Monsters, Book One: The Good, The Bad, The Cursed

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Angel shivered. A chill suddenly rushed up her spine and down her arms, raising goose bumps along her skin. She blinked, glanced around again, and frowned. There was something familiar about the sensation, and this time it wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t just Elena’s words that had set it off. It was too deep, too hard.

  She turned thoroughly scanned the coffee shop now, taking in details like laptops, hand bags, any sign of bulges under jackets that could conceal weapons. But there were very few people in the shop to begin with, and they were all utterly innocent. No one was looking at her. There was nothing out of the ordinary.

  However, the night yawned dark and deep beyond the shop windows, and she had that feeling. That feeling that someone was watching her.

  The night just gazed back at her from the windows, and her feeling didn’t resolve itself. In fact, if anything it deepened. She wasn’t a detector like Caleb, but when something was personal or directed at her, she noticed it. The magic inside her pointed it out.

  Angel had the distinct impression there was something beyond those windows that was all too interested in her. But this was not the time to go into warden mode. Not in front of her friends.

  She hated lying to them. Countless times, she’d considered telling them the truth about what she did. But this was the life of a warden. It was probably equally difficult for federal agents or spies.

  Being a warden meant making a life long decision to keep the danger of the job far and away from the ones you cared about. With any luck, Cass and Elena would grow old and die natural deaths. It was probably more than she could say for herself. She didn’t know a single warden who’d died of old age.

  Chapter Nine

  Once Cass and Elena went home, Angel stood alone in the coffee shop parking lot and turned a slow circle, her eyes searching the darkness of lining trees and buildings. Earlier inside, she’d had the feeling she was being watched. But the truth was, she’d had that feeling a lot lately. And if she was being honest, she had to admit there were other feelings, too.

  Yes, she’d had Jacob Crow on her mind. But when she wasn’t thinking about him, other things would hit her, and at random times. There were unpleasant sensations like dizziness and weakness, and there were voices and dreams that haunted her well into waking hours. There were unsolicited good feelings too, sensations of weightlessness, comfort and warmth, even euphoria and of blatantly sexual pleasure.

  All of these sudden impressions, whether good or bad, always came without provocation or explanation, and they were fleeting. They were there one second, gone the next.

  As Angel stood alone in the lot and sensed absolutely nothing again, she finally wondered… if maybe she was going a little crazy. It would be about time.

  What happened to her fifteen years ago had been traumatic, to say the least. She’d never seen anyone professional about it. No counselors, no therapists, nothing like that. She’d simply been snatched up by Gabriel Santiago and she’d become a warden. But she hadn’t climbed back on a bike since. Clearly she hadn’t really dealt with it at all.

  Gabriel had been there that night, the night she faced off with Dmitri once and for all. At that point, he’d already been a warden for several years, and apparently he’d been assigned to Dmitri’s case. Wardens were good at tracking rogues. Dmitri Voronin was a rogue vampire who’d chosen to break the rules due to an obsession.

  Gabriel tracked the vampire to Angel’s location that night, and as it turned out, he arrived just in time. But in the end, Gabe wasn’t the one to kill Dmitri. Angel was.

  She would never forget it, could never forget it, and she knew damn well no therapist in Hell could make it otherwise….

  (Fifteen years ago)

  She was taking a walk in the Bronx. Alone. On a Saturday night. She had a death wish.

  And Death had come to grant it.

  Angel stopped in the middle of New York’s High Bridge when she felt him approach. Harlem River flowed fast and deep below. She’d come here because this bridge had been closed to pedestrians for eons. It was empty. No one else needed to get hurt.

  She stared straight ahead along the empty cement walkway, but her gaze was unseeing. Her eyes were tired and no longer wanted to bear witness to the reality that was the world. The world without Michael.

  As the vampire drew near, Angel’s fingers curled around the small ring of metal in the left pocket of her jacket. The authorities had found it in Michael’s pack after the accident. It had been tucked inside an emerald colored box with her name on it. The box had probably been green to match the emerald in the ring. Emerald, not diamond. Because she didn’t care for diamonds, and because emerald was her birthstone. Michael was like that. How he’d managed to afford it, she would never know. And she was sure she would never care.

  Her other pocket held something else. And that was the thing she hid from her pursuer, blocked him from detecting as he came upon her.

  Angel sensed the vampire’s magic attempt to wrap around her as usual, but this time he failed to take control. Through sheer will and dying determination, she defied him. There was too much pain in her this time, so much that it was numbing her from the inside out, acting like a barrier of static, pulsing misery that kept his influence at bay. Inch by inch, her insides were changing. They were molting into hatred.

  As if he sensed the difference in her, Dmitri finally stepped out of the shadows, no doubt wanting to come physically closer. He was off to her right, so she couldn’t see him, but she heard his boot touch the cement. She remained still and listened to him as he began circling her. His fingers of power continued to inch around her, curious, testing, and adamant. She ignored them.

  When he was directly behind her, he stopped.

  And she spoke up. “You killed him,” she said. The words came out of her mouth monotone, as dead as her heart.

  “Yes. I did.” He admitted it freely, if softly.

  “How could you ever believe this would change my mind about you?” She almost didn’t realize she was asking the question. Her mouth was running without forethought now. She was simply speaking because some part of her somewhere had yet to go numb, and that part was terribly confused.

  “You misunderstand,” he told her, still speaking softly. “I am under no misconceptions.” He stepped closer; she felt as well as heard him close the distance. “I knew you would lament his passing. But I also knew this would be easier on you in the long run.”

  Angel felt a bucking of something inside. Was it rage? Was there still something of that left in her? Some kind of spark still smoldering underneath all that ash that was the wasted remains of her spirit?

  Dmitri stopped at her back, so close that she could hear him breathe. “You know,” he said, his accented words laced with quiet menace. “If you had wed him, he would have been a lot harder to get rid of. Breaking up a couple is one thing,” he paused, and she imagined he shook his head. “But splitting a union like that calls for much more force.”

  Angel still didn’t move. “More force than death?”

  “Oh yes.” Dmitri then continued to circle her like a shark, hungry but patient and calculating.

  Someone had once said that there was nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing left to lose. But now Angel knew they’d been wrong. There was. The only thing more deadly than a man with nothing left to lose – was a woman. She’d known Michael such a short time, and yet she’d fallen for him completely. He’d had her, body and soul. And now he was gone.

  For Angel, there was no point to anything any longer. No reason to keep going, no reason to get up in the morning. That was the worst, she knew now. There was no circumstance more ruinous than when there was nothing left to look forward to. That was the moment when the individual atoms making up a living being became the most volatile, erratic and uncontrollable.

  She was a time bomb. The ticking echoed loudly in her eardrums.

  Slowly, cautiously, like the predator hemming in his skittish prey, Dmitri moved aro
und her until he was standing in front of her, towering over her like the beautiful monster he was. She let him come and still didn’t move. She remained stoic, her gaze fixed on some point in the distance, some point right through his body. Her fingers curled around the hidden ring.

  She slipped it on. It fit perfectly.

  Despite the bewildering numbness wreaking havoc with her soul, Angel had meticulously executed her plan to the letter. She’d robotically gone through the motions of this final, momentous act as if they were instructions in a cake recipe. She’d ticked them off in her mind one after the other without emotion, and without pause. She hadn’t slept in three days. She’d barely eaten. Electricity rode along her nerve endings, static and strange.

  “Are you finally done running, little one?” He whispered to her, but he didn’t touch her.

  She almost smiled at his hesitation. “Yes,” she admitted. She was definitely done running.

  She wasn’t sure how much longer she would be able to keep his magic from invading her mind. It was pushing hard now; the vampire could sense something was wrong and he wanted in. But she needed to keep her secret from him a little while yet. Just long enough for him to do what he’d come to do.

  “Then why don’t you let me in?” he asked, a playful smile on his lips.

  “My thoughts of Michael are my own,” she admitted. That much was true, at least. “You’ve no right to them.”

  He lifted his chin. She wouldn’t look up at him, but she could sense that her reply had satisfied him to some degree. “Ah, I see,” he sighed. “You wish to mourn him in private.”

  She swallowed hard, pretending to hold back tears. But the truth was, she had no tears left. She was utterly and completely dry.

  He raised the backs of his fingers to her cheek, and she managed to keep herself from flinching. She did have to close her eyes, however. His touch was powerful, and with it came an influx of his magic that battered at her defenses like a hurricane on a straw house. She was losing control.

  Her body shivered.

  “Always having to be so strong,” he whispered next. He’d lowered his head, and his words were spoken against her lips like a caress. “It must be exhausting. Give in to me now. There’s no need to be strong any longer. I will take the pain from you, Angel love. You need never hurt again.” He brushed her lips delicately with his own, a butterfly kiss that nearly forced her to her knees. “Let me make you mine.”

  Now was the time. Angel exhaled a shaking, defeated sigh – and nodded. Just once.

  That was all Dmitri needed.

  He’d been waiting for this since the beginning. He’d been waiting for her consent. Not that he needed it. He just wanted it. He was that kind of creature. And now that he had it, he moved over her like a tidal wave.

  Swiftly his hand slid around her neck to fist in her hair, and his arm came around her lower back to hold her against him. His body hit hers like a brick wall filled with otherworldly power. His fangs lengthened deadly and sharp, and as he sank them into her now exposed throat Angel’s defenses came crashing down with the internal noise of an avalanche.

  She cried out in shock, outrage and bliss. But she thanked the Storyteller for the oblivious state that would now come over the vampire, because in that blurring world of colorless grays, in his complete distraction at finally taking what he wanted, Angel was able to pull the second item out of her other pocket.

  And plunge it into his neck.

  He went still against her as she depressed the syringe, emptying its contents into his bloodstream. Magic then carried the poison throughout his body, and Dmitri very slowly let her go.

  He pulled his fangs from her throat with oddly tender care and straightened before her with bizarre calm. It was surreal to Angel. In that moment all she could do was stare up at him wide-eyed. The now empty syringe fell from her limp fingers, clattering to the cement. She’d always hated needles.

  Dmitri’s vivid eyes sparkled, shifting at once from ruby red into amethyst purple, and finally their original electric blue. “Clever Angel,” he whispered.

  The poison had literally cost Angel everything she owned. All but one hundred dollars of her savings and all of her jewelry but the ring in her pocket, she’d handed over without emotion. Along with a full pint of her blood.

  Apparently healer blood was worth a small fortune in the shadows of the supernatural underworld. She was learning something new and disturbing every day.

  Made from hawthorn tree ash, colloidal gold containing gold nanorods, the blood of a dead vampire and a powerful warlock spell to hold it all together, the poison worked like a very strong sedative at first. After a few seconds, it would begin to burn. And by the time a minute had passed, every last drop of blood in a vampire’s veins would be dried up, leaving them dead – truly dead – at long last.

  Dmitri smiled sadly. “I should have known you had it in you.”

  Chapter Ten

  That night fifteen years ago was burned like a brand in Angel’s mind. She would never forget the look on Dmitri Voronin’s face when he’d stepped back from her. It was like she’d hurt him emotionally, not just physically. Other than those few final words, he’d never had a chance to say anything more to her.

  Gabriel had shown up then. His bullets ripped through the night, speeding past her so close that she felt as well as heard them. They were a warden’s bullets, bespelled with magic meant to hold a vampire immobile until a warden could decapitate them. But when they struck Dmitri, he’d already been affected by her poison and was off-balance.

  The impact of the bullets knocked him backward. He took one and a half steps exactly before he was toppling over the bridge and into the dark and troubled waters below.

  Angel had run to the stone wall, moving on auto-pilot and not really caring who’d fired the shots. She saw the white of a splash in the river – then nothing. Nothing but darkness and the wind and the sound of water rushing. In a few seconds, she heard footsteps running toward her, but she didn’t turn to see.

  Instead she gazed long and hard into that wet grave. Was it really over?

  “You’re hurt,” said a kind, deep voice. “You’re bleeding; he bit you.”

  Angel remembered blinking slowly, languidly. “Yeah,” she’d said numbly. “He did. But he won’t hurt anyone ever again.”

  The man who stood behind her said, “I’m afraid… that isn’t quite true. I only managed to injure him. He’ll survive the bullets and the fall.”

  But she’d shaken her head. “No. I poisoned him.”

  Strong but gentle hands had taken her by her upper arms then and turned her around. Eyes the color of amber searched hers. They were beautiful eyes, sparkling and vivid, in a handsome young face framed with thick black hair. He was so tall, she craned her neck to look up at him.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, his tone gentle. Those searching eyes kept glancing at her neck. She could feel her collar was wet. She knew she’d lost a lot of blood. Dmitri had been hungry for her and making up for lost time. He’d pulled her blood to him and swallowed with abandon. Angel wasn’t going to become a vampire; Dmitri had never had a chance to give her his blood in return. But he’d taken so very much of hers.

  After donating a pint already to acquire the poison, Angel hadn’t had much left to lose.

  She knew something had happened to her, maybe even something permanent, because of Dmitri’s attack. She could feel it. Her body felt wrong inside; she was aware of that wrongness on a molecular level. But the physical discomfort was being compartmentalized by a traumatized brain, and it was distant and shuttered.

  Angel nodded to the syringe on the ground by her boot, and the man looked down.

  “Hawthorn ash, colloidal gold, dead vampire blood, and a warlock spell.” She listed the ingredients off in a soft robotic voice that was growing distant even to her own ears.

  She recalled the way Gabriel’s bright hazelnut eyes had widened in admiration, shifting from the syringe back to her
just before her world began to tunnel black. Through that tunnel, she heard him say something and saw his expression change again, becoming devoutly worried. She felt his arms come around her just as everything went dark.

  That was fifteen years ago.

  That Saturday night had been the first night of her life as a warden. Gabriel Santiago had been second-in-command of the Vega clan at the time, and he’d taken Angel under his wing. It turned out the sovereigns paid wardens quite well fortunately, and Angel was able to rapidly rebuild her life, at least material-wise. She’d also been granted a sentinel.

  That was a trip.

  Gabriel had taught her about sentinels. Sentinels were magical beings, a little like guardian angels. They’d been created by the Storyteller to protect wardens in their dangerous jobs. Sentinels were an enigma. No one understood how they came into being. No one ever actually saw it happen. They only knew that once an individual signed on to be a warden, the sentinel was assigned to look after them. Just like that. It was as easy as, “I’m in.” And boom. The sentinel was theirs.

  Sentinels had three main strengths and two big weaknesses. For strengths, they never took damage dealt by supernatural means, nor did they take damage dealt by wardens. Werewolves couldn’t claw them, vampires couldn’t bite them, wishers couldn’t enact revenge on them, unicorns couldn’t run them through, and wardens couldn’t pump them full of lead. This immunity allowed sentinels to enter into the fray of many warden battles, when and where they were needed. They could also transport instantaneously as if they were simply popping in and out of existence anywhere they wished. Anywhere. Not even a sovereign’s ward could keep them at bay. And most importantly, they possessed the ability to heal. As long as their warden still lived, even a wound that would have been mortal could be completely repaired by a sentinel’s touch.