Angel Seduced

by Jaime Rush

  “Yeah, thirty-two and over the hill.” Of course, that was old to these kids. They couldn’t yet comprehend how long Crescents lived, how those years would drag on. “Five hours straight, and I can’t take a break without getting harassed?” Had he been this relentless when he lived here? Yeah, probably, in his eagerness for a grown-up’s attention.

  Most of the Harbor kids were Caidos, but some were Dragon or Deuce orphans. Here, there was none of the separation that eventually happened between the Crescent classes. They all belonged equally. And while Kasabian had felt safe and accepted here, he had never truly belonged.

  “I’m done, too.” Daniel Portofino, another volunteer, flopped down beside him, panting. “Man, I can’t believe you do this and then work until three in the morning.”

  “Helping out here is recreation for me.” He liked giving back to the place that had taken him in after his mother’s murder when he was twelve. “Actually, so is bartending.”

  “I don’t know how you do that, either. All those emotions, people getting hot for each other, jealousy…that’s got to kill you.”

  Even joy felt like a thousand razor blades across his soul. “I’d rather suffer than shut myself off from humanity.” Kasabian wasn’t about to tell anyone he craved emotions. He leaned back on the bleacher behind him. “Ever been in love, Daniel?” At his surprised look, Kasabian added, “Not seriously in love, but crushing on someone even though you knew it wouldn’t work? Because we’re Caido.” An innocent crush, he wanted to add, but his thoughts about Kye were far from innocent.

  Daniel stared at him for a long second, some odd emotion flashing behind his dark blue eyes. “Once. Long time ago. You?”

  Kasabian chuckled, shaking his head. “There’s this Deuce chick who hangs out at the Witch’s Brew, and she’s freakin’ amazing.”

  “A Deuce?”

  Caidos couldn’t pick up the emotions of other Caidos, but Kasabian didn’t need supernatural ability to see that the idea annoyed Daniel. Who cared? It felt good to talk about her. “Long blond hair, the creamiest skin I’ve ever seen, dresses all biker-chick in black leather and fishnets.” He thought back over the last few nights that he’d seen her at the Brew. “Last night she finally danced within sight of my bar, and man, can she move. She kept checking to see if I was watching.” And he had been, every spare second. It had been a long time since he’d desired a woman, and then only fleetingly. With Kye, he couldn’t seem to stop.

  “You going to act on it?”

  “I have to do the Essex twice a night to dull the pain. But wanting her is as far as it goes.” The only thing he and Kye could ever do was exchange furtive glances.

  “Smart. That kind of thing never works.”

  “Actually, it could.” For normal Caidos, anyway. “She’s a Zensu Deuce, and she’s come up with a permanent Essex so the Caido is immune to his lover’s emotions.” Then he remembered that it wasn’t public knowledge yet, so he added, “But keep that to yourself.”

  “Caidos should stick with their own.”

  It was easier for Caidos to get together. Desire didn’t hurt as much if they were in angel form, nor did any emotion, a layer of protection that allowed them to heal others. Caidos could Invoke and partake in carnal activities with a non-Caido, but the numbness also muffled the excitement. And, unfortunately, holding on to angel form for the sole purpose of getting off was difficult. After a while, it was easier—hell, necessary—to douse desire altogether.

  Until someone like Kye came along.

  “Yeah, and that would be fine if there were plenty of Caido females.” Part of the curse their forebears passed on was relatively few females in their Crescent class. At least that was the theory.

  “That’s why some males turn to each other. Ever considered that?”

  Kasabian shook his head, wondering if Daniel was making a pass at him. “I like women way too much. Their curves, the soft mounds of their beautiful breasts…” Kye popped into his mind again, and desire prickled through him. Yeah, she had some nice curves, all right.

  Daniel’s mouth tightened, like he was preparing some kind of lecture, but his sulk turned into a speculative look. “A permanent Essex, you said? How does it work?”

  Kasabian demonstrated the way Kye had.

  “Who is she?” Daniel asked, not so judgmental anymore.

  “Kye Rivers.” Damn but he liked the way her name rolled off his tongue. “But remember, she’s not offering this magick to just anyone. In fact, I probably shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

  “Kasabian!”

  Hayden Masters approached from the end of the bleachers. He acknowledged Daniel with a nod but focused on Kasabian. “Can I talk to you for a sec?” He glanced at Daniel. “Sorry, but it’s confidential.”

  Kasabian pushed up, excusing himself. He bumped knuckles with the big Caido, and they headed out of the gym.

  Hayden lowered his voice. “Something came up at work that you need to know about. Even though you’re not supposed to know.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Hayden was a Vega in the Guard, the Crescent’s police force. He’d shared some of his cases, mostly hunting down Crescents who broke the laws of the Hidden. Rule Number One was to never reveal the magick of the Hidden to Mundanes. Other rules focused on not using fangs, orbs, or other magickal weapons on either Mundanes or Crescents. Not that everyone obeyed.

  They stepped out into the humid air, the afternoon sun cooking them until they moved beneath a tree by the tennis courts. Two Harbor residents were batting a ball half-heartedly back and forth.

  Hayden braced his hand against the tree trunk. “A five-year-old Caido boy was picked up this morning, just wandering the streets. The kid was weak, disoriented, and mute. Whatever he’d gone through traumatized him pretty bad. And he had this.” He yanked up his shirt to reveal a faint gray starburst over his diaphragm.

  Kasabian felt a squeeze where his own scar was. “Hell. Whoever kidnapped us more than twenty years ago is still doing it.” He remembered the group of kids who’d escaped with him, none with any memory of their captivity. Once sexual abuse had been eliminated, based on physical exams, all they had were questions. Four years of captivity were locked away in some part of Kasabian’s brain that no magick or hypnosis could touch.

  Kye’s voice echoed in his mind: One Caido experienced a resurgence of buried memories.

  “Did you talk to the kid?” Kasabian asked.

  “Yeah, for about three minutes. My sergeant called me in because he knows about our ordeal and recognized that it was the same type of scar I have. He thought if I showed the kid, maybe he’d open up. And I think he would have, only my sergeant pulled me out of the room. He said the Concilium was taking over the investigation. Sensitive matters and some such bullshit.”

  Hayden smacked the tree, making leaves float down. “Within minutes, the kid’s sucked into the system. My boss wasn’t happy about it, but what’s he going to do, fight the Elders, who are like the United Nations of Crescents? Hell, we don’t even know who’s in the Concilium, and they’re supposed to be representing us. My guess is that someone knows what these marks mean. Wouldn’t be the first time something was covered up to protect society,” Hayden added with finger quotes.

  “Five years old.” Kasabian shook his head in disgust. “Even younger than when we were taken.”

  “If it’s like last time, the bastards are taking kids from hookers or drugged-out mothers who either are accepting a payoff or are too scared to report their kid missing.” A shadow passed over Hayden’s features.

  When they were able to track down the mothers, they got a story about how some government official had offered to send the boy to a camp and get him away from the situation while the mother got sober. Pressure had a way of cracking people with magick. Crescents had to worry about being incinerated by Dragons, stalked by demons, hurt by spells. Exposing their magick.

  Hayden pushed away from the tree. “I’m going to do some digging.”
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  “I’ll check around, too.” Kasabian headed back into the building.

  Cory, one of the guys who ran Harbor, was going over some details for the middle school kids’ overnight trip to the Everglades. Maps and brochures were spread out all over the desk. Cory looked up. “I keep expecting the headmaster of the Deuce Academy to postpone the trip, what with all the talk of the solar storm effects hitting as early as Thursday. Even the Mundane news is reporting on possible GPS distortion and electric outages. We’ll feel it in deeper ways. Some of the younger Caidos are already experiencing headaches and bad feelings.”

  “We’ve weathered them in the past. We’ll get through this one.” The solar storm was the least of Kasabian’s concerns. “Have you heard about any kids going missing recently?”

  “You know Lyle?”

  “Skinny Caido with the choppy hair? Came here, what, a year ago? Keeps to himself.”

  Cory nodded. “He’s barely hanging on to his required grades. I’ve suspected him of running drugs, maybe Abyss. I hate to even think it, a twelve-year-old doing that. Caught him sneaking out a few times, though I couldn’t find anything on him but a bunch of pictures of the same kid. His missing brother, he said. I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or using it as a cover.”

  “I’ll have a chat with him, see what I can find out.”

  Kasabian found Lyle at a computer in the library. The kid quickly closed the browser screen, a suspicious move. Kasabian decided not to call him on it, turning a chair at the next computer and sitting down backward. Although it was obvious that Kasabian was there to talk to him, Lyle opened a new screen and pulled up one of the curriculum programs, ignoring him. His eyes were bloodshot, face gaunt.

  “You came from the Vale, didn’t you?” Kasabian asked, finally getting the kid’s attention. The Vale was a run-down area populated by the addicts.

  “Yeah.” Lyle kept his gaze on the computer screen, but he was working really hard to do it.

  “I’m investigating some disappearances. Have you heard anything about kids going missing from there?”

  Lyle turned to him, his mouth working. He pulled back whatever words he was going to say and affected a nonchalant shrug. “I’m not sure you could call it disappearing. They supposedly went to some kind of camp, while the mothers moved to this weird neighborhood for a better life.”

  Kasabian considered what angle to use. “But they lied.” Not a question. “How do you know?”

  The kid was clearly in a war with himself: tell the nosy guy the truth or distrust him as he did everyone else.

  Kasabian knew how he felt. Sharing didn’t come easy for him either, but he needed to if he was going to get anywhere. “I was kidnapped when I was eight. I was lucky. I escaped. The people who took me, I think they’re still taking kids. I want to stop them. Maybe it has something to do with this camp. I need to find out more.”

  Lyle’s expression slowly revealed his pain. “My brother went a year ago. They said I was too old to go with him.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Four.”

  “And you never saw him again.”

  Lyle chewed his lip, his eyes staring at nothing. Finally he shook his head. “We moved to the Bend soon after.”

  “Is that the weird neighborhood?”

  Lyle nodded.

  The Bend. Kasabian had heard about the gated community that housed middle- and low-income Crescent families, particularly single mothers. It was touted as being safe and claimed to help the drug-addled clean up their lives.

  “They never returned your brother,” Kasabian said gently.

  “They said three months. Then it was six months. All my mom kept talking about was our beautiful house and wasn’t our life so nice now? She didn’t even seem concerned.”

  Because she knew the kid wasn’t coming back.

  “When I threatened to go to the Guard, she admitted that Jonathan had been adopted by another family.” Lyle met Kasabian’s gaze with a fierce expression. “She said it was kind of a trade-off. I accused her of selling him, and then she was all like, ‘I didn’t say trade-off!’ I ran away and came here.”

  The pieces were coming together. “You sneak out to the Vale to search for him.”

  Lyle searched Kasabian’s face, sensing whether he could trust him. Finally he nodded. “I ask around, talk to people. But no one knows anything.”

  “Can I help you?”

  “No. But thanks. I can do it on my own.”

  Just like Kasabian, not wanting to involve anyone else. The poor kid had been dealing with this alone, driving himself to exhaustion.

  “I understand. No one cares about your situation like you do. But sometimes what you’re after is more important than your need to do it on your own. I’m going to look into this for my own reasons. It would help if I had a picture of your brother.”

  Lyle pulled out his worn nylon wallet and extracted one of many color copies. On the back was the boy’s name, age, height, and weight, along with the date he’d gone missing. The boys looked nothing alike; Jonathan had straight brown hair while Lyle’s was dark blond and wavy. Lyle’s face was lean and sharp, Jonathan’s round, his eyes soulful.

  Kasabian ran his thumb along the edge of the photographic copy paper. “Thanks.”

  “I should be thanking you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.”

  Kasabian left Lyle in the library, feeling the unease sympathy caused in his body. Caidos didn’t feel pain at their own emotions, only a sense of discomfort. He let the tightness in the chest come as he gathered information from both the kids and the counselors. Nothing conclusive, just tidbits here and there that added up. It wasn’t just the camp. One kid was thought to have drowned in a canal. No body was ever recovered. One kid wandered off and was never seen again.

  Kasabian found Cory on the worn-out chair in front of his desk. “Lyle’s not running drugs. He’s trying to find his little brother. Give him space, okay?”

  Kasabian saw Cory’s reaction in a quick-fire burst: surprise, guilt, and then a nod. He didn’t stick around to say more. Cory would have questions—so did he—but answers, well, he was painfully short on those.

  You have the answers…

  Buried in the recesses of his mind. He rubbed the scar. He would always be fucked up, and it wasn’t only because of his abduction. But he could help these kids, get to the bottom of the abductions, and put a stop to them once and for all.

  Good thing for him he knew a chick from a bar with just the kind of magick he needed to unleash the repressed memories in his mind. He’d vowed to stay away from her. But now he needed to get close. Very, very close.

  Chapter 3

  You want me to do what?”

  Kye stared across her table at Kasabian, where he’d sat after closing his bar. She was sure that the echo of the night’s pounding music was distorting his words.

  “It’s not a want. I need to do the Cobra with you.”

  His words catapulted through her body. “Uh…no.” She swallowed. “Remember what I said about it bonding.”

  No longer in the tight shirt encouraged by Mike for the purposes of being eye candy, Kasabian wore one of those urban shirts with angel wings on the back. He smelled like limes, clean and citrusy.

  He took her hand and mirrored her earlier gesture of hands on top of each other. “So we take the Cobra to the second step”—he slid his fingers between hers—“but don’t permanently take each other’s essences.” His touch, along with what he was proposing, shook her.

  As much as she knew she should pull her hand free, she couldn’t. “Just so you can lust without pain? No way.”

  But he didn’t look like a man in search of physical pleasure. His expression was somber, his eyes intense. He turned her hand and traced a circle on her palm. “When I was eight, I was kidnapped and spent four years in captivity. I escaped, along with four other children. Three of them were Deuce or Dragon, and they were dreadfully weak. I heard they surv
ived, but I never saw them again. There were two of us Caidos.”

  He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it open to reveal what looked like a gray starburst tattoo at his solar plexus. “Whatever they did to the Caidos left these scars…and made us crave feelings. What they did to the other kids depleted their essences, leaving them in the same shape as someone who’s left Miami for an extended period.”

  The god essence inside Crescents needed Deus Vis, literally the “god force,” that radiated from the Bermuda Triangle. If Crescents were away for too long, their magick essence withered away, and so did they. “But I doubt we walked far, not with the kids in such bad shape. The problem is, we don’t know anything because we think they memory-locked us. That’s a Caido ability to lock away a period of time or event. So when you mentioned that the Caido’s buried memories returned, you got my attention.” He buttoned his shirt again.

  Kye’s hand continued to tingle from where he’d touched her. “You want me to help you remember.”

  This was not at all what she’d expected, not children in danger. She saw the pain of what he’d gone through and his fear for those kids. “I’m sorry that happened to you, but doing the Cobra just to revive those memories, well, I can’t even guarantee it will work. And if we accidentally bond, I have no idea how to unbond.”

  “I dismissed approaching you for those reasons. But now there’s more at stake. The Caido who escaped with me works for the Guard. Hayden told me a boy was found with the same mark.” Kasabian tapped the starburst through his shirt. “He may have escaped from the same people who had us. Before Hayden could get the traumatized kid to talk, he was whisked away by someone connected to the Concilium. Whatever the people who took us all those years ago were doing…they’re doing it again. There are secondhand stories about Crescent social workers taking kids to camps so the mothers can get back on track. No one ever hears from the kids again. Others have simply disappeared.”

  Kye shuddered. Who knew what horrors those children were exposed to? She looked at Kasabian, really studied him. For a moment, she was tempted to pry, to delve deep and glimpse the pain he’d endured.