Dark Angel

by Bridget Essex

  I knew that I was leaping to a bunch of conclusions with this ring, but I sure as hell would remember if I owned any ring, let alone a diamond ring, and no one else in the world had a key to my apartment save for Josie. And it really didn’t seem like she would have invited some of her girlfriends over for a party and that they would randomly leave their engagement ring in my medicine cabinet.

  It was the only logical conclusion that this ring was Josie’s.

  But there was no logical reason why, if she was still engaged to Travis, she would have shown up here.

  I stood very still, trying to make sense of everything, trying to calm the pounding in my head.

  And I heard her voice.

  I stiffened, and for half a heartbeat, I thought she was talking to me. But no, her voice was too low, too soft, for her to ever think that it could reach me here in the bathroom.

  It was actually pitched perfectly so that if I was in the bathroom, I shouldn’t have been able to hear it. But it wasn’t pitched perfectly enough.

  My heart pounding in me, my pulse roaring through me as my headache intensified in pain, I stepped closer to the door and crouched down.

  I listened.

  “—Yeah, she’s here. Yeah, I can keep her in the apartment, don’t worry about that, but how long is it going to take you guys to get here? Yeah, yeah, I know, Christ.” She sounded so testy. Angry. “Look, get your asses here as quickly as you can, yeah? I’ve kept my end of the bargain, now you’d better fucking keep yours. Yeah. See you.”

  There was silence for a long moment after that, and I realized she’d hung up. She’d been talking on the phone.

  “Hey, babe!” she called loudly as music began to emanate from the bedroom. Some slow rock song came on, one I didn’t even particularly like—I couldn’t even remember its name, I thought numbly. “Come on out, baby, I’m waiting for you!” she called with a little laugh.

  Her voice was completely normal. If anything, it was more syrupy sweet than I’d ever heard it.

  I crouched there, biting my lip. I can keep her in the apartment. I’ve kept my end of the bargain.

  I put all the pieces together in my head as I stood up, feeling my head reeling. I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t, but I’d better. I had to ask her, had to know.

  I grasped the doorknob, pushing the door open and I stepped over the threshold and into the bedroom.

  Josie sat on the edge of my bed, her legs crossed, still in her panties and still utterly naked up top. She lounged backward with a cat-who-ate-the-canary grin as she leaned back on her wrists, and she wiggled her foot at me as she sank down, crooking a finger and curling it toward herself.

  “Don’t keep a girl waiting,” she said, drawing out the words with a wicked smile.

  “Who was that on the phone?” I asked her, my head pounding so hard now that I was starting to see stars at the corner of my vision. I stood my ground, taking deep breaths of air, wishing I’d actually taken the damn Ibuprofen before I’d confronted her.

  Josie’s smile slipped so quickly off her face I wondered if it had ever been there. Just as quickly it came back, but it was over.

  I knew she was hiding something.

  “No one. I wasn’t on the phone,” she said with an even deeper smile, hooking her fingers into the waistband of her panties. “Baby, seriously, come over here and—”

  There was a knock at my front door.

  I stared at Josie with wide eyes, feeling my heart race through me. “Josie, what did you do?”

  “About God damn time,” she muttered, springing up from the bed and scooping up the Red Sox shirt from the floor. She wouldn’t look at me. “Just a minute!” she called out and threw the shirt on over her head, sprinting past me toward my living room and the door like the hounds of hells were on her heels.

  Oh, God.

  This couldn’t possibly be good.

  The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up straight to attention, and I didn’t even think—I just acted. I bolted toward my bedroom window, throwing it open. The fire escape was right there, and people escape out onto the fire escape in movies all the time, right? But whether they did or not, I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. This was the only place I could go. If I stayed in my bedroom, I would be utterly trapped.

  Somehow, I assumed I wouldn’t be happy to see the people at my front door.

  And I was right. When I threw my leg over the windowsill, I heard from the living room a voice that would play in my nightmares the rest of my life.

  “She’s in there,” Josie said triumphantly.

  “Job well done,” came a deep, male voice. I recognized it immediately. It belonged to the leader of the four vampires who’d tried to kill me. Magdalena’s goons. Here. At my apartment.

  Ready to drink me dry.

  “Shit, shit,” I muttered, shaking so hard that I almost lost my balance as I hurled myself out onto the fire escape. I let the window down as quietly as I could behind me, and then I was bolting down the metal stairs that shook all around me. The fire escape was very old, about as old as the building itself, and it was rusty and creaky and not used to holding the weight of anything more than a bunch of pigeons. I felt the metal structure shake beneath me, and I tried not to think about the fact that I was ten floors up, and I needed to get down to the ground immediately.

  I heard a window open above me, loud in the quiet stillness of the night as the casement slammed upward.

  I hit another see-through landing, bolting around the staircase, which was really just a metal ladder. The entire construct was shaking terribly, now, and when I glanced up above me, I could see the shadows of four men in trench coats, not that far above me, turning and sprinting along each landing and hitting the ladders with such speed that they would catch up to me in heartbeats if I didn’t keep moving.

  I didn’t have time to think about anything. I didn’t have time to consider yet that Josie had sold me out, that she’d betrayed me, that—again—she’d been lying to me, but it was so much worse this time. So much worse. Because this time it wasn’t about the fact that she didn’t love me and had never loved me. This time, it was about the fact that she sold me out to people that, whether she knew it or not, wanted me dead. And had they given her money to find me? Had they paid her off to watch for my return?

  I rounded onto the next landing and flung myself at the next metal ladder. The fire escape was starting to creak ominously from where it was hooked into the brick building. I didn’t know what floor I was on, but I still was incredibly far up. Far enough up that I would fall if I lost my balance or if I was pushed, and from this high, I was going to be dead in a very messy fashion.

  I gulped down air and rounded the next landing. God, I could hear them breathing, they were so close, huffing in and out, their trench coats flapping out behind them as they came after me, their big boots stomping on each metal landing making the fire escape shake all around us.

  All I had to do was get to the ground. I could get to the ground in one piece, I could make it. And then? God, I didn’t know. But all I could repeat to myself was that I had to get to the ground. After that, I had no clue, but at least I wouldn’t be a couple of stories up in the air with vampires chasing me. I’d be down on the pavement with vampires chasing me. Somehow, that felt a little fairer, like the odds were at least a tiny portion in my favor.

  Two stories up. I was two stories up when I rounded onto the second story landing, and I heard the creak from overhead. It was an ominous groan that seemed to go on forever, and I realized as I felt the metal shake under me that it was the fire escape itself. It was caving from too much weight and motion on it.

  It was going to collapse.

  I slid down the next metal ladder, feeling the rusted metal peel away into my hands as I hit the last landing before the ground running. But, like with most fire escapes, the final ladder that led to the ground was pulled up and bolted upward. It was rusted to itself, the metal corroded, and thoug
h I fumbled with the bolt, trying to get it to move, it wouldn’t budge. The ladder probably hadn’t been undone and tested in years, and I was still far too high up to hit the pavement and be able to get up immediately and run. If I hit the pavement from this high, I’d still probably break something.

  But I wasn’t getting much choice in the matter. The fire escape was shaking all around me, like there was an enormous earthquake rolling through the city, and this metal contraption was at the epicenter of it. I looked over the edge of the railing at the ground, still too far away from me, and tried to find the Dumpster behind our apartment building to jump on. I’d always thought it was a lot closer to the fire escape than that, but now that I was looking at it, I realized that there was no way that I’d actually be able to leap onto it—it was about fifteen feet away from this landing. I’d never make it.

  I looked up.

  They were too close. They were going to reach me. I could see the leader’s eyes glinting with a deep fire, and he was grinning maniacally, his incisors already long and glinting in the light from the streetlamps.

  I took a deep breath. I didn’t want to die today. I didn’t want to give them that satisfaction. I threw one leg over the railing and clung to the metal for dear life as I tried to bring my other leg over. I had no idea how to try to leap down fifteen feet onto pavement without breaking anything, but I thought it might be best to have my feet under me when I landed.

  They hit the final level when I let go of the railing.

  I dropped heavily. There’s no way to describe the feeling of falling through the air, seeing the ground come up to meet you other than “terrifying.” I braced for impact, but there’s no real way that you can brace for that sort of thing.

  But still, I thought the ground would be harder than what I hit.

  For a long, still moment, I had no idea what had just happened. I stared up, and when I saw her face, I understood.

  Elle was holding me. Elle had caught me from my fall like a superhero or, I guess…like a vampire. She held me tightly now in front of her, like she was a groom from the fifties, and I was her bride, and she was just about to carry me over the threshold of our brand new house.

  One of the vampires on the landing roared in frustration. It was difficult to make out which one was doing the roaring, because at that exact moment, the fire escape began to collapse.

  Elle turned on her heel and bolted, with me in her arms, down that back alleyway.

  From behind us, there was the terrible sound of metal connecting with pavement, the shrieking of the girders as they tore themselves out of the brick.

  There was no sound of human (or vampire, I supposed) pain. I glanced over her shoulder, and all I saw was a heap of metal. Most of the fire escape had remained attached to the building—only the lower two stories had crumpled to the ground.

  There was no sign of the vampires.

  Chapter 10: Lovely Bait, Reprise

  Elle was cold against me as she carried me. It was so unexpected, her arrival, the tender way she held me, that I felt a rush of emotions layered on top of the rush of adrenaline I’d just been through. I could hardly breathe I’d run so fast, and now I was being carried by the one person I’d thought I’d never see again.

  Elle paused at the entrance to the back alley, and she gently set me down. When my heels connected with the pavement I stood up, leaning against the crumbling building wall behind me, and I stared up at her as I panted.

  She looked much the way she had when I’d left her. Elle was wearing her long black coat she’d worn the first time we’d met, a cream-colored blouse that was unbuttoned on the top three buttons (something that my eyes were always drawn to, whether I wanted them to be or not), tight black jeans that outlined her perfect hips and thick black boots that looked very much like she meant business.

  Once my eyes were done roving her body, my gaze returned to her face. She was staring at me with those deep, dark eyes, and her full lips were pulled downward into a deep frown. She stared at me as her jaw worked, and she didn’t say a word.

  “Elle…” I wasn’t sure what to say, but as I stared at her beautiful face, at her indifferent eyes, I felt a fresh wave of pain moving through me. “Why are you here, Elle?” I managed to whisper, breathing heavily as I stared up at her.

  “That’s a lovely way to say ‘thank you,’” she muttered, one brow up as she sighed. She crossed her arms in front of her and put her beautiful head to the side as she considered me.

  “I just…I don’t even know what to tell you,” I said, and I put my hands on my knees and doubled over. God, I was tired.

  No, not tired—I was exhausted, and my head pounded terribly within me, and apparently my ex-girlfriend had sold me out to the bloodthirsty vampires who wanted me dead, and apparently said bloodthirsty vampires who wanted me dead were after me now, even as I stood there, trying to make my lungs get enough air because I was a little out of shape, and running very quickly down ten flights of ladders with vampires hot on your trail would make even a seasoned Olympian a little breathless.

  And then there was the fact that Elle had caught me. The one person I thought I’d never see again, the one person who admitted that I was the last in a long line of women who meant absolutely nothing to her. And she’d probably saved me from a broken leg or much, much worse considering the fact that a broken leg would have left me utterly at the vampires’ mercy.

  Why was she here?

  She stood next to me, her gorgeous body languid but somehow at attention, too, like she was a wolf who could, at a moment’s notice, be ready for the hunt. Her left hip was jutting forward a little, and her shoulders were back, her head to the side as she watched me, her face purely unreadable. But as I glanced up, still panting, I saw something slide behind her eyes.

  Concern?

  “Look, thank you for saving me,” I managed then, placing a hand on the worn brick wall behind me and pushing myself off of it so that I was standing on my own two feet again. I wavered, but I managed to hold my ground. I looked up at her, and I wondered if the hurt was still highly visible on my face.

  “You’re welcome,” she said quietly, still searching my gaze.

  I didn’t know what she wanted from me. How were we capable of carrying on this conversation when she’d said the things she’d said? Obviously she’d just saved my life, and that counted for something since she’d saved my life quite a few times these past few days. She was this elaborately confusing woman, and she’d just saved my life again, hours after telling me how she didn’t care about me at all.

  I sighed in frustration and shook my head, running my fingers through my long brown hair. Somewhere in the back of my mind that was trying to cling to anything comforting, I considered the fact that I would probably have done anything in that moment for a ponytail holder.

  “So. Where are the vampires chasing me? Do you know?” I asked her, my voice a little high pitched from fear. I cleared my throat. “That’d be a good thing to know,” I managed, then.

  Her mouth twitched at the corners as if she was going to smile at my quip, but then her full lips downturned to a frown and she shook her head as she shrugged elegantly. “I don’t know that,” she told me in her low, husky voice.

  “Great. Just great,” I sighed, pressing my fingers to my eyelids as I breathed out. They were fast—I’d seen how fast they were. So those men could be anywhere now, and it was obvious that they were still hunting me.

  And how could I fight against vampires who had super speed and a ridiculous urge to kill me?

  As I glanced up at her now, I saw Elle’s eyes were flashing with an inner light that I still couldn’t read. But nothing else mattered as she took one sure step forward. As she wrapped her hands around my waist, holding me gently in place, her cool length pressing against me in all of the right places, her hips to my hips, her stomach to my stomach, her breasts to mine. She smelled like cold winter wind as she bent down her head, and then slowly, softly, she brushed her m
outh over mine.

  I closed my eyes. I wrapped my arms around her neck. I moved by feeling alone, without a single thought or worry or heartache, as I kissed her back.

  She didn’t taste like metal. That was the first thing that surprised me. Her skin was cool to the touch, like always, and she tasted…flowery. Like jasmine green tea, I realized, as I drank her in, as our mouths collided harder, faster.

  I hadn’t realized until that moment what it meant to walk out of that house, leaving her behind me. What it meant leaving through that door without looking back.

  It meant losing her forever.

  And despite everything, despite everything she’d said and told me, I hadn’t wanted that.

  But she was here now. Wasn’t she?

  I broke away, looking up into her face, looking deeply into the darkness of her eyes, trying to find a sign of what she must be thinking. But I could see nothing. It was pitch black out, and there were streetlights around, but they illuminated very poorly. But as she leaned toward me, as I stared up into the depths of her gaze, I felt my heartbeat quicken even faster, and I felt my body respond to her. Even though I was exhausted, even though I’d just run down several flights of ladders, I could feel myself…wake up, because she was close to me. There’s no better way to describe it than that.

  We could have stayed in that moment longer. I wanted to. I wanted to kiss her again, I wanted to taste her again, I wanted her hands on me, in me. I wanted her to smile at me with that sarcastic, beautiful, devastating smile that called to me in all the right ways. I wanted to talk to her, talk to her for hours, like we did before it all went so horribly wrong, flirting and feeling the intensity of the connection between us as her eyes traced a pattern down my neck, her gaze awakening a fire within me that begged for her touch.

  But I needed to know, needed to know before she tore my heart out again. I’d been through too much tonight, and I needed her to tell me the truth.