Dark Angel
by Bridget Essex
“Dark Angel”
© Bridget Essex 2014
Rose and Star Press
Smashwords Edition
First Edition
All rights reserved
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Synopsis:
Can love save a soul?
Cassandra Griman was caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. She'd stayed out at the bars until last call, and on her way home was cornered in an alleyway by four men. That night might have been her last...until she was saved by an angel.
But first impressions aren't everything, and Cassandra soon realizes that the captivating woman who saved her life is no angel. In fact, Elle is a powerful vampire who was exiled from Boston fifty years ago. But Elle has returned now to exact revenge.
And Cassandra is caught in the middle of it.
Elle is cruel and has a very dark past, but despite everything, Cassandra feels herself drawn to the mesmerizing vampire. Is there more to Elle than meets the eye, or is Cassandra falling for a woman far past saving?
A dark and sensual romance that explores power and love, the novel DARK ANGEL, will leave you spellbound. It is approximately 57,000 words (several days worth of reading or so).
Dedication:
This one is especially for Natalie, who inspires every love story I’ve ever written.
You’ll always be my angel.
Contents:
Chapter 1: After Last Call
Chapter 2: Marked
Chapter 3: The Choice
Chapter 4: Not Really Safe
Chapter 5: The Wrong Place
Chapter 6: Lovely Bait
Chapter 7: Immortal
Chapter 8: Leaving
Chapter 9: The Beautiful Betrayal
Chapter 10: Lovely Bait, Reprise
Chapter 11: Final Sacrifice
Chapter 12: Dark Angel
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Chapter 1: After Last Call
I should have never stayed out until last call.
Two o’clock in the morning, while late in the grand scheme of things, seems awfully early when you're determined to drown your woes in a lovely, boozey haze.
But still—I should have never stayed out that late, not that night.
I wasn’t drunk. I was tipsy. And there's a vast difference between drunk and tipsy when you’re trying to make your way back home through the streets and alleyways of the not-so-nice parts of Boston. I’d kept my wits about me, and I had a can of pepper spray in my little backpack purse. I didn’t walk like prey does. I kept my shoulders back and my chin up, because no one was going to hassle me. I was in no mood to be hassled.
But somehow, someone hassled me, anyway.
I'd been drinking alone. There, I said it. I know it’s sad—kind of pathetic, actually. It was Josie’s fault, of course, what with her having broken up with me a few hours earlier. The pain of her betrayal was still burning brightly in my heart.
I should have never dated Josie. I know that. She was the kind of girl who tried me out and used me up while she was embarking on the grand adventure of “finding herself.” Yeah, she actually pulled that line on me. Our sex was “great,” she said, and our chemistry was “awesome,” but in the end, she wanted a “normal life” with that asshole Travis, the backwards baseball-capped guy she worked with. Adding insult to injury, she left me for a jock.
Fresh out of college, damn degree framed and nailed onto the wall just last week, and somehow I’ve never felt stupider in my whole life.
I mean, I never intended to fall for a straight girl. Who really wants to pine after someone they can’t ever truly have? Honestly, I went to Bentley University with this sort of weird promise to myself that I wouldn’t date at all while I was in school—which, I realize now, was a stupid, unrealistic vow. You can’t help being attracted to who you’re attracted to, and there were a lot of women in my classes and organizations that I was attracted to. But no matter how many pretty heads turned mine, I was staying focused, following my self-imposed rule about not dating until graduation. I wanted to earn the best grades possible in my terribly boring degree of Business Finance. (Hey, it wasn't sexy or exciting, but at least I knew I'd have a couple of employment options after I graduated).
But I couldn't have predicted how that English Lit class I needed to complete my credit requirements would change my life.
I couldn't have predicted Josie, who sat in the desk right beside me.
She had long blonde hair and dimples in her cheeks when she smiled—which was almost always—and this mischievous glint to her eyes. Her legs were miles long, and she always wore these pretty short skirts and flip-flops to class, even when it was freezing outside.
I was smitten. Immediately. And there were sparks between us right away, too. You know the type. Sparks so bright that they blinded me, until they were the only thing I really saw. We were passionate together, and we argued too much, but everything else felt so right. So right—until it all went terribly, terribly wrong.
Anyway, tonight I was feeling very sorry for myself, on top of being heartsick and miserable. So, yeah, I didn’t call any of my friends to go out drinking, because I didn’t want to talk about the breakup yet. I didn’t want to rehash the harsh conversation Josie and I had had; I didn't want to relive all of the painful, soul-piercing stuff Josie had told me, the stuff I’d probably remember every time I second-guessed myself from now on, every time I was feeling down on myself.
Like that one point where she told me she’d wished she’d never met me…
I should have just gone out and bought myself a couple of six-packs, come back home and drunk them while watching Buffy re-runs in my jammies, a gigantic tub of ice cream in my lap and my cat Tanya purring like a motor beside me, but I couldn’t stay in the apartment. The self-same apartment where, earlier that day, Josie and I had had sex on the sofa...and a little bit on the kitchen stool and the long laminate counter.
In retrospect, I guess it was pity sex, since she must have known she would be breaking up with me for a guy a few hours afterward.
You can see why I was upset.
I put on my leather jacket, grabbed my car keys and wallet from the memory-stained counter—which no amount of bleach would ever be able to successfully sanitize—and slammed the door behind me on the way out.
I was angry, too angry to think or engage in complicated activities like counting out coins for bus fare, so I walked to Queenie’s, my favorite bar in the South End, even though it's a good two miles away. It was May, so it was pretty warm out, and the air smelled too sweet, like flowers and cigars.
Since I was fuming most of the way, I didn’t notice the little hint of a chill in the air. And, honestly, I was glad to be fuming. Fuming was safe. Fuming was thoughtless. I knew what would come next in my grieving process: intense pain and sadness and these terrible feelings of loneliness which would probably result in my calling Josie up at four in the morning to cry pathetically while I left yet another voicemail message about how much I wanted and needed her in my life.
I’m not the kind of person who leaves messy, pathetic voicemails. And I promise I’m not (often) this pathetic, but I really thought that Josie and I had had something special, and I knew booze was going to make me d
o rash things involving texts and voicemails (and possibly Cyrano de Bergerac-style serenades) that I would really regret.
Though, somehow, that realization didn't make me want the booze any less.
The thing is, I’d thought our relationship was going to last. I really did.
I would have never spent the last ten months of my life falling in love with her if I hadn’t believed it would last.
I guess maybe it’s old fashioned, but I've always wished for a forever sort of love with someone. You know, finding and meeting and falling in love with an amazing woman, that one woman who wouldn’t see my faults, or maybe would, but would love me in spite of them. Who would dance around in the kitchen with me to Janis Joplin and wear stupid aprons embroidered with sayings like “World’s Best Chef!,” when our skill levels weren’t even anywhere close to the “World’s Most Mediocre Chefs!” Someone who would spend Sunday mornings lazily wrapped around me in bed while we drank cream-filled coffee and planned our grocery list for the week. Someone who would go to every Red Sox game with me, or at least quite a few of them, and who would maybe get excited about eating hot dogs in the park.
Someone who would love me—always and unconditionally.
But that person, I now knew, could never have been Josie. Because Josie had had too many conditions, conditions that I’d been too blinded by love to consciously acknowledge. Conditions like hiding me from her family (“I'll introduce you soon!” she’d been promising me for months. “It just has to be the right time...”). Conditions like not even telling her friends about me. She called me her roommate, for Christ’s sake. We’re not in the Stonewall era anymore. She didn’t have to be out and proud, but I would have been thrilled if she was, at the very least, not ashamed of my presence in her life.
So I went out to Queenie’s, and I began to drink, and I didn’t pay that much attention to how much I was drinking, and I got tipsy. Okay, maybe more than a little tipsy. But I wasn't drunk. And I left the bar at last call, two in the morning, with a heavy heart, and I began to drag my feet back towards my apartment.
The streets were almost as bright as day, what with all of the blazing street lamps and the illuminated shop signs, and overhead there was a big, blazing full moon. Gazing up at that glowing sphere made me feel even sadder somehow, so I pointed my gaze low, at the skeletal, budding trees and the overflowing trashcans. There were a couple of people milling about on the sidewalks because last call had just been announced. Cigarette smoke mixed with the cooling air, and I could hear laughter and talking, and somewhere far distant, the sound of a harmonica.
I shivered a little, because in the packed bar, with all that body heat around, it had been pretty hot, but now that I had a few drinks in me and had been pushed back out into the night, I was noticing the cold.
I shuffled along the sidewalk, trapped in my melancholy little world. I paid attention to things like the “walk” and “don’t walk” signs, and the intermittent traffic on the streets, but other than that, my thoughts looped on Josie, memories of Josie, and how I would never touch her, kiss her, or hold her again.
I’d never told her I loved her. Maybe if I had…
I was propelled out of my downward spiral by a little shiver. What was kind of weird was that I had this pricking sensation at the back of my neck. You've felt it. It's like when you’re in a crowded room, and you can feel someone’s eyes on you, but you can’t find anyone staring; you only know that you’re being watched. That I'm being watched feeling was really insistent all of the sudden, and I’ve lived in the city long enough to know that at two o’clock in the morning, eyes on you can are usually less than friendly. So I kept going, throwing back my shoulders, lifting my chin a little higher and putting a slight swagger in my step—which made me feel ridiculous, but I hoped it made me look like someone you didn't want to mess with. There were people around, and I was only fifteen blocks away from my apartment. There was no reason to get jumpy.
But the pricking sensation continued at an alarming, shiver-multiplying rate until I just couldn’t take it anymore. Finally, I turned to glance over my shoulder really quickly. It was just a fast duck of my head when I reached an intersection and had to stop for a light.
There was no one behind me.
Well, then I just felt silly. I even chuckled at myself as I waited for the pedestrian light to flash to “walk,” my hands jammed deep in the pockets of my old leather jacket, the cold breeze blowing over my flushed cheeks and tugging at my ponytail, sending long wisps of brown hair across my face. I tossed my ponytail back over my shoulder, rocked on my heels, waiting for the light to change.
Then I felt a strong hand close around my upper arm.
There was not even a heartbeat of time in which I assumed that hand was a helpful hand. I knew, immediately, from how tightly the fingers gripped me—hard, digging into my skin—that this was wrong. This was very wrong.
I’ve taken some self-defense classes, but I was too inebriated to do anything more than react instinctually: I elbowed backward as hard as I could. And my elbow connected with hard force against a ribcage. There was a low, guttural oof behind me, and then that terrifying combination of the two words you never, ever want to hear at two o’clock in the morning when you realize that the sidewalks are empty, and the traffic has thinned out since you’re walking through an abandoned section of town.
A man’s voice behind me, in a chilling growl, said, “Get her.”
I didn’t bother to look over my shoulder. I took off, sneakers pounding against the broken concrete of the sidewalk in staccato timing with my heart. I’m not the best runner (heck, I’m not even a good runner), but adrenaline began pumping through me faster than my blood, and I ran as quickly as I could, hoping that I’d make it past the unpopulated streets and edge closer to the blocks that were nearer to my apartment. There’d probably be some people around there, and there would definitely be people in cars.
That’s all I needed: people. You don’t get attacked or mugged around people, right? No one wants to commit a crime where there are witnesses watching.
But I only ran a couple of strides before strong fingers curled around my arm again, jerking me to a standstill as suddenly as if I’d hit a brick wall. That selfsame arm flung me around, and then I was facing a line of four men.
Four men, all taller than me, bulky in long, black trenchcoats. I stared them down, my nostrils flaring as I tried to keep my gasping to a minimum, gulping down cold air.
One of the men stepped forward. He had close-cropped black hair, a cruel hooked nose and dangerous blue eyes.
“Over there,” he said, jutting out his chin toward an alleyway.
That’s when it truly sank in that something really terrible was about to happen to me.
I began to scream my head off, kicking back with my legs, gritting my teeth and swinging my fists around. They connected with nothing: the man holding tightly to my arm simply sidestepped each violent jab. A rough, wide hand clamped over my mouth, and then I was pressed back against a body that reeked of cheap cologne as I was dragged toward the alleyway.
He was impossibly strong, my captor, like a steel girder or a concrete barrier, his body as hard and immovable as a wall. I’d never felt a human being like that in my life; it was like he was made of armor, not flesh.
I was afraid. Terrified, really. It was the kind of terror that made every single thing stand out in harsh detail. How strong his body was, and how not even the most desperate of my struggles could dislodge him. How the men around me smelled of cologne and cigarette smoke. How the flickering streetlamp overhead went out as the men walked beneath it.
I was so afraid. But there was, deep within me, a bright, hot seed of anger that was making me react, making my body still push against his, lashing out, even when none of my other tactics worked.
Instinct roared up within me again, and I bit down on his hand—hard.
And he actually…chuckled. It was a surprised laugh, as if he thought my att
empts at escape were hilarious. And even though my teeth bit into his metal-tasting skin, he didn’t loosen his grip.
He really did taste like metal, like he’d been holding keys for a long time. I bit down harder, and when he failed to react, I stopped, panting through my nose because he was pressing his palm down tightly against my lips, and I needed more oxygen than I was getting: I was starting to see stars.
“Personally...” said the leader—or the person who I was assuming to be the leader, the guy with the black hair and the hooked nose. He chuckled: a deep, velvety sound that sent chills through me, from my head to my toes. “I enjoy it so much more when they’ve got a bit of life to them.”
“Yeah, don’t let her black out, though,” said the guy to my right, wagging a finger. “That’d spoil things.”
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
I was all animal at that moment, all feral, kicking, screaming, biting animal. I didn’t want to die or be raped or suffer any other punishment their sadistic minds were dreaming up for me. I wanted to live. If you’d asked me earlier, at the bar, I might have—in a more-than-tipsy stupor—told you that I didn’t have much to live for. But right then? With the hand over my mouth, the men laughing around me, their strength—their immovable, steel-girder strength—dragging me to a situation I was fighting tooth and nail to escape?
Yeah. I wanted to live. I wanted to live desperately.
I dragged my feet, black spots beginning to blossom at the corners of my vision. I wasn’t getting enough air, but it didn’t matter; I had to get out of this. I had to get out of this now. I had to save myself. If I could just get away from them, struggle out of this guy’s hold, I could sprint, run toward a brighter street, run toward people who would, by their very presence, save me. I could get home, and I would call the cops, and I would be alive. I would be blessedly, beautifully alive.
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