Forbidden (The Preternaturals)

by Zoe Winters

  “Decide by tomorrow night,” the vampire said. His attention shifted to Hadrian. “Have you been watching the news?”

  “I’m not much of a TV kind of guy.”

  “You should watch the news.”

  The vampires left, and Father Hadrian shut the door and put down the heavy bar to lock it in place.

  “Downstairs. Now,” he growled.

  “You just told him you couldn’t make me do anything, but you sure order me around like you think you can.”

  He watched her silently until she turned and went down the stairs. When she reached the bed, she pulled her wings inside her back and curled up under the covers.

  ***

  Hadrian pulled back the fabric curtains on the bed and tied them to the posts then propped himself on top of the blankets on the other side. He took the remote control from the drawer in the night table and flicked the screen on.

  He ignored the way Angeline tensed when he sat beside her, and then he tried to ignore the way she shifted closer, hesitant at first as if afraid he’d push her away, then leaning fully against him. He felt her eyes on him.

  “Are you going with me tomorrow night?”

  “Do you want me to?”

  Was she playing him? Was this some new game for her? He knew she still wanted him. He could smell it on her. Was this her way of trying to be with him? It was so different from the woman who’d turned him. Or had it been? Hadn’t there always been a sweetness to her, a shy deference? Wasn’t that what had attracted him from the beginning?

  What if her domineering had been the facade? What if this was the real her? And if it was, had it been trained into her by her sadistic sire? Had it been fine-tuned by those obedient robots in Heaven?

  “I won’t make that decision for you. I don’t like or trust Anthony. I know you can handle yourself, but it’s up to you.”

  “Do you think he’ll pardon you?”

  “It’s hard to tell with him. It could be a trap.”

  “Then I need to go. I should guard you, at least.”

  “I’ll give you the address and time before you leave.”

  He flipped through the channels until he found a news program. Maybe he should have been watching the news. The screen showed riots and fires and looting. It would seem like your typical civil unrest, except that the fires were too targeted. He turned up the volume. A plastic-looking Barbie doll of a woman stood with a fake smile on her face as she read from a teleprompter.

  “This grisly scene has repeated itself all across the country. The fires are believed to be intentional arson attacks on vampire resting places.”

  It was still surreal to hear a human talk about it so matter-of-factly. The vampires had kept their secret successfully from the human race for centuries. All it had taken was the right set of crazy circumstances for the story to unravel in front of human eyes.

  He went to another channel. This scene took place at night. Humans screamed and ran down the streets while vampires chased them down and slaughtered them in full view of the camera. Priests chanted and threw holy water, but the vampires were only briefly deterred before setting upon the priests.

  It was gruesome.

  “Why are they doing this?” Angeline asked.

  “Maybe they’re tired of hiding.” Human or vampire, people could be shockingly predictable. He couldn’t tell her he’d counted on this happening to destabilize Anthony’s reign.

  Every station carried the same stories. The president had called a state of emergency and was holding a live press conference.

  “We’ve been in talks with some of our own kind who can only be described as witches. They’ve offered to align themselves with us in the fight against the monsters. We don’t know why these monsters have become so openly aggressive, but we do not negotiate with terrorists. In addition to magic, I want to assure the people of this great nation that we, and the other world leaders are bringing in the highest-level military technology to discover these creatures’ weaknesses, as well as weapons to end this conflict, now.”

  Great. Hadrian knew exactly why Anthony was so interested in Angeline. With all the chaos, his baby daughter would be in more danger than usual. And maybe not even from the rest of the world, but from his own kind.

  The vampires were itching to kill her. To let that abomination live… If Anthony weren’t the vampire king, she’d already be dead. It wasn’t natural. Vampires weren’t supposed to have babies. But placing a vampire claim on a human had created the one-in-a-million opportunity for this weak, frail being to be created. She had all the weaknesses of a vampire and none of the strengths, unless she was immortal, which they wouldn’t know for a while. Still, her odds of surviving long with so much stacked against her weren’t good.

  If Angeline protected Anthony’s child, Hadrian had no doubt the pardon would be genuine. Either way, he had to take the risk unless he wanted to be holed up in the church forever. With the arson reports, even his church might not be safe for long. The wards wouldn’t keep the building safe from fire, and the odds of getting a magic user to come up with a ward that could protect it were long.

  His dark angel had gone back to sleep. Hadrian tried not to let the way her small body curled around him affect him. She still might be playing him somehow. If she’d been shoplifting, she hadn’t become perfect and innocent upon elevation. And If she wasn’t playing him? It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t allow himself to want her beyond the blood. It would be a disaster to give her that much power again.

  Chapter Five

  Angeline brushed past Rodolfo and scurried to get into prayer circle. Kurt gave her that look again. She tried to ignore him, but his hand trailed down her bare arm, his gaze burning through her as if he might throw her down on the soft grass and have his carnal way with her. Given where they were and who else was there, even the thought was scandalizing.

  “What are you doing to yourself?” he asked. “Something is definitely different.” He couldn’t seem to stop touching her and stroked her arm as if she were a soft rabbit he’d discovered and wanted to take home as a pet.

  A couple of the other angels noticed as well. The females gave her surly looks, but the males… they definitely found her more interesting than normal. This time, Angeline didn’t just flush and try to brush it off. This time she was scared. Feeding Hadrian caused them to react to her differently. And the effect was only growing stronger each time he fed. They’d figure it out.

  It wasn’t as if she could avoid Heaven forever and never come back. She had to make the hard choice. They’d find her out if she didn’t. She swallowed back anguish at the thought of never seeing Hadrian again. She shouldn’t care if he forgave her. And maybe she didn’t. Maybe she’d only wanted his arms wrapped around her, the illusion that somehow their history could be made right—and the glimmer of what could have been if she hadn’t screwed it up so badly the first time.

  “Your hair smells like sunshine.” Kurt invaded her personal space, enough to catch a whiff of her hair.

  “Sunshine doesn’t have a smell,” she said, trying to keep things light.

  “Oh, it definitely does. And you smell like it.” He moved even closer, his voice lowering to a whisper. “The things you’re making me want right now… I’ve never wanted and never thought I could want.”

  Being in the warrior class, Kurt was created, not elevated. He’d started out as an angel and had never had the experience or the desire of human lust, or any other kind of lust. But he seemed to be having it now. She wanted to move to another part of the circle, but given the nasty looks from the others, it wouldn’t be much of an escape plan.

  “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she sputtered, managing to free her arm from his grasp.

  “Oh, I think you know. You’re elevated, not created. You know. Weren’t you a vampire before? Aren’t they pretty… sexual?”

  She blushed as images of her time as a vampire flooded her mind. That was a mild way to put it, yes. Though i
t was hard to separate her sire out from the simple state of being a vampire.

  “Kurt, think about what you’re saying. Perhaps some magic is affecting your mind.” Even she knew she was grasping at straws.

  He laughed. “Only you.”

  Rodolfo interrupted the awkward seduction mission. When she took Kurt’s hand in the circle, it burned. His thumb brushed over her skin, as if he just couldn’t help himself. As if he couldn’t not touch her.

  Why couldn’t Father Hadrian be this way? Sure, he’d taken to her blood like it was a mystical drug, and maybe it was. But he looked at her fully naked in an assessing way, as if cataloging a piece of art. Either he had saintly levels of self-control, or he didn’t want her that way. It wasn’t as if she expected Hadrian to ever want her after what she’d done and what they both knew she’d been planning to do to him, but it was still hard being near him, particularly when the last body inside hers, had been his.

  But Heaven didn’t know what to do with even the smallest bit of carnality inside it.

  When they prayed and raised the energy, it was harder this time. It felt… off somehow. And she knew it was her fault. She’d thrown everything off. If she stayed away from Father Hadrian, would all this go away? Would she be pure again and fit for this plane? Or had he tainted her forever when he’d taken her blood?

  Could she somehow wash his bite off? She didn’t want to wash it off. She wished instead that she could wear his mark on her throat visibly. Part of her wanted everyone to know. Even now, she wanted to be in the basement of the church with him. She wanted his fangs in her throat. She wanted to feel that particular sting, that bit of pain that was far more exciting and intoxicating than it should be. That intimacy that shouldn’t exist between them and seemed only possible to exist between them in that way.

  Being elevated hadn’t changed her, not in the deepest places. The marks Linus had left were too deep and had gone on too long. Becoming an angel had only repressed it, repressed her. It would have been better to come back human, all her memories shattered and scattered into the wind. But inside Father Hadrian’s darkened church, everything felt somehow right again. It felt safe and warm.

  “Angeline?” Rodolfo’s biting voice cut off her thought trail, and she looked up guiltily at him. Her lack of focus on top of everything else would only make prayer raising harder.

  “Y-yes, sir?” she squeaked.

  Everyone but her had dropped the hands they were holding and looked at her with accusative disgust. She quickly extracted her hand from the angel on the other side of her, and Kurt—who proved to be more difficult. Kurt was the only one smiling at her, but it was more like a wolf who had found a lone rabbit eating a clover in a field. It wasn’t a “Let’s grab some coffee later,” smile.

  Rodolfo watched her with that judgmental assessment. It was the look he’d given her the day before, only this time the disgust was palpable. It rolled off of him like gathering storm clouds just before the rain. Oh God, he knew. Her hand went to her throat involuntarily to cover a mark that wasn’t there. But Father Hadrian had marked her. He’d marked her soul.

  “Please remove yourself from the circle, but stay. I need to speak with you when we’re finished.”

  There were murmurs among the other angels in the group as she extracted herself from the circle and moved back a few yards. She sat on the lush green grass beside the stream that fed into the pure crystal lake. A baby deer approached her, tentatively, as if he wasn’t sure she was safe. Great, even their menagerie of wildlife felt the change.

  She absently ran her fingers through the fawn’s soft coat as she watched the angels raise the ball of light with their prayers. This time, it appeared effortless. She watched wings pop out around the circle like a crowd doing the wave at a baseball game. And then the euphoria from the light as they soaked in the power. It went on for ages, years, eternities. Then they laid down and stretched out in the grass, riding the high.

  Maybe angels didn’t need sex. The way the light felt when it touched their wings was pleasurable, if not isolating and lonely. What angels lacked was love and intimacy and connection and touching someone else outside a prayer circle.

  Kurt glanced over at her from his position lying in the grass, that look still on his face. Whatever joy and pleasure he’d just experienced, there could be no doubt of what he still wanted from her.

  The fawn raised his head from her lap, struggled to stand, then scampered off as Rodolfo approached, that stern look in his eyes, as if the euphoria from the light absorption hadn’t affected him at all—like he couldn’t become drunk on the power of it like the others. He couldn’t be distracted from his mission.

  He reached down to help her stand. “We need to have a serious conversation in my office.”

  The other angels watched and whispered among themselves. It was rare to have a good scandal up in Heaven, but they seemed hungry for it, that gleam in their eyes not unlike a vampire’s blood lust.

  Without a word, she followed Rodolfo down rolling hills, past some chattering birds, and down a few golden streets until they reached an area that looked like a small town. It was where some of the higher-up angels and the angelic council conducted various business and where assignments and orders ultimately landed after the man upstairs had delivered them via messenger angel.

  Rodolfo’s office was the center building, made of pure silver. It looked dark and imposing even though the reflectiveness would have blinded anyone but an angelic being.

  “Sit.”

  She tentatively took a plush powder blue chair that looked like what Miss Muffet must have sat upon. Rodolfo took the more sturdy-looking high-backed chair on the other side of a glass desk. There was a large window behind him with a view of the lake and some trees. A few angels were already poking around back there.

  The senior angel waved a hand without looking behind him and blinds closed over the glass. It darkened the room considerably, making it seem even more ominous.

  “Now. I’m afraid we’ve got to deal with an unpleasant matter, and it will be better for you if you’re honest with me.”

  “Oh?” Her voice, meant to sound confused, came out guilty and high pitched.

  Rodolfo’s eyes narrowed. “For months, we’ve feared that you might be straying in some way, but we didn’t spot anything amiss. The council and I discussed the possibility of putting you on a specific assignment. We understand that without a charge or mission, many angels grow restless. We thought if we gave you a purpose, perhaps it would put things right. But I’m afraid it’s too late for that now.”

  Angeline alternated between looking at her hands and looking through the glass table onto the fluffy white carpet. It was so weird that there was no dirt in Heaven.

  “Angeline?”

  “Yes, sir?” She looked up.

  “The past couple of days when you haven’t been here, where have you been? What have you been doing?”

  “I…” He’d demanded honesty, but if they didn’t have anything, it would only condemn her. And if they did? It would condemn her worse for the lie. But if she’d determined to stay away from the vampire… maybe it would blow over if she didn’t spill her guts and confess everything. You can’t stay away. Father Hadrian might be in trouble if you don’t guard the king’s family. But if she did go, what would the angels do to her? Could she fall? Or even worse… would they destroy her soul completely? It was the only final death. Nothingness. Forever.

  Angels only appeared to have a good deal. The truth was, they were the only being who could really die. Or at least the only being the higher angels had been authorized to terminate if necessary. There could be no imperfection here. She wasn’t sure what difference there was in an angel who fell and an angel who was destroyed. She was afraid she may be about to find out.

  “Angeline!” Rodolfo rapped a silver letter opener sharply against the glass, snapping her out of her thoughts.

  “I-I’ve just been wandering. Nothing special.” She wond
ered if she could run from them, if she could hide and never come back without falling. Falling was rumored to be too horrible… that couldn’t happen. There had to be a way to get back into their good graces.

  Rodolfo planted his hands firmly on the desk and stood, looming over it, over her. “Tell me the truth!”

  “I don’t know what truth you’re referring to. I’ve done the same thing I’ve done nearly every night since I was elevated.”

  That part was mostly true.

  He looked down his nose at her. “Yes. That seems to have turned out to have been a poor choice on our part. We were foolish to believe you could fit in here after two hundred years drinking blood.”

  Humans ate meat. And weren’t the cows innocent? And the chickens and pigs? But she wasn’t about to contradict the angry angel.

  There was a knock on the door and a blindingly blond head popped in. Kurt.

  “Excuse me, sir, but one of your recently deceased charges is having a meltdown in the streets. She doesn’t want to be here and she doesn’t want to reincarnate.”

  Rodolfo’s eyes narrowed. “I hate when we get those. Belligerent is what they are. Go deal with her.”

  “She’s making a large scene and demanding to see the man upstairs.”

  “Fine. Take Angeline to the black room.”

  “No!”

  Kurt’s eyes widened. “Is that necessary?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “What do you want me to say?” Angeline said. “I did something bad, I’ll do better. I promise.”

  Rodolfo raised a brow. “Oh, now you’re ready to confess. I don’t have time for this right now. We’ll speak about it after I’ve taken care of the human histrionics. Kurt? Black room. Now.”

  “Noooo!”

  Angeline couldn’t explain why the words black room terrified her so much. She had no idea what happened in there. All she’d ever seen were the results. That had been frightening enough. She’d had a casual acquaintance in her prayer circle nearly a decade ago that had been to the black room. When he came back out, he didn’t talk to anyone beyond praying for two years.