Angel had always felt that being a warden was a double-edged sword. She killed what wardens collectively called monsters. But in her opinion, she’d never met a monster who could hold a candle to the evil in a human being’s soul. She’d seen what happens every day to women in Sudan and The Congo. The witch trials? The Inquisition? Humans were creative in their wrongness. Frankly, Dante’s Inferno was lacking. And that was the one thing she didn’t like about being a warden.
So she wasn’t all that fond of being human, when it came down to it.
Angel was going to give herself to Dmitri. If it meant he would never kill anyone ever again – if it meant sparing clan members, friends, and family – she would hand herself over to him and end this hellish game of cat and mouse once and for all. Let him turn her. Most of her no longer even cared.
But if she was going to do that, there was only one thing in the universe she wanted to do beforehand. She wanted to spend one final night with Jake.
Angel had only been in love once before in her life. And even that had felt different than this. She’d always felt that when she’d fallen for Michael, it had been really fast, surprisingly so. But even that whirlwind romance that nearly ended in marriage was somehow… weaker than what she felt with Jake. It paled in comparison.
She felt ashamed to admit as much, especially given Michael was dead, and because of her. It felt as if she were being unjust to his memory. Unfair and disrespectful. But no one could dictate their own emotions. And when she thought of Jake, her mind melted. Wanting to be with him was a scorching, inexplicable form of surrender deep, deep inside, as if he’d introduced her by a baptism of fire to the world of love.
Love. That was just it, she knew it. She really did love Jacob Crow.
And at the moment, he was the only thing in the world Angel wanted. In the hurricane of blood and death and uncertainty that had become her life, she was surprised to find that the most stable, most comforting, and safest place she could imagine was in the cage of a biker vampire’s arms.
One more night. That was all she asked.
She nodded her consent to Gabriel and looked away, unable to meet his gaze any longer.
“Get your things together and I’ll make a few phone calls,” Gabe told her as he pulled his phone from the inside pocket of his jacket. “No doubt the police were alerted when your gun went off. The sovereigns will want to arrange a clean up.”
Gabriel had obviously seen the bullet holes in the wall – and she didn’t fail to see him shoot a slightly mystified glance at the scimitar sticking out of her fridge.
Angel left her clan leader alone in a room that ironically now more closely resembled a room in the Overlook Hotel than ever, and made her way down the hall to pack her things.
Chapter Forty-Three
The boys were deep into a discussion on the merits of a good spiked coffee drink, which was done more to tease Jake than anything else, when Killian tossed his empty beer bottle into the trash only to have it roll off the top of the mound onto the garage floor. He turned and grinned at Jake. “You won the poker run, you’re stuck with the trash, pretty boy.”
Jake smirked. “I was partnered with Cain. He always wins.”
But Randall Mace, another clan member snorted. “You wanna be the one to tell Cain to take out the trash?”
No one said anything, but there was a lot of laughter. Finally, David Sharpe chuckled, shaking his head. “I’ll help you out, Crow.”
He and Jake stood and grabbed hands-full of black trash bags, then took the bags around to each of the guys lounged on various vehicles in the garage, making sure every last scrap of shit got tossed into the bags before they went out.
When the two were outside in the cool night air behind the safe house, Dave said, “I think Kill’s jealous.”
Jake made a derisive sound. “I know Kill’s jealous. He saw Angel today on the surveillance cam. He says she gave him a hard time when he didn’t open the gate right away. You know how he likes a woman with fire.”
Both men laughed softly. “Who doesn’t? But yeah, it’s the dark fae in him,” said Dave as they tossed their bags into the proper dumpsters. Then David dusted off his hands and faced Jake again. “Speaking of dark fae… you gave her your pendant, didn’t you?”
Jake touched his chest, as if the movement was automatic. When he felt the absence of the bear claw, he felt warm inside instead of cold. It was with the person it was meant to protect.
“According to Cain, the Apex after Angel is someone she already knows. Dmitri Voronin. The same vampire who killed Clemens, remember him?”
“Michael Clemens, the would-be fiancé?”
“The very same. He somehow survived. At least, that’s Gabe’s theory, and if Cain believes it too, then there’s good reason. But Dmitri isn’t the only one after Angel. There’s a Taal after her too,” Jake told him.
“You’re shitting me.”
“I wish I was. But I’m not surprised with what the Taal are going through right now. Angel is special and rare.”
“A safe bet if you’re searching for a soul mate.”
Jake nodded. It was bizarre to him that he dichotomously felt like the luckiest man in the world and yet one of the most guarded and wary. He supposed that was what it was like when you had a treasure. On the one hand, you had the treasure. But on the other, everyone wanted to take it from you.
“What else do you know?” Dave asked.
“That’s all Cain would tell me. Giving her the pendant was the only thing I could think of to keep her safe, aside from tying her to my bed. Since I don’t particularly want Angela Clemens hating me, I gave her the pendant.” He slammed the lid of the trash bin down maybe just a little too hard and said, “But I admit that for once, I can’t fucking wait for the sun to come up, Sharpe. Because it means she’ll be back on this side of things. With me.”
David nodded. “I feel you.” Then he asked, “Speaking of the Taal… I heard the Kindred search has become brutal in some areas. And yet Ransom seems to be unaffected.”
Jake thought about Max…. Maxwell Ransom, usually called “Ransom” by his MC brothers and sometimes just Max, was the Monsters clan negotiator. When Cain needed permission for a certain aspect of a job, or the clan required extra aid from any one of the many more powerful supernaturals across the globe, Ransom was the one Cain sent in to broker the deal. Humans referred to people like him as closers.
Max Ransom was a Taal of the Malek Taal, a race of ancient and powerful unseelie fae.
James Killian was dark fae as well, but the two men were from distinctly separate worlds. Ransom and Kill were sewn from different cloth, their powers equally deviant and proportionately disreputable, for lack of a better word, but they were not at all similar at their cores.
As a Taal, Ransom was gifted with tremendous influential powers. He could convince almost anyone to do anything. As David Spade had put it in Tommy Boy, he could “sell a ketchup popsicle to a woman wearing white gloves.” Which was why just like Killian, Ransom thoroughly enjoyed it when he unexpectedly failed at this with a woman. Nothing got him turned on like getting turned down.
Really, there wasn’t a guy in the clan who didn’t appreciate a good challenge when it came to winning a woman’s attentions. They weren’t little boys, they were men. There was no better compliment to a strong man than a strong woman.
“I think Ransom’s holding his own because of Cain, to be honest,” continued David thoughtfully.
Jake couldn’t disagree with that. So far, Ransom didn’t seem to be under the maddening effects of the Kindred search that other Taal men were falling under. Not that he wasn’t getting laid on a regular basis. He just wasn’t obsessed with any deeper need to find his soul mate just yet. He maintained control, as ever. And Jake wouldn’t be surprised at all to find that Cain had a hand in that control.
Cain was… well, he was Cain. And his influence over the members of his clan was probably greater than any of them realized.
Jake froze, his head snapping up to find that David was looking at something over Jake’s shoulder. Jake spun around. Angel was less than twenty feet away, her slim form looking shell-shocked, her clothes stained with the bloody evidence of something brutal. She was hugging herself tightly, and her normally vibrant eyes were red with unshed tears. Her face was pale, her teeth clenched.
“Oh hell, Angel,” he muttered, taking a step forward.
But David’s hand on his arm stopped him up short. “Angel, what happened?” Dave asked, his voice mystified even as his grip on Jake’s arm was firm.
Jake hadn’t heard Angel approach. He hadn’t smelled her either, and with all the blood on her, he certainly should have. Come to think of it, normally he could feel her coming when she was drawing near. But this time, there had been no warning.
“J-Jake,” she whispered, her voice quaking. Jake’s guts tightened, and his chest throbbed with anguish at seeing her like this. She unfolded her arms to wipe furiously at the tears on her cheeks as if they’d betrayed her – so very like Angel – and he saw the silver bear claw glint in the moonlight.
At once, he forgot his doubts and rushed to her, pulling her small form into his arms. She collapsed against him, her entire form sobbing as she shoved her hands under his jacket and held him back. She was trembling furiously, and now that he focused, he could sense her magic in frayed tatters all around her, discordant and wrong.
“It… was… Dmitri!” she cried breathlessly. “It was him! Gods, he was at my apartment waiting for me!” She pushed away from him and shook her head. To his left, Jake saw David approach now, clearly convinced it was safe after all. “He killed two Vega clan members,” she cried, her sob losing a little volume as the emotion drained her. “I managed to save the third, but….” She sobbed again, choking on the sound as if she absolutely hated it. Which he knew she did. She hated losing control like this.
The blood splattered on her clothing was indeed from three different people. He could differentiate each of their unique scents now. And he realized the reason he had neither heard nor felt nor smelled her approach was because of her magic.
He’d never seen magic like hers look like this before. It was as if someone had strung her up and struck her repeatedly with a whip meant to destroy her magic alone. The normally beautiful gold glow was bruised and in strips, and it both cushioned and clawed at everything around her.
“I thought… I thought he was gone. I went to pack to come back to meet you. I left Gabriel behind in the room….” She shook her head again, furiously, and fell to her knees with the colossal weight of what she was relaying.
“Fuck, Angel,” said Dave hissed as he and Jake both took a knee beside her and Jake pulled her tightly to him again.
“But when I came back out,” her muffled voice continued, “Gabe had… Gabe had… he’d taken Knight’s place! He was hanging from the wall! He came back!”
Jake looked up at David, feeling absolutely helpless. And exceedingly confused. “Dmitri… came back? He did that?” If so, why was Angel here in his arms? Had she defeated the Apex herself?
“No! Malek did!” she cried.
Jake blinked furiously. He and Dave frowned, exchanging shocked looks.
“Malek Taal did that?” Jake asked.
“Wait, Malek did what?” Dave asked disbelievingly, his confusion getting the better of him.
Angel pulled out of Jake’s embrace and raised her arms. In each hand, she held a gun. One pointed at Jake’s chest, the other at David’s. Both barrels were fitted with silencers. “Did this,” she said calmly, and pulled the triggers.
The guns went off with the muffled noise of something so much more meaningful than it sounded. And Jake and Dave hit the ground, unconscious on impact.
Chapter Forty-Four
Angel watched Gabriel’s Land Rover slow down as their separate vehicles neared the Monsters border. He was escorting her personally, and she couldn’t blame him. But she didn’t envy him the mess he was having to deal with on his end because of her. Two dead Vega members and a lot of witnesses who needed to have their minds wiped clean of any evidence of a gunfight going down in her building.
Still, they’d been through worse. They were wardens, after all. And this really was the safest course of action for all of them right now.
When Angel crossed the invisible line taking her from Vega territory, she saw Gabe pull his SUV over and idle it. She continued on through, and wasn’t surprised when a new vehicle dropped into place behind her. The new escort was probably set up by Gabriel or Cain or both, and she was grateful actually. She didn’t know many of the Monsters clan members, but she trusted Jake enough at this point to truly feel none of them would wish her harmed.
Angel followed the directions on her phone to the famed Fairmont hotel, and soon she was pulling her army green Jeep into the hotel’s opulent valet drive. An overhang would have kept the sun and rain off, but at the moment, it merely shielded guests who pulled up in BMW’s and sports cars, and Angel couldn’t help but feel out of place.
The last time she’d been here, Cain had taken care of her Jeep himself. Now she was all too aware of how old it was.
When she went to open her door to get out, however, someone else was already doing it for her. She always kept her doors unlocked while she drove in case she was in an accident that knocked her unconscious. She wanted the paramedics to be able to get her out of the vehicle. But now she was thrown a little into defense mode by someone else opening her door for her. She managed to not go for her gun, but had she been any more tired or on edge it might have been a different story.
“I’m sorry if I startled you, miss,” said the young man who stood back and waited for her to get out. “I only meant to assist you out of your vehicle.” He was dressed in nothing short of a tuxedo, and white gloves covered his hands. She felt sorry for him. After dealing with her Jeep, he was going to have to replace them.
But he seemed utterly nonplussed by her and her Jeep, and in fact he smiled brilliantly at her as if – as if he knew everything. She settled him with a hard stare. “You work for Cain, don’t you?” she asked point-blank.
He laughed softly. “Miss Clemens, I think you’ll find these days a surprising number of people work for Mr. Cain in one capacity or another.” Then he straightened again and said, “Now if you’ll please come with me, I will see that you’re escorted safely to the penthouse.” He held out one white gloved hand. “Your dinner has already been arranged, and the concierge will be up shortly with your bags.”
Angel decided then and there to just go with it. She was tired. She’d had an exceedingly wonderful but admittedly tiring morning and afternoon. And then Dmitri had returned and all but buried her. Now all she wanted to do was go upstairs, take a hot, rejuvenating shower, eat something delicious – preferably chocolate – and see Jake again.
At the thought of food, Angel thought of room service, which made her realize she had no cash whatsoever for tipping.
The man escorting her chuckled softly. “Miss Clemens, I’ve been given strict instructions not to accept any form of payment or gratuity from you whatsoever, as has everyone else you will deal with during your stay.
Angel stopped dead in her tracks and shot him a wary look. Wards, damn it! She hadn’t put up any mental warding yet! In the chaos of all that had happened, she’d forgotten. And subconsciously, she wanted to save her magic for healing anyway. Already, it had come in handy in saving someone’s life tonight.
But her young companion had obviously just read her mind. She eyed him in silence – and he let her, his smile never slipping. If anything, it deepened as if he were amused. Was he a vampire? Actually, there were quite a few supernatural creatures who could read a person’s mind under the right circumstances. He could be any one of them.
But again, Angel decided to go with it. She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Okay, I get it,” she said. “So I�
��ll make you a deal. Stay out of my head and I won’t tell Cain you accepted a C-note from me. Got it?”
The man’s eyes widened. Then his smile broke into a shit-eating grin and he laughed. In that moment, he appeared older than his outwardly youthful appearance made him out to be. “Everything I’ve heard about you is true,” he finally said, shaking his head. “And it’s a deal.”
Thirty minutes later, Angel was coming out of one of three luxurious bathrooms with the plushest towel she’d ever felt wrapped firmly around her body. Steam coiled around her feet as she hastily padded out into the bedroom, her ears pricked.
Her phone chimed a second time from where she’d left it in the library.
“I knew I’d heard it,” she said. She had turned the notifications volume up full blast before looking around the suite and finally taking a shower, just in case. So now she could hear it even across the labyrinthine property that was the penthouse.
Angel ran across the penthouse, trying not to slip and slide on the areas that were wood or tiled, and entered the massive library to grab her phone. As it had the first time, the room astounded her, and she found herself in a daze as she strode to the table where her phone rested, plugged in.
She grabbed it and headed back to the bedroom, but on the way, the view beyond the windows of the property caught her eye. She slowed and eventually just stopped. The view from the Fairmont San Francisco penthouse suite was nothing short of life changing.
The three-suite penthouse spanned the entire floor and covered more than six thousand square feet. It contained a ballroom with a grand piano, a billiards room, an antique books-filled two-story library with a celestial painted dome ceiling and a secret escape passage for emergencies, a commercial-sized kitchen with wine storage, and a formal dining room where the United Nations charter was once created. President Truman had hosted a dinner for the signing members – right there in that dining room. The original plates from that dinner were still on display in the very same room.
Monsters, Book One: The Good, The Bad, The Cursed Page 25
