by A C Warneke
As they arrived at the car, she expected him to open the back door for her but he just smiled and shook his head as he opened the passenger door instead. Reluctantly, she climbed into the running car, happy that the heater was on high and she’d be able to take off the heavy parka soon enough.
“Give me a moment and don’t run,” he ordered as he closed the door.
“I’d never dream of running,” she muttered.
“Don’t run!” he yelled, the sound muffled by the thick glass and purring engine. As the warmth seeped into her bones, she found it impossible to summon the strength to flee into the frozen winter night.
She lost the opportunity to escape a minute or so later when the cop climbed behind the wheel. Shifting the car into drive, he asked, “What’s your name, miss?”
“Mal… Matilda. Matilda Macklemore,” she answered after a brief stutter. “And you?”
His smile was very white in his face but he didn’t look at her when he answered, “Scott Macintyre.”
“Where are you taking me?”
Instead of answering that question, he calmly stated, “I saw what you did to that tree, Miss Macklemore, but I managed to take the shine into myself so all that remains is the tree, albeit one that wasn’t there yesterday. So what are you?”
Coming from a stranger, the question was unexpected and she could only stare at him. “Huh?”
“It’s like an old memory that I just can’t quite remember.” He spared her a glance as he continued to drive, curiosity clearly written on his handsome face. “Usually I can tell what a person is just by looking at them but I can’t seem to place you, even after I put my hand on you, and it’s the strangest thing. Plus, there was that tree.”
Malorie blinked her eyes, still reeling from his comments. But then he continued, “You have human blood, so I am assuming some sort of hybrid though you’re unlike any of the other hybrids I’ve come across.”
“And you have so much experience with this sort of thing?” she finally managed to ask.
He chuckled, “Yes, I do.”
“What are you?” she asked, thinking about the light that had nearly blinded her when she had opened her eyes. Had it come from him?
“I’m surprised you don’t know,” he said with a grin. “Since my kind is not so rare.”
“I mostly deal with vampires,” she told him. “Anything beyond that doesn’t interest me.”
He snorted, “All the pretty girls prefer vampires.”
“I didn’t say I prefer them,” she countered. “Generally I kill them. Well, usually.”
Arching an eyebrow that had to be a gift inherent to sexy men, he looked at her, “Usually?”
Color heated her cheeks as she thought about Jack and looked away. How could this stranger, who wasn’t human, understand that somehow she had brought her dead husband back to life after he had tried to kill her? “Well, they’d probably frown down upon killing vampires now that they’re behaving themselves.”
Chuckling once again, he shook his head, “Are we talking about true vampires or the Apocritae created Calices?”
“What the fuck is an Apocritae?” she asked, sensing large gaps in her education. When she thawed out enough to take the heavy jacket off, she peeled it from her body and felt her shirt ride up a little. “Or are you talking about Aradians?”
This time he sucked in a sharp breath as he looked at her, making the car swerve at the sudden movement. After he got the vehicle back under control, his eyes dropped to her waist and he drew in another audible breath, “Well, fuck me, you’re a Breeder. I thought you smelled faintly familiar but I didn’t even consider that possibility because your kind died out hundreds of years ago. Apparently we were mistaken.”
“Jesus, what the hell are you?” she asked, pulling her shirt down and hiding the mark that glimmered as brightly as the alien tree.
“I can’t believe we never saw you coming, especially with all of the other changes,” he muttered mostly to himself, not answering her question. “We should have seen it, though, all things considered. Wow, a Breeder and a pregnant one at that. How did we miss this? Of course, with the new Queen and the Goddess, it’s not really surprising the angels missed you.”
“Okay, now you’re just rambling,” she grumbled, wrapping her arms around her stomach as she sat forward and tried to ignore the crazy man who was talking about goddesses and angels and queens and who knows what else. It didn’t make any sense to her, no matter how hard she tried to follow his ravings.
Staring out the window, she grimaced as his words played over and over in her head and she tried to concentrate on where they were going. It was strange being back in New York and it was especially strange to be riding in a police car with a man who wasn’t human and who was clearly mad. Chancing a peek at him, she wondered if she was in danger even though she didn’t detect any hostility coming from him. Curiosity and excitement were rolling off him in waves but no malice. Unfortunately, she knew curiosity and excitement could be just as dangerous in the wrong person. Did he want to take her to some lab to experiment on her? Or did he want to keep her safe because she was a Breeder?
Fuck, she needed to come up with a better name.
“Um, wasn’t that the police station?” she asked, as they passed the large, brick building. He looked at her as if she was crazy but he was the cop driving pass the station.
“You don’t want to go there,” he said as if he could read her mind. “If you’ve managed to stay hidden for this long I can’t imagine you’d want to broadcast the fact that you exist and if we go there you’ll be forced to register and it would be a huge headache for all involved.”
“You register non-humans?” she asked dumbly, a little warmed by his understanding that she didn’t want to be found.
He looked at her and scowled, “Not usually because we can sense one another. No, you’d have to register because you’re something that hasn’t been around for over four hundred years and the powers that be would be very interested in learning about you and your kind and how you’ve stayed hidden all of these years.”
Malorie scoffed, “I’d like to see them try. Feryn would be pissed if something were to happen to me.”
The tires squealed as he slammed on his breaks and brought the car to an abrupt halt. The seatbelt jerked her backwards to keep her steady and she winced. As soon as the car came to a complete stop, she whipped the damn thing off and turned to glare at the mad man, “What the hell?”
Both of them ignored the honking horns that blared around them. He faced her with an expression of regret and said, “No offense, miss, but you need to get the hell out of my car. Now.”
“What the fuck?” she asked, staring at the man who was sworn to serve and protect even as she reached for the door handle.
He gulped audibly, “Aradians aren’t known for their forgiving dispositions and as much as it pains me to admit it, I have had several lustful thoughts about you since finding you asleep in the park.”
“I was mugged,” she interjected.
“Right,” he snorted, a slight smile tilting his lips before he wiped the humor from his face. “It’s just that lust is still so new to me but I do know enough to know how the Aradian emperor would take it if any man lusted after his marked property, no matter how unintentional.”
“Pardon me?” she asked, her mouth gaping open.
“It’s because you’re a female and I’m still trying to figure out my body,” he continued, answering the wrong question. In an almost pained confession, he murmured, “I find myself lusting after pretty much anyone with breasts and….”
“No, not that,” she shook her head as she held up her hand to stop him from going any further. “What makes you think I’m Feryn’s property?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” he asked, looking at her as if she was the one who had gone mad. “Aradians mark a Breeder before he mates with her in order to conceive a child and to ensure the child is his. The mark won’t fade until after
the babe is born so until you deliver, you’re his.”
“I’m not his property,” she ground out. She remembered Feryn hadn’t marked her before they had sex the first time, when she had conceived his child. Apparently, she shouldn’t have been able to conceive without his mark, something he had said in passion but she hadn’t realized what he meant. No wonder why Feryn had freaked out. Of course, she already knew that she was something new so what else was unique about her?
“You poor thing with your human sensibilities.” He looked at her with pity as he nodded towards the door, “Now, it’s nothing personal, but can you get out of my car? I don’t want to do anything that will threaten the fragile alliance we have with the Aradians. Being in the same vicinity as the emperor’s property is tantamount to treason and if Feryn should discover you in my car it will set back relations a thousand years.”
Struck speechless, she simply stared at him for a few moments as he continued motioning towards the door, practically willing her back out into the cold. Thinking fast, she asked, “Don’t you think Feryn would be even more furious if you simply dropped me off in a strange city in the middle of winter with nothing to keep me warm?”
Color crept up his throat as he stared straight ahead. His knuckles were white from gripping the steering wheel so tightly and she wondered if it was going to break off in his hands. Grinding his teeth together, he managed to choke out, “Where do you want me to take you?”
Pleased with his quick capitulation, she smiled and gave him the address of the warehouse. She watched in fascination as he turned and stared at her in horror as the color faded from his cheeks. “Miss Macklemore, I could lose my brand new balls for looking at you twice. If I drop you off in that neighborhood, your Feryn would stuff them down my throat. Give me a different address.”
“Feryn knows where I’m going,” she told him smugly, crossing her arms beneath her breasts and leaning back in the seat. “Now, I would suggest driving before anyone grows curious enough to see why a police car is stopped in the middle of the street. You can’t be sure who’d look into the window and see you sitting here with me. Word might get back to Feryn and your precious balls will be history.”
“Do you know that phrase, ‘She goes where angels fear to tread?’” At her nod, he smiled ruefully, “The warehouse where you’re going is such a place. Are you absolutely certain I can’t take you somewhere else? Anywhere else?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, truly remorseful to put him in such a position. “But I have a contact there and I have to talk to him.”
“God, this sucks.” Slamming the gear into drive, he pulled back into traffic. “As soon as I drop you off I’m packing up my stuff and getting the heck out of the city.”
“Where would you go?”
“As if I’d tell you,” he grunted. “No, it’s better to keep you in the dark so your Feryn can’t extract the information from your pretty, little head.”
“You act like you know so much about Feryn and Aradians and me but you don’t know anything,” she grumbled, watching as the streets grew darker and darker the closer they got to the warehouse district. Underneath one of the lone streetlights, a girl with too much makeup and not enough clothes was being propositioned by a too-skinny man. As the police car cruised by them, the man took off and the girl looked up with a scowl on her unexpectedly pretty face. Her eyes were dark and hollow and she could have been a vampire if not for the thready pulse at her throat. “What the hell is that?”
“That’s a Calix,” he murmured. When Malorie looked at him, he nodded towards the abandoned girl who was now behind them. “She was going to drink the blood of that man and return home to the Adytum where one of the Apocritae would drink her blood and pleasure her beyond a human’s endurance. Now that there is a new Queen, we are seeing fewer and fewer of these rogue Calices but they’re still out here, usually on the fringes of society.”
“The false vampires?” she asked, curious in spite of the circumstances.
“Yes,” Scott said, nodding his head. “The new Queen recently came to power and things have been a little chaotic for them. Growing pains, you understand.”
She nodded her head as she twisted in her seat to get one last look at the false vampire. A new man was standing there, larger than the one before and just as eager. Facing forward, she stared out the window, lost in contemplation. There was so much more to the world than she ever knew. Why hadn’t she known?
“I am a little bewildered,” she admitted softly. She hadn't even realized….
Smiling sheepishly, he shrugged, “I don’t get the chance to talk about this with a lot of people so you’ll have to forgive me.”
She smiled at his confession, understanding his wayward tongue more than she cared to admit. “I don’t mind. There’s obviously a lot I need to learn.”
His smile became brilliant as he continued, “Well, I’ve been on this planet for a long time, mostly keeping to myself and just observing.”
“It sounds lonely,” she murmured, her heart thumping with sympathy in her chest at the wistful longing in his voice, a feeling she understood too well.
He shrugged his shoulders, turning onto an even darker road. “It isn’t so bad. Anyway, a few years ago, everything changed and the world was thrown into chaos. My brothers tried to contain the fallout but in the end it didn’t matter and the Apocalypse still came about.”
She understood the words coming out of his mouth but they didn’t make any sense. “But the world didn’t end.”
“Mistranslation,” he explained. “Humans in their beautiful arrogance believed it was about them but it wasn’t, not entirely. The Apocalypse was the ending of the separation of man and monster, of angel and demon. It is the commencement of a new reality and I guess we should have known more creatures would be coming out of the woodwork.”
“I’m still mostly human,” she protested feebly. But it wasn’t true in the strictest definition of the word since an alien had changed her father’s and grandfather’s DNA four hundred and fifty years prior.
“And now so am I,” he said with a wry grin. “When the new era was ushered in, all of the angels on the planet received new bodies and let me tell you, human bodies are unpredictable and terrifying and absolutely amazing. As much as I am dreading it, I am looking forward to my first sexual encounter.”
Out of everything he had told her, confessing to being a virgin was perhaps the most surprising. He must have understood her stunned silence because he added, “As I’ve said, these bodies are unruly and I don’t want to cause injury to my partner or myself by losing control and sex is all about losing control.”
“Only if you’re doing it right,” she murmured without thinking because she always lost control when she was having sex with Feryn. Clearing her throat, she added, “But, yeah, I can see your point.”
“And I’d prefer to keep my balls long enough to experience the joys of the flesh,” he added with a knowing look.
Without quite expecting it, a burst of laughter exploded from her lips, coming all the way from her belly. After the drama with Feryn and then Jack, it felt good to laugh, which only made her laugh until her eyes began to water. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she looked at him and shook her head, “I would have made sure Feryn didn’t touch you, Officer Macintyre. In some areas, he is surprisingly lenient with me so your balls have been perfectly safe this entire time.”
He gaped at her and she saw the wheels turning in his head and she quickly added, “However, if you refuse to drop me off at the warehouse, I might do something about your genitalia.”
“You’re a cruel woman, Miss, er, Macklemore,” he smirked, pulling the car to a stop in the parking lot of a large, dilapidated building. He turned to look at her and that glow that had been there when she first met him was back and all at once she knew what he was, either from a fragment memory or intuition.
“You’re a Guardian Angel, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Guilty,” he s
aid with a pleased smile. “Despite this new body, I still have the sense to know when a person is in need. It’s how I found you when you needed someone.”
“Very cool,” she murmured, nodding her head in appreciation. “Thanks for the ride.”
“I have to ask one last time,” he murmured as she opened the door. “Please let me drop you off somewhere safe.”
“I’m perfectly safe here,” she assured him, ignoring the twinge of doubt that was in her belly. “But thank you.”
“Well, if you refuse to listen to reason, do you want me to wait here for you to do whatever you’re doing here?”
She shook her head as she got out of the car and leaned back in. “I plan on staying the night and I fear if you stayed the night with me your precious balls will be in grave danger since there is only so much leniency with Feryn.”
He grinned at her teasing as he handed her a dark coat. “Good luck, then, Malorie.”
She could only stare after the car as he pulled away. It made sense that he knew her real name. After all, he was a Guardian Angel. A shiver went down her spine at the realization that there was so much to the world that she had never even known, a world that was rapidly opening up around her.
Replaying the conversation in her head, she slipped her arms into the sleeves of the jacket, barely sparing a moment to wonder where Scott had gotten it. As she welcomed the protection against the bitterly cold night, she hurried across the deserted parking lot to get inside where she knew there would be someone waiting for her.
Chapter 5
~Jack~
“This sucks,” Jack said sullenly as he threw another rock into the clear blue water of the ocean that separated him from his wife. His son – his son! – was quietly building a sand castle a few feet away, occasionally glancing at Jack and studying him with those brown eyes of his. It was like looking at a living picture of himself at that age and he had to rub his sternum to ease the ache of everything he had lost. He had missed out on so much of his son’s life and until he returned from the dead, he hadn’t even spared Toby a passing thought.
