. “Naïve children, I taught Lucifer his place, as I shall teach you yours.”
Then he clicked his fingers, and I screamed.
My stomach lurched as the Invisible Bridge disintegrated. I tumbled through the air, unable to beat my broken wings.
A green glow…flitting shadows in the mirrored water below…blurring closer…
Silvery-violet wings folded around me, whilst slim arms hooked around my waist. I buried my face in Mischief’s hair, as he spun me away from the water; our feet skidded across the surface. Then we soared towards the cavern’s entrance.
Rahab stood with his hands laced behind his back, as we landed.
When Mischief carefully let go, I swayed; my boots slipped on the slimy rock. “What the assassin pixies in hell was that?” My skin prickled with static; my new magic icicle tingled, heavy and dangerous in my throat. “You’re not my dad: you’re more like one of those creepy online groomers. And I’m not ending up ganked or pimped.”
“Sailor…” Mischief hissed in warning.
“Do let her go on,” Rahab’s shark-smile froze me in place. “Creepy and…?”
I swallowed. “Just keeping it real, yeah?”
“Indeed.” Rahab’s lips curled. “Lucifer may have — unwillingly — donated to your conception but he wasn’t your true father. I can be. Because all my children forget their old families here, becoming a new united one. You’re the first Glory I’ve allowed into this refuge for gifted Wings.”
“Have you been watching too much X-men?” I smirked.
Mischief nudged me; I nudged him back.
Rahab strolled to the cavern wall, running his hand loving along its filth. Then he closed his eyes. “This is where my mother tried to drown me as a baby.” I started, twisting around to stare at the pool. I shook my boot, as if the water had been contaminated by the action. “My Angelic Powers terrified her. She hated that I was stronger than her: a Glory. My father managed to stop her, and together they abandoned me here. I imagine they thought I’d die. I didn’t.” When he opened his eyes and his piercing stare swung to me, I squirmed. “As I grew, I created this castle, which became both my home and a refuge for other Wings, like me: the magical unwanted. I’m a saviour to the abused, the rejected, and the lost. I allowed you here because I thought that out of every Glory, you’d be the one to understand what I’ve spent centuries building…and hiding. My mages in the human world appreciate X-men, but I think I’ve been Xavier too long. Magneto holds quite a draw for me.”
Vampire Mage Page 2
