by Zoe Winters
Hadrian pointed to the door. “Go. Do not return here again. I don’t need your protection or your warnings. Wouldn’t want you to get in trouble with God, now would we?”
“I-I’m sorry. For that night. I truly am.”
“I don’t care. Leave.”
***
Hadrian watched the hypnotic swish of her dress until the church door thudded closed and he was alone again. He clenched his fists, the rage causing him to shake. He wanted to run after her. He wanted to tie her up and… he didn’t know what. He was no match for her angelic power, and that angered him even more. He was always a sitting duck whenever she appeared in his life—some stupid fool she could play games with.
He remembered the night of his rebirth with clarity that still surprised him. He’d pretended there was something noble in sending her to greet the sun, in murdering his sire. He hadn’t been able to admit, even inside his own mind until this moment, that it had been vengeance and nothing more—pure rage that she had thought to control him, to own him like some pet.
He’d hidden behind familiar holiness, behind absolution, behind the idea that he was doing her a favor, that she could have another chance to get it right this time. And now that she had, he still hated her. Someone upstairs had seen something in her worth saving, something worth elevating for fuck’s sake. How had she lied to them? How had she tricked them?
There was nothing holy in her, and now she was an angel and he was… this.
Even if he’d meant the words he’d said so long ago while explaining why he must kill her, he’d thought she wouldn’t be his problem. He’d never have to see that face again. Perhaps she’d reincarnate as a human, but he wouldn’t know her. She wouldn’t know him. They might pass as ships in the night, neither one the wiser for the experience. Perhaps some day they’d meet and he’d absolve her for something as he drank deeply of her blood. Or perhaps he’d kill her again in her new form. But he wouldn’t know.
He remembered the innocence before his turning, thinking of her as his dark angel. Wanting her. It had all been lies. Tonight she’d been dressed much as she had back then, a long, old-fashioned dress, but white instead of black. The gown had a low-back so her wings could come and go without damaging the fine cloth.
He wanted to damage the fine cloth. He wanted to damage her. He wanted to break her beyond all repair. He wanted vengeance still.
Hadrian shoved the holy water onto the floor, shattering the marble. He hissed as water splashed his face, judging him. He growled into the empty church. Fuck God and all his stupid rules. Hadrian was the judge, jury, and executioner in this town. And nobody said or did shit about it. He’d stayed away from sin city for far too long.
The vampire blurred out of the church, his anger becoming a living thing, another demon clinging to him, rippling black and shiny beneath the surface. He hunted until he found a petite woman on the streets. Her black leather skirt rode high to give him an enticing view of her thigh. Cleavage was cinched as if to say, “And here is what we have on special tonight, honey.”
Her hair was long and dark, like Angeline, her eyes far too guileless for a prostitute. Too innocent. Tricking him. Another dark angel.
“How much?” His voice was clipped as he bit out the words.
Fear rolled off her at his intensity, his anger. She took a step back.
“I-I was going to take a break. It’s b-been a long night.”
Oh, a stutterer. Just like Angeline with all her pretend innocence. Fantastic. He would enjoy this one. He took her by the arm and led her off the street.
“How much?” he asked again.
“T-two fifty.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Rather rich for this neighborhood don’t you think?”
“You frighten me.”
“As well I should. It’s your call, sweetheart. Yes or no. Are you in or out?” He hoped she’d say yes. It would be one more sin to add to her pile, so he could punish something that looked like his sire.
“Y-yes. I need the money.”
He looked inside her mind. She truly was an innocent. She wasn’t just sorry for her sins. They ate her up inside. She shouldn’t be on the streets. He should take her some place safe. He could fix her life with the smallest flourish of thrall on someone in the position to save her. He couldn’t bring himself to fuck her. As badly as he wanted to get some aggression out, to take her vein while he screwed her against an alley wall, he simply couldn’t go there.
But he couldn’t bring himself to forgive her, either. She was too much like his dark angel.
His fangs descended. “You won’t need money in Heaven.”
“Y-you’re one of them.”
“Indeed.” He clamped a hand over her mouth to stop her scream and drank until she went limp in his arms.
***
Angeline shielded her eyes from the brightness of Heaven. With all the lights on the Vegas strip, it shouldn’t seem so unnaturally bright here. She pushed through the golden gates and tried not to look as if she’d been consorting with the devil.
She wondered if Hadrian’s darkness had left an imprint, perhaps a cloud around her soul. She looked down at her arm, worried she’d see an angry mark where his hand had been. He hated her, and yet, for the briefest moment she’d relished the feel of his skin on hers after so many years. No one had touched her with any brand of passion since she’d been elevated. It was forbidden. And Hadrian’s touch had been searing.
What was wrong with her? Even as an angel she couldn’t stop thinking all the wrong things about him.
“Angeline? You missed prayers. Where were you?” said a short, balding angel.
Oh, God. Rodolfo. One of the adjustment angels and one of the biggest suck-ups to the man upstairs she’d ever met. His perfect and overly obsequious behavior had allowed him a level of power not normally granted to any angel that wasn’t created one from the start. Elevated angels didn’t normally get to make demons or elevate others to angelhood. But he did. He’d elevated her, and he’d turned the last demon. Jane, was it?
Jane had stayed locked in her room with the screens, obsessively watching her mate and young child, much like Angeline obsessively watched Hadrian. He was right. She was a stalker. The only thing she wasn’t doing was sending him cryptic messages and dead flowers. Surely that could only be a matter of time.
“Angeline?”
She shook the thoughts from her head. “I’m sorry, I was somewhere else.”
“Prayers are not optional. You know our powers are strongest when we meet together for daily prayer circle. It’s not so much to ask of an angel is it? Perhaps I was wrong about you.”
Rodolfo liked to jab her with her one insecurity—the fear that Linus had tainted her so greatly that none of her lives before mattered, none of her goodness, none of her striving to be better. Linus had washed it away in a river of pain and blood and death.
“I’m sorry. I lost track of the time. It won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t. Forgiveness is not a luxury for our kind. You don’t want to be sent to the black room.”
She shuddered. The black room was a punishment for angels. No one who went to the black room talked about it. Ever. Nothing that happened in there could ever be spoken aloud. All she knew was that it was bad, and she’d never seen an angel who’d gone in there ever slip up again.
They came out perfect. Too perfect. Not the slightest disobedience. And if someone were to ask why they were so perfect and obedient, the only response would be eyes so haunted, it took one’s breath away to look into them. It was as if they begged the questioner to gaze into their soul and see the story they could never share.
“N-no, sir. I won’t miss prayers again,” Angeline said.
He gave her an assessing look, as if contemplating whether he should report her. “See that you don’t.”
She nodded and scurried off to what Hadrian had referred to as her glittering castle in the sky. He wasn’t far off in that guess. There w
as a tower with a window and a view of the water. She climbed the winding stairs to the screening room at the top.
The screens were meant for her to watch over charges when she had assignments, but Angeline hadn’t had an assignment in a while. It was for the best because she’d spent the better part of the last few decades preoccupied with the only vampire she’d ever made.
She waved a hand over the wall, and an image snapped to life. She winced as she watched Father Hadrian drain a prostitute. Her hand went to her mouth when she saw how much the victim resembled her.
This one is your fault. The thought rumbled through her mind in Hadrian’s rich baritone.
Just another reason she shouldn’t have approached him. If he couldn’t make her pay, someone else would. Angeline turned from the screen and descended one flight of stairs into her bedroom. Everything in this place was jewel-encrusted gold and silver—or marble. Fabrics were silk, mostly white with a bit of gold thrown in. It was so sickeningly perfect, so cloyingly pristine.
Maybe Rodolfo was right about her. How could she look at the utter perfection of this place and long to be in Hadrian’s arms in the basement of his wilting and dying church? Her closet was filled with long white and gold dresses, as well as a few in silver and pale blue for variety. The blue brought out her eyes.
The clothes had been waiting for her when she’d first become an angel—all in a similar style to what she normally wore, except with low backs that wouldn’t obstruct her wings. There were even corsets, though these too had been altered with a lower back than was normal. She missed the others she’d worn before she’d been elevated. Secretly, she’d accumulated regular corsets whenever she ventured into the human world. It had become a compulsion to collect and hide them.
The corsets she wore now were ivory and bright white. The hidden ones were black and red—colors of death and pain and seduction. They felt like a guilty and hedonistic secret sitting in the back of the closet, and she knew it was dangerous to keep them.
She’d only put them on a few times in the privacy of her own room. The steel-boned cages covered the place in her back that transformed to allow glistening wings to come out. Out of curiosity, she’d tried to bring her wings out while wearing one. She’d bowed her head and closed her eyes until she’d felt the glow and the transformation start.
When the wings had hit the obstruction, they’d stopped, the energy of her angelic magic coiled tightly within her. She’d felt that if she tried harder, if she forced the wings to push through, they would. But she’d stopped herself and put the corset back into the closet.
Angeline pushed the dark-colored secrets farther into the back and pulled the dresses to fan across the front to cover them better. She shouldn’t want to own any corsets, neither the regular ones, nor the modified versions.
Linus had liked them and insisted she wear them for him. When she’d broken free from him, not wearing one had felt too frightening and exposed. She had grown to like the little cage, even as she’d hated her captor. And here they still were, all lined up in a row, offering her their restrictive sanctuary.
Hadrian’s roar on the screen in the tower pulled her out of the memories. Angeline flew down the stairs, out of her home, and through the golden gates to return back to the human world. She didn’t have to see the screen to know he needed her, even if he didn’t want her.
Chapter Two
After disposing of the girl’s body, Hadrian had gone to the desert to think. Surrounded by the peace of the Kelso Dunes, he couldn’t decide if he was lonelier in the city or out here with only stars for company. The choice to align himself with an enemy to bring down Anthony’s vampire police state before it spiraled out of control had cost him any semblance of family or friends.
And seeing Angeline had only made it worse. When she’d first turned him, she’d said she wanted a mate, that she was lonely. But all she’d done was pass that loneliness to another soul. Would he be less lonely if he’d spared her that night? Perhaps, but at what cost? Being her obedient puppet? The thought made him cringe.
Hadrian was so wrapped up in his internal pity party that he didn’t hear the strangers approach.
“This is almost too easy.” A woman’s voice.
A circle of vampires and magic users formed around him. All Anthony’s. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t known the vampire king was pissed at his betrayal. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t expected reprisal. He’d just foolishly thought that returning to his old church—a place he was sure the king couldn’t know about—would offer him safety and protection. But Anthony had witches, and no doubt they’d used a personal item of his to find him.
Inside the walls of Our Lady of Mercy, he would have been safe even from their locating spells, but his wards didn’t extend into the vastness of the desert.
“I guess you’re here to kill me.” What difference did it make anymore? Why not escape this life? He knew why. He feared the golden room in between the worlds where his life would be weighed and judged. Hadrian wasn’t sure he was prepared to atone for his own sins. It was easier being the judge than the convicted.
One of the male vampires chuckled. “We’re here to play with you until you’re too weak to fight back. Then we’re taking you to the king for execution.”
The magic users in the circle each raised a palm to reveal a glowing ball of purple energy. It sparked off their fingertips as if it had a sentient need and desire to cause pain. The vampires in the group growled, fangs extending, eyes glowing, crouched and ready to pounce.
The vampires wore black leather gloves, and each held a silver cross.
Before Hadrian could escape, the magic users threw their balls of energy at him. He winced and roared as they hit and burned his skin. One of the vampires rushed him, and the two of them began to scuffle, rolling in the sand. He howled and jerked away from the cross as it pressed against his skin. Another vampire jumped onto his back, tearing into him with fangs, using another silver cross to inflict more damage.
As the rest of the vampires moved in to overtake him, the magic users closed in, their arms outstretched, chanting in a language he didn’t know. Not Latin. That would have been too easy. Latin he could have deciphered.
Lightning lit the sky, and a wailing shriek filled the air. He looked up into the gathering clouds to see what their magic had brought down on him. But the activity in the sky wasn’t the magic users. It was Angeline.
Her wings were outstretched as she swooped down from the sky, causing sand to swirl up all around her. She landed on the ground a couple of yards from him as a powerful light burst forth from her wings, shoving everyone away from her, including him. While the others were disoriented, she rushed to his side and shielded him, her wings closing around to protect him from the vampires and magic.
Hadrian’s attackers cried out from the power of the light and the protective energetic field she’d erected. He was too weak to protest. He didn’t want her protecting him. He didn’t want her swooping in with her righteous outstretched angel wings saving the day and shielding him like some barely crawling infant.
The magic users continued to chant and kept throwing balls of energy at them. Even inside the circle of her wings he felt the tiniest pressure when they hit, like harmless drops of water falling against bare flesh in a spring rain.
The chanting became angrier, the energy balls growing in strength until the witches and sorcerers ran out of juice. Their voices grew weary, and the energy died. Angeline was quiet and patient through it all.
Hadrian knew she must feel his hatred, but so close to her and so near death, he hadn’t been able to bring out the angry words to drive her off. He wasn’t sure it would have worked anyway. His guardian stalker angel seemed determined.
“Goddammit. That bitch’s walls are impenetrable. Where the fuck did he get an angel?” One of them shouted in disgust.
“We’ll be back for you, vampire. She can’t protect you forever.”
“Let’s get out of here.”<
br />
Angeline remained still and quiet while they dispersed. She hadn’t spoken a single word since she’d arrived and as much as he hated her, as much as he still wanted revenge, he couldn’t bring himself to break the spell of silence.
There had been no quips from her. No threats. Nothing but wings and power and the certainty that she could protect him as long as she was there.
He didn’t want her protection.
When they were alone, her wings opened to reveal the starry night sky above him. The clouds had disappeared, and all was clear and calm. She rose, her dress sliding down over her body, her wings shrinking and hiding their power back inside her, making her look innocent and unassuming once again.
She reached down to help him stand, but he scrambled away and groaned in pain from the damage that had been inflicted before her arrival.
“Let me help you back to the church.”
“No. Go away.”
Tears formed in the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them away.
“Haven’t you done enough?” he asked.
“You’re not healing. Why aren’t you healing?”
“I’ll be FINE. Leave me.”
“So they can just come back and take you? No. I know you hate me. I’m sorry. You have every right to hate me, but please, please let me make something right between us. Just this one time, and then I’ll go away.”
He growled but relented, allowing her to help him stand. Then her wings were out again, and before he could blink, she’d scooped him up and flew over the desert, back to the city. What a manly vampire day he was having.
When they were a few blocks from the church, she landed. “We can walk the rest of the way if you can make it… It was just so far out that…”
“I can walk. I don’t need you coddling me.”
“I’m sorry.”
He bared his fangs and snarled. “Stop saying you’re sorry. It’s just a word. It doesn’t undo anything. It doesn’t make it right, and if you think I’m ever forgiving you, you are insane. Do you understand? In my eyes you will always be a demon. You’ll always be the evil thing that tried to take my will away.”
