Vampire Princess

by Rosemary A Johns

  Ash and Rebel nodded at each other. Then they scraped over the bottom of the bowl. They tore back my slashed dress, before their fingers trailed over my shoulder blades, one each. Finally, they stepped back.

  It wasn’t working.

  My mouth dry, I stared at the ground.

  Those hysteria giggles were working their way up my throat again; I clamped my lips together to hold them inside.

  I hadn’t craved wings before but if I was the only one left out of this bonding, then it’d be a replay of every other time I’d been labelled freak. Able to grant wings to others, but wingless myself.

  A tingle. On my left shoulder blade and then on my right.

  I held my breath.

  Then I shivered, riding the electric waves rippling under the taut skin of my back. Bucking forwards, wings erupted from my back in a single burst.

  I choked on the — hell, blood magic — veiling me. Finally, I staggered upright under an unexpected weight.

  And they were there: wings.

  How did I even move them?

  As soon as I thought it, however, my wings folded round instinctively like a limb.

  I gasped.

  Deep violet mixed with black feathers. Wing tips that pulsed obsidian. I stroked a silky feather and arched at the touch.

  Violet and black, like my eyes.

  When I snatched off my sunglasses, I stamped down on the panic attack, shame, and then a surge of rage that I’d hidden my eyes for so long. Hidden myself, just like the Broken down in this Hollow.

  Half vampire and half angel: a monster.

  And I’d own it.

  When Ash caressed his fingers along my black wingtip, and Rebel traced his thumb under my violet eye, I almost had that big ‘O’ moment right there.

  It would’ve given my Blood Angels a legendary first story.

  As I stood in the shadows with my new wings, and for the first time without anything hiding my true eyes, I got that the Blood Angels hadn’t knelt because they belonged to me but because we all belonged to each other: Addict, Seducer, Imperfect, the freed…monster.

  And now it was time to fly. Away from perfection. Above it.

  Because I was the rebel princess.

  I nodded to Gwyn, and he darted after me towards the stairs and Barakiel.

  I’d abandoned Drake: it hurt because I could feel the tug towards him. His pain. But I could keep my promise and protect the Lightning Angel.

  I drew the blanket off Barakiel. He lay, drained and unmoving, his spindly arms limp at his sides.

  My own wings fluttered at the sight of his bound wings. I bent over, ripping off the leather and hurling it against the wall. His wings lay in mangled ruin: broken, bent, and plucked.

  Gwyn’s gaze shot to mine. ‘Not to worry. We’ll look after him fine, the same as the other Imperfects. They’ll have to vote themselves a new name as well, isn’t it?’

  I smiled. ‘Their choice, bro.’

  Small as he was, Gwyn lifted Barakiel like he was a kid, after all, he didn’t weigh more than one. Then Gwyn gave his wings an experimental flap.

  All around the Hollow, Broken were pairing up with Imperfects like partners at a dance club.

  Ash had shrugged off his jacket, before handing it to Harahel. He’d slipped his strong arms around Harahel’s shoulders, and Harahel’s brunet curls rested on his shoulders.

  In the middle, Rebel stood with his hands in his pockets, shuffling from foot to foot.

  Alone.

  My bondage punk wallad who couldn’t find a date but was as beautiful as a god.

  Or monster.

  I caught Rebel around the waist, spinning him. He laughed, before shuddering, as our wings wrapped around each other more intimate than any kiss.

  ‘If we rise out of Angel World and back to the human,’ I murmured, ‘eventually, you’ll Fall.’

  He shook his head. ‘I was an idiot to fear the dark when the true monsters sun themselves here in the light. And your Blood Angels? They’re new. Who knows if they’ll even Fall? If they do, they have us to bleeding rescue them.’

  He peeked at me, before pressing one earbud from my sister’s iPod into my ear, and the other into his own.

  Around us, Blood Angels and their partners rose towards the shafts and the star shimmering sky: spiralling crimson bleeding into violet.

  Rising towards freedom.

  I laughed: bubbling bliss swept away all doubts.

  We’d bastard done it. We’d escaped Angel World.

  Haman brushed against my shoulder, before grinning at Rebel and diving up towards the moon’s light.

  Rebel nodded after his brother, and I gripped him tighter. When I beat my wings, it was like I’d always had them but they’d been stolen from me.

  And now I’d taken them back.

  Eels’ grungy “Novocaine for the Soul” wove its spell through the iPod, and Rebel and I held onto each other, soaring up through the Hollow towards the shafts and the night-time sky.

  I shook, lost in the beat of my wings, Rebel’s intense gaze into my eyes without the shield of my sunglasses, and the dark anthem for the outcast misfits.

  Yeah, we were monsters.

  And it bitching rocked.

  A pull, far below: melancholy and loss. It lassoed me through my mind.

  I hesitated.

  ‘My daughter, why do you abandon me?’ The Matriarch’s sorrowful voice echoed telepathically. ‘Look at your splendour! Together we shall rule as wonders. You may fashion all worlds to your liking, and then they shall tremble at the beat of your wings.’

  Below, the Matriarch, whose long hair and dress were stained crimson, stretched out her hands, offering her toxic love.

  And the world.

  Lurid, flashing images forced themselves on a white-hot rainbow arcing from the Matriarch’s brain and into my own.

  I was dictator: human, angel, supernatural and Fallen alike knelt for me.

  I swayed, sweating, as Rebel hollered at me, alarmed. Mesmerised by the illusion, I craved to claim that future.

  I blinked against the haze. Then I plummeted towards the Matriarch’s poisonous embrace, the Blood Princess falling into the arms of a blood-soaked queen.

  29

  Abandoned amongst the humans as a baby on a gravestone with nothing but a feather in my tiny hand, for twenty-one years my reality had been fighting to survive Hackney’s shanks, sex, and pain.

  My geek supernatural games had been my escape. But I wasn’t playing anymore.

  I was a princess. Yet what did that make me?

  A Warrior? Rebel? Mother?

  Monster?

  Or no different to the Matriarch?

  My eyelashes fluttered against the cloudy mists milking my vision, as I tumbled towards the Matriarch, away from the shafts through the roof of the burnt orange Hollow.

  Someone hollered, their eyes blown wide with panic, but their name was lost beneath the flickering movie-show blast of triumph, bowed heads, bones and feathers and blood…

  I panted, whining.

  Then I shrieked.

  That — someone — who was clinging around my middle, whilst I dived, had sunk his blunt teeth into my neck.

  The bright pain shocked me back into myself, breaking me free of the rainbow arc.

  Free of the Matriarch.

  Wisps of intoxicating myrrh lashed from the arc to entangle me again, but I shook my head, focusing on that someone: Rebel.

  Rebel licked the red from his lips and then the snaking stream down my throat. ‘Belt me one when we’re out of here, Feathers, but I wasn’t after stealing a taste. You wouldn’t wake up. And that’s the Matriarch’s power to call to you and corrupt your desire.’

  ‘Psycho queen and siren.’ I clasped Rebel closer. He mouthed at the pouch around my neck that held my sister’s necklace, before nudging it with his nose. ‘I get it, bro, enough with the charades.’

  The Matriarch had shown me power, but my true love was held in that pouch: the s
ister I’d adopted.

  We had a chance to find her and the other disappeared kids of Hackney, whether they were with the vampires, or no longer human.

  The Matriarch stamped her stiletto and howled, a Valkyries’ wet dream in blood-splattered chic.

  I smirked down at her, whilst soaring higher. ‘Like mother, like daughter. You wanted me to rule with love? Then here’s a taste of abandonment, bitch.’

  Rebel stiffened. ‘How about not poking the powerful Glory seeing as she could fly up and—’

  I frowned. ‘Then why the hell isn’t she?’

  Haman: his small scarlet wings soared past my shoulder. His eyes were glazed. Then he dived towards the Matriarch’s welcoming arms.

  The Matriarch’s lips twisted — bitter and knowing — as she met my gaze.

  Checkmate.

  I’d thought all my pieces safe; I’d been bastard wrong.

  ‘Haman,’ Rebel hollered, squirming in my clasp. ‘Jesus, will you listen to me, brother?’

  I’m asking, J. The bitch has brainwashed the kid.

  You’re asking but not the right question.

  You were ready to die to save the human world, what would you sacrifice to stop genocide?

  Who would I sacrifice. This is Rebel’s brother. And what’s with the genocide rant?

  If you become the Matriarch’s weapon…? BAM! You’ll be the star of the Mage’s show, and he’s the one running the genocide campaign.

  Would a princess risk the lives of so many, for the life of a single child?

  One shot. Please, J?

  Static tingled along my face, up my cheeks, and in migraine bursts through the back of the socket of my violet eye.

  Haman had almost reached the Matriarch.

  I blinked, focusing the sparks and gasping as they surged up my throat, through the back of my eye, and then out in a dazzling ray.

  Had I hit Haman and shaken him back to himself?

  Haloes blurred my sight, but when they settled, I shook.

  Haman was cradled in the Matriarch’s arms, and the ochre wall behind sizzled.

  I’d missed.

  Rebel struggled madly; his breath hitched with sobs.

  I lurched, plunging down. ‘Bastard stop before we’re raspberry jam.’

  ‘We have to save him,’ he pleaded, his kohl-smudged eyes wet. ‘I only just found him. I-I’m his big brother… I didn’t look out for him…’

  When I shook my head, soaring up and through the shaft, Rebel hollered.

  ‘Sweet Christ, he’ll think I’ve abandoned him… She can take me instead… Please, please, princess…’

  I soothed calming emotions through the Mark, but Rebel’s anguished gaze sang of betrayal, even as his eyes became heavy, and his head rested on my chest.

  We’d escaped, but the blood ritual had demanded a sacrifice.

  One Rebel had paid.

  Would he ever forgive me, or had I just turned him into my most dangerous enemy?

  Tear-tinged dawn wept over an Arthurian valley in a swirl of mists, as I crumpled to the rocky lakeshore.

  Furious orange sunrise broke across the fanged peaks, reflected in a twin dawn across the lake’s waters.

  I crouched over Rebel, who I’d laid on a mossy bed.

  Hell, I’d broken him at last.

  He curled over; his eyes were red-rimmed. ‘Take me back.’

  I stroked across his cheek, but he flinched. ‘I can’t. Not yet.’

  His brow furrowed. ‘I knelt for you but I…’ He studied me searchingly, before he turned away, tracing his finger over his collar. ‘I don’t know you.’

  Rebel had abandoned me. The snap of rejection echoed through the bond.

  I quivered, scrambling against a fallen tree trunk; I scraped my palms over the rough bark because otherwise I was falling, lost, and alone…

  Just like Haman.

  Above, the Blood Angels streamed — scarlet birds — towards the dawn.

  They had their mission, and I had mine.

  Behind, quick footfalls, and then Ash’s chuckle and Harahel’s chatter.

  ‘Reporting from scouting duty,’ Ash slunk around an outcrop of rock, his hands in the pockets of his army coat.

  Ash had fallen back into his Brigadier — leader — role as soon as we’d soared through the shafts and out of Angel World. He wasn’t the prisoner trapped in his enemy’s cell, and I wasn’t the princess, daughter of the bitch in charge.

  That changed everything.

  Yet stinking in a dress encrusted with my own blood, after a day and night battling in The Pit and against vampires, it was all changing too fast.

  These weren’t my Poly-Wings any more.

  I shivered, rubbing my hands across my goose pimpled arms.

  Ash shucked off his army jacket. He ghosted the back of his hand across my dappled feathers; I leant into the touch, before folding my wings. Then he draped his coat around me, and I melted into the warmth.

  Ash eyed Rebel, who lay staring out at the humped rocks that rose above the dawn burnt lake like grey sea serpents. ‘Cave: has potential for a Fallen with photophobia. It’s just along the shore, and we’ll just have time to find out each other’s dirty secrets.’

  He wound his fingers in Harehel’s curls, nuzzling his neck. Harahel pushed Ash away with a swipe across his nose and a grin.

  Last night, I’d been princess, top boy, god…

  This morning?

  I was the bastard outsider.

  Had any of the Matriarch’s offered power been real, or had the control in Angel World been nothing but contaminated fairy dust?

  Waking up with heaven’s supernatural hangover was a bitch.

  ‘Whatever, bro.’ I didn’t look up, tracing my fingers down Rebel’s spine through his leather jacket; he was still too thin.

  ‘This has never been about hiding, Violet.’ Ash’s voice: too strained and tight.

  Harahel gasped and then whimpered.

  I sighed, closing my eyes as if I could wish it away: Ash’s betrayal.

  ‘You’re not Han,’ I opened my eyes, pushing myself up to face Ash, who held his shooter to Harahel’s temple, with his shaky finger on the trigger. ‘You’re bastard Lando.’

  He blanched, but he wound his other arm around Harahel’s throat. When Harahel choked, Rebel twisted back to watch.

  ‘It’s about choosing a side.’ Ash hesitated, and for a moment, I thought he’d drop the shooter, but instead he only adjusted its snout, until it bit even sharper into Harahel’s skin. ‘I failed. I wish I could be the guy you think I am but I’m everything the angels sneer. A worthless screw buddy. And now you’ll hate me too.’

  Harahel gagged, struggling onto tiptoe. When he sought out my gaze, I knew he was about to go Rambo.

  I couldn’t risk losing him too. When I shook my head, he stilled.

  ‘Dry up. What did you do?’ Rebel’s plea vibrated with fury but also an agonised understanding, one Judas to another.

  Ash swallowed, glancing between us. ‘I’m sorry.’

  The swarm of grey soared between the mountains that were painted in the shades of the roiling dawn and then over the lake towards us.

  Ash intended to hand us to the vampires.

  How long had he planned this?

  His coat around my shoulders suddenly weighed me down like shackles. I chucked it off, stamping the heel of my boot into the gleaming buttons and grinding the sleeves into the mud.

  Ash flinched.

  ‘Fly away,’ Harahel hissed. ‘I’m still your Trainer and I’m ordering you to fly.’

  You heard the apple-scented sweetie, unfold those wings and make for the heavens.

  Ash said I have to choose a side.

  So, the vampires want me? Then they can have me. I’ll rip them Hackney-style apart until I find my sister.

  But my side? It’s with my fam. If you don’t get that, then you’re not on my list.

  You cut my poor heart. Because I’ll always be on your side.
/>   Ash tensed, his gaze softening, as if he wanted me to fly.

  Instead, I swaggered closer. ‘The bastard Lando is right.’ Ash winced. ‘The Blood Princess doesn’t hide or abandon her fam.’

  Ash let up the pressure on Harahel’s neck. ‘Violet…’

  ‘Silence, Seducer,’ Albino swooped down from the storm cloud gathering of vampires above, his hair caught at his nape and swinging to his waist, and his leather coat flapping behind him: a dark Legolas. ‘Or do I need to cut out that clever tongue of yours?’

  Ash ducked his head, but I stumbled backwards.

  Images flashed through me of the battle: Albino snapping Eah’s neck and then tossing her corpse off his claws like old food caught between his teeth.

  I flamed, burning bright.

  Rebel’s hand inched into mine. ‘Mind yourself,’ he murmured, ‘control it.’

  My cheeks flushed.

  Even in his grief, I’d been wrong to imagine Rebel had fully abandoned me.

  Once a Custodian, always a Custodian.

  I nodded but gritted my teeth at Harahel’s wail.

  Albino had wound silver chains that wrenched Harahel’s elbows too high behind his back.

  Ash held out his hand for the other chain.

  Albino tutted. ‘Speak. I love your tongue too much to ever do worse than gag you, my Seducer.’

  ‘May I bind the others, General Trick?’ Ash asked.

  ‘What will you pay me for the privilege?’ Trick’s bone-white fingers played across Ash’s hand, as he trailed the chain snake-like across his palm. ‘But then, you only have one thing you ever pay with, don’t you?’ Trick’s words slipped out like the tip of an oiled blade.

  Ash had given us up, but I could cut out Trick’s tongue for the way he was insulting him.

  No wonder Ash had hated that I’d Marked Rebel.

  Ash backed away, but Trick tipped him over the fallen log, pinning him against the bark. When Trick ran his hand slowly down the front of Ash’s jeans, Ash panted, turning away.

  To my surprise, Rebel growled.

  I tilted my chin. ‘Enough of the cheap fang-on-fang porno, chains won’t shackle themselves.’

  I held my hands behind my back.

  Albino shoved Ash off the log on top of Rebel, hurling the chain at the back of Ash’s head.