Angel Seduced

by Jaime Rush

  “For the children. Was that real?”

  “I never lied to you. And it worked, Kye. Even though it got screwed up, it worked.”

  “Tell me.”

  He could see her being drawn in, the same as when he’d approached her about the Cobra. “The best thing for you to do is back away from me, from this. Find a way to terminate our bond.”

  “Like I can just reach into my bag of tricks and pull out that one. I’ve spent all my time working on developing the bond, not on ways to break it. You brought me into this. I deserve to know.”

  “Yes, you do, but—”

  A knock sounded on the door. Hayden. Damn. Kye had to go. If only he could have lied to her, told her the story was a farce and that he was the worst kind of man. And part of him was the worst kind of something. But he was too honorable to let her believe he’d tricked her. Or to involve her in this.

  He said, “If you never see me again, maybe the bond will weaken.”

  “You think it’s that easy?” Her laugh was bitter as she shook her head. “You can’t throw people’s lives into chaos, make me care about something, and just move on. There are consequences. Aftershocks. You are a frigging earthquake, Kasabian.”

  He tamped down the way her turmoil rocked through him, how he hated that she’d gotten hurt. “You have to leave now, Kye.”

  More pounding on the door. “Hey, it’s Hayden.”

  Kasabian opened it. “Come in.” He put his hand to Kye’s back and urged her toward the door. “My friend was just leaving.”

  Hayden could no doubt pick up Kye’s seething emotions, enough that he winced.

  Kye dug in her heels and faced Hayden. “I’m Kye, the one who’s life got screwed up because of all this. I’m not leaving until I know what’s going on.” She planted her hands on her hips and shifted her gaze to Kasabian. Oh, yeah, he could feel her stubbornness.

  Kasabian wrestled with the prospect of physically ousting her, but no, it would be wrong and ugly. He introduced them and told Hayden about the Cobra, omitting the Shadow aspect. Thankfully she also kept that to herself.

  Hayden dragged his gaze from Kye to Kasabian. “Get to it. Tell me what you saw. I’ve waited long enough.” The strain of all those years of wondering stretched his voice thin.

  “It was my father who ran the program.”

  Hayden’s eyes widened. “Your father did that to you? To us?”

  Kasabian still couldn’t quite grasp that. “My parents separated when I was four, and my mother kept him out of our lives. All I knew of my father was that his competitive nature drove him to do crazy and dangerous things. Like mortgaging the house to fund an expedition to find Lucifera. I can remember overhearing my mom calling him a glory whore. I thought she said ‘horse.’”

  Many fools had tried to find Lucifera, the legendary island in the Bermuda Triangle on which their ancestors, both human and god, had lived. Before the two gods and the angel that made up the Tryah instigated a war that ultimately sank the island hundreds of years earlier.

  “So when I saw him outside my school, I was wary but not afraid. He told me what I wanted—needed—to hear, that he missed me and wanted to spend time with me. His devastation at losing touch with me had inspired him to take in homeless children. He assured me that my mother had given him permission to bring me for a visit.

  “The secluded estate was beautiful, but something felt off. I met you and another Caido our age named Silva. The first night I spent there, I sneaked into the wing my father had forbade me to enter and found several non-Caido Crescent kids locked in rooms. They told me they’d been kidnapped. Then my father discovered me and that’s when he explained that they were part of an important program to find a way to break the Caido curse. And now I would be, too.”

  “He was experimenting with kids just so you all could get off?” Kye’s outrage sang through him. At Hayden’s surprised expression, she explained how she knew about desire causing Caidos pain.

  “It wasn’t just about sexual desire,” Kasabian said. “It was about freeing us from the effect of all emotions, so we could be a part of society. He made it sound altruistic and promised that no one would be harmed in the process. But that was a lie. It hurt the Caidos, who were channeling the kids’ essence to some kind of vessel.” He rubbed the place where the scar resided, now remembering the searing heat. “And it drained the non-Caidos. All the kids were too young to be Awakened to their powers. My father believed our untapped magick was purer, therefore stronger.”

  “Why were they filling a vessel?” Kye asked.

  “I don’t know the exact mechanism, but an angel told my father that filling this vessel would free them from their ties to this plane. And that would break our curse.” Kasabian turned to Hayden. “The reason you and I crave emotions is because we were flooded by them during our captivity. We could feel everything without pain. But after our escape, we no longer had the protection of the Essex that we got every day. And we wanted to feel again.”

  Hayden gripped the back of the chair he was standing near. “What happened to the kids?”

  “My father said he returned them to the parents he’d ‘borrowed’ them from when they started to weaken. We’d wake up and one or more would be gone. I regularly crept into their wing to check on them. One Deuce girl was fading fast. I gathered her in my arms and meant to beg my father to send her home.”

  Such a small girl, looking at him with hope in her glazed blue eyes. “She died in my arms. I couldn’t help her, couldn’t…” The grief and helplessness washed over him anew. He cleared his throat. “To test my father, I laid her back in her bed. The next day when I saw her empty room, I asked where she was. He told me she’d gone home to recover. I started making an escape plan right then.”

  Kye’s eyes glittered with tears. Could she feel his pain at that memory? She swiped them away. “He just let them die?”

  “He kept saying our suffering was a small price to pay for releasing the pain of a whole race of Crescents. Wasn’t that, after all, what wars were about? Sacrificing our soldiers’ lives to win freedom? He didn’t want to hear my point that today’s soldiers voluntarily sign up for the dangers when they’re of legal adult age. He believed that what he was doing was justified.”

  He tore his gaze from her to Hayden. “You and I conspired to escape. I didn’t trust Silva. He was sucking up to my father as well as to me. You were the only Caido I could trust. We took the three non-Caidos who were in the worst shape. I figured we’d expose my father’s operation, and all of the children would be safe. But we never got back to them.” They’d been left there, abandoned to a fate Kasabian could well imagine. A flicker of hope lit his heavy heart as a memory resurfaced. “A Dragon woman escaped. She was the oldest of the captives.”

  “The oldest…” Hayden tapped his mouth as he seemed to ponder that. “There was a story circulating around the Guard when I joined ten years ago. A woman who called herself Willow accused someone on the Concilium of imprisoning her, along with several children. She said she’d been there the longest. Her story couldn’t be substantiated, though, so they locked her in the psych ward. Another member of the Concilium tried to break her out, and they were both killed.”

  Kasabian ran his hand back over his hair. “From what I understand, my father was on the Concilium once.”

  “The man who tried to help her was Kade Kavanaugh’s father. Kade is a fellow Vega, which probably keeps the story alive. Probably every new Vega hears, ‘See that guy. His father…’ I’ll take him aside at headquarters and find out what I can.” Hayden’s voice went softer. “So you remember your mother getting killed?”

  Kye’s head snapped toward Kasabian. “What?”

  All these years he had only known the bare facts. Now he had the images to go with them. “I called her as soon as we could get to a pay phone. She arrived, saying that others were on their way to help. My father showed up, killed her, then turned to us. But he hesitated. We heard others coming, foo
tsteps pounding the pavement, so he memory-locked us instead.”

  Kye put her hand to her heart. “I’m so sorry.”

  Could she feel his ache at his mother’s loss, the guilt that he had caused it? And he had. “I’m going to find Treylon Grey.”

  “Have you tried Leaping to him?” Hayden asked.

  Kye stepped closer. “Isn’t that where you can pop in to some other place? So you just think of your father and you’re there?”

  “Only if we know the exact location or have an emotional connection to the person, which acts as a touchstone,” Kasabian explained. “I’ve already tried to find the bastard, but I keep hitting a barrier. That’s an invisible force field we can erect to keep another Caido out.”

  “I asked Cecily at the Guard to check into missing Crescent children reports,” Hayden said. “There were an extraordinary number of them in the last year. I could ask her to do a search on your father’s name, but it will raise red flags.”

  Kasabian shook his head. “We don’t want to do that. See if there are any other ways for her to search. In the meantime, I’m going to keep trying my father. If he put the barrier over his location, I can catch him when he leaves.” He turned to Kye. “And when I do…this is why we have to sever this bond.”

  Her beautiful face was even more pale. “I’ll try.”

  “Excuse us for a minute, Hayden.” Kasabian led Kye to his bedroom for privacy, turning her to face him once they were closed inside. “Do it.” The words were hard to push out, because a part of him craved this bond.

  “Relax, like you did before. Let me take control.” Her fingers wrapped around his, linking them. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, determination tightening the lush mouth that was recently plastered against his. His gaze drifted down her long, graceful neck, the curves of her breasts, and the hint of cleavage. His Shadow thrummed.

  Her jaw flexed, and her eyebrows pulled down in a frown. Agony filled her eyes. “I can’t summon my Zensu magick. Before, when I felt romantically drawn to a guy, I got static. Now I get nothing!” Her panic plowed into him as she drove her fingers into her hair and turned away. “What am I going to do? Without my abilities, I’m worthless.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  She was going to cry. He felt it before even glimpsing the first glistening tear on her eyelashes. The sight of a woman or child crying wrecked him, but it was much worse because he’d caused her angst.

  He pulled her close, keeping his hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry, Kye. I take full responsibility. But in my defense, the Shadow has never done something against my will before. I wouldn’t have taken a chance otherwise. But now that we’re bonded, the Shadow is growing stronger, its whispers more fervent.”

  “What is it whispering?”

  “It wants me to throw you onto that bed, tear off your clothes, and take you. It wants to devour you. The worst part is, I don’t know how much is the Shadow and how much is me.” He took in the swirl of mist in her eyes. “When I kissed you just now, you should have immediately shoved me away. You should be putting distance between us right now. But you’re drawn to it, too. And that is the most dangerous aspect of all.”

  “I…I’ll look through my notes and see if there’s something that will give me a clue.”

  He forced himself to open the door. Kye darted down the hallway toward the living room. By the time he got there, she was already at the door. Smart girl.

  “I’ll let you know if I find something,” she said, then gave Hayden a nod before leaving.

  “Did it work?” Hayden asked when the door closed behind her.

  “No.”

  “I wouldn’t mind being bonded to her. I’d—whoa, dude. Your eyes went black for a second.”

  Rage had roared through Kasabian at the flippant comment. He had no right to feel possessive of her. He rubbed his eyes. “It’s been a long night, an even longer morning.” Had his eyes really gone black? Somehow his feelings for Kye had given this thing inside him more power. It scared him.

  Hayden was keeping a bit more distance between them now. “I’ll do some quiet checking, see if I can find where your father is these days.”

  “Very quiet. He’s willing to kill children to attain his goal. That day we escaped, he struggled with whether to kill us. Maybe because I was his son. This time I guarantee he won’t hestitate.”

  Chapter 5

  Kasabian closed the blinds, stripped off his shirt, and bowed as he Invoked his angel essence. Caidos’ wings were not made of feathers but an energy that resembled wings. That energy tore through his back like butcher knives, making him hiss with pain. Once the Transformation was complete, the Light pulsing inside him chased away the pain.

  He straightened, focused on his father, and slammed up against the barrier again. Kasabian kept trying every few minutes throughout the day, exhausting himself with the effort. Finally he felt himself transport.

  He arrived outside a residential entrance, the curved concrete walls bearing a discreet shell-shaped sign but no words. In those first few seconds after Leaping, he was invisible, long enough to pull in his wings in case anyone was standing nearby. But he left the shield and his wings in place as he surveyed the property in front of him. Down a long drive, he could see one of the old, Florida mansions. And coming up the drive was a black Mercedes. The gates began to open. Kasabian stood off to the side as the car drove out a few seconds later. He knew his father was inside, felt him, but he was more interested in the mansion at the moment. Kasabian slipped inside just before the gate clanged shut. Beyond the mansion, he spotted an assortment of smaller buildings. A salty breeze rustled the leaves, indicating that the ocean was nearby.

  The air in front of him shimmered, and he felt the tightness in his gut as he neared the Caido barrier. He could see beyond but couldn’t pass it. He felt along its edge as he followed it toward the back of the property. He saw no sign of any children, but last time his father hadn’t allowed outdoor toys or play equipment.

  Kasabian needed to get a feel for the scope of the operation. How many kids held captive? How many adults involved? He kept close to the tall, thick hedge that separated this property from the next. The windows were all blocked by blinds. He dropped his invisibility cloak, which was cumbersome to maintain, and crouched near a cluster of hibiscus bushes to wait.

  Twenty minutes later, one of the back doors opened, and a man herded a boy of about ten to some vegetation, where he proceeded to vomit. Kasabian remembered when the channeling got too much for his body. He strained to throw himself through the barrier and strangle the adult. He had to suck in deep breaths to pull his Shadow back.

  The adult gave the boy a small towel to wipe his mouth. The vomiting was only the beginning. Early in Kasabian’s captivity, two Caido boys started getting sick. His father told him that, regrettably, he had to slow the pace at which the boys channeled the essence.

  Kasabian watched as the man escorted the boy back to the house. The kid was gaunt, his movements listless. Like all of the children had been before they “went home.”

  He knew where “home” really was. Death.

  There were only two ways to get through a barrier. Be invited in or go through with someone who was allowed. He made his way to the front of the property and waited for his father to return.

  Silva watched the intruder slither among the landscaping toward the back of the property. He might have not seen him at all but for the fact that he was staring out between the narrow slits of the blinds daydreaming.

  Who would dare come onto the property? And how had he gotten through the front gate? Not that he’d get past the barrier, but still, an intruder had to be dealt with.

  Silva waved his hand, creating a cloak that rendered him invisible. This shouldn’t have anything to do with the mess he’d inadvertently caused. Could the man be the Caido whose wings he recently Stripped? Silva flexed his hands at the sweet memory. He had powers not many did, and he was finding new ways to use
them.

  He slipped out the side door on the other side of the house. The intruder was hunkered down near some bushes, his face hidden by the pink flowers.

  Silva passed through the barrier, stepping lightly on the grass as he neared his quarry. When the man stood, Silva nearly dropped the cloak in his shock at seeing him here. Kasabian. That he was here meant the memory lock had failed after all these years. But how? Had it just gone poof?

  It also meant he was investigating what those memories meant. He was once again a threat to their operation. And that couldn’t happen. Treylon had questioned the wisdom of letting him live after his escape, regretting his weakness. It was Silva who had convinced him that Kasabian posed no threat if he remembered nothing. Treylon would kill him on the spot now.

  As much as Silva had wished Kasabian dead for abandoning him and nearly destroying Treylon’s work, he did not actually want him dead. He wanted him broken and bleeding and under his control. He had dreamed of it for so long, Kasabian begging for mercy, then forgiveness, then for Silva’s gentle caresses. In contrast to the pain, Kasabian would accept, even welcome, Silva’s hands on his muscular, tanned body.

  Kasabian was intently watching Beldeen taking one of the young Caidos out back to puke. Treylon was pushing them too hard now that the solar storm was approaching. Silva touched the starburst scar. It still burned from his last session. He was doing it voluntarily now, but he remembered how helpless he’d felt when Treylon had first brought him to his estate all those years ago. Kids couldn’t comprehend what was at stake. Now he did, and he would give everything to see it through. Well, everything but his life.

  Kasabian’s jaw tightened, his mouth tight with his anger. He looked dangerously beautiful. Only inches away, Silva reached out, straining to touch him. He held back, unsure how to deal with this particular intruder.

  Kasabian headed toward the front of the property. Was he leaving? If he told the Crescent authorities some crazy tale about a former Concilium member holding children, he would be ushered away. Like the boy who’d recently escaped. Or he would be made insane, like the woman who had escaped many years ago.