His Wings

by Aya DeAniege

  “Oh,” I said, drawing out the word. “Right, that makes total sense.”

  “I suppose for a human it takes some getting used to,” Michael said.

  “Grace doesn’t know Toby is part of the Heavenly Host, she just thinks he’s a human,” Raphael added. “But if you tell her by accident we can start throat punching him every time he says something stupid.”

  “I’m not doing that,” I said.

  “Worth a shot,” Raphael said with a little shrug.

  “Am I missing anything?” I asked.

  “We’d rather you no longer stripped,” Michael said.

  “He’d rather you no longer strip for anyone but us,” Raphael said. “He’s a jealous one. We can help you find jobs. Modelling, you could be a model.”

  That didn’t seem fair. I enjoyed what I did, it made me feel great about myself, and no one was allowed to touch me at the club without permission. I could probably fight them on that bit, but right then wasn’t the time.

  “Not willing to starve myself,” I said. “But, I will start looking for another job. I’m still going to strip, I make fantastic money, and you guys are not going to start paying my bills just because of all of this. So, deal with it.”

  “I think I finally understand why Sam offered Grace a job as a janitor at such an extravagant pay rate,” Michael said in a distant tone.

  “Don’t do it,” Raphael said. “We can’t afford another obscenely high wage. Mary will take a rolled-up newspaper to us for playing favourites and not splitting the profits among all of our workers. I’ll start looking up jobs after I drop her off at home. We’ll go one day at a time. When’s your next shift?”

  “Tonight,” I said. “I work almost every night.”

  “Okay, we could go for an early breakfast when you finish,” Raphael said. “Go from there. Right?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Anyone else nervous about this?”

  “Little bit,” Raphael said. “But the whole ageing and children thing is at least not being tried out on us first. Sam’s the one who has to figure it out. Him and Grace.”

  “Poor bastards,” Michael said. “Hopefully the child isn’t born with wings.”

  “Could be fun,” I said.

  “Angels learn to fly before they learn to walk,” Raphael said. “Which means you could be projectile vomited or urinated on from above.”

  “Oh,” I said with a grimace. “That doesn’t sound fun.”

  “Which is why we’re thankful Sam and Grace are the guinea pigs for that, and not us,” Michael said.

  “Small miracles,” I said.

  Which for some reason got a laugh out of them.

  Preview Of:

  Seed

  The Reaping Book I

  My name is Kazimir DeElysia. I am four thousand years old, well, just shy of four thousand, but I am told that mortals prefer rounded numbers, and I am closer to four thousand than thirty-five hundred. I hardly look a day over two thousand, I have been told.

  I was twenty-seven when I was captured, taken to what you know as Crete, and then turned into a vampire. My turning was consensual, though I did not quite understand what she had offered me. Partly because of a lack of knowledge, partly because there was a language barrier between us. I knew immortality and hunting the night, but my Maker was little more than a fledgling when she turned me.

  That is the term that mortals are familiar with, correct? ‘Maker,’ as if we create toys and set them loose in the world, as if the one who turned me could be summed up with such a hollow title.

  I called her ‘Love’ then, and through most of history.

  Maker... no wonder the vampiric world is so weak and pathetic.

  They have a name for me, you know. They whisper it to one another and fall silent as I pass by. Few see me these days, as I am a wanted man. I keep a territory in the name of my matriarch and thanks to modern advances in technology, I have been able to keep track of those trying to sneak into my city. There are some few who I employ or have employed in the past, but, for the most part, my city remained empty of vampires.

  Because I do not like their faces, and they cannot be trusted to not to be catty and run back to the Council to tell them who owned the city.

  I reside outside of Council control. I always have. The Council and I simply do not see eye to eye on so many important topics of conversation.

  Such as the place of a child in the life of their ‘Maker.’ The Council views all as free agents, a ridiculous belief. Some have made children only as a blood bag, or weapon, or whore. That is their only use. Just as not all humans are leaders and ‘go-getters,’ not all vampires are meant to be left to their own devices. There is a place in our world for each of us, and a Maker should always turn with that place in mind. A child without a place will cause problems.

  Only an heir might come and go as they please, and only one heir is needed. All other children are only there to serve the will of their Maker.

  Yet these are the same people who believe a vampire should be destroyed if that vampire does not meet their very strict requirements. If they’re too young or too old, if they aren’t perfect upon turning.

  Not even the hermaphroditic are welcome amongst Council lands any longer. One must be male or female, nowhere in between.

  Oh please, like you believe every fantastical tale they tell you about honesty and equality, about being the great saviour of mankind? The Council does not believe that. They believe in only one thing: control.

  And they will gain that control by whatever means necessary.

  I suppose some of you might be eager to hear how I have spent my four thousand years on this planet. Well, too bad. I am not going to ramble like dear, soft Quintillus about my daddy issues.

  My father and mother raised me to be a fighter, a warrior among my people. For that reason, when I was captured, I was sold. Perhaps to be a guard, or perhaps they knew to whom they sold me, knew what would happen to me. The reason why no longer matters, I was sold into slavery and turned. That’s about as much of my history as I’m willing to share with any mortal soul.

  Do not take me to be a pathetic loner just because I live outside of Council lands. I have made my way and lived in factions before. I know how to ‘play nicely’ as Elysia would say, though only ever for her.

  Whatever my dear Elysia asks for, I try in earnest to deliver. She has kept me sane all these years and given me a reason to do more than simply be.

  So, when Elysia picked up the book of the Prophet, hot off the presses as it were, and she became interested in such narrations and their effects on the mortal world at large, I agreed to take up the task.

  But only for her.

  Oh, who is the Prophet you ask?

  Well, dear reader, just because you have seen the vampire world through Quintillus’s eyes, does not mean that you have seen the whole world. He always had a knack for knowing just a little too much, has happened to slip into town as I was just getting comfortable.

  But we have never met face to face. He does not know what I look like. Besides seeing him in passing, covered in blood and a mask, I had not seen his face until his televised interview last year. I simply know the man by reputation and knew to stay out of his way as much as he knows to stay out of mine.

  Most vampires ignore the obvious, their little minds too shallow to accept the whole truth, but it’s paying attention to those details, following the interviews and reading the books that the Council expects other vampires to ignore, that has given me such a keen edge.

  They call me the Warlord.

  If only they knew how appropriate the name was.

  Coming Soon:

  Awakened:

  The Last Prophet*

  Every human is capable of magic, it has been a part of the world since the beginning of time. In the other races magic was rare, one or two a generation might have it, but all humans had it, which aided them in conquering and finally exterminating the other races.

  In the mode
rn era, only a small percentage of humans ever become able to actively use their magic. Laws have been built to both protect and control those who have awakened to magic.

  Dave Archon works with the Magical Protection Agency. It is his job to investigate and then capture Awakened who break the laws, but when mages start turning up dead, he’s the one called in. No one kills the Awakened, they might not have the skill necessary to all be called mage, but they are dangerous. Violence against mages is practically zero, the cases before Dave are the first mage murder in modern history.

  Abby is a new Awakened. Her mark is not yet healed and she has no idea what she’s doing, or how she’ll pay the taxes on her magic use. Her roommate takes her to a party at the estate of a man looking to become a patron of a mage.

  In a world where fate is as real as magic, Dave doesn’t hesitate when he meets Abby at the party and his heart skips a beat.

  Prototype

  An Aurora Novel

  (Working Title)

  My name is Maggy Doyle. I have a three-year-old daughter, a husband, a home, and an extended family. I work a secretary job for a lawyer’s office and spend my days just trying to fly under the radar of pretty well everyone.

  See, five years ago, I was found wandering around a field. I don’t recall anything before that moment. I had no idea who I was. If it weren’t for Harry, if not for how much he loved me before the incident, I would have probably been lost forever.

  Imagine my surprise when I opened my front door one day to find men standing there, demanding my daughter and I go with them. They wouldn’t answer my questions or tell me where they were taking us.

  There’s this nagging at the back of my mind telling me that it has to do with Aurora. The still new, third world we were linked to, ruled by a woman who is said to have not only created the world, but also animals, and who knew what else.

  What could she possibly want with twenty people ranging from late teens to middle-aged? The only thing we have in common is amnesia. Our lives before a certain point were erased. We didn’t do anything wrong, none of us know each other and our incidents were months or even years apart.

  We’re completely harmless.

  I think.

  My name is Nathaniel Edwards, I am just over forty years old as I write this introduction. I’ve chosen to write this of my own volition, I was not pressured into it, nor was I commanded by my wife and Mistress, Isabella. Today she may be Mistress, but tomorrow she will be my sub once more. Most likely you are reading this because you read Isabella’s books and were curious about my part of the story.

  Or you whined about how you didn’t get all the details in the middle portion of her books and now you’re hoping my absolutely detailed account with her will rectify the situation.

  I’m not the least bit sorry to say, you will be disappointed. This is not a detailed account of my time with Isabella Domme. You already know what happened when she was around me. I lost my mind, my lust got the better of me.

  No, this account covers before I met Isabella, how I became the man that I was when she met me. Yes, I will cover—however briefly—my time with her during the contract but it will be focused on after she was removed from my home. While my journals from our time together are being collected, and edited slightly for inclusion in the national archives, I don’t much feel like sharing that with you.

  My story does not begin and end with Isabella. Just as hers did not end with marrying me. Well, her written story did, but she went on to bigger and better things in the real world. My story doesn’t even begin when I met Him.

  Master.

  About the Author

  Aya DeAniege is a Canadian author who wrote for years, first to please herself then writing stories for free—believing no one would ever pay to read her stuff—before pursuing indie publishing. She still writes mainly for personal pleasure, with topics ranging from romance, fantasy, science fiction, on to whatever takes her fancy in the future. World creation fascinates her, and when she finds one she likes, she dabbles endlessly.

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