Rebel Angels: The Complete Series

by Rosemary A Johns

  I backed away, but Dillon prowled after me. “I’m sorry, orders.”

  Gwyn leapt up. “Stop, Dill, please…”

  “Actually,” Dillon’s smile turned the corners of his thick lips, “I’m not sorry, princess.”

  His wrestler arms pinned my arms, slamming me into the crystals.

  I hollered, as my back sliced, thrashing in Dillon’s sweaty hold. His skin slid against mine, one hand grappling towards my neck. I twisted, kneeing him in the balls.

  Dillon growled, and his breath caught. “Typical Glory,” he muttered.

  But he didn’t loosen his hold. Instead, he heaved me closer, forcing my cheek against the heat of his furnace chest. Suddenly, his fingers dug into the base of my neck, and I screamed.

  Blinding shards of ice-cold tore through my mind, ripping me apart.

  Nothing existed but the pain.

  Hands dropping me. Collapsing. Falling.

  As my eyes closed, I was swept away by violet.

  3

  Blurry-ghosted, when you walk through life without a mum, her shade walks at your shoulder: the birthdays, school events, and Christmases when you’re alone, but yet the vision you’ve created hovers.

  Mum would want me to work harder…

  I bet I’m like mum …

  Mum would’ve saved me…

  Yet just like the angels who I called out to, until J stopped me, and who didn’t protect me in Jerusalem Children’s Home, it wasn’t the bastard truth.

  Because even though angels were real — even though my mum was — everything else had been nothing but shadowed longing.

  And the reality could kill me.

  Fuzzy violet birds swooped in elegant figures of eight through shafts of light like they were ice-skating in the cold white.

  I blinked.

  My back and arse were numb; the stone ground froze my skin through my dress. I blearily focused on the big bastard birds: not birds, female angels.

  The Glories.

  What the hell would these slave-owning, harem-bitches do to me, the monster in the palace?

  The angels swarmed, buzzing with chatter in the quartz throne room, which arched with encrusted parades. Their wings beat through the slashes in the back of their dresses, which were subtle variations in shades of violet: levels of Perfection.

  And I was anything but perfect.

  My breath ghosted in panicked puffs; I rubbed at my prickling arms.

  Then an angel with jet braids, ebony skin, and leather corset and skirt in ringed lilac straps, broke off from the gang…and dived.

  I eeped, bottom shuffling backwards. My neck still pulsed from where Dillon had pressed, and my arms were stiff.

  How had Dillon had the balls to attack me, whilst Drake played the pussy?

  I squirmed onto my front, shoving myself to my knees.

  Sniggers.

  Blokes in indigo trousers, the same as Drake’s, knelt to the right of the throne room: Wings who were owned by the circling Glories. The Wings’ heads were bowed, even as they cast furtive glances at me and sniggered.

  Why were they kneeling, whilst the women flew?

  Yet other blokes in gold trousers leaned casually on the other side of the cavern against an iridescent wall. They didn’t laugh. Instead, their gazes were hard and assessing.

  It looked like golden pants were the alpha pricks. But where was the top boy: their boss?

  So, it was turf war in this shielded avian world in Wales that they called Angel World? A rival gang? How the hell had I landed myself in the West Side Story Angel Edition?

  I scowled. “Don’t disrespect me, bitches, or I’ll go Hackney style on your arses.”

  I grinned at the Glories’ shocked gasps, before pushing myself to my feet, only to be tumbled arse over tit by the bitch with the braids. She landed on my guts, pinning me down like landed prey.

  I snarled. Time to violet-up.

  I battled to summon flames to my fingertips — the violet fire that I’d learned was summoned by J or my sense of righteousness — but both remained stubbornly silent.

  I was alone.

  “By my feathers, who dances with the dark to laugh at my daughter?” The Matriarch’s soft voice managed to boom around the throne room, cowing the angels to nothing but the rustle of wings. “Or lay rough and tumble without a mother’s permission?”

  Braids leapt off me like she’d been scorched.

  I smirked: mummy was home.

  I twisted, clambering up to stare at the dais on the far side of the room and the woman on the giant throne built of dove gray and violet feathers. They’d been plucked from fallen enemies and traitors, Drake had told me.

  My kingdom built upon the dead.

  “The lass didn’t kneel, Queen Miniel,” Braids muttered with a hard Glaswegian twang, scuffing her foot against the floor; her wings drooped. “I just wanted to teach her some manners.”

  “You will, Supreme Commander Battle. But not before I talk to my baby bird. And why would any daughter of mine kneel?” The Matriarch’s thin mouth twitched.

  One long finger beckoned.

  Yeah, like I did beckoned, any more than I did summoned.

  I took a breath, before sweeping towards the platform and the woman Rebel and Ash, the blokes who’d risked death to fight by my side, had tried to protect me against.

  Why hadn’t they wanted me to come to Angel World?

  The Matriarch’s ash-blonde hair, the exact shade of my own, cascaded all the way down to the tips of her crushed diamond stilettos: she was a definite ballbuster. Feathers were woven tribal into the strands of her hair.

  Hell, my mum’s cool beauty made me crave to prostrate myself and kiss her toes.

  Her dress shimmered pearl-like and perfect. I clutched at the ripped shoulder of my dress, pinning the flaps, before letting them go. They gaped obscenely. This was perfection Rambo-style.

  But then, I hadn’t been expecting an audience with Queen of the Assholes.

  My mum who’d ignored me for sixty-two days...

  I swaggered closer.

  A kneeling angel with short strawberry blond hair bowed before me. His cheek and wings pressed to the freezing floor; his back vibrated with tremors.

  I’d craved respect? Maybe I wasn’t pure angel enough to get off on his terror.

  I nudged the kneeling angel with my foot, and he shot up. His bent wing raised between me and the platform like a step. There were already bloody footprints pressed into his feathers.

  I stroked my fingers through the bloke’s hair in comfort, wishing that I could do more, but he still pushed up into my touch. With a sigh, I boosted off his wing onto the platform, and he flinched.

  A rich scent, like Drake but darker — not frankincense, but myrrh — wrapped me in its velvety hold.

  I flung myself down on the only other throne on the platform: a smaller copy of the Matriarch’s in feathers of the slain, next to hers. I booted my legs over its arm and crossed my arms behind my head.

  This time it was me sniggering at the collective outraged beating of the Glories’ wings. “Now I’m home, let’s parlay.”

  The Matriarch didn’t even turn to look at me. “In truth, you reveal with your words what you wish to hide. My, what my little one has to learn.”

  “You’re twenty-one years too late, bitch.” I bit my lip. She was right. And one thing that these angels were good at? Hiding: truth, pain, and love… “So, bust me open. What do you see?”

  The Matriarch’s lizard eyes blinked. “Sister. Lover. Enemy.” I winced, and finally, she turned to scrutinize me. “And slave.”

  The only other time that I’d met the Matriarch — sixty-two feathers in a cupboard ago and on the first day that I’d been brought to Angel World as Drake’s spoils of war — I’d trembled in front of this platform.

  The throne room had been emptied then, apart from the Matriarch and me, with Drake beside her grotesque feather throne.

  It was lucky that I wasn’t the hear
t-warming reunion sort. The most I’d raised from the Frost Bitch had been a quirk at the side of her lips.

  But fam is fam, yeah?

  Drake had curled into a ball at the Matriarch’s feet, tucking his hands and wings underneath himself, as if expecting her to break them. The Matriarch had pulled Drake up to his knees, petting his curls. He’d blushed all the way to his chest, shooting me a mortified glance. The Matriarch had run her hands over his wings, from the base to the tip. He’d arched away from the touch, but she’d pressed deeper. Then her eyes had suddenly fluttered.

  I’d sensed the memories torn from Drake’s mind into the Matriarch’s by her invasive touch.

  Were the blokes not allowed to cover their wings, so that they’d always be exposed? Unable to conceal their status, Fallen, falling, or Broken? Or to shield themselves from another’s attack on their mind?

  Drake had keened, but the Matriarch had only yanked on a curl, until he’d fallen into a shaking silence.

  The Matriarch’s gaze had flickered to me. “Baby bird, this is going to be wild.”

  I’d clasped the pouch around my neck, which held my sister’s crystal necklace.

  Jade had still been missing, like all the disappeared kids of Hackney. Until I’d found my sister, queen or not, my mum would have to wait.

  “Let’s get to the bonding crap later.” I’d taken a step towards the Matriarch. “Where’s my sister?”

  “Interesting.” She’d yanked Drake’s curls again, and he’d whined. “Somebody, by the Glories, needs to learn patience.”

  And I’d learned it. For sixty-two bastard days.

  Now the Matriarch lifted her hand, and a streaky brown Merlin falcon, with a shrill ki-ki-kee, dodged low across the throne room, through the kneeling angels, rapidly beating its pointed wings.

  I narrowed my eyes. “My sister—”

  “Patience: have you not learned it?” The Matriarch shifted, as the Merlin landed on the arm of the throne.

  “Has anyone told you that your parenting sucks?” I tilted my head. “You play the absent card, then when the powers hit me like a freaky second puberty, you’re all authoritarian because I said so. Why do you even want me here?”

  My chest ached at the way the Matriarch didn’t even look at me. Instead, she stroked the Merlin’s black tipped feathers, as it folded back its wings.

  “Good girl, Caron,” she cooed.

  “Enough with the Bond villain routine. If you won’t tell me about my sister…” Rebel’s despair ached like a phantom limb. I couldn’t save everyone, not at once, but I could save the punk. Every day, it’d been agony knowing that he was trapped in the dark, and I couldn’t rescue him. Yet was I making a mistake to trust him again? “I’m only kicking it back with you because Rebel saved me. He also betrayed me but he’s why I’m a huntress.” I bit my lip. “He was a good Custodian.”

  Through my bond with Rebel, memories hit as hard as emotions, forced across my retinas like a 4D movie.

  …A glade speared by oaks behind a witches’ house, as I trained with Rebel, pinning him against a tree, whilst snowflakes fell around us like confetti, and my mouth ghosted his…

  Was Rebel sending me a message? After all, his Angelic Power was memories. Or was it the bond uniting us? Could Rebel feel it too?

  Hell, please let him feel it too…

  I jerked, awake to the throne room again, as the movie faded.

  My throat was too tight to swallow.

  “Good Custodian?” Battle sneered to her audience of angels.

  Titters, guffaws, giggles.

  I flushed, clenching my teeth so hard that my jaw hurt.

  Boom.

  The throne room rocked and shuddered.

  The sunlight sparked, before bursting to blackness at the explosion.

  Screams and whimpers.

  I shrank back against the feathers, drawing my knees to my chest.

  A single spear of light cut across the Matriarch. She towered, as her hair flowed as if it was alive; flashes rainbow-flickered across her body.

  Caron perched on her shoulder. She stared down at the angels, who — male and female alike — lay on their faces in the dark at her feet.

  Even Battle.

  Who’s kneeling now, bitch?

  “You dare laugh at my daughter? Did I not make clear to do so was to court the dark?” The Matriarch demanded.

  Silence.

  “You wish to laugh some more?” She raised one pale eyebrow.

  Why is it when you know that you shouldn’t laugh, you’re hit with the nervous giggles? I almost wanted to snigger at myself.

  “One day without light. My, aren’t you silly children. As to the Addict, Zachriel…?” The Matriarch shrugged. “He receives what he deserves. And you, baby bird, deserve better.”

  I leapt off the throne.

  Rebel deserved the dark? I deserved captivity? These angels deserved to cower at her feet?

  I yearned to claw off my mum’s superior mask. And I remembered Drake’s dare. What nobody else would risk: to ask this psycho queen about my dad.

  After all, I’d always been nobody…

  Sometimes, in the swirl of my rage, I forgot my street smarts.

  “Why do I deserve better? I’m a monster, yeah?” My lip curled. “Unless my dad’s stashed under your skirts.”

  I hadn’t reckoned the silence could get even deeper. I was wrong.

  The Matriarch calmly settled herself on her throne, rustling behind her for something brown and wriggling, which she threw into the air.

  Caron plunged, catching the creature in her beak; she ripped into leathery wings, before pinning it with yellow claws on the Matriarch’s shoulder as she tore into its furry body.

  A live bat.

  The Matriarch didn’t even flinch.

  I shuddered, but looked away, as Drake was dragged by Battle into the throne room and to his knees below us at the bottom of the platform.

  Did that mean Drake was Battle’s Wing? I winced at the thought, hating the idea of her brutal hands on Drake’s creamy skin. Then I shook myself. Drake wasn’t mine…and the Matriarch knew. About the dare. Our game. Drake’s manipulation.

  Hell, one of us was dead.

  Drake was ashen as he peeked at me from underneath his eyelashes; I experienced a twinge of guilt.

  Strange, it didn’t feel right to be looking down on Drake, or to see the glee in the Matriarch’s eyes at his fear.

  When had I become a player in her twisted sports?

  “Your father,” the Matriarch replied, still studying Drake and not me, “was one of the Fallen. Did you truly wish to learn that he forced me?”

  “Don’t…” Drake tried to sit up, but Battle shoved him back onto his heels.

  I blinked, whilst my hands convulsively clutched the arms of the throne. What vampire had the strength to force anything on the Matriarch?

  The angels were lost in the darkness of the throne room, swallowed by the silence. But they all knew now. Daughter of the Fallen. Daughter of…

  I choked on a sob.

  Not here. Not in front of these strangers.

  “That’s why I’m… Why you abandoned me?” My cheeks were wet but numb; I couldn’t even work out why.

  “Gracious, you truly do not perceive.” The Matriarch’s expression gentled. “I did not abandon you; I saved you, precious girl. You’re my greatest achievement. Weapon. You’re death to the Fallen. You’re destroyer, savior, and—”

  “Where’s my sister?” I hugged my arms around myself. “I want Jade.”

  “The Wing has a snake’s tongue. You’re all for truth, do you wish to know another?”

  “Please, don’t,” Drake’s voice was low and sad, “not now.”

  “Lies, lies, such pretty, bloody lies.” The Matriarch’s smile was sharp enough to shank, as she leaned across her throne to mine, conspiratorial. “The naughty boy made it up, like as Santa to a child. A happy myth to believe in and entrap you. Your sister was never here
.”

  My mum broke me then, shattered in slivers on the stone floor.

  I slid onto my knees.

  And I’d said that I’d never kneel…

  J was right: I was one deluded bitch.

  When my blazing gaze met Drake’s, he slumped, defeated before both mother and daughter.

  The ancient powers roared inside, rumbling for justice and crimson pain: righteous wrath.

  The side of the Matriarch’s mouth quirked. “Oh, you shall play with blood, pain, and feathers. The Wing has been a bad boy. He’s your pressie for the night.”

  Drake’s eyes widened. He cast me a horrified glance. His wings fluttered back and forth, vibrating violently.

  My sister wasn’t in Angel World. I’d lived all these months, desperate to find her. Yet it’d been nothing but a false dream. And now I was trapped on Angel World with no way to save her.

  Because of Drake.

  Yeah, Drake should be a trembling mess. Even if I knew we’d been played gang style. And the only winner was the Matriarch.

  Truth or Dare: the game was dangerous.

  Nothing mattered, however, but the lies that Drake had told and the pouch with Jade’s crystal necklace swinging at my neck.

  I leapt from the platform, as violet zinged through me, and Drake pulled himself up. In this game, we’d both be savaged bloody.

  4

  Pain was the mate, which blossomed beautiful from my years growing up as the freaky kid with eyes that didn’t match and no parents.

  Pain was the mate, which pressed in the shank and blazed fire under me, until I was the swaggering Bitch of Utopia Estate.

  Pain saved my life because I learned to never let it control me, even though it was inside me.

  Powerful.

  But was my name Pain?

  The Matriarch’s chambers were maze-like caves, each smaller but more ornately decorated than the last. As I swaggered through them, it was like being swallowed by a honeycomb.

  Dripping myrrh scented candles fizzed in niches, and I choked on the winding scent. Outside the walls, the harsh patter of rain meant the chambers were close to the edge of the mountain, as well as near the top.