by Brianna Jean
He looked at me with a sad smile. “You already know the answer to that.”
I let out a sigh and walked away, heading to the downstairs bathroom.
The two of them were matched, equal...alphas. And while Cabe and I also had alpha personalities, Lanier was the leader. He had been from the start, so now that Annalise had come into the picture—with enough power to take him on and win—this was always going to happen.
Their relationship would set the tone for the rest of us. For mine. For Cabe’s.
I slammed the door behind me, pulling my dick out to take a piss. The bathroom downstairs was the opposite of Lanier’s. This one was all white marble flooring, pretty cream countertops and bright lighting.
I shook my dick and slipped it back in my joggers, moving toward the sink. Washing my hands, I stared into the mirror. My ash colored hair was messy, as usual. My red eyes hard, as usual. My piercings—one in my eyebrow, one in my nose—all in the same spot. But something else was missing.
My Bull was unsettled. He wanted to get out and find her, claim her. But technically he had nothing to claim. She had a beast, like the guys, but with Warlocks, the mating system was different. Warlocks had an animal that they shifted into, not wings. Who would my animal claim? There was nothing else within her. No animal he could mark.
I was the only one without something else to hold on to. As fucked up as it was, Anna and Lanier were now vampires, Cabe and Anna changed the fucking weather, and what did I get to share with her? Nothing.
She wouldn’t need me. I had nothing to give her.
I curled my fists, ready to smash the fucking mirror in, when the door flew open.
“Hey!” Anna shouted, coming up behind me to grab my arm. I hadn’t even realized that I lifted it. “Whoa there, big boy, slow down.”
I gritted my teeth and ripped my arm from her grasp, flying through the open door. She was fast though, running out behind me and grabbing the back of my hoodie. She pulled, yanking me back and into the wall, before she stood in front of me and placed her hands on my hips.
“Calm the fuck down, Q,” she commanded, her grip tight and firm.
“Get your hands off me, Minx, before you see what happens when I let go of the monster.”
Her hard voice didn’t waver as she said, “I can take him.”
I looked down at her and felt all the muscles in my body unclench and begin to relax. She was here. She wasn’t fucking him anymore. She was okay.
I didn’t think, I just grabbed her, lifting her into my arms and crushing her body to mine. She smelled like blood and sex, but I didn’t care. I basked in the scent, simply because it was hers.
Her arms came around my neck, one of her hands at the back of my head as I buried my face in her hair.
Three hundred years I’d been alive, and never once had I ever felt more content than I did when she was near, when she held me like this. No one had ever done that, no one dared get close enough to try.
She took a deep breath and pulled on my hair, silently asking me to look at her. “We all need to talk. We have so much to figure out, and I need you to stay calm, or I’ll go insane.”
“You fucked him,” I accused.
“I did,” she nodded.
“I wasn’t there to watch,” I snarled.
Shocked, her eyes widened. “You…you wanted to watch?”
“I don’t want you out of my sight!” I shouted, the Bull taking over. I tried to pull him back, but it took more effort than I was used to. He was stronger with her near.
“Whoa, okay, okay.” She soothed him, the beast, like she knew I was two seconds from shifting and letting him run rampant through the house.
“I’m sorry,” I stated, feeling like shit for yelling at her. “I’m not sure what the fuck is happening to me right now.”
She laughed, a sweet and pretty sound. “Join the club, handsome. Will you come with me? I want to talk to you all, and I need to make sure that everyone is on board before we tackle this little mission we’ve sent ourselves on.”
I couldn’t say no to her even though I wanted to say fuck the family meeting and take her to my bed. I nodded, setting her back down. She reached back and grabbed my hand like she was dealing with a lost child, and in some ways, she was. I was drowning in feelings I’d never felt before, and I didn’t know what the fuck to do.
She walked us into the living room where Cabe and Lanier were watching TV, both with beers in their hands. Lanier looked freshly showered, Cabe looked like he was barely holding on, and Annalise marched a determined path to the center of the room. She left me at the love seat, pushing me into it, before standing below the mounted TV and turning to face all of us.
“Lanier and I fucked,” she stated, eyeing us all with a careless expression. “I know that you’re dealing with jealousy, I get it, I probably would too in your position, but let me be clear. This is just sex. There is no need to be jealous, because my goal here is not to pick just one of you to fuck and run with it. My goal is to find a way to bring the ceremonies back and end this. But I can’t do that if I have to fight the bond too. Emotions are running high in this fucking penthouse, and I need it to stop.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Cabe spat.
“Oh, yes it is, Cabriel, because I can’t live with it.” She gave him a hard look before seeking out my eyes and then Lanier’s. His green eyes softened for only a second as he took her in, then he leaned back on the couch with a smirk like he knew something we didn’t. It was his usual look, his mask.
“So here is what I propose. We are a unit. From this moment on, we treat this bond like a pact, a gang symbol—for us ghetto kids—something that is understood by all of us as: all in, all out. We can’t leave the unit, we can’t abandon the mission, until we find a way to bring the ceremonies back. I say we do this; we trust each other on the most basic level. We all have the same goal here, anyway. I’m cool as fuck; you guys are Dolphins fans, but that’s okay.” She shrugged, a smile gracing her swollen lips. “I’ll change that. But honestly, I just don’t want all kinds of bullshit getting in our way. I’m sure that we can find a way to not let jealousy fuck with our end goal.”
There was a seriousness to be heard in what she was proposing. If we let our emotions—the negative ones—get in the way, we’d never get anything done. But if we put that shit aside, we could be a family. At least for a little while.
“So you are just going to fuck all of us?” Cabe questioned, eyes hard.
“Don’t think of it like that!” she argued. “That, right there, is the problem. No, I’m not just fucking all of you, I’m going to try and live in the moment, and wherever the moment leads us—we try not to question it. But we can’t tear each other apart. I won’t break up your friendship, but I can’t exactly leave. I’m honestly not sure what would happen if I did.” She paused, looking down for a moment before meeting all of our eyes. “But I know that when Lanier was gone, I felt it and it sucked. So I’d like to avoid that feeling while we do this. Can we agree to keep this casual but be friends outside of it?”
“You want to be friends?” I spoke up, incredulous. I couldn’t do friends with her. Friends don’t touch their friends. I planned to touch her all the fucking time.
“Outside of sex, yes, I’d like to be friends.”
“But like…” I started, sitting forward in the chair. I understood what she was saying, but I wanted to ruffle her feathers a little. A smirk graced my lips. “What kind of friends?”
“Are you an idiot?” Lanier laughed. “Ignore him, Annalise, he’s just goading you at this point. Yes, we will be friends, all of us. A unit. Until we break this bond, everyone needs to keep their fucking cool.”
“Yeah, let’s see how well you do when she fucks me and you have to listen,” Cabe spit out, still fuming.
“I won’t care, because I’ll fuck her right after. Take what you want, isn’t that what we agreed to? While the bond lives, we do what we want. When it dies,
we go our separate ways.”
The room went quiet at his words, the finality in them. He truly believed we’d all be able to just walk away from this unscathed, that we wouldn’t get used to her being around?
Annalise cleared her throat, looking momentarily uncomfortable before she schooled her features back to normal. “Okay, so let’s talk about what we know so far.”
She came over to me and sat down on my lap, wiggling her hips until she was seated comfortably—right on my dick. I bit back a groan and put my hand on the back of her neck. “This isn’t very friendly, Pup, not with your ass on my dick.”
“Stuff it, Quint, focus,” she replied sharply with another little wiggle of her hips.
Cabe got up from where he was seated on the couch. “I’ll get the pizza.”
Her face fell. She watched him walk away with sad eyes, like she didn’t like that he was upset, but she wasn’t willing to go over there and make him feel better. I wondered what that was all about, but Lanier spoke up before I had a chance to ask.
“About a month ago, Lucifer asked Quint to search for a female Neph here in the city. He said that she would be from the shitty parts and might run in the dirtier circles. That’s why we showed up to the fight that night. We had already looked into strip clubs, shady bars, homeless shelters, and street corners where drugs are known to be sold. We figured that if she wasn’t in any of those places, she would be in the more brutal parts. I didn’t think we’d find her in an underground fight though, that came as a surprise.” He smiled at her with warmth and pride in his eyes. I doubt he realized it, but he was already looking at her with more feeling than I’d seen him express in the entire time I’d known him.
“How did Lucifer know about me? What did he tell you to look for?” Annalise asked, leaning back into me. She was small enough to fit right up against my chest, the top of her head under my chin. She pulled her legs up and threw them over the side of the chair, wiggling down even more. Again, I was about ready to say fuck the conversation and drag her to my room.
The intoxicating scent of sex was still all over her, making me hard and fucking ready.
Cabe walked back into the room, saying, “We don’t know how he knew about you, but he had your scent, somehow. It was me who recognized you because of the visions. I had no idea that you were even Nephilim. For all these years, I saw you as a Human, but I never got the chance to catch your scent, the visions didn’t work that way. Lucifer had one of your shirts; it had your scent all over it.” He dumped two boxes of pizza on the coffee table, but no one moved, everyone still focused on the conversation at hand.
Well, aside from me. I was focused on the way Anna’s right ass cheek was caressing the hard dick in my pants. She didn’t even seem to notice.
“But there has to be something hidden in this scenario that leads us back to why he wanted to find me in the first place. That’s what I don’t understand,” she stated, chewing on her thumbnail absently. Her tongue peeked out and licked the pad of her finger.
I bit my lip, unable to focus.
“Quint,” Lanier called, breaking me out of my staring contest with the hot pink tongue in Anna’s mouth. “You said it was your father who told you about the Elite Angels, yes?”
I paused to think about it, trying to redirect my thoughts.
“Yeah, but it was like two decades…” My voice trailed off as it clicked.
No fucking way.
“What?” Anna asked, looking up at me from my lap.
“Holy shit,” I sputtered, pulling her to my chest so that I could sit up a little more. “It was two fucking decades ago, guys.”
“Back up, Quint, what was two decades ago?” she asked, now playing with a strand of her hair. Like me, she couldn’t sit still, had to always be moving or doing something.
I shook my head and told them what I remembered. “About twenty years ago, there was an upper level Demon running around Hellfire, talking about the ‘Elite Angels.’ He said that soon this group of Angels would bring war on Hellfire. I didn’t think much of it at the time because, if they weren’t widely known, I wasn’t about to go searching for them. I lived in Hellfire back then; it was my home, and while I hated it, I had no reason to come Topside.”
Not until my father asked me to years later. I still hadn’t told any of them that I had been Topside for longer than they knew. I wondered briefly if it mattered, if it was connected.
“What would the war even be over?” Lanier asked, all his attention on me. He didn’t seem to care that Annalise was still firmly planted in my lap, but he still had an eye on her, always watching to make sure she was okay. The look on his face said that he was glad she could handle her own, but he wouldn’t hesitate to step in if she needed him. Interesting.
“I think The Maker has always planned to find a way to get rid of Hellfire. The only way to do that would be to kill the Demon who rules over it,” I replied.
“Lilith,” Cabe filled in.
My sister.
I growled involuntarily. I hated that bitch, always had. She was the epitome of evil, the very definition of what it means to be a Demon. “Yes, along with my brother Lucien.”
“I’m confused,” Anna stated, her eyebrows scrunched together. Fucking adorable. “What do you mean ‘get rid of Hellfire?’ Isn’t Hellfire just…hell? Why would The Maker want to get rid of the place that houses all of his enemies?”
I chuckled. “I forget you don’t know anything about this world. Hellfire only houses about one eighth of the Demons that exist. It’s a place for Demons to go if they wish to go Topside. Just before I was born, The Maker created it in exchange for a favor from my father. No one knows what He asked of Lucifer, but no one cared at the time because Hellfire was something that my people celebrated. It was a chance to live with Humans. That’s priceless.”
She paused, searching for her next question. “How do—or rather did—the ceremonies work? How will we break the bond?”
Her question formed a brick in my stomach, souring my mood, making me anxious. She looked up at me, searching my gaze with sad, knowing eyes. She didn’t try and comfort me though, which stung. Instead, she turned back to Lanier, ready for him to tell her how easy it would be to leave me.
“Believe it or not, the ceremonies typically happen in a church with a Nephilim priest, but the ceremonies have stopped since all of those priests disappeared over the course of a few months. Human priests have stepped up to replace them, not knowing the difference, just thinking that the previous one quit. But as a Neph, the difference was obvious,” Lanier explained, his eyes bouncing between hers. He continued, “Shortly after the priests went missing, the bonds stopped forming all together. I was told by a few older Nephilim that it was as if the priests were taken on purpose.”
She nodded. “So there isn’t anything we can do until we find a priest? And when we do, we just say we would like to deny the bond?”
Cabe answered, “Yes, exactly. They have the power to sever the bond and strip a Neph of their powers, leaving them Fallen.”
“Do they become Human?” she asked, her voice steady.
“No, the opposite. They become Demons. When they pass the barrier to Hellfire, they become Demons officially. The Fallen would have to figure out how they feed. Like Quint, he feeds off negative emotions. Another Demon or Fallen could feed from sins or even prayers to false gods. They lose their access into The Kingdom, or Heaven, as you may know it as.”
Annalise shook her head, eyes wide from all the information.
“Okay, so these Angels would start a war to get rid of Hellfire?” She was desperately trying to understand, all of her attention focused on the sound of my voice, the words I said.
“Yes, essentially,” I confirmed before continuing. “That’s what the rumor was. And it would make sense because Hellfire enables Demons to mess with Humans. The Humans are The Maker’s most prized possessions. He loves them more than He loves his Angels. If He wants to keep them safe and away fro
m Demons, then Hellfire would have to go.”
“And what does that have to do with Annalise?” Cabe asked, leaning forward as if he were sucked into the story.
“Well, that’s almost too simple. My father asked us to find a female Neph that was about to Transition, exactly twenty years after the rumor was spread? New Angels being born to bring war against his people? Lucifer must have suspected that you”—I bopped her on the nose—“are one of those Angels, Pup.”
I didn’t want to scare her, so I kept my tone light. But my hypothesis was a good one, and if I’d guessed correctly, it could mean so many dangerous things.
“He told us to keep her safe, why would he do that? She would be a threat to Hellfire. If Demons wanted her, why would he care?” Lanier mused, not really asking anyone specifically.
“That’s another thing I don’t know. He seemed to think she was in danger, and he was pretty specific on his instructions to keep her safe. He wanted us to bring her here, no matter what we had to do to make it happen.”
“Well, I say we start there,” Annalise stated, sitting up in my lap and looking at Lanier. “I say we find these Angels. The mating bonds stopped around the same time, twenty-one years ago. Surely these Elite Angels have something to do with the bonds disappearing. And I’m positive that I’m not one of them, but if Lucifer thinks I am, then he believes that they do exist.”
“How are you so positive that it’s not you?” I ask her, knowing that she isn’t going to like what I have to say next. “These Angels would be capable of killing Demons, and a lot of them. A few Angels against an entire Demon army? They’d have to be strong.”
“Your point?” she sassed.
“You’re an Angel, a vampire, and by the looks of it, an elemental. Those creatures do not exist, Pup. Sounds pretty Elite to me.”
I refused to acknowledge Quint’s statement, not without significant proof.
Granted, they knew more about this world than I did, but that didn’t mean I had to accept their guesses as truth. Neither Lanier nor Cabe said anything in response but instead, we all just sat there staring at each other. I was still curled up in Quint’s lap, playing with my fingers and thinking about everything I’d learned, trying to make sense of it.
