Angeli Trilogy: Angeli Books 1-3

by Amy Vansant

  “No.”

  Con turned and stared at him.

  “You’re an asshole.”

  Michael shrugged.

  Con dropped his aching head into his hands and rubbed his eyes.

  “What is this place?”

  “Meili held me captive here. He left me with Keira, who thought it a fun game to reach between the bars and siphon me every hour or two.”

  “Really? What happened to Keira?”

  Michael nodded towards a pile of ash on the floor beside the cage.

  “Ah. She’s lost weight.”

  “The cage was built to hold Angeli. When I realized you might be able to hold Seth long enough for me to transport him to the cage, I took my chance.”

  Con stared at what remained of Seth. The little bit of him still in Seth’s possession was within his reach. If only the Perfidian Arch would just stop swirling around and take a proper human shape, he might be able to retrieve it.

  “Well, good job, I guess,” said Con. “You’re a fecking genius. Now what?”

  “I have to rest for a bit. Transporting both of you here wiped me out. I have to figure out which Angeli I trust, and summon them to keep an eye on Seth while we decide what to do with him. I need to recover Leo.”

  Con rolled his eyes.

  “I mean what now for me? I don’t care what Angel shite you’re up to. Where am I? Where is Anne?”

  “She’s still in Virginia. We’re in South Carolina.”

  “So, she’s no idea what’s happened to us?”

  Michael shook his head.

  Con put his hands in his pockets and ran his tongue across his teeth as he considered this.

  “She’s going to be pissed,” he said, after a moment.

  Michael nodded.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, she is.”

  Thank you for taking time to read Angeli! If you enjoyed it, please consider telling your friends or posting a review on Amazon or GoodReads or wherever you like to roam. Word of mouth helps poor starving authors so much!

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  Cherubim

  Angeli Book Ii

  Amy Vansant

  ©2015 by Amy Vansant. All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by any means, without the permission of the author. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  ISBN-10: 0983719179

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9837191-7-5

  Library of Congress: 2015908051

  Vansant Creations, LLC / Amy Vansant Annapolis, MD

  http://www.AmyVansant.com | http://www.TheAngeli.com

  Copy Editing: Carolyn Steele http://carolynsteele.ca/

  Cover design by Steven Novak: http://www.NovakIllustration.com

  DEDICATION

  To my first Angeli fans, like Mimi, Christie, Nina and Leslee…you’re responsible for keeping a world going!

  Chapter One

  Anne awoke in the fetal position with her left foot asleep and her right hand pinned to the bed. A shroud of hair covered her face, making it difficult to breathe.

  She awoke that way every night, like a body stuffed into the trunk of a car with several other bodies, each demanding more and more space. Only a monster could do that to a woman. Only a being of unspeakable evil could expect someone to sleep like a kidnapped contortionist.

  Only a Labradoodle.

  Anne grunted and pulled her right arm out from under the sixty-five pound dog lying against her face.

  Ah, the comforts of home.

  She stretched her leg. The soft-coated wheaten terrier using her ankle for a pillow snorted and stomped to the lower corner of the bed, flopping back down with a grunt. Anne turned her head to avoid breathing through a mat of doodle hair, only to find herself nose to nose with a snoring pug-mix. Each time she inhaled, he exhaled, offering her lungs nothing but pug-infused carbon dioxide.

  “You creeps are more likely to kill me than any rogue angel.”

  The pug opened one bug-eye and then snapped it shut for fear she’d see him and ask him to go for a walk. Exercise was his mortal enemy.

  Anne struggled to escape her tangle of animals and sheets. She slid out of bed, dogs peeling from her body like salted leeches. Standing naked in the dark, she surveyed her bedroom by the light of the bright moon glowing outside her New York apartment. The hole where she’d curled sleeping remained ringed by a snoring halo of dogs. The other side of the king bed remained as empty as a lunar landscape.

  “Couldn’t you all just spread out a little bit?”

  On cue, the Labradoodle stretched his long legs, filling a little more of the bed with his bulk. The terrier lifted her head to glance at Anne, and then dropped it to the mattress. The pug snorted a fine mist of snot. Only the white mutt sat up, hanging on her every word, tail wagging.

  Anne retrieved the sweatpants and t-shirt she’d tossed on her reading chair the night before and dressed. She left the room with only Puffer following her. Younger than the other three dogs, Puff still tracked Anne like a furry Lo-Jack.

  “Hey Puffer,” she said, sliding a leash from the wall. “You want to take a walk with me?”

  Puff danced at her feet, tail wagging like a flag, tongue hanging from the side of his mouth.

  Anne clipped the leash on Puff’s collar and left the apartment. She padded down the hall in her fuzzy slippers and stepped into the elevator.

  When the doors opened, Anne entered the lobby of the Gramercy Hotel. Her apartment was located in the residences above the guest rooms. She liked the full service feel of living in an apartment connected to a hotel. Her job reaping corrupted angels kept her on the road and the hotel always had staff handy to accommodate long distance requests. The Gramercy had recently added an Italian restaurant, Maialino, and she could call for room service any time she felt too lazy to cook or shop, which happened more often than she liked to admit. She was reasonably certain that cooking was part of her assistant Jeffrey’s job description, but he’d morphed from eager-to-please employee to annoying little brother years ago. There was no turning back.

  Anne caught a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror as she walked out of the elevator bay. She appeared younger than Jeffrey now. She remembered when his father worked for her and she’d taken the boy on outings, pretending to be his mother. She couldn’t have children of her own and usually didn’t know what to do around other people’s kids, but Jeffrey felt like hers. He was the perfect real-life doll for make-believe.

  Of course, he’d been a lot less snarky at six. At that age, he’d believed everything she said. Then something went horribly wrong. It was as if he’d developed his own mind. Terrible thing, though she’d read it was a common affliction amongst teenagers.

  Twenty-two years later, creams and potions littered Jeffrey’s bathroom counter, but no anti-aging cream could ever compete with Anne’s aging cycle of one year for every hundred human years. Her eternal youth made Jeffrey crazy, which offered her some consolation for his constant pranks and acid tongue.

  Anne walked into the lobby on her way to the park. Gramercy apartment owners received a key to Gramercy Park, the only private park in New York City. When the twitching bodies of four sleeping dogs awoke her in the middle of the night, the park was a lovely place to stroll.

  Anne glanced to her left and spotted Front-Desk Pete operating the helm. The freckle-faced young man waved to her.

  “Hey Pete.”

  “Hello Ms. B!”

  Pete beamed. Anne liked to think he adored her as a person, but she knew she inspired his eager attentions in a very different way.

  He thought she was a vampire.

  Pete once observed Anne lifting a three-hundred-pound bureau by herself. It happened to be nighttime. Supernatural strength, plus nightfall, plus an overactive imagination a
nd an addiction to all things vampire equaled Anne Bonny the Vampire for Front-Desk Pete. He told her so. At first he’d hinted; stretching and scratching his neck when she was near, telling her that the Italian restaurant could make dishes without garlic, finding ways to slip his blood type into casual conversation. Then, one evening when she’d caught him enjoying a quick beer with the bar staff, he whispered, “I know what you are,” in her ear. The alcohol had provided him the bravado to share his suspicions.

  At the time, his confession worried her. Could he know? Could Pete know she was a Sentinel working for the Angeli?

  No. Front-Desk Pete couldn’t know that the Angeli created Sentinels to hunt Perfidians, rogue angels who killed humans and fed on their energy. He couldn’t imagine she was a member of the Angeli’s personal execution squad. The Angeli helped the humans and Sentinels like her helped the Angeli.

  One big happy family.

  Pete couldn’t know, but he was acting strange. After his confession, Anne extended her energy field to feel if he was a Sentinel like herself.

  He wasn’t.

  It had been a longshot that he was, but new Sentinels came and went and she couldn’t keep track of them all. She didn’t want to keep track of them all. It was less painful that way. Many didn’t last.

  Life as a Sentinel did have its benefits. She would live one thousand years, if she managed to survive that long, and she had supernatural strength, speed, healing and agility. Well into the twenty-first century, she also only appeared only a few years older than she had in 1720.

  Yet, she’d never been offered a make-up commercial contract.

  Life could be cruel.

  Youth was nice and supernaturally enhanced strength was handy when moving heavy bureaus, but she’d been so busy avoiding the elevator cameras that she’d forgotten to look for plain-old human Pete. It wasn’t like her to be so careless. She didn’t know how he’d been able to sneak up on her.

  Well…

  That was a lie.

  She knew.

  Michael.

  She’d been thinking about him. That was how he surprised her. She’d been distracted.

  She grinned at the memory of Pete’s face, his jaw slack with surprise. She remembered how he’d shuddered, later, when she’d mingled her energy with his own.

  “Are you glamouring me?” he’d asked, stepping back and nearly stumbling over a crushed-velvet sofa.

  “Am I what?”

  “I’m on to you.”

  Anne put her hands on her hips.

  “Pete, what exactly do you think I am?”

  “You know…”

  “No, I really don’t know. Say it.”

  Pete touched the point of his own, very human, canine tooth with the tip of his tongue.

  “You know,” he repeated, offering her an awkward wink.

  That’s when she realized he thought she was a vampire.

  She’d laughed. She walked in daylight all the time. She even had a bit of a tan, though it really only made her fair Irish skin human tone. Pete worked the nightshift and had never seen her during the day.

  If you only saw a person at night, naturally you’d assume they were a vampire, right?

  “Okay, well, let’s keep it our little secret,” she’d whispered to him.

  Pete’s face flushed and his pulse quickened.

  If she was a vampire, she would have found it arousing.

  As she made her way out of her apartment in the middle of the night, Anne knew Pete thought he’d caught her popping out for a midnight snack. She offered him a toothy grin as she walked past the Jade Bar to the front door.

  He looked smitten.

  The park was less than half a block away. She unlocked the gate with her resident’s key and entered, walking slowly, enjoying the crisp fall air. Puff sniffed every leaf and tree, searching for the perfect place to leave his scent. Alone with her was his only chance to be alpha male. Back in the apartment, he’d be demoted back to fourth place, behind two males and a female terrier of very strong opinions.

  Anne strolled around the statue of Edwin Booth, located in the center of the park. Booth had been an actor, and, more infamously, John Wilkes Booth’s brother. Poor Edwin, one of America’s greatest actors, was doomed to a life and afterlife of shame by association. Anne had seen Edwin play Hamlet before the 1865 death of Lincoln at the hands of his brother. He’d been quite good.

  She noticed a figure sitting on one of the park’s benches. This one moved.

  Due to its exclusivity, the park had few visitors and fewer still after midnight. This person’s presence held her full attention.

  The visitor’s build was slight and vaguely masculine. She suspected he was a teenager by both his shape and the moody way he stared at the ground; the hood of his sweatshirt pulled low across his face. Anne walked toward him, unafraid but alert. No ordinary human could kill her, but she didn’t like to put her dogs in danger. If a human hurt one of her dogs, there would be one less human for the Angeli to protect.

  Five feet away from the boy, Anne sensed something strange about his energy. She reached forward with her aura to inspect his. He snapped his head to face her.

  He felt me.

  Pete, a human, had shuddered; a normal response to her probing. This man reacted before she’d touched him. He’d sensed her presence.

  Anne froze. The two stared at each other. The stranger’s face remained cloaked in darkness, but now she saw two pinholes of red light where the man’s eyes should have been.

  “You’re exactly what I’ve been looking for,” he said.

  Puff barked. The hoodie bobbed downward. Anne traced the man’s glowing gaze to her dog.

  Here we go.

  Anne scooped Puffer into her arms and with inhuman speed bolted from the man to the nearest edge of the park. She felt his pursuit. She jumped the tall, wrought-iron fence with ease and gently placed Puff on the ground outside. She turned and leapt back in, meeting the man in the air just inside the fence line as he soared upward to follow her. The collision sent them spinning to the ground.

  Puff stood outside the bars, barking, too big to squeeze through and join Mommy for tumble class.

  Safe, thought Anne hearing Puff bark as she spiraled through the air. She wished the mutt would run back to the hotel and wait for her, but she couldn’t even teach that one to give paw. At least he couldn’t get back into the park.

  Now I just have to make sure this thing never leaves the park.

  The boy took the brunt of the fall, landing on his back with a crunch of gravel. Anne landed on top of him, one elbow striking the ground as she balanced to keep him pinned beneath her weight. She touched his bare neck with her left palm, siphoning his energy into her own body.

  She gasped.

  The creature was not a Perfidian.

  Pulling energy from an Angelus or Perfidian filled Anne with power, though, with one exception, only the lesser angels contracted the disease. Mighty Arch Angelus like Michael seemed immune, or so they thought, until the Arch Seth fell ill. It had been she who siphoned Seth, and his energy made her sick.

  She thought Seth had been the only anomaly in her predictable, if strange, career as a Sentinel, but this man, just beginning to catch his breath and squirm, felt different, even from Seth. Anne felt a rush of power. She didn’t feel sick.

  She felt angry.

  The teen bucked beneath her and Anne clawed to hold him, siphoning energy as fast as she could. Whoever or whatever this creature was, he was powerful.

  Had another Arch become infected?

  Anne’s heart filled with dread. The Angeli didn’t even know what to make of Seth yet…if another Arch had fallen…

  The creature roared in pain and thrust forward with both hands, lifting Anne away from him and throwing her into a nearby bush. She scrambled to her feet as he stood and charged, catching her just below her rib cage and slamming her against the wrought iron bars of the fence.

  Anne heard her ribs crack
as the air rushed from her body. She turned her face away, gasping for breath as the man grabbed her throat, squeezing her windpipe with the force of a python. She felt him siphoning energy, felt herself growing weaker. She clawed at his fingers, trying to escape his grasp while Puff barraged them with a string of barks and yelps.

  With eyes about to pop from her head, Anne stared into the face of her attacker. As she suspected, he wasn’t a grown man. She wasn’t very good at judging people’s age, but the pretty boy with fine, almost effeminate features couldn’t have been more than nineteen. His eyes were solid black with a small ring of glowing red, but other than that, he looked like an ordinary young man. She didn’t recognize him and didn’t know why he would want to kill her. His skin was pale and he squinted with the strain of choking her.

  Poor thing.

  Anne didn’t know what her assailant was, but she guessed he didn’t know exactly what she was either. Even if he recognized Sentinels, he didn’t know Anne Bonny. She had one parlor trick her fellow Sentinels did not; a power she’d inherited after defeating Seth in battle back in the late seventeen hundreds.

  Anne stopped clawing at the ever-tightening fingers pressed against her throat and allowed her arms to fall loose. Power rapidly dwindling; she used her reserves to summon her swords. Orange light burst from her hands like fire, forming two-foot-long short swords of pure energy.

  Anne saw the boy’s eyes glance downward, curious as to the orange glow in his peripheral vision. Before he could react, Anne brought her hands together like a thunderclap on either side of his head, sinking both swords into his skull.

  The young man seized and squeezed her throat one last time before his arms fell limp. His eyes rolled into his head as he crumpled to the ground.

  Anne fell with him to her knees, careful to keep the swords embedded in his skull. The power rushing into her body soothed her wounds and healed her broken ribs. In seconds, she felt invincible. With her left sword phased through the teen’s forehead, pinning him to the gravel, she removed the right one and retracted the energy blade into her raised fist.