by Brianna Jean
He had the most tattoos out of the three of them. I couldn’t make out what any of them were due to the darkness of the alley, but the ink on his neck was unmistakable. He wore a black T-shirt and black skinny jeans tucked into Timberlands, with a white hoodie tied around his waist. The ink on his arms stretched as his muscles flexed from clenching and unclenching his fists at his sides.
He was a perfect vision of hell in the flesh.
“If she’d stop checking us out, maybe we’d find out just how much she knows,” Lava Eyes said. I think Blue Eyes called him Quint.
I looked to the other two again, noticing that they too wore dark skinny jeans tucked into Timberlands, but Blue’s were ripped at the knees. My stomach flipped at the sight. Fuck, they were gorgeous.
“I’m not checking you out, I’m sizing up the competition.” My voice sounded confident despite my warring feelings. They may be hot as hell, but I’ve lived in hell long enough to not let their looks mess with my head. If anything, I knew this hell well enough to know their weaknesses.
I felt my beast pacing restlessly inside me. I called on her. Gave her a mental nod, telling her to get ready. I warned them, and they didn’t listen, so now I had to teach them a lesson.
“I told you to get out of my way,” I warned, staring at the three guys in front of me.
I couldn’t physically see my beast, it was a mental connection we shared, something I had never understood or been able to figure out, but she never left. I had gotten used to her presence, and now she was simply a part of me.
Quint laughed. The other two didn’t. The devilish one in the middle snarled, and the one with golden hair and blue eyes looked…worried? He was still staring at me like he knew me. Like he was sad I didn’t remember him.
“What’s your name?” Blue Eyes asked.
“Not interested,” I replied and moved forward.
Walking right up to Seafoam, I pushed my small frame into his large one and watched as he was forced to step back. He didn’t move far as he was a strong match for my tiny body, but it was far enough for me to walk easily through the three of them without being directly touched.
Feeling a shift in the air behind me, I spun around and wrapped my hand around Blue’s wrist just before it landed on my shoulder.
“Don’t fucking touch me unless you want to lose a hand, got it?” I asked as I squeezed his huge wrist. His eyes widened just a fraction.
Another shift in the air to my other side had me dropping Blue’s wrist and spinning around just before reaching up to jam my palm into Quint’s jugular and backing him up against the brick wall behind him before he could snake his arm around my waist.
“Oh shit!” Quint cackled in a raspy voice as he tried to pull air into his blocked lungs. I felt his trachea move underneath my palm. Even with my hand at his throat, he looked down at me with a blinding smile on his face. “Dude! Do you see this? She’s like a fucking ninja!”
“Take your hand off him, you bitch!” Seafoam shouted and came up behind me. When he was close enough, I kicked my leg up and nailed him right between his legs, without breaking eye contact with Quint.
Hearing his grunting, I knew I’d landed the intended target—without even looking. I smiled up at Quint. “Not a ninja, handsome. I’m not that graceful.”
I let go of his throat and backed up. I’d proven my point.
“It was nice to meet you boys, but I’ve got a bottle of vodka at home that’s screaming my name.”
I gave them a saucy wave and watched as they all gaped at me. Laughing, I turned around and flicked them the bird over my shoulder.
After I got a few more feet of distance between us, I dropped my smile as the reality of what just happened sunk in. Thinking of the words they said…
“She’s got no fucking idea what she is.”
“Maybe we’d find out just how much she knows.”
I didn’t know what the fuck any of that meant.
Now that I was seemingly in the clear, I felt my panic rise up from where I’d hidden it away. As I walked, my body started to shake, my protective instincts still firing on all cylinders, ready to save me should it need to.
I felt tingly, like something in me was shifting.
I gritted my teeth as the beast I kept caged in my soul threatened to rip through my flesh. She has tried before, but all it did was give me a pounding headache. She was stuck in my mental space, and I had no clue if she was even real—if I could get her out.
Something told me this wouldn’t be the last time I saw those guys—they’d cornered me for a reason.
I just didn’t know why.
That little bitch kicked me.
She lifted her tiny ass leg and kicked me in the dick with enough force to rival a grown man. That shit hurt just as much as the swift kick to my pride. I was convinced she ruined any chances of me having kids in the future—not that I wanted any.
“What the fuck just happened?” Cabe asked no one in particular.
We all stood in the same spot she left us ten minutes ago, staring in the direction she went, too stunned to move.
“You said that was Annalise.” I looked to Cabe, who was pacing the alley hastily.
“It was,” he growled.
“Why didn’t you tell us she was so fucking hot?” Quint laughed. “No wonder you’re so obsessed with her.”
I rolled my eyes. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that we now have a way in. Cabe, you can talk to her, get her to come back to the penthouse with us before her Transition.”
“How the hell am I supposed to convince her to hear me out? She isn’t even going to let me near her again,” Cabe grumbled, running a hand over his blond head and blowing out a deep breath.
He was pissed that this failed.
When he told us yesterday that he thought he found the girl we were looking for, he was expecting someone else. A random female Neph that hadn’t yet Transitioned—like we’d been sent to find.
But that’s not what happened.
Instead, we showed up at the fight tonight and watched Annalise, the girl from Cabe’s visions, pummel a bitch with at least seventy-five pounds on her, straight into the mat. There was no doubt that Annalise was fierce. She was a fighter through and through.
“You’ve been dreaming about that creature for eleven fucking years and you’re telling me you had no fucking idea that she was Nephilim?” I all but yelled at him.
“Do. Not.” He glared at me, his blue eyes darkening. I stepped back when I saw, for the first time, the gray in his eyes begin swirling like a thundercloud. “Start. With. Me.”
“Don’t start with you? This was our one fucking chance, Cabe!” I moved to stand in front of him, my anger driving me to slam my forehead against his. “How did we not know that it was the girl from your visions? How the fuck did you miss that? I wanted this done tonight!”
He may be pissed, but I was raging. We had one job, find the girl and bring her home to wait for further instructions. After weeks of searching, that was supposed to happen tonight.
Quick. Easy. Done.
But instead, she bested us, and our brother could have fucking warned us about her strength. We could have been better prepared.
“I didn’t know, okay?” Cabe shoved me back, the force behind it making me stumble before righting myself. “I had no idea that she was Nephilim, none. She never showed any signs in my visions. I would have told you if I knew. Hell, I would have tried to find her years ago if I knew.”
I took a breath, turning my back on him. Trying to sort my fucking feelings, I walked to the brick wall in front of me and put a hand against it. This rage was different, and that scared the fuck out of me.
Something wasn’t right about this girl.
Something about the whole situation felt off.
I wanted to run after her and lock her in my bedroom, preferably chained to my headboard while she let me take full advantage of her spread eagle on my California King. Just for me.
/> When I agreed to this, I didn’t expect to feel anything toward the girl. Quint’s father said she would be clueless, but he never said she would be that hot, that intuitive. Her violet eyes saw through me, and I was forced to lay myself bare.
She wasn’t supposed to look at me like she saw straight into my chest and found my nonexistent heart. She wasn’t supposed to have perfect pink cupid’s bow lips and eyes the color of lilacs. She most certainly wasn’t supposed to have a body built like sin.
“She really is hot as fuck, dude,” Quint threw in casually, like we all didn’t just fucking see her.
I bit back a groan as my beast came forward. “Mine!”
His multilayered voice tore through my mind as he pushed and pushed to get out.
Shocked, I held him back, not wanting to lose control and shift out in the open. Humans wouldn’t react kindly to a tatted-up Angel standing in an alleyway.
It was hard to keep him inside though. He wanted to throttle Quint for even thinking about her—another hint toward this situation being weird as fuck.
Why was he freaking out?
Something was very wrong with that girl.
“Well, now we need a new plan, because she’s going to be twenty-one tomorrow night at midnight, and we all know what will happen when she gets her wings. She can’t be in public when she goes through the Transition,” I said through clenched teeth.
This whole situation was more than I signed up for.
Cabe was still looking down the alley, his eyes sad and brimming with hurt. I sighed, shaking my head. I didn’t know much about Annalise, but I did know that for eleven years, he’d been seeing her. I could tell that he’d grown attached to her, and I couldn’t blame him. Having someone in your head for that long…he was bound to become possessive of her. But he never expected the girl we were hunting to be the very same one he’d been looking for all this time.
“She looked the same?” I asked, trying to get him to stop staring after her.
She was long gone.
“That was her.” He looked at me, and I tried not to freak out. He was in bad shape. His blue eyes were full of desperation and longing, his heart bleeding on his sleeve. This girl owned him, and he’d been breathing the same air as she had just a few minutes ago…before she got away. “How did I miss that she was Nephilim? I thought, all this time, that she was a Human. Annalise never showed any signs of being anything but an ordinary girl. But then tonight…the way she fought…that was brutal. I’d never seen a vision of her fighting before. I think I’ve seen everything else, but now I’m not even sure if I’ve touched the surface. What is the fucking point of these visions if information is being left out? I don’t understand.”
He grunted and kicked the wall, falling apart.
“What have you seen exactly?” I asked hesitantly. I’d never cared before, but now I wanted to know anything that he knew. My beast perked up his ears, searching for any intel on the girl.
“That’s not my story to tell,” he said harshly, looking up at me with new eyes. Something was shimmering in them, rolling like a tidal wave. “Her life is her life; I shouldn’t have been able to see it at all.”
“What the fuck? Who cares about her privacy?” I laughed a humorless sound. “We were asked to find her, and now we’ve lost her. We need every scrap of help we can get before Quint’s dad orders our asses dead.”
“This is bigger than him now!” Cabe shouted, no doubt frustrated that I was taking this too lightly. “This is about Annalise and the fact that she has no idea that she’s a fucking Nephilim, and tomorrow night she’ll be in a world of fucking pain. I don’t have access to her anymore, so we’re going to have to come up with a plan to find her and get her to trust us enough to help her through it. I’m not going to spill her secrets, it’s not my place, but I will tell you that I have no idea what the fuck that was just now. She went on the defense immediately, and I didn’t expect it. She’s broken, sure, life hasn’t treated her kindly, and the shit she’s been through…” His voice trailed off as he hung his head, his shoulders bunching up under the weight of his concern. “You guys have no idea what she’s been through, but I guess I expected her to be different. Not so fucking hard, so vicious. I have no idea what that was.”
I knew what that was.
That was a fucking mask. Annalise was fighting for her life. Sure, she might be sweet somewhere deep down in that fiery soul of hers, but to get to that girl? Yeah, Hell itself would have to freeze over before anyone got to see what she was really like under those tough fists.
“Well, now we have to find a fucking way to get her to trust us, and this big asshole growled at her the whole time like some raging animal.” Quint punched me lightly in the ribs to emphasize his point. I didn’t bother responding since it was the truth.
Something about her rubbed me the wrong way.
“MINE!” my beast roared, his voice echoing in my head.
Fuck.
I groaned, pulling on my hair, feeling the black strands fold and twist between my fingers. I didn’t want to take this mission in the first place, but Quint’s father was a hard man to refuse, and I was bored, frustrated, and needed a distraction from all the fruitless research I’d been doing. Now I was all wound up, and nothing had changed. I felt even worse than I did before I agreed to find her.
“I’ll see if a vision comes tonight, though I doubt one will. I haven’t gotten one in the last month, and if I heard that JD guy right, he said she’s gotten stronger. Which probably means her body is gearing up for the Transition. That’s probably why I’ve lost my visions,” Cabe said, still pacing.
“So what’s the fucking plan?” My voice was harsh and bitter. I wanted out of this conversation, and I wanted to be balls deep in any pussy I could find before the night was over. I didn’t like that I wanted to crack Cabe’s skull open and pull out every memory he had of her. I wanted to know what made her tick, what made her angry, what made her laugh. My beast was still raging.
Something was fucking wrong with me.
“We’ll throw a party tomorrow night at Hellhound,” Cabe began, shaking off his melancholy attitude and getting excited about his new plan. “We’ll have to slip an invitation under her door, but with Hellhound’s reputation and her obvious need to find trouble…I bet you she’ll show up. Quint, can your Bull sniff out her scent and find out where she lives? You can cloak yourself and leave it under her door. I’ll give her a plus one, and she can bring the guy she lives with, that way she’ll be more likely to come. She can bring backup.”
“She has a fucking boyfriend?” I shouted. My hands shaking with rage, clenching and unclenching at my sides.
What the hell was happening to me?
I couldn’t breathe right. The beast inside me was snarling and foaming at the mouth. All I could picture was dragging her kicking and screaming from wherever the fuck she lived and getting her far away from whoever the fuck he was…fuck!
I felt my beast stand up and sniff the air. His dark brown eyes widened as he pulled in the remaining tendrils of her scent out of the air. I closed my eyes, letting her sweet flavor waft over me, lilacs and a hint of sweat.
He began whining, whimpering, pacing. He was itching to get out, to get to her, to protect her.
He wanted her.
And I was powerless.
Boyfriend.
“Lanier, bro, calm down.” Quint chuckled as if he had no care in the world.
He laughed at fucking everything. It only made my situation worse as I was losing control—and quickly.
“Cabriel, she has a boyfriend?” I asked through clenched teeth.
“I mean, I’m pretty sure they’re broken up, but she lives with a guy named Joey. She’s been living there for three years. I’m not sure why she hasn’t left yet, but I imagine it’s because New York is expensive and the diner she works at isn’t enough to support her on her own. I always wondered what she did to make real money, to pay her bills and stuff. Never pictured
underground fighting though. That was entirely left out.” He sighed as if in pain. I swear to all fuck, if he was going to fight me on having her, I’d kill him. Brother or not, I’d kill him.
Wait, what?
“What are you doing to me?” I accused my beast, confused as hell.
“SHE’S MINE!” he roared in my head.
He was claiming her.
No. No way.
“Didn’t that JD guy mention that she’d have enough money to move out soon? Something like that?” Quint sounded genuinely curious, which only pissed me off more.
I never fucking cared about girls. Never. I fucked them, I let them suck my dick, then I kicked them out of the bar. Never let them in my room, never in my bed. Never once cared. But her?
This situation, my feelings, my beast’s reaction to her…it was all looking too much like the one thing I knew it couldn’t be. The one thing that was fucking impossible. And yet…
No.
No…no way.
I turned to my best friends, my brothers, the only two guys on this earth that I trusted. All of us were twisted fucks, mentally, morally, emotionally, but we were almost always on the same page.
The feelings, my reaction—it couldn’t be what I thought it was—but the symptoms, the pit in my stomach. It was all there.
Was I the only one feeling it? The bond beginning to stretch across the space between us?
Cabe had known about this girl for eleven years, so he was already at least a little bit in love with her. He saw her every day, experienced her emotions, her fears, her life.
And it royally pissed me off.
“It doesn’t matter now. We make sure she gets to the party. One of those hellhounds will try and take her, we play knights in fucking shiny armor, we get her to trust us enough to take her to the penthouse. She stays with us until your father tells us the next step,” I spat, wanting the conversation to be over. No more talking about her. No more for tonight.
I turned to walk away before I felt a hand on my bicep. Cabe.
