by Liliana Hart
I couldn’t believe what she was asking me. She wasn’t afraid. All the others saw me for what I wanted them to see, an angel of mercy or an angel of vengeance. People understood. Angels weren’t of this world. They came and went. They never stayed. “I don’t have a home to take you to.”
“You could make one. If you cared. If God cared, you would make one.”
My heart nearly broke. I wanted nothing more than to keep them safe, but they would be in more danger with me than away from me. I had…limitations that would put them at risk.
I swept my cape free of the supplies and clipped it to my shoulders. What I had brought would help them through the next few nights. I glanced at the ever brightening sky. It was all I could do at the moment, but now I was determined more than ever to have Ryan help them.
I took a step back and paused. “Keep safe. I will find help for you. I promise.”
“Will you come back? Make sure we’re okay? We won’t go far.” Sage stood, dragging Baby to her feet as well.
“Tomorrow night.”
Baby hugged Sage’s arm. “See? She’s going to help us. Our own angel.”
The platform was small, and when Baby took a step forward, it brought her too close.
“Stay back.” I held out my hand, warning her to stop. My heart pounded in my chest. I couldn’t let either of them near me.
The girls stood rock still, but Sage’s voice plucked at my heart like none had before. “Please. Don’t leave us here alone.”
Couldn’t she see I didn’t want to? I had no choice.
This girl. She was different. She didn’t see me as an untouchable. She saw me as something I had no right to imitate. I stretched out my wings, swan white, with lush beautiful feathers. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
With one last look at their beautiful faces, I jumped free of the platform and into the air. Baby stretched out her hand and as my wings worked the air, her small fingers gently brushed the tips of my feathers.
The sensation rocketed through me. I gasped and glanced fearfully back, only to see them huddled together, staring at my departure. No sign of distress, just a deep sadness that I’d left them behind.
The color of the sky brightened with every beat of my wings, and I flew faster. I zipped over Boston Commons westward toward Copley Square. Beneath me was the newly restored Trinity Church, and far above the statues and deeply sculpted friezes, a niche stood empty except for a lone helmet. I flew to the tiny area and landed. The sun was just cresting the horizon, and right before it reached me, I pulled out my sword and pounded the tip into the shelf. With wings outstretched, I knelt on one leather clad knee and peered down from my perch to the streets below. As the sun hit my face, I felt my warm skin turn cold and harden into blue-veined white marble. Before the sun claimed all of me, I thought of Baby, the littlest girl.
She had touched the tip of my feathers. I was appalled. Not because she’d touched me and I was offended. No. It was because she’d actually done what no one else had. What I had been so careful to avoid.
A tear rose and hovered on my bottom lashes before it slowly turned to stone as well. A human had touched me. And lived. All this time I had lived alone. Afraid of human contact.
I was not as cursed as I had been lead to believe.
Chapter Four
Ryan
Morning light had just peeked its head over the horizon when I pulled into the tiny side yard just big enough to tuck my bike out of sight. Our neighborhood was old, but unremarkable and our modest house lacked character, but that’s what Beau liked. Vamps had a love of the ostentatious and didn’t bother moving in parts of the city they considered droll.
I entered the house, hung my helmet by the door and tossed my keys on the small kitchen table before heading to the fridge. After pulling the door wide, I hung on it, leaning into the cool interior. All that stared back at me were leftovers. Pizza. Chinese. Italian. A Greek salad from yesterday. It was the flippin’ UN of takeout. My stomach rumbled, but I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t get her out of my mind.
Who the hell was she? I owed her for saving my life.
Beau entered the room. “The board looks the same. You didn’t update the numbers.”
I shoved the refrigerator door closed and gave him a drop dead glare.
“Check the attitude. Come in and update first, then feed your pie hole.” He picked up the dry erase pen. “How many?”
Bad-tempered didn’t even begin to describe my brother. Impatient. Bossy. He was definitely those.
“Guess,” I said, knowing it would annoy him.
“By the amount of ash on your clothes…more than three.”
“Eight. Except weirdly enough,” I leaned my shoulder against the fridge and faced Beau, “I only ended one.”
His hand stalled over the board and his head snapped toward me. “What are you saying? They’re starting to kill their own?”
“I met someone last night.”
He put the pen down and faced me, crossing his arms over his chest and waited. My brother could scare the devil when he set his mind to it.
“I met her while getting my ass kicked by some vamps.”
“Her?” He rolled his eyes and laughed. Not a pretty sound. “You want me to believe a woman killed more vampires than you tonight? I’d be crying over my obviously shrunken balls if that ever happened to me.”
“You always were the emotional one.” He didn’t laugh, and I rushed on. “I know it sounds unbelievable, but I’m not kidding. I’ve never seen anyone move as fast as she did.”
“You get bit?” He stepped in front of me and yanked my head side-to-side. When he saw the finger hickies on my neck, he grunted. “Nice marks.” He let go and shoved my sleeves up to examine my wrists.
I pushed him off. “Personal boundaries, bro.” I rubbed the bruises on my neck. “Nearly got choked out, but no blood loss on my part. They set a trap, and I walked right into it. Stupid, I know, but—”
“You were playing hero again.” He drew back and crossed his arms over his chest.
I wasn’t interested in a safety lecture. “Isn’t that technically our gig, only without wearing the tights? Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful you haven’t suggested that yet. Last thing I need is a sweat rash on my thighs.”
He dropped his arms, and a look of frustration shadowed his face. “Yeah, it’s our job, but not the way you do it. You’re going to get yourself killed. How many times do I have to tell you to scope out the situation before you jump in?”
“The vamp was in mid snack. There wasn’t time.”
“We can’t save them all.”
My jaw stiffened when he said that. “I don’t see it that way.” He’d learned to walk away. I still couldn’t. “By the way, I saved her.”
“I’m glad she’ll live to party again, but you nearly died.” His lips thinned and he rasped, “Sophie saved you. Don’t be a fool and waste her sacrifice.”
Beau’s fiancée had died for us. Bringing her up was an argument winner every time. Sophie was the reason we knew vampires were real, and killing every vampire we could find was the only reason Beau kept breathing. He’d stopped living the day she’d died, and though I had tried bringing him back, he refused to care about anything but killing the monsters that’d killed the only woman who’d been stubborn enough to love him.
It was kind of romantic, in a twisted sort of way.
I dropped eye contact and muttered, “I’ll be more careful.”
Beau snorted. “No you won’t. But let’s keep this real. I’m having a hard time believing someone else is out there killing vamps.”
That hurt. He was my brother. He, above anyone else, should believe me. “I’m not lying. She’s real.”
“I believe you. I don’t believe her, or what you think you saw. The odds of her being on our side aren’t high. Think about it. When was the last time we bumped into anyone willing to help us out there?”
I didn’t like the question, but he pressed me
for an answer. “We haven’t,” I finally said.
“Exactly. They’ve tried to fool us before, and I’m not about to fall for an obvious trick now.”
He thought she was working for the vamps. Anything was possible…but I wasn’t convinced.
“Did you get anything tonight?”
I held out my arms, indicating the leather jacket. “Only this and...” I flashed an inside pocket where a wallet bulged. “…his wad of cash.” I plucked it out and tossed it to Beau. Usually, we mugged ‘em and ashed ‘em. Vamps carried around a ridiculous amount of money. Playing the Sugar Daddy or Sweet Mama for susceptible, usually drunk humans was the easiest way of attracting victims. “Everything else is ash.”
Beau diligently counted the money. “Eight hundred and thirty three. What was he planning on doing? Renting a high-class call girl?”
I plucked a hundred dollar bill from the stash in Beau’s hand and smiled. “Payment.” I turned to leave and muttered, “I love high-maintenance vamps.”
Beau placed the money in a box on top of the refrigerator. “Not so fast. I mean it. No more lone wolf. From now on we stick together. We do things smart, starting now.” He nodded toward the sparring room. “Come on. We’re going to put in a round.”
Taped to the outside of the door was an inspirational quote. Alone, we’re lethal. Together, we’re unstoppable. He tapped it as he opened the door, giving me a meaningful look.
We’d survived as long as we had because we didn’t employ the same tactics night after night. We kept the game interesting, slightly off kilter, and solely nerve-wracking for the vamps. Night after night, they didn’t know if, when or where we’d appear. Our unpredictability didn’t sit well with them, but after three years of us picking them off one, two, three at a time, we’d finally forced them to get creative.
I stripped to my bare feet and jeans, dumping my shirt alongside Beau’s neatly folded one. Hands wrapped, but without gloves, we stepped onto the mat where the living room furniture should be but wasn’t and circled each other. An image of the woman I’d encountered tonight slowly emerging from the shadows messed with my concentration. I tried to shake it off and threw a jab. “She knew my name.”
Beau slipped to the right even as that verbal bombshell had his eyebrows winging higher. He delivered a quick uppercut toward my chin. “Have you ever seen her before?”
I dodged the blow. “No. I’d remember.”
“That gorgeous or that ugly?”
I landed a cross to his face, unimpressed by his attempt at humor. “What do you think?”
He staggered to the right, rubbing his jaw and glared at me. “Not sure. Your taste has always been eccentric. Need I remind you of Lily James?”
Lily James was a woman I’d met at my first and only female roller derby event. She’d been the star of the Curvy Cats and rocked tattoos and more cleavage than was naturally seen on such a petite woman. Years older, and a bad girl through and through, she taught me things a wayward eighteen-year-old had no business knowing, and Beau pegged her as a mistake he needed to extract me from before I went all puppy love on her.
Reimagining those assets, I missed landing a wheel kick, and took one of his on my thigh. Stung like hell and had me limping backwards as he pressed forward. He elbowed my cheek and then kneed my gut, doubling me over.
When we were younger, it was about now Mom would step in and twist our ears and send us upstairs until we could act like civilized humans. A reconciliatory hug was the usual punishment required before we could reemerge from our isolation, which meant our sweet mother had a few hours of relative peace before we caved in to her demands. Looking back, she was an angel neither of us deserved.
Those days were long gone, just like Mom. When she went to see Jesus, Beau and I stopped pulling our punches. Brawling had become therapeutic. We’d become a two-man fight club. Our friends and their friends and their friends’ friends paid good money just to see us knock each other around. We embraced our hoodlum ways and squandered our young lives in worthless pursuits. Our bodies hurt and looked like hell the next day after a fight, but oddly enough Beau and I bonded, growing tighter and more dependent on each other as the years passed. As word got out, the number of spectators grew until there were more strangers than friends. As long as the money flowed, we didn’t care.
Everything changed the night Sophie died. Our battle became real in a way that was totally surreal. The supernatural made itself known, killing too many of our friends that night. Beau didn’t need to ask if I would join him in fighting the vamps. It was a given.
A double jab snapped my head back. I could already feel a bruise forming, and Beau growled, “Stop daydreaming. Focus.”
I intercepted the next few hits and slammed my fist into his face so hard, I split open his cheek. The first to draw blood wins. I backed up as he dabbed his fingers at the blood.
“Is that focused enough for you?” I asked.
Talking trash usually got me a low blow, but I was quick and he missed. The frown he sent me warned me to stay clear. “It takes more than one good hit to win. It takes—”
“—mental toughness and the ability to adapt and kill,” I said along with him. No surprise I wasn’t a fan of being lectured. “I heard you the first five hundred times. We’re done.” I ripped off my wrappings, scooped up my clothes and headed to my room as he yelled after me, “She’s one of them. A liability we have to deal with.”
I showered and watched the ash of my enemies slip down the drain. I would’ve been dead if it wasn’t for my very beautiful, wholly unlikely rescuer. Part of me wished I hadn’t told Beau about her. He was probably planning her death right now. I got out of the shower, wrapped a towel around my hips and searched for my toothbrush. It was gone.
I leaned out the door and hollered down the hall, “Beau, where’s my toothbrush?”
I clanged around the bathroom some more and finally found the sad little brush in the trash. I picked it out and plucked a gum wrapper and some stray pieces of hair out of the splayed bristles.
Beau casually stepped in, opened the medicine cabinet and pointed to a new one. I dropped the old brush back in the trash and scowled as I shouldered him away from the sink. I didn’t like him touching my stuff. I snatched up the new one, squeezed out a glob of toothpaste on the shiny new bristles and shoved it in my mouth, grumbling about how I liked green, not yellow.
He backed out of the room and rested his arm along the doorjamb, totally calm in the face of my irritation. “Your old toothbrush was blue.”
“I didn’t like that one either,” I said and spit into the sink.
He stared at me scrubbing my teeth, and I locked eyes with him. “We’re the good guys. You can’t hunt her down without knowing who she is or what she’s doing.”
He shook his head. “She’s bad news. Trust me on this. My instincts are always right.”
“Not this time. She saved my life. I owe her.” I’d never been this confident. I’d find her and prove to Beau his instincts about her were wrong.
He sighed. “We’ll talk about it later.” Shaking his head, he turned and left.
Although in many ways our relationship was a-typical, there was one aspect that would never change, he was my older brother. Because of that fluke of nature, he used his seniority to rule our lives.
In that respect, it was time for a change. If someone was going to hunt down my Viking warrior maiden and find out what was going on, it would be me.
Chapter Five
Ryan
Who ate breakfast at five o’clock in the evening? My life was just too weird.
I’d always been a night owl, but working the death hours had never appealed to me, not until everything changed with Sophie’s death. I hated vampires for forcing me to become someone I really didn’t want to be.
Looking over at Beau aggressively whisking eggs for our unconventional breakfast time of five o’clock in the evening, a pang of unease slithered through me. Being sneaky was an occu
pational necessity. I didn’t want to give Beau the slip. He was my brother, the only family I had left. We did everything together, but I wasn’t about to help him find my rescuer and eliminate her.
While Beau continued to manhandle our breakfast, I studied a street map of Boston. She’d made it clear she’d been watching me. All I had to do was retrace my steps and see if I could find her. The city was a maze, one I knew by heart, but I had a hard time believing I could be watched without my knowing.
He plopped our plates on the table and called me over. After a quick blessing, we dug in. Newspaper fluttered as Beau read a tabloid story about the threat of witches in Paris, Texas of all places. An anonymous source named a particular family as the sole reason crops were failing and divorce was so high. The witches were to be avoided if you didn’t want to find the love of your life suddenly a toad. It listed about a dozen high profile families suspected of practicing witchcraft around the United States. A few even lived in the Boston area.
I poked at the paper and snorted. “Junk journalism. Why do you read it?”
Beau pulled it out of my reach. “Because some of those sightings sound crazy, but you and I know some of them are real. Keeps us a step ahead.”
“Right.” Like witches could wave a magical stick that could turn a guy into a toad actually existed.
Beau pointed his fork at the map. “I figured we’d split, you in the Bay Village area, me at the North End of town and we’ll drive any stray vamps toward the Theatre District.”
“The Opera House?”
He nodded, not making eye contact.
I smirked. “I thought you said no splitting up anymore?”
“We can for a short time, but we’ll be safer doing our main work together.”
It wasn’t like him to change his mind. I could question it, or just let it go. Letting go was easier. We scarfed down the remaining eggs, bacon and bagels, then cleaned our gear waiting for prime hunting time to begin. Let him wonder if I was going to go rogue and find my rescuer. Better me than him.
