The Rise of Monsters: Angelus Book One

by Brianna Jean

  Risk.

  Fighting wasn’t a risk for me, it was a guaranteed win. I won every time—no questions asked. Because fighting was all I had, there was nothing else to put at risk. I was left with just my life, which was never in danger before now. My foster father could be considered a significant risk, but he never intended to kill me. If he did, he would have lost his only punching bag.

  I regretted allowing her to pick the music. R.LUM.R was too right, too on point, when he put out “Frustrated.” The song was intense and turned all the way up as I drove us toward the destination I had in mind. The lyrics were hitting way too close to home.

  I was frustrated. Just as he sang it. The song was thick and full of twisted bass, but the lyrics were wistful, angry, and confused. Where the lyrics weren’t entirely positive, I still felt the sting of potential hope in the artist’s voice. He was frustrated, but he sort of liked the burn. I understood that too well.

  Annalise was quiet next to me for the entire hour we’d been driving. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I found myself alone with her, but I definitely didn’t think she was the quiet type. Now, as I looked at her, she was subdued and in her head. She was thinking so hard I swore I could actually see her thoughts bouncing off the walls of the car.

  I wanted to know what she was thinking. Her brain fascinated me. Anyone else in this world would have run kicking and screaming from our house if we’d told them they were a heavenly being that shouldn’t exist in real life.

  But not her.

  She just listened and then paced the floor of the penthouse. I bitched at her about it, but I was trying not to take her in my arms and kiss all the confusion away. The hard-ass girl we had come to know was cracking under the pressure of the truth. She wanted to get out of the penthouse because she clearly wanted to think. She could have run, asked to go home, but instead, she sat in my passenger seat, switching between staring at me and looking out the window.

  It didn’t make me comfortable to know that she wanted to be around me, even if she would never admit it. The bond I was desperately trying to ignore was clearly steering this ship. There was no way that she’d still be here if it weren’t for that connection…the bond that shouldn’t be there.

  The first bond seen in twenty-one years happened to be between one female and three males. Not fucking good.

  I didn’t like not knowing what exactly it was that she was thinking, and as much as I hated it, I was still afraid that she would run as soon as I stopped the car, even with the bond. Surely, at some point, this would all be too much for her to handle and she’d leave.

  I couldn’t let that happen. So I broke the silence the only way I knew how. I turned the music down abruptly and grumbled, “Want to tell me why you walk around the streets of New York with your head down and your headphones blaring in your ears?”

  The corner of her mouth tilted up in a smile as she picked at the black polish on her fingernails. “Because I like music on my walks home?”

  I leveled her with a hard stare. “Annalise.”

  She huffed out a laugh and looked at me. “You’re going to make me explain this? Why?”

  I didn’t like the reason I wanted to know, so I didn’t give her one at all. “Humor me, Vix.”

  “Not if you keep calling me that.” She scowled, I laughed. She was cute when she did that, which I’m sure knowing I thought that would piss her off.

  “Not going to stop,” I said, adjusting my hand on the steering wheel. My ass was starting to fall asleep. “Come on, I need to know if you’re as stupid as I think you are.”

  Her face fell, turning from reluctantly happy to angry. Okay, that was harsh. It was also a lie. But I couldn’t afford for her to think I cared.

  I did care though, which was a problem.

  “I do that so people like you think I’m vulnerable. I put myself in danger to provoke you. I want the adrenaline that comes with the impending attack. You know that theory of fight or flight? Well, I fight. Every. Time. And if I put myself in what you see as a risky situation, I get the opportunity to do what I need to do.” Her words were spoken with confidence but still leaked venom.

  I called her stupid, and she wanted to be mad, but she couldn’t be.

  It was stupid.

  “I understand,” I found myself saying, feeling the truth of it. I understood her need to fight, but I didn’t know why she needed it in the first place. I knew virtually nothing about her, and Cabe refused to share her secrets. I wanted to know them, but I was hesitant to ask. Annalise was tough, stronger than any female I’d ever met. She never showed fear, even when she was feeling it—like in the alley with the Demon. People only became strong if they had, at one point, been weak. Something bad happened to her, something that would change who she was, how she thought, how she acted.

  That was why I was hesitant to ask.

  If she told me her nightmares, they would make her permanent in my headspace, but I couldn’t stop the question as it rolled off my tongue, “What happened to you?”

  She turned to look at me again, her flower petal eyes searching my own. She was quiet for a few beats before asking, “You want the real answer or the sugar-coated version?”

  The seriousness of her tone told me all I needed to know. She was going to tell me her pain, her past, and I wasn’t going to like it.

  My biggest fear was becoming a reality. I wasn’t ignoring the bond because of her specifically, I was ignoring it because of the things it made me feel for her.

  I couldn’t afford to feel anything toward her. If I did…going rogue would be that much more difficult, and I needed that. I needed to Fall, to escape, to punish myself.

  Now though, all of the feelings I was trying to avoid swished at my feet, swaying back and forth as they prepared to wind their way into my heart.

  I shook my head. I needed to know. “You know the answer to that, Vix.” My voice was raw and scratchy with newfound nervousness.

  She cleared her throat and adjusted in the seat, getting more comfortable.

  “Alright, well, you asked for it.” She sighed, looking down at her hands. God, she was breathtaking. I considered taking back the question simply because I didn’t need any more reasons to fall for her, but then she spoke. “I was brutally beaten on a weekly basis for nine years.”

  I stopped breathing.

  I swear to all fuck, I stopped breathing.

  In slow motion, the feelings at my feet licked their way up my legs, my waist, slithering up my abs and leaving their marks on my chest, scratching and clawing at my skin before they wrapped their lethal hands around my heart.

  Brutally beaten. For nine years.

  Inside, I was choking on a wave of black rage that crashed in my lungs. I was drowning so quickly all I could taste was the ripping agony of pain. Her pain. It was as if I were in her head for those nine years; I felt everything she did in the dark corners of my soul. I couldn’t get away from it.

  Her pain was both suffocating and entirely life changing. Her feelings had my feelings morphing into something that was altogether new to me. Something I’d never once felt before.

  I looked over, seeing her with new eyes, seeing her clearly for the first time.

  I took a breath, looking into the face of a girl so broken that she ached for a fight she could win because she spent so many years fighting in one that she couldn’t. No, this girl wasn’t traditionally broken. Her very core was like a shattered vase that had been glued back together.

  All on her own, she took the scattered pieces of herself and painstakingly glued them back together. Now she was a beautifully mixed up vase of fresh, thorny roses. It wasn’t a dozen that had been neatly clipped, either. No, in her vase sat a rose bush that had been ripped from the ground and replanted in her soil. After all this time, it had grown into a deadly weapon, warding off anyone who threatened to break it all over again.

  That didn’t scare me though. In fact, I wanted to crawl into the thorny depths and lose myself in
her.

  Since I couldn’t do that, I did something else.

  I reached across the seat and opened the glove compartment. It took me a second before I found what I was looking for. Once I did, I pulled it out and set it gently in her lap.

  She looked down at it and frowned, confused. “What’s this for?”

  I straightened up and met her eyes. “You live for the fight, Vixen. You need it. We all do in this group. So I just gave you another tool to help you win, at all costs.”

  Now it was her time to think. She knew what I gave her was more of a question than anything: Did she understand that she was truly in danger? Would she let us protect her?

  I certainly hoped she would, because this new feeling I had in my chest felt a lot like the crushing need to protect her. Shield her against whatever was coming for her. She may not believe us fully yet, but after she was attacked by the Demon, she knew we weren’t lying about her safety.

  The first way to do what I now felt that I needed to do was to ensure that if I wasn’t there to protect her myself, she’d have a weapon on her. All she had to do was accept my offer.

  I held my breath as she looked down at her lap and then up at me. She searched my face for a moment before a wicked gleam lit up her eyes. She gave me a twisted smile and once again stole the breath from my lungs as she picked up the shiny new gun, checked the safety, and slid it into the waistband of her pants.

  She faced forward again and quietly said, “Thank you.”

  The cold metal of the gun bit at my skin, but I welcomed the new feeling. I wouldn’t be leaving the house without it from now on. I knew why Lanier gave it to me. It wasn’t just that I’d need it eventually.

  The gun meant a couple of things. One of them being I would have another tool besides my fists and blades if I needed a quick out. My accepting the gun also meant that I understood I was no longer safe. I was being hunted.

  Lanier was telling me without words that I could believe him or I could choose to ignore the warnings.

  I knew the truth though; I saw it when I faced the Demon less than forty-eight hours ago. The guys might have been lying about me being an Angel, but they weren’t lying about the fact that other people believed the same thing and wanted to capture or kill me for it.

  It was the last thing that made me pause before I accepted. Lanier was giving me the gun, sure, but he was offering me protection that I knew didn’t end with the gun. I wasn’t sure he even realized it, but he was admitting that he cared enough to protect me.

  The gun was just the beginning.

  “You’re staying now,” Lanier spoke, confirming my suspicion.

  “Staying because you want me to stay or because you made a deal with the Devil?”

  He turned his sharp gaze toward me. “Do you really think any of us are going to willingly let you go?”

  I thought for a moment before I responded. Did I think they were going to let me go? I pictured Cabe’s gentle smile. His warm presence. Sure, I knew he was interested in me, but I figured it had something to do with the visions he mentioned earlier. Quint was the easiest to understand. He was attracted to me like any male with a dick would be, but he was also teetering on the fine edge of insanity. He was madness and chaos wrapped together tightly in a twisted knot. I craved that in a man.

  But Lanier… “Are you saying that you wouldn’t let me go if I asked you to?”

  He turned his piercing green eyes to me, searching my face. Maker above, he was intense. Everything about him was calculated and murky. Through the walls of his glass house, I could see everything he was, see that all his broken pieces fit perfectly with mine. All we had to do was merge our flames and they’d melt with new heat.

  He looked back to the road. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  I’d be a lying bitch if I said that didn’t hurt. When I spoke, the words were harsh. “Well, I haven’t decided if I want to be the new pet in your den of thieves. I’m keeping your gun, Lanier, simply because that giant chunk of metal is more reliable than you.”

  I took a deep breath before shaking my head and continuing, “Don’t think I don’t see what’s happening in this group. I know how it works. Quint brings the laughter, the insanity. Cabe brings the thought, the brains. He provides a steady stream of facts. But you? You bring the pain. And I’ll tell you this once and only once, pain and I are well acquainted, we’re the closest of friends. So you, Lanier, don’t know what you did by bringing me home with you. The pain you carry in your fists, in your hard jawline and clenched muscles…I’ll match it with more ferocity and more power than you anticipated. I’ve seen all I need to see from you, so I’ll play your game. But don’t forget, the walls around your heart may be glass, but you just gave me the weapon to destroy them.”

  The temperature in the car thrashed between searing hot and bone chilling cold. The small space was full of warring emotions and unanswered questions.

  Lanier knew the weapon I mentioned wasn’t in reference to the gun. “And what weapon may that be?”

  I turned to face him, a vicious smile displayed across my lips. “You showed me you cared.”

  I couldn’t look at her, much less respond. Both of us knew she was right. I cared. It was the fucking bond influencing my feelings, allowing me to forget my goal, my purpose in finding the mating bonds again. I wanted to destroy this thing, not feed it.

  She clearly had no interest in rubbing it in though, because shortly after making that grand statement, she wiggled down further into the seat and curled up to look out the window. She was so small.

  I hated how much I wanted her, but I couldn’t go there.

  No way.

  After this little trip was over, I was headed right back home to figure out if it was possible for us all to be linked, for her to be mated to all three of us. I was more determined than ever to get the ceremony over and done with. That meant that I needed to stay far away from Annalise.

  I couldn’t risk falling in love with her and then losing her when I Fell for good. It would be forbidden for us to be together once I was one of the Fallen.

  I couldn’t fall for her.

  It wasn’t an option.

  We drove in silence for another forty-five minutes before she spoke again, turning toward me and asking, “If I’m an Angel, then how come I can’t even feel my wings?”

  I had to laugh at the tone of her voice. She sounded like a confused five-year-old trying to convince her parents that fairies were real because she found glitter on her bedroom floor. Her tone was mocking, like we were crazy for even bringing it up, because it couldn’t possibly be true. “Because your beast is most likely hiding her presence, as she did before the Transition. She doesn’t want to alarm you.”

  “Wait, what?” All I could hear was the shock in her voice. Clearly, she wasn’t expecting an answer quite like that one. “So she can actually feel? Like, she has a brain? Wait, that sounds really dumb…of course she has a brain…but—”

  “Relax, Annalise. I’ll explain.” I chuckled. She was flustered and frustrated with herself. She obviously wasn’t a big fan of needing someone else in order to get what she wanted. Especially someone like me. “Every Neph has a beast. As we grow up, our beast’s presence also grows. We start to be able to sense that they’re there between the ages of eight and ten. We can see them clearly after ten years old. Once we hit the age of twenty-one, our bodies are mature enough to handle two spirits in the same body, so our beasts have the ability to shift into wings. Her spirit is in your wings, and when you shift, it becomes her physical form.”

  I looked over at her, making sure she was still following. She seemed to be. “Your beast is able to read you as well as she did before the Transition, and she most likely knows that you’ll freak out if you can all of a sudden feel her around at all times. She’s dulling her spirit and hiding her presence until you and I have a chance to work through the logistics of having wings.”

  Annalise was dead quiet as I explained. She looked
ahead at the road for about five minutes before muttering, “You have got to be fucking kidding me. This is insane, you’re insane. Or maybe I’m insane because I’m the one who got in this stupid car with you in the first place.”

  I barked out a laugh. “You’re not insane, and neither am I. At least, not in the way you’re thinking right now.”

  She started nibbling on her thumbnail, and I tried not to zero in on the way her tongue drifted over her bottom lip every time she pulled it out of her mouth. My fucking god. This girl was going to be the death of me. Adjusting my dick with as much subtly as I could manage, I let her think about what I said.

  I knew she’d eventually ask something else, and I wasn’t disappointed when she spoke again a few minutes later. “So that’s what we’re doing? You’re taking me to teach me the logistics? What does that even mean?”

  “The logistics of shifting. You should probably know how to do it, don’t you think?” I shrugged, trying to keep a hint of darkness in my voice. I wanted to stay serious and mission oriented, but it was hard with her so close and so confused. I wanted to tease her about the adorable look on her face, reach over and pull her finger out of her mouth, and hold her hand in mine to ease her anxiety.

  I wanted to, but I didn’t.

  “Oh,” she said dully. “Right.”

  “It’s not fun at first, not by any means, but after you do it a few times, your body gets used to the strain and you recover within seconds.” I turned to look at her, shocked to find that she was staring right at me, eyes blazing. I couldn’t tell if it was out of anger or desire, but it looked like both. Like she hated me, and she wanted to use her teeth to show me how much. “Why the fuck are you looking at me like that?”

  She didn’t even flinch at my tone. “Why are you the one teaching me this, boss man? You could have easily given this job to either of the other two.”