The Rise of Monsters: Angelus Book One

by Brianna Jean

  “Alright, alright,” I replied, moving quickly through the kitchen. I had enough respect for him to know when my sass wasn’t welcome. He was protecting me, and I needed to stay aware of our surroundings.

  This was my crew, my makeshift and temporary family. I’d protect them with everything I had.

  I felt the bond sizzle and vibrate between us, as if Lanier’s awareness had woken it up. It was gearing up, warning us all that danger lurked. We all paused and looked at each other.

  “Nope, don’t like that.” Quint shook his head, grabbing his wallet off the counter and shoving it in his front pocket. “You stay next to me, Annalise. Get your shit, let’s go.”

  I grabbed a to-go cup from the little coffee station they had set up and poured the liquid quickly before capping it and meeting the guys at the front door. Bestia began to stir, I felt the lick of her power dart up my spine, the energy preparing itself for whatever was plotting against us.

  Lanier opened the door and stepped into the hallway, looking left and right casually as if he was just curious. I kept my eyes peeled as I walked ahead of him, not listening when Quint bitched and Cabe tried to grab my arm.

  I had triple what they had; I was stacked with power. It might have been foreign and uncomfortable just yesterday, but the bond had wrapped its claws around my throat. Protect them or suffer the consequences.

  I didn’t question it, the sick feeling in my stomach, knowing that it wasn’t just the connection we shared that was giving me the intense need to protect. Those feelings were also mine.

  Nothing was amiss in the hallways, the same red walls and marble flooring. The building was quiet, as usual. No kids running around or parents screaming. The entire place seemed to be hushed.

  I walked with Lanier the rest of the way to the elevators, and he reached forward to press the button. Quint walked up behind me and put his hands on my shoulders. Turning to look at him, I caught his smile not quite reaching his eyes. I frowned, not liking his worried energy.

  “We’re good, Q.” I patted his hand with my own. “You’re a fucking Demon, buck up.” Throwing his words back at him with a confident smile did the trick. He laughed and squeezed my shoulders, rolling his own slightly.

  I was quickly figuring out that Quint needed constant reassurance, but I hadn’t figured out why. He was a fucking Demon; he had a Bull inside of him that could crush a grown man in seconds. He was lethal, but for some reason, I made him weak and insecure.

  It was the opposite of my connection to his best friends. While I made Lanier and Cabe stronger, gave them new powers, I made Quint doubt himself.

  I wished I could take all of his insecurities away, but I didn’t know how. I wasn’t even aware of the problem. I reached up again but this time, grabbed his hand and squeezed, wanting to give him more than a snarky comment.

  He needs it, and you vowed to follow your instinct. It means nothing in the long run. I reminded myself, ignoring the panic that tried to choke me. I could be there for him, be his friend, without blurring the lines.

  How was it that I was able to take the emotions out of sex, but holding someone’s hand was almost too much?

  Once the elevator opened, we all stepped in and took places against the mirrored walls. As a group, we stayed silent and alert as the elevator dropped ten floors to the parking garage.

  I let them lead the way, not knowing what car we would be driving.

  Quint led the group to a thick matte black Escalade with chromed out rims and a mean looking grille on the front.

  I grinned. “Fuck yeah, Q. This baby is hot as hell.”

  “Check out her ass, she’s locked and loaded.”

  I walked around the back of the car, whistling. It was beautiful and just a little grungy. It fit the three of them perfectly.

  Despite it being Quint’s car, Lanier beeped the key fob and slid into the driver’s seat with that serious expression still on his face. If I hadn’t known what his dick tasted like, I’d be afraid of him, but I knew where to bite and how to scratch in order to have him at my mercy. I had no reason to be afraid.

  I jumped into the passenger seat and clicked my seat belt in place. “Do you know where you’re going?” I asked.

  “I do,” Quint piped up in the back seat next to Cabe, a wicked smirk on his face.

  “He informed us,” Lanier grumbled, remembering the night Quint came to visit before my Transition. God, it felt like years ago when it was only just a few days ago.

  Time was flying so fast, my life changing by the second.

  The drive was quiet and full of tension, all of us scanning our surroundings, checking for any sort of threat.

  When we pulled up to my apartment, I just stared at the front door with dread leaking in my stomach. I really didn’t want to go in, to attempt to explain all of this to Joey. I had barely accepted it all myself, and there was no way that he would let me go without a fight.

  “You have to get out of the car at some point,” Lanier said in a dry voice a few minutes later.

  “Shut up, I know that.”

  “Vixen.” For the first time, my heart skipped at the nickname. He was staring at me with a blank expression, but I felt his confidence in me bleeding through the bond. It dripped along my heart and turned my spine to steel.

  I closed my eyes and nodded. “Alright, boss man, let’s go.”

  His lips lifted for a fraction of a second before slipping back to the stony leader he was. He didn’t want to be here any more than I did, but we both knew it had to be done. I had to cut ties with Joey before I could really move forward.

  I got out, the other three following my lead.

  As a unit, we walked to the front door—me in the middle, Lanier on one side, Cabe on the other, Quint at my back. I turned the old rusted handle, knowing it would be unlocked, and as soon as I did, I was hit in the face with a cloud of marijuana smoke.

  “Jesus fuck,” Quint coughed, laughing. “Homie doesn’t mess around.”

  “Welcome home,” I deadpanned.

  Lanier scoffed as Cabe stepped into the house first, looking from left to right. The place was a disaster, worse than it was earlier in the week.

  “What the fuck?” Joey’s bedroom door flew open as he barged through it. “Annalise?”

  He rushed forward, running down the hall before grabbing me in a bone crushing hug. “I was so fucking worried. Where have you been?”

  “Around, Joe,” I said evasively, pulling out of his embrace. “Listen, I have to make this quick. I’m just coming to grab my stuff.”

  His dark hair was greasy, his brown eyes were weighed down by dark blue bags that sat beneath them. He looked exhausted, and I felt a fresh wave of guilt.

  His tone didn’t shock me when he asked, “I’m sorry? Why are you grabbing your stuff? Who are these guys?” He looked over the faces of the guys before his eyes brightened in recognition. “Back the fuck up, these are the guys from Hellhound on your birthday. What are they doing here? Have you been with them this whole time?”

  “Yes,” I nodded. “I really don’t have a ton of time right now, and I’m sorry that I made you worry, but you were worried for a good reason. Shit is happening that I don’t understand just yet, but…I don’t know, Joe, it’s pretty bad. I think, at least. I’m not sure. I just need you to let me leave without throwing a fit, because I’m going either way and these guys are no fucking joke. We’re all a little…”

  “Wound up,” Lanier growled, glaring daggers at my ex, who was still wrapped around me like a spider monkey.

  Quint’s leg was bouncing rapidly as he leaned against the wall of my living room. He was anxious again, making me fucking dizzy.

  “You expect me to just let you move out? Like this?” Joey looked at me like I was ripping his world apart with my shiny new claws. So much pain lingered in his eyes. I felt like fucking garbage, but there was nothing I could do. I needed to stay with the guys; I couldn’t even imagine trying to live here and figure this out whi
le they lived in the penthouse. If their emotions fluctuated even a little, it would send me into a blind panic.

  No, I couldn’t do it.

  I softened my expression and smiled sadly at him. “You knew this wasn’t going to last forever, Joe. You need to live your life without waiting for me to be your girl. I don’t have what you’re looking for, and you deserve more than I could ever give you.”

  “Annalise, I’m your friend,” he argued. “I want you here, not with them. Why would you just leave like this?”

  Cabe stepped forward then and looked at Joey with understanding blazing in the depths of his blue eyes. As if he knew what Joey was feeling and could relate to his mindset. “Because she’s in danger, man. We don’t know how much, we don’t know anything really, but we know that she needs to be with us right now. I’m sure she will come back and explain eventually, but for now…” His words trailed off as Joey looked Cabe from head to toe.

  Joey was smaller, but Cabe made himself less intimidating in order to convince my ex to let us go without a fight. We didn’t have time for this.

  “You got her?” Joey asked, squaring his shoulders. “And I mean really got her? Because I always had her. If she needed me…”

  “We’ve got her,” Quint added from his place against the wall. He had stopped picking at his fingernails, that leg had gone still as he promised my ex that he would protect me.

  My heart warmed against my will. The look on all three of their faces stunned me into silence. Hot tears, foreign and unwelcome, stung the back of my eyes. These lethal creatures vowed to have my back, and even though we already talked about it, they were saying it out loud to a stranger, proving it with their dark attitudes and eyes that followed my every move.

  It was more than I could handle.

  “I’m going to grab my shit,” I said quickly, clearing my throat. “You guys can work that out.”

  I turned with purpose and walked to my room. Closing the door behind me, I paused, looking around at the familiar walls, the twinkling lights that hung from my ceiling. The half drank bottle of vodka in the corner of my bed.

  This was the end of my old life.

  I couldn’t come back here after I broke the bond with the guys. I wouldn’t be the same. Hell, I wasn’t the same even now. I was still learning, but every minute that passed, every second that flew by, I became more solid in this world. More determined to protect myself and find out what kind of fuckery was happening in Hellfire.

  God, Hellfire. I had accepted it all without even realizing it. Real or not real, I drank blood from Lanier. Real or not real, I changed the weather. Real or not real, I had wings.

  I accepted it.

  I owned it.

  I was going to figure it out.

  I lifted Anna’s two tiny duffle bags into the back of the Escalade, pissed off that she had virtually nothing to her name.

  We left her furniture, telling her she could sleep wherever she wanted in the penthouse, and took only what was necessary. Which turned out to be everything she owned. Almost nothing she owned was for pleasure.

  Vodka to drink, the posters on her wall, weed to smoke, and that was it.

  The posters were rolled up by Cabe and placed into a garbage bag so that we could find a place for her to keep them until she eventually left the penthouse. She wasn’t willing to throw them out, and we didn’t have time to argue about it.

  “So that wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be,” Quint said from the back seat, fumbling with this phone. He was always watching YouTube videos about random shit.

  “I feel like a fucking asshole,” Annalise admitted in the passenger seat.

  “Don’t,” Cabe said from the back, leaning forward between my seat and hers. “He’s in love with you, but he knew deep down that you were never going to be his. You never led him to believe differently.”

  “What makes you think he’s in love with me?” she asked, turning around to face him with a confused expression. Adorable.

  “You’re you, Annalise. There’s no way he could spend as much time with you as he has and not fall for you. But I was once in love with your ghost and I can tell you that its worth all the pain.”

  With that, he leaned back, pulled his phone from his pocket, and started to scroll absently while Annalise watched him with an unreadable expression on her pretty face.

  When she turned around, I looked over at her. “You good?”

  She nodded and turned toward the window.

  I should have been annoyed hearing Cabe admit that he was in love with her, but I had gone into this knowing how he felt about her. He was always upfront with his feelings; we just didn’t know that he would be so open with her. Annalise didn’t handle the emotional shit very well, all of us knew that, but he was being so transparent.

  He must have been aiming to push her past her limit, force her to see that love was right in front of her, whenever she wanted to grab it. But Annalise was like me, she was stubborn and not willing to compromise her heart, her independence, her defense mechanisms.

  She was smart as fuck.

  The less we felt for each other, the easier it would be when it came time to complete the ceremony and go our separate ways.

  I drove us home, the car silent and thick with tension. The feeling of someone watching us hadn’t gone away but instead had instead grown stronger. I was nervous as fuck, and that right there wasn’t something I was used to feeling. I didn’t like not knowing what we were protecting her from.

  I cared about my brothers, I would give my life for them, but I never had a reason to before this. I looked out for trouble, made sure to stay away from the shady corners of our world, but then we were asked to protect someone more powerful than ourselves. Annalise was beyond strong before her Transition, but after, as a Nephilim, she was unstoppable. Add to that both vampirism and elemental power, and she was lethal.

  This threat against her, the reason we’re protecting her, was invisible to our eyes—much like everything else in our lives.

  Invisible bonds, invisible threats, invisible feelings.

  Just because none of us could see them didn’t mean that they were any less real, and it scared the fuck out of me.

  When I pulled into the parking garage and parked the SUV in our space, Annalise all but jumped out the car, heading for the door that led us into the building and toward the elevator.

  “Do not push her,” I pointed at Cabe.

  “I know what I’m doing, Lanier.” He rolled his eyes. “You may want to break this bond and run like hell, but I never agreed to that. I agreed to break it, but I intend to stay when all is said and done.” He looked to the door that Annalise disappeared through. “I’ll keep her because she deserves to be kept. She deserves to be loved and cherished and protected, Lanier. You can throw her away over something that was out of your control, but I’ll just pick her up off the ground and take her with me. This is your choice, but it isn’t mine.”

  He got out and slammed the door, heading toward her, leaving me and Quint in the car together.

  “I don’t want to let her go, either,” Quint admitted. I closed my eyes and shook my head. My memories, my demons, the fucking guilt threatening to choke me. I planned to turn down the bond because I knew that I would feel something for my mate, I would want to stay with her, and leaving would be my punishment. If I Fell and still got to keep her, what lesson would be learned? What kind of punishment would that be? None of us owed society anything, we didn’t ask to be Nephilim. Falling wasn’t the issue, she was the issue. She would be the reason I lost my brothers.

  Annalise was right yesterday when she said she was cool as fuck. She was. She ate when she was hungry, she wasn’t ashamed of her body, she made jokes, smoked weed, fucked like a goddess. She twisted up my insides and pulled until I was a shredded mess at her feet.

  There was no way that I would walk away from this without a gaping hole in my soul. She was my match, and I wouldn’t even know what I was
missing out on. With this arrangement, I would only get a small taste of what it was like to be loved by her, and then I’d spend the rest of my life knowing what her love tasted like. It was the perfect punishment, the sweetest kind of torture.

  I did nothing while four Nephilim murdered my father, kicked his face in, ripped his organs out. Back then, I had no idea that a Neph could be capable of that kind of evil, and hadn’t seen it again in the eighteen years that passed since that day, but it didn’t matter.

  I did nothing while he suffered.

  Now I would suffer, and this was the perfect punishment.

  I took my time walking into the building. Annalise was standing by the elevator alone, staring straight ahead, lost in her thoughts. When I came to a stop beside her, she blurted out, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Then don’t,” I replied casually, shrugging my shoulders as if it was the easiest thing in the world.

  It was.

  She was quiet the whole ride to the top floor. We passed floor after floor, each level bringing a sinking feeling. Something was wrong. The air changed, becoming thick with dark power. Magic?

  “Cabe, what’s going on?” Anna asked, her eyes narrowed.

  I sniffed the air, my beast coming forward, attempting to catch a scent.

  There was nothing tracible there.

  “I don’t know,” I replied just as the elevator opened to the short hallway on our floor. I stepped out and looked around, nothing was amiss. “Stay next to me and watch the right. I’ll watch the left.”

  She stepped up to my side and took a deep breath. “This feeling sucks.”

  “Yes, lilac girl, it sure does,” I mumbled as dread slipped up my spine.

  “There’s nothing wrong here!” she grumbled, looking around. “Where are they watching from? I can’t see anything.”

  “Come on.” I put my hand on the small of her back and unlocked the black door to the penthouse. Pushing her in, I checked the hallway one more time before leaving it unlocked for the guys.