Rebel Angels: The Complete Series

by Rosemary A Johns

  I jacked up, kicking off the fur throw and wriggling to the far side of the bed. I steeled myself for the bump as I hit the floor, but a hand grasped my ankle and I was hauled back amongst the pillows like a winded catch of the day.

  I bucked again, hissing.

  “Take it easy, princess.” Rebel glanced at the open door, before whispering, his body taut with tension against mine, “If you promise to stay here with me and my family, the Deadmans, then I’ll promise to help find your sister. Deal?”

  I became still. My freedom to find my sister?

  Hell, no contest.

  “Deal. But you’re taking me back to Utopia Estate. I adopted Jade, and what you don’t seem to understand is that doesn’t mean I own her, yet she’s still mine. She’s my estate sister, and that’s closer than blood.” Rebel’s confusion was painful. My gaze softened. “Angel kisses can’t heal me, whilst my fam is missing.”

  Clank — my handcuffed wrist jangled against Rebel’s in the pocket of his leather jacket.

  Handcuffed together, we stumbled through London Fields park, between taekwondo classes, bike trails, and shabby buggies in the clear winter sunlight like a lame-arsed comedy duo. I tripped against Rebel, and we tangled in a crazy waltz. My nose pressed to his jacket; I took a snort of leather and metal.

  But no copper sweetness.

  Its loss was a boot to my gut, and I didn’t know either why I cared, or why it’d faded. Yet the chance to escape the danger of Rebel’s family was like being able to breathe, after being crushed under heavy stones. I dreaded being dragged back there.

  With a growl of frustration, I shoved away Rebel, and we both crashed into the scaly trunk of a London Plane tree.

  Rebel raised an unamused pierced eyebrow. “Problem, princess?”

  I snatched his fingers inside the pocket and squeezed. He smothered a yelp, struggling underneath me to get away.

  Just as I’d done in the bedroom.

  Yet when Rebel discovered that he was trapped, he melted into me. It was…delicious. Violet snaked between us, licking, tasting, and feasting.

  Put the pretty boy down before you break him.

  Where have you been, J? You left me chained in that Tudor mansion. Alone.

  You’re never alone. Just sometimes, Feathery-puss, you can’t hear me.

  At last I let Rebel go, with a final warning stroke of my thumb. “I’m still in handcuffs, even outside the house. You’re a proper kinky bastard.”

  Rebel tilted his head, his wide eyes thoughtful, as he bit at his lip. “Trust is a brilliant thing, to be sure. You can fly on trust. But you?” He flexed his hand. “I don’t trust.”

  And that was the true boot to the gut.

  I scowled. “Because I’m all down with trusting the killer angel. Look, kids took pictures of me with a knife in my hand. Then I disappeared from a murder scene. You don’t reckon that the police will be searching for me?”

  Rebel shrugged but he shuffled from foot to foot. When a football bounced against his ankle, his face lit up with a joy that I hadn’t seen before. He kicked it back to the lads in hoodies, who skulked by the benches, in a flawless arc that had the lads whistling and clapping. They gestured for Rebel — the bondage punk — to join the game.

  In London Fields, Hackney.

  Yeah, nothing was regular anymore.

  I reckoned that if Rebel hadn’t been handcuffed to me, he’d have bounded to join his new gang, with their designer saddlebags of cocaine, knives, and bottled acid stashed underneath the slanted benches, as if he was Peter Pan leading the Lost Boys.

  I shivered, battling to drag my jacket closer.

  Hell, I’m wearing a stab victim’s clothes, even if I’m the victim.

  The punk cleaned and mended your clothes.

  Want to tell me how he magicked out bloodstains?

  Magic…that was an interesting word to choose.

  Magic too…?

  I wasn’t sure that I was ready to believe that yet. In fact, all I wanted was to find my sister and get as far from Rebel and his freaky secret world as I could.

  When I yanked Rebel, he strolled after me across the playing field towards the road looping Utopia Estate like we were any couple, huddled against the cold. Waves of grease from the burger bar on the corner melded with spice from the kebab shop opposite.

  “Why’d you bother rescuing my clothes?” I patted at my jacket.

  “Clothes are important.” Rebel glanced at me from underneath his eyelashes. “Ma helped.”

  I clenched my handcuffed fist, only for Rebel’s fingers to gently caress over it. Yet somehow his — kindness, calmness, and submission — only made me madder. “Your family, these Deadmans, are bastards. Why are you hiding with them?”

  “I warned you that I wasn’t good, I was righteous. But I fibbed.” He gnawed at his sore lip again. “I’m a bad angel. I ask for your trust and say that you can fly on it. But you shouldn’t trust me.” He stared at the ground, refusing to look up. “I did a flit from Angel World and bolted here to yours. Now I’m the hunted.”

  Finally, he sneaked a glance at me, as if expecting me to either clout him or recoil. Instead, I clutched his hand in mine, stroking him as he had me because his shame called to my own.

  For the first time, he released his tortured lip.

  I frowned. “Still, why stay with humans who beat—”

  “They know magics that keep me safe. The Deadmans aren’t my true family, although covens like to say that they adopt the angels who they help, but they’ve taken me in and risk their lives to protect me.”

  On the edge of the road, in the shadow of Tower Block A, I pulled Rebel to a stop. “Are you telling me that I’m the prisoner of spell lobbers?”

  “You’re a guest of my family. Who happen to be witches.”

  An angel had been adopted by witches, and now I was their guest in handcuffs?

  Suddenly, there was a flash of neon blue and a wail of sirens, as a police car flew through the estate.

  Rebel spun me, as if to haul me into a snog, but I jerked backwards. “We’re not in a movie, hiding from the feds. Learn some swag, if you don’t want to get beaten.” Rebel’s smacked puppy nose pout made me wish that I’d snogged him, even more than the strange new buzzing murmur inside: mine, take, devour… And stoked my rage even higher. “But you’ve already been beaten. How’s the arse?”

  “I can sit down again, thank you.”

  “See, kinky angel.”

  “I’m Da’s.” Rebel bristled, dragging me after him across the road between the beeping cars and vans. “I left him. So, he punished me. How’s that turn you on?”

  I flushed, as he marched us up the stairs into Tower Block A. The guard was missing: Toben’s soldiers weren’t stretched out, like a lion pride on weed, along the concrete.

  Everything had changed.

  Rebel and I slipped into the inky dark of the stairwell. The quiet suffocated me. Suddenly the idea of someone else’s hands touching Rebel — punishing, exciting, or comforting — made the hidden force that’d claimed him boil.

  “You can kill a bloke with your hands,” Toben kneeling, adoring, and then dead with a snap of his chicken neck, “but you’ll let this slipper wearing, daddy issues Dom turn you over his knee because you were late home?”

  Rebel smiled brightly. “Get on with you, Da would be mortified to wear slippers. And I wasn’t just late: I disappeared for over forty years.”

  When I clattered up the stairs, a schoolgirl paled as she passed me. Before I could duck, the kid had snapped me with a whoop and a victory dance. She’d been there on the night that I’d fought with Bisi too.

  The bitch had pulled down the world on me, simply with her mobile.

  Rebel and I glanced at each other once and then we ran. When Rebel booted in the door to Apartment 333, we burst inside, diving for the death-quiet of Jade’s room.

  I shrugged. “She’s not here. Maybe…she’s just with mates.” I didn’t even dare say back on
the streets.

  I wandered through the room to the wardrobe that Jade had painted black and then decorated with glow-in-the-dark skulls, yanking open the door.

  Rebel jittered. “I told you, you’re not—”

  “Connected,” I muttered, running my hand over Jade’s favourite pink-and-white striped tunic.

  If Jade bolted to be with some boy, or…if she’s alive…then why didn’t she take her clothes?

  Your sister’s alive, Violet-sweets. What scares you, is that you can choose the world that you want now. You’re free of Jade and this Estate.

  For the first time, you can choose who you are.

  I recoiled from J’s truth and temptation because J knew me better than anyone.

  Sirens wailed outside the block; the police cars circled like hyenas.

  “Time to leave.” Rebel pulled me towards the door.

  I caught a glimpse of gold on the bedside table. I dug in my heels, leading Rebel to the necklace, before threading it between my fingers. When I heard his intake of breath, I knew that he recognized it from my memories.

  We shared Jade now and the promise to find her.

  Jade would never have left without her necklace. It was my last birthday gift to her. The only present she’d been given that day because I alone loved her, but she hadn’t cared because we’d been sisters.

  Someone must’ve taken her.

  Rebel’s forehead against mine brought me down from the rush. He raised the necklace to my neck and with one hand each, we did up the catch. I longed to rip off the handcuffs and escape the claustrophobic closeness, at the same time as the other half of me relaxed into it.

  Then I gave a nod, and we bolted.

  Halfway down the open stairs that overlooked the playground and sweeping crescent of the Estate’s main road, we peered over at the swarming police amidst their snarling cars.

  Click — my stomach dropped, like I’d tumbled over the ledge, when I heard the trigger cocked on a shooter.

  Yet when I risked peeking over my shoulder, the gun was pressed to Rebel’s head.

  By Bisi.

  Bisi met my glare but he was trembling. I’d never seen him tremble. “You stole my shank.” He rammed the snout of the gun harder into the base of Rebel’s skull. “So, I stepped-up.”

  I’d wondered what becoming the victim would do to Bisi. Now I knew. If you took a man’s shank, he bought a shooter. No one could risk being invisible in London and no one ignored a bloke with a gun.

  Except Rebel.

  “Friend of yours, Feathers?” Rebel leaned his arms on the ledge, as if he was sightseeing.

  Bisi puffed up, rubbing one hand against his stiffie. “Word on the street is that this freak took out Toben. Are you muscling in on my turf? Monsters and murderers hungering to be the new top boys?”

  I shrank against Rebel. “Do your righteous thing.”

  Rebel stretched his shoulders, flexing his wings underneath his jacket. “It doesn’t work like that.” He pushed back against the shooter like he didn’t realize that Bisi wasn’t bluffing. “Lay off, muppet.”

  At last, Bisi eased off the trigger, before grinning — a slash of gold in the concrete gray of the day — and turning the shooter on me. He pressed almost as close to me as the cold snout of the gun.

  I’d been knifed, beaten, dodged acid and meat cleavers but I’d never had a gun to my head. Since Rebel had fallen from the ceiling, it’d been nothing but a world of firsts.

  I hadn’t expected the wash of terror, edged by impotent fury; I vibrated with it.

  Then I yowled, as my wrist was wrenched up, and Rebel spun us, his expression transformed from studied boredom to tight grimness. He knocked the shooter up and away from my head, before clouting Bisi across the mouth.

  “This is what a bro gets for going soft.” Bisi scrambled backwards. “As soon as your man fell short, I should’ve shanked both you and your sis.”

  Violet hit like a tsunami. I rode it to a plateau of feathers, where I was stronger, faster, more powerful and nothing mattered but…righteousness. I ruled over the land of bones below, gnashing my teeth in vicious victory.

  Someone was battling me, holding me back.

  “Princess…mind yourself.”

  But there was nothing beyond the feathers and bones. I was lost, as something else took over, and it wasn’t human.

  A scream. Bang. Howl.

  I couldn’t stop. My hand was around Bisi’s neck. He hung rag doll limp over the ledge.

  “Feathers, wise up! Let him go!” The voice came out in gulped gasps, as an angel tugged at my arm.

  My angel…

  The world blurred back to multicolor. And I was balanced on the open stairs of Tower Block A, with my hand clutched around Bisi’s throat, as he dangled over the sweep of flashing lights below.

  I eased my hold, whilst my heart beat wildly. Yet when Bisi edged himself back over the ledge, he jerked me off balance and then snapped at my thumb with his golden teeth, trying to bite and kiss me all at once.

  I shoved Bisi back, and he fell, windmilling through the winter sky like a dark angel with broken wings.

  Crash — Bisi slammed onto the windscreen of a police car; the crack spider webbed scarlet.

  The alarm screamed, as police hollered and pointed up at me.

  Bisi had been right: I was a monster and, like Rebel, I was a murderer too.

  Maybe that’s what being an angel meant.

  Sometimes, kisses are a revelation because it wasn’t the soft lips that’d awoken me, but the blood when I’d bitten. I’d known ever since Rebel had kissed me: I was part angel. His blood had sung to my own.

  Sirens shrieked, whilst the heavy stomp of police boots echoed up the stairwell. I clutched at Rebel, only to be dragged down, as he sank to the floor. When he touched his shoulder, his hand came back sticky from a gunshot wound. I pulled him up, and he swayed. Panting, I clasped him close to my chest.

  Then we became the hunted.

  5

  Ever since Jerusalem Children’s Home spat me out at sixteen, I’d expected to end up stumbling home with some bloke bleeding out from a gunshot wound.

  What I’d never expected...?

  Home to be a witches’ house. The bloke to be an angel. And to have just discovered my own angelic heritage.

  When Rebel shivered, I held him tight, yet I was frozen too. His feet dragged, tripping against mine. The House of Rose, Wolf, and Fox rose out of the damp fog beside the silver snake of the Thames. Ancient woodland glowered behind the stone and blackened diagonal timbered mansion. Smoke snorted in furious bursts from the spiraled chimneys.

  I shuddered.

  Did you know spell lobbers were real, J?

  There isn’t space on earth for what I know. But right now? You need to dump the punk, turn your ass around, and use your brain, rather than the sweet tingles between your legs.

  I jolted to a stop.

  Rebel groaned, grasping the stone sundial that marked the center of the sweeping drive. “Princess?”

  “We’ll be at your home any moment, bro.”

  He shivered again. But this time, I didn’t reckon that it was with cold.

  Was Rebel frightened because he’d defied the witches to help me? How big a risk had he taken? Yet how dangerous was the world Rebel had fled, if a witches’ house still meant safety?

  I’m done with being afraid. So, no arse turning.

  You’re playing with fire. If you go inside, the witches will kill you for breaking their toy.

  They can try.

  And there’s the Feathers-bitch I love.

  I could hear J’s smile. For once, it disturbed me, although I didn’t know why.

  I unfurled Rebel’s hand, finger by finger from its death grip on the sundial, then dragged him crunching over the gravel to the rounded arch of the porch. Rebel had sneaked me out of a side door in the early hours, when the house had still been veiled in black. Now I saw the red daubed symbols around the oak door and w
icker angel effigies swinging in the porch like they’d been hung.

  Hell, the Blair Witch had nothing on Evie, Louisa, and Richard Deadman: witches, angel tamers, and my true captors.

  Strange, since Rebel’s kiss and his exchange of blood, this truth was clearer. I could read his feelings, spiderwebs at the corners of my mind, but only fleeting sensations.

  Before I could knock, the door was wrenched open — creak — and a bearded bloke loomed over us. He held himself motionless, yet every giant inch of him radiated fury.

  Rebel shrank back.

  Da, in russet wool suit and waistcoat, with his white shirt matching his perfect teeth, asked crisply, “Where have you been, Zach?”

  “Zach?” I mouthed at Rebel, but he didn’t hear me; his gaze was fixed on Da.

  “I’m sorry, but it’s like this, see,” Rebel faltered, “I made a deal—”

  “Do you get to decide on what’s best? To make deals, boy?”

  When Rebel shook his head, I grasped his hand in my pocket. He winced, expecting me to hurt him like I had earlier, and that flushed me with unexpected shame. Instead, I only held his hand lightly in mine.

  “And why is that?” Da demanded.

  “Because you’re in charge, Da.”

  I’d faced the disappointment of agency staff each time I’d swaggered back in the early hours to Jerusalem. Curfews were for geeks and losers. The kids who took the beatings and ended up at the end of a shank. So, if you hadn’t wanted to be bullied, you broke the rules.

  This? Returning to face the music of a parent who actually gave a damn? If it hadn’t been for the danger in Da’s steel eyes and his headmaster sadist vibe, I’d have found reassuring.

  Maybe I had daddy issues.

  Da rubbed at his beard, which was as regimented as his hair. “I believe that we shall have to reinforce that lesson.” Stanbury had been the wannabe, but here was the true Christian Grey, only all grownup. But Rebel was such an innocent, I don’t think that he even understood what they were playing. These weren’t his true adoptive parents, after all. “Inside.”

  Rebel flinched.

  I’d only glimpsed a grand oak galley running above the entryway and gold threaded tapestries, as Rebel and I reluctantly stepped past Da, before Rebel dropped to his knees. I fell next to him. His eyes were screwed shut, and it was only me stopping him from collapsing.