by Liz Meldon
“Maybe you can feed from Severus?” her bestie offered, and Ella flashed her a quick smile.
“I can wait. I just…” She shook her head, glaring up at the full sky, at the sheet of sprinkling white. “Where the fuck is Malachi?”
“I’m still not sure how communication between here and Hell works,” Moira said as they rounded a corner and headed down a single-lane side street. Steam spiraled up from a sewer grate, melted snow drip, drip, dripping into a pool somewhere below. “But I’m sure he’s coming back soon. He gave his word, and Severus says that actually means something.”
Ella nodded, but Moira’s unimpressed eye roll didn’t go unnoticed. For all the chaos demon had done for her since she turned, he still hadn’t won over her best friend—that much was obvious. The pair fell silent for a few minutes, neither saying a word until they were on a completely different side street, admiring the Christmas lights glittering in the windows of one of the pricier, more upscale apartment buildings. Chrome and glass, black and looming, it stuck out like a sore thumb in this part of the downtown core, far better suited for the glittering skyline of the business district.
“So, what’s… What’s happening with you two?”
Ella had been dreading this conversation. In the past, they had always talked boys. Always. She knew far more about Severus Saevitia than she ever wanted to, and yet when it came to Malachi, it seemed Moira had been holding back.
Not that Ella had been forthcoming with information, but she preferred to get a grip on her feelings before she blurted something she might regret.
“I don’t know,” she told her, hands in her pockets as she studied a flickering snowflake display six stories up. Wasn’t it annoying to have that flashing all night in your living room? “Sex is happening, I guess.” She shot her friend a wry grin. “Really good sex.”
Moira cleared her throat, frost-kissed cheeks darkening. “Ella—”
“And, I don’t know, feelings too?” She huffed for effect, breath fogging between them. “Oh, look at that one!”
Ten stories up, blue and white lights zigzagged across the entire ten feet of exposed window. Fancy. Moira obliged her, murmuring that it was beautiful, but she knew the distraction wouldn’t work for long.
“Look, I’m not putting up with his bullshit. He’s a lot of talk, and we both know that,” Ella carried on. “But feeding from him kind of… bonded us, I guess. I know he’s an asshole a lot of the time. He says things to push people’s buttons. He manipulates situations in his favor. He thinks he’s way more charming than he is. I’m not blind to his faults, and I know he rubs you the wrong way—”
“Sometimes,” Moira agreed softly, brushing a smattering of snowflakes off her cheeks. “But he’s loyal to his family. He and Severus have really made strides to rebuild their relationship. I can see that he’s trying, and that he wants what’s best for us in his own twisted way. I just…” She met Ella’s gaze, her ethereal blues especially bright tonight. “I don’t want him to hurt you.”
“He won’t,” she said without missing a beat. “I won’t let him.”
Moira’s white brows shot up, and they linked arms again before moving on from the enormous black tower, its intricate—maybe even competitive—window displays behind them.
“Seriously,” Ella said, grinning. “I don’t take shit from men, you know that.”
In the past, guys had tried to walk all over her, only to discover that despite her shitty home life, her absentee dad, her narcissistic mom, Ella Thomas had self-esteem. She valued herself. She lovingly cultivated her self-worth—and she knew what she deserved.
“It feels easier around him though,” she admitted, nibbling her lower lip for a moment when they paused at a crosswalk. “Now that I’m letting myself accept that there’s something between us, it feels… better. Less stressful.” And infinitely more pleasurable. “I’m not, like, in love, but I feel closer to him.” She chuckled at the thought. “I’ve probably drank his full body weight in blood by now, so I’m not surprised we’re closer. He stepped up for me when I needed… when I needed something. He doesn’t get anything out of the feedings.” Besides a raging hard-on, of course. Heat flared in her chest, between her thighs. “Anyway, he did something kind of selfless so that I could feel more myself again, and that means a lot to me.”
“I can… get on board for that,” Moira told her slowly, the pair kicking a balled clump of snow between them as they walked. Across the street, a lone figure hurried by, bundled up against the cold. Distantly, she heard the pitter-patter of his human heart. Swallowing down the rush of saliva, Ella squared her shoulders and grinned.
“Well, that’s good to hear.”
“I just hope it isn’t, you know, like a biological response,” her bestie added, casting her a wary look. “As if you feeding from him, drinking his blood, gives him power over you.”
“Yeah, no, the animal inside me who craves blood more than life itself has power over me—not Malachi.” If she hadn’t gotten a handle on her bloodlust, the vampiric monster lurking just below the surface would be calling all the shots. In the beginning, she had been wild, uncontrollable. If anything, Malachi’s blood had tamed the predator inside—he had given her the power back without even realizing it. “I mean, I chose to kiss him every time, and, and…” The heat rose, scorching up her throat and pooling in her cheeks. While she felt its intimate caress with burning clarity, Ella knew she wouldn’t see evidence of it in her reflection. “And I chose to sleep with him—like, a lot.”
On the pullout couch. Against the shower wall. Bent over her bathroom counter. In her bed, in every position imaginable. His hands everywhere. His mouth hot and wanting and possessive. His eyes black and his grip bruising. Again and again, Ella had chosen blood and sin and pleasure. She had chosen that bloody mess, that bloody night. She had chosen him.
Beyond his initial groping and leering, after she’d stabbed a knife into his hand, Ella had always been the one to initiate anything between them. Malachi hadn’t pushed them into the abyss—she had dragged him down with her.
“Just be careful,” Moira murmured, giving her arm a squeeze. Ella squeezed back, suddenly immensely grateful to feel the fullness of her heart again.
“I know. And I know you’ve got my back.”
Moira grinned. “Always.”
“Snape reference.” Ella snorted when her friend rolled her eyes. “Nice.”
The pair giggled together, tackling a mound of snow and dashing across the street to a little neighborhood park. Beyond the white picket fence sat an evergreen dolled up in bows and balls and lights, a glittering star at its peak. Usually they attended the lighting of that particular tree together; this year, Ella had been housebound.
And Moira had been by her side through every second of it. As they passed through the front gates, pointing out familiar decorations and a few new ones, Ella’s eyes prickled with tears. Moira had stepped up for her consistently since all this started, taking her side in every argument at the house, doing whatever she could to ensure Ella was comfortable—that she wasn’t isolated, even when she did all she could to isolate herself.
It was time Ella returned the favor.
“Any news on your trial?”
They stood before the twelve-foot evergreen, its decorated branches dusted in snow. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Moira’s expression fall.
“Soon,” she said after a beat. “Zachariah says it’s soon.”
Panic. Anger. Indignation. Guilt. Her gut churned, and she faced Moira with a frown, taking her by the arm and gripping tight. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
The angel hybrid shrugged. “Because you have a thousand other things to worry about?”
All that guilt turned violent, clawing at her insides. It wasn’t fair that Ella had been the center of attention for weeks—not when Moira’s life was at stake. What had happened to her, what she had become, was devastating, but not more than losing her best friend, her sister,
just because some high court of angels decided Moira’s life wasn’t worth living.
Moira couldn’t help it if her gross dad had slept with a human.
This wasn’t her fault.
“Okay, let’s make one thing perfectly clear.” She gave Moira a little shake, the jostle forcing those ethereal blues her way. “If my best friend is being taken to some stupid court in Heaven to be judged by a bunch of dick angels, it’s something I want to know. I don’t care what’s going on with me. Humans turn into vampires all the time, right? It’s tough, but it happens. You could die, Moira. Of course I want to know about that.”
Moira’s lower lip wobbled and she looked away, glossy eyes catching the reflection of the nearby tree lights. “Zachariah has been prepping me. We study the laws, past verdicts, appropriate court behavior. He can’t give me any specifics, but he’s been implying that it’ll be really soon. Like. Any day, I guess.”
Fucking bastards had no right to do this to her. No right. “Moira—”
“And we…” Her breath hitched as she brushed her mittens over her cheeks, catching a few rogue tears. The temperature plummeted a good ten degrees, a bitter cold invading the air around them. Even if it didn’t bother her, Ella could still feel its burn. Moira cleared her throat, then sniffed. “We got the house. Severus and I… They chose us.”
“Oh my god! Honey, that’s—”
“But we had to pass,” Moira told her, hiccupping as a few more tears spilled down her cheeks. She let out a watery, humorless chuckle. “I don’t know if I’ll even be alive a month from now, so what’s the point of buying a house together, you know?”
Fuck. Ella had known that all this was happening in the periphery, but she had been so focused on just surviving, on learning how to adapt to the hand life had dealt her, that she hadn’t really been able to see. Moira’s world was falling apart around her—again—and they had been so focused on her…
It wasn’t fair.
And it wasn’t right.
“Oh my god, Moira…” Grabbing her sleeve, Ella dragged her crying best friend into a hug, the guilt making itself permanently at home. At this proximity, her nose to Moira’s throat, she could smell the blood pumping—human blood tainted by an angel. Not only that, but she could hear it all, coursing through her veins, firing from her heart and back around.
A month ago, it would have driven her mad.
A week from now, maybe it would again.
This morning, however, Ella could ignore the siren song. She could live in the moment, feel her soulmate’s anguish.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, glowering up at the sky, all the way to that heavenly court. “This supernatural stuff is literally the biggest crock of horseshit I’ve ever experienced.”
Moira laughed, the sound high and clear and sweet—genuine. She pulled back with a nod, removing her mittens and stuffing them in her pocket before she scratched off the tears freezing to her porcelain cheeks.
“Yeah, it really is, isn’t it?”
“Seriously,” Ella said, her throat tight, her eyes bloody as she pushed Moira’s thick white locks away from her face. “The biggest load of bullshit ever.”
“Sister?” A nasally voice sliced through the moment, forcing the hairs on the back of Ella’s neck to rise, her gums struck by a familiar ache. Out of the corner of her eye, a wall of dark shadows loomed. Moira’s confusion quickly mirrored her own, and they turned in unison—only to discover a crowd had materialized, seemingly out of nowhere.
A crowd of vampires.
Cold, dead auras hummed faintly back at her from the sea of unfamiliar pale faces. A few appeared gaunt, their cheeks deeply hollow, their eyes sunken, like they hadn’t fed in months. Ella shifted her weight between each foot; had she looked that bad back when she’d refused human blood?
Never mind. Bigger issue at hand.
“What… the fuck?”
A pair stepped forward from the front of the group, their clothes the nicest of the lot; everyone else looked like they’d just crawled out of the gutters. Maybe they had, but they lacked the scent of sewage, instead surrounded by the briny metal tang of dried blood. The front two, however, smelled of… cologne. Perfume. Her fiery red hair up in a high pony, his almond-brown eyes bright and focused. A pretty pair. Ella and Moira’s age, from the looks of it.
But she could be completely off base with vampire ages. After all, they lived forever.
“Ella Thomas,” the woman greeted, placing a hand to her chest, mouth stretched wide in a beaming grin. The tips of her fangs protruded beneath her top lip. “Sister. I am Grace Abbot. This is our brother Flynn Jameson. We’ve come to take you home.”
“I think I made my position on home pretty clear to that fuck Serafino,” Ella snapped, and the entire group flinched, perhaps at the way she spat the bastard’s name. “I have a home, and it’s not with him. Or, you know, you.”
Moira stood stock-still beside her, expression tight yet focused, her bright blues sliding from vampire to vampire, assessing each one in a single glance.
“We were sent by our master to collect you,” Grace remarked, words lacking her previous warmth. Flynn placed a large hand on her arm with a gentle smile, his eyes fixed on Ella.
“We know you crave family—belonging. We are your family, sweet sister,” he insisted, gesturing to the loitering, deadpan vampires behind him. “Here you belong.”
“I’ve got my family,” she said thickly. Her hands tightened to fists when Grace snorted and Flynn’s smile turned patronizing.
“Her home is right here,” Moira added, “with me. Now, step aside and let us pass.”
“Master said you would be resistant.” Grace tugged up her sleeves, dressed in a pink cashmere sweater and puffy white vest, some gaudy sparkly thing of fake crystals hanging around her neck. “We understand. The change is hard, but we can make it easier.”
“We will make it easier,” Flynn clarified. He too tugged up his sleeves, like they were both gearing up to get their hands dirty. If they wanted a fight—fine. Ella tossed her head from side to side, eliciting a beautifully deep crack from her neck with each toss.
“It’ll be a cold day in hell before I go anywhere with you.”
“Not a great metaphor,” Moira mused, shooting her a wry grin when their eyes met. “I mean, it does get pretty cold in Hell.”
“Oh yeah.” A prickle of old familiar adrenaline tickled her belly. “The snow.”
“If you want to call it that, sure.”
“Okay, we can get technical about it, I guess, but—”
“Enough of this,” Grace snarled, snapping her fingers in Ella’s direction. “Brother… Collect our sister so we can deliver her before sunrise.”
The ache in her gums sharpened as her fangs slid into place. While Ella had always weighed the options of fight or flight seriously in the past, even more so since entering the supernatural world, her new body was all about fight—and she could appreciate that. Sure, her fangs were a raging pain in the ass whenever they showed up to the party uninvited. But this was twice now they had leapt to her aid in a tense situation, ready to tear flesh and viscera.
Ready to defend her.
The innate protective mechanism was almost endearing.
Unfortunately, just about every other creature in the small park had fangs too—all sharp, all lethal. Flynn even had the nerve to flash his as he lilted toward Ella, dress-shirt sleeves jerked up to his elbows.
“Don’t you dare touch her,” Moira growled. The vampire shot her a bitch, please look, the kind that made Ella’s blood boil, and then charged headlong toward her at full vamp speed. To Moira, Flynn was probably just a blur of dark and light; Ella tracked every step. Tensed, she waited until he had grabbed hold of her arm—waited until smug triumph stretched across his face—before rearing back and slamming her forehead into his nose. The vampire released her immediately, cold blood spurting across her skin, and retreated with a hiss.
Ha. Broke that huge
nose right in the center.
She was getting good at this headbutting thing. Maybe it could become her signature move. And it definitely hurt a lot less hitting one of these suckers than it did Serafino. Apparently vampires who had once been human weren’t built of the same stuff as their demon makers.
Totally unfair.
Like most in this supernatural world, however, Flynn wasn’t down for long. Snarling, he snapped his nose back into place, then charged again. Ella added a little bend to her knees, ready for the next round, only this time the vampire didn’t reach her.
Couldn’t reach her.
Not when Moira darted between them and latched onto his bare left forearm, her hands aglow. Flynn’s screams echoed violently as his flesh sizzled and crackled, lights from nearby buildings flickering on. Teeth gritted, Moira held him there until everything below his elbow disintegrated, no more than a pile of black dust at their feet, and the vampire staggered back across the snow to his sister. The rest of the pack hissed when Moira raised her glowing hands to them, a few retreating through the park’s main entrance and vanishing in a burst of vamp speed.
While the angel light wasn’t directed at her, Ella still felt its cruel sting. She shuffled aside, wincing, and brought a hand up to protect her watering eyes.
“You tell your master that Ella Thomas is her own vampire,” Moira barked, her voice strangely deep and full, swelling to fill the space. The wind whipped up around them, creating little whirling tornadoes of white, the tree ornaments jingling in protest. “She is my sister. My name is Moira Aurelia. I have killed demons, and I have killed angels—”
Ella pressed her lips together, swallowing a snort. Not exactly true, the last bit: Severus and Malachi had technically been the ones to kill her dad—but never mind. The threat landed, the bulk of the remaining vampires scattering. Grace, meanwhile, crouched beside her wounded brother, scowling.
“—and the next one of you Serafino cultists who comes near her is getting charbroiled to nothing. Do I make myself fucking clear?”
Grace flashed her fangs, and Moira responded by intensifying her light and taking a menacing step forward.
