by Zoe Winters
She peeked around the edges of the blanket to find Hadrian beating the vampire into a bloody pulp. The vamp wasn’t an old one. She would have felt more power from him if he were. Even though Angeline was no longer a vampire herself, she still knew the energy that crackled in the air when one was old and had a lot of power.
Hadrian was exceptionally strong for his age, courtesy of the excessive blood she’d given him for his change as well as drinking angel blood now. But he was still quite young. Thankfully, the vampire thug was younger and weaker than his opponent.
Truly old vampires were unlikely to attack in the open no matter how much chaos the world fell into. It wasn’t their style. The old ones preferred to blend and hated when even another preternatural could sense their power, let alone sniff out what they were.
She watched Hadrian shake the sting from his fist as his wounds healed in front of her, an annoyed expression on his face. The vamp on the ground wasn’t healing nearly so fast. Hadrian bent down, grabbed the vampire’s head, and pulled it off his body. The vampire melted more slowly than most. Yes, very young. And very stupid.
Hadrian got into the car and slammed the door. “What a fucking idiot.”
“D-did you get a room?”
He nodded. “Top floor. One of the suites. I enthralled the receptionist and learned the suites have a second room without windows. It’s safer for me that way.”
Angeline would never pull the curtains back on him, but she understood the self-protective paranoia. A vampire was so vulnerable during the day, so prone to being killed—suspended in a complete death sleep and unable to defend himself. The instinct was to hide in the darkest, most private hole one could find until night came. She was still surprised Hadrian would risk having her in his space during such a time—not that she had much ability to hurt anything right now. Even staking or decapitating a sleeping vampire would be too much exertion in her state.
And she would never try to hurt him. Especially not after tonight.
Hadrian parked in the garage and carried her up the back stairs wrapped in the blankets. When they reached the room, he laid her on the bed in the master bedroom. He’d sleep in the spare room, likely meant for children or personal assistants.
There was a balcony off the main living area with a sliding glass door. Angeline thought it was good they were so far up with doors like that. A vampire could never be too careful, especially now that the secret was out.
She bolted off the bed and ran for the sliding door.
“Angeline? What is it?”
“I feel like I’m suffocating… I need… I need to be outside. Now!” She struggled with the deadbolt and half fell out onto the balcony when she got the door open. She gripped the railing, not caring about her naked state.
The jitters were worse. She felt lightheaded. The vertigo swamped her, and she might have pitched over the railing to fall ten stories, if it weren’t for Hadrian pulling her back to safety.
“What’s wrong?” Was that fear in his voice? For her?
“I-I don’t know what’s happening.” She shook her head. “I don’t know.” Was it something with his blood? She didn’t know the effects of drinking vampire blood on her kind. It wasn’t the kind of question that came up often. She’d been too desperate for anything to make the pain go away and the bleeding stop that she hadn’t had the presence of mind to think about it.
Angeline looked up at the sky as a large cloud moved away, revealing a bright Moon. She turned toward it on instinct, soaking in the moonlight.
Of course. It was so obvious.
As an angel it had been sunlight and the huge balls of light they’d raised in prayer circle that had fed and sustained her. Now that she’d fallen, it was the light from the Moon. A weaker light in a darker world. She laughed with relief as she started to feel better, but then she began to sob again.
Hadrian’s hand was warm on her back, and for the first time since landing on the church steps, she was aware of her nudity and wanted to cover it up.
“Angeline?”
“My wings. This is when they would come out. Either to protect or to feed and now… they’re never coming back. They’re just gone.” She’d loved her wings. She’d loved the power in them, the grace, the way she could soar through the sky—assuming no one was nearby to see or she flew above the clouds out of sight. She’d loved the built-in protection and the ability to help others. She’d loved the way they’d looked, framing her body.
“They’ll grow back,” he said.
“N-no they won’t. They’re gone. They ripped them out.” She shuddered as the image of those horrible metal claws descending from the ceiling in the black room bloomed fresh in her mind as if it had just happened.
“Look at me.”
She looked up.
“Yes. They will. Guardians have wings. They have protective power, just not the unstoppable power of a full angel. You’re part angel and part demon. You’ll be okay now. Everything will be okay.”
They were the same again. Darkness and light, wrapped and blended together. Contrasting natures warring within the same being. But she didn’t say it. She’d never say it again because it would only call back that terrible night when she’d taken Hadrian’s choices away.
She never would have been happy with mystical power over him. It felt wrong and unnatural, like she had been a child wearing a costume. But she hadn’t known another way they could be together, and she’d been too afraid to trust her instincts about him, too afraid to trust he would ever come to her on his own. She’d handled it wrong, and now she could never fix it.
His hand rubbed down her spine. “You’re healing more from the moonlight. I’m sure the wings will come out when you’re fully healed.”
Angeline wanted to believe him. Even if the wings weren’t quite the same, and even if they weren’t quite as strong, she wanted to believe they would come back again, that they hadn’t taken everything from her.
City lights blinked in the distance, but behind the hotel, it was peaceful. “I-I need something to wear,” she said suddenly.
Hadrian stepped out of her way so she could go back inside. He followed her and rolled back his sleeve. “Drink. It will help your back.”
Angeline wrapped the blanket around her and followed Father Hadrian to the couch. This time when he cradled her and offered her his wrist, it felt intimate. It wasn’t a desperate attempt to survive or get help. It felt like warmth and safety and caring.
He stroked her hair as she drank, and she wasn’t sure if he realized he was doing it. She felt the benefits of the blood this time as her body healed, and the pieces seemed to come back together into one whole. For the first time since she’d stepped into the black room, she felt as if she might be able to be okay, that everything in the world wasn’t terrible and unfixable.
Instead of feeling ostracized not being in Heaven, she felt relief. She felt the shackles of mindless drone obedience fall off of her inside the circle of Hadrian’s arms. She tried to shake those thoughts from her head. Of course Father Hadrian couldn’t read them. Unlike in Heaven, she had mental privacy here, but she still shouldn’t think it. Whatever kindness he showed her was happening for the same reason he absolved others.
It was something deep inside the core of who he was. The need to fix and help. Maybe he thought she’d suffered enough, that her penance was complete now, but it wasn’t as if he would wake up tomorrow night and declare his unending love and that they should travel eternity hand in hand. She wasn’t that foolish. She wasn’t a child.
“I still expect to feed from you,” he said.
Her heart picked up its rhythm at that, and though she knew he couldn’t read her thoughts, he could surely read the increased excitement of her heart. Though, let him think it was fear. It might be better all around if he thought that.
She pulled away from his wrist. “W-why? I-I mean it’s not angel blood anymore. It won’t be the same for you. You won’t like it as much.”
&
nbsp; “It’s still the best blood I’ll ever have on offer. Guardian blood is one step below angel blood. How many of my kind do you think are drinking angel blood?”
“No angel that stayed an angel for long,” she said, still bitter about it, though not at Hadrian. It was hardly his fault the angels were so weird about vampires.
“Did you get enough?”
“I think so.”
She closed her eyes as he pulled back the blanket to examine her back. His hands skimmed over her skin, checking the place where her wings had been taken.
“No scarring, even. I’ve seen a few guardians with scars. I doubt they had vampire blood to prevent it.”
Angeline pulled the blanket back around her. “Thank you. You didn’t have to…”
He put a finger to her lips. “I’m responsible for you. You put yourself in my hands.” Before she could dissect his words or obsess about them, his gaze went to her throat. “My turn.”
There was something in the way he said it that both excited and terrified her. Unlike their other two nights together, she didn’t have the excuse of prayer circle—an easy escape hatch to avoid whatever it was they were dancing around. She’d felt content to dance around it forever. To confront it could mean possible rejection. She wanted to exist in this in-between place where it wasn’t everything she’d ever wanted, but it was something. And she didn’t want to think about how utterly pathetic that probably was.
“I…Father Hadrian… what is it that you want with me?”
“You may just call me Hadrian if you wish. And I told you, I want your blood. Daily. It will always be a thousand times better than any human. I’m not going back now.”
Angeline was sure that it wouldn’t be that difficult to protect herself from a single vampire, once her new wings came in. She didn’t know how the guardian world worked, such talk had been forbidden. And guardians were always so discreet about everything—no doubt because they knew about the screens in Heaven. But Angeline was sure guardians worked for vampires voluntarily, and not because they couldn’t protect themselves from them.
She wasn’t sure if this was a game he was playing, offering forgiveness that would never materialize, or if he even could forgive her. She wasn’t sure it mattered one way or the other, as long as he didn’t hate her. And the way he looked at her right now definitely wasn’t hate. And it wasn’t pure lust—blood lust or otherwise—either. There was a tenderness that she was sure she didn’t deserve, but would try not to question or push away.
She swept back her hair and tilted her head. A hiss escaped her lips when Hadrian bit her. He answered with a rumbling growl as he drank.
Then everything came tumbling out of her in sobs that began small and barely audible and then grew until they almost overwhelmed her. Hadrian didn’t stop drinking. He didn’t pull away and ask her to talk about it. He didn’t do anything but pet her hair and continue to drink.
The jolt of pain from his fangs was all she’d needed to trigger the release of emotion. Though she’d thought everything that could be wrung out of her had been wrung out inside the black room while the voices had whispered and accused and threatened, she hadn’t had time to process it all.
Until now.
She’d needed to cry so badly in a place that was safe where she didn’t have to keep constant vigilance for fear of what might come next—a place she could feel something without fear that it would be used to harm her later.
This space, this moment belonged only to her. It was a piercing bright point of pain that she’d been allowed to feel and let go. Until now, she hadn’t understood just how much she’d held back and held onto for years up in Heaven. There, everything was about appearances. How everything looked. If it was appropriate enough, right enough, holy enough, clean enough. If it had been sanitized enough for the rest of the denizens of this cloyingly perfect place where nothing and no one could be real. That suffocating perfection that stole the light from their eyes and the joy from their hearts while they smiled, always smiled. Because what might happen to you if you didn’t smile and pretend everything was okay?
The realness of Hadrian’s fangs in her throat nearly unmade her, then remade her into something that was okay to just be. To exist without expectation or condemnation—imperfect as she was.
His grip on her as he fed was overwhelmingly possessive. He was another corset, one that wrapped entirely around her soul—something that should be a cage, yet somehow felt like safety and comfort. Like freedom.
Angeline was unsure if the earlier fight in the parking lot with the other vampire had been about protecting her, or about protecting the food source that was his.
She tried not to let it mean anything. She tried not to think about how everything inside her lit up at the idea of being his. She didn’t even care what that meant. If it included forgiveness or not. Friendship or not. Romance or not. Sex or not. The one thing she somehow knew it contained, was safety. She felt safe with him and was content with whatever grew between them, if anything even could.
Hadrian ran his tongue over her neck to seal the wounds and held her quietly as her sobs wound down and she found the will to be silent.
When the moment broke, it felt awkward, as if neither could articulate what had just happened between them, as if both feared they would destroy or somehow break it if they gave voice to it. Words could kill everything sometimes.
Father Hadrian took a few steps away from the couch. The physical distance was almost unbearable after what had transpired. He scrubbed a hand through his hair, rolled his shirt sleeve back down, and righted his clothing. He crossed to a writing desk and took a pen and hotel stationery from the drawer.
“Write down your sizes, and I’ll go get you some clothes. Do you need anything else?”
“Can I order room service?”
“I thought you ate light.”
“W-we do, but we still can eat food. I like it. At least I did as an angel. A cheeseburger sounds like Heaven right now.” She wrinkled her nose, catching herself. “Or… no. That’s wrong. Heaven sounds terrible, and a cheeseburger sounds great.”
He chuckled. “Order whatever you want. I’ll be back in a bit.” He wrote his cell number down for her.
Angeline folded the paper and put it on the coffee table. “Thank you.”
He stood for another moment and looked at her in a way she could barely bring herself to hope for. His fingertips trailed lightly through her hair one last time, then he slipped out of the room.
***
Without Angeline with him, Hadrian could utilize vampire speed. He hadn’t driven far outside the city to find a hotel room for the night. He’d wanted something nice but not too flashy, and not in the very center of things—a space that would feel safe for both of them.
Vegas never slept. It was like New York that way. There was a time when he’d loved that about it, but he wasn’t sure anymore if Vegas was the place for him. Or the church he’d hidden out in for that matter. In fact, he wasn’t sure who or what he was supposed to be anymore.
When he’d become a vampire, the priestly trappings were more a signature, a calling card, than any real sense of leftover piety. The church had been a place of familiarity, and the basement had been a perfect resting spot for the day. Safe. But if he intended to keep Angeline with him, he’d need to find somewhere new to settle, and not a church as he normally frequented.
Though it could be just the wards, he had a feeling that as a fallen angel, she was no longer welcome in churches.
And why should he keep her with him? Hadrian tried to find the anger he’d held onto for so long where she was concerned. In truth, he very much enjoyed his vampiric nature, so he wasn’t sure why he’d held such a grudge against Angeline. And it wasn’t as if her attempt at dominating and controlling him had come to much effect in the end. He’d turned the tables and maintained his autonomy. It wasn’t as if she held any power over him. Keep telling yourself that.
When he’d seen her on his
church steps crying out for him, the anger and bitterness he’d tried to hold onto simply vanished. She wasn’t that vampire anymore. And even when she had been, the darkness didn’t sit well on her. She had never worn her vampiric nature like anything more than a mask covering the parts of her that were too fragile and easily wounded. It was never her darkness he’d been attracted to, no matter how much he’d wanted to pretend. It was her light.
When he’d first set up this feeding arrangement, he’d wanted to see how far he could push her, and if he got angel blood out of the deal, he wouldn’t push the vein away.
Angeline had given him more than just her vein. She’d given him an open trust that he didn’t want to crush or damage. She’d slept in his bed without a stitch of clothing on, simply because he’d asked her to. She’d trusted that he wouldn’t cross any lines, and he hadn’t. He’d been honored that she’d offered him that trust, and he refused to break his own code. He would never damage someone who approached him that way.
Something inside him screamed that she was his. Hadrian pushed the thought away. It was the same possessive feeling she’d once had toward him. And that hadn’t ended well for either of them. That kind of possession felt dark and ugly and controlling. Even so, this thing between them felt right.
He found himself irrationally angry with the heavenly realm, with the church, with everything he’d believed in his human lifetime, everything he’d committed himself to and the shadows and trappings he’d continued with into his immortality. He wasn’t sure if he could ever go inside another church after this.
It would be like supporting the very beings who’d hurt Angeline. He ripped off the Roman collar and threw it on the ground. He couldn’t even look at it anymore.
When Hadrian reached the strip, he slowed his pace to appear normal and human. It drove him nearly insane to move so slowly when he had things to do. The casinos were just getting started for the night. Vegas was the one city that seemed to have incorporated the preternaturals as a tourist attraction.
