by C. E. Murphy
KISS OF ANGELS
ISBN-13: 978-1-61317-148-6
Copyright © by 2018 by C.E. Murphy
All Rights Reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the author, [email protected].
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover Artist: Tara O'Shea / fringe-element.net
Cover Design: C.E. Murphy / mizkit.com
Copy Editing: Stephanie Mowrey / [email protected]
for Brian Nisbet
Author's Note
The author would like to suggest that the Old Races Universe books are best enjoyed in order of publication, which is as follows:
HEART OF STONE
HOUSE OF CARDS
HANDS OF FLAME
BABA YAGA'S DAUGHTER
YEAR OF MIRACLES
KISS OF ANGELS
FAMILY TIES
He came from the speakeasy with blood on his hands.
Not literally; there had been no call for that. Not even to punish Eliseo, because the bulk of his wrath should be meted out on that man, and not the woman who had been his lover for a century or more. Vanessa had, in truth, deserved better, but she had understood all too well that she was a player in a game much older than herself, and Janx did not believe for a moment that she had truly lost the hand that had cost her life. Not when she'd won the hand, a hundred years earlier, that earned her the speakeasy; not when she'd confessed, years later, to the cheat that had won it. Vanessa Grey did not lose at cards, not unless she chose to. But he had blood on his hands, none-the-less, and that it was necessary made it no less unpleasant.
It was usually easier. They were so ephemeral, humans; they rarely survived long enough to gain his attention, much less for him to become fond of them. Vanessa had been different, though. Different for drawing Eliseo's eye and yet never once rising to Janx's flirtations; usually when mortal women fancied one of them, they found the other difficult—impossible—to resist. Vanessa, by all appearances, hadn't even liked him, and although Janx's ego was sufficient that he knew that could hardly be true, that she'd maintained the pretense convincingly over ten decades was admirable.
So yes, there was blood on his hands, and for the first time in a very long time indeed, real anger burned inside Janx's breast, that Eliseo Daisani had made it necessary. And that was how he went, with rage in his heart and blood on his hands, to meet the daughter Eliseo Daisani had stolen from him over a century ago.
#
Thrice in two centuries is not enough and too many times to see a creature such as Janx. Not enough, because his beauty is such that desiring him cost me my very life; too many, because I have stolen his daughter from him, or at least, not returned her when I might have, and if he did not know it before today, he most certainly does now.
She does not want me there, my Jana, but neither can she bring herself to send me away. She is too afraid and too forgiving both: afraid that her father will judge her for being the daughter of a witch, and not properly of the Old Races at all; forgiving, that I have let that come to pass, and that she will protect me for it. I see him in her, in her emerald eyes and in the height and strength of her slim body, if not in her hair, which is as black as my own. The depths in her hair are red, not blue as mine are, or as her sister's are; those depths come from Janx, and from the dragon who was my daughter's mother. All I know of that one is her name: Fina, and I gave her daughter the best dragonly name I knew how, in homage to those I took her from.
Janx's presence is inimitable even at the best of times: he seems a man, but even the greatest and most charismatic of men would pay any cost to carry the weight and gravitas that a dragon can master. I do not know where a dragon's mass goes when it takes human form, but I know with certainty that they can call it to themselves to command a room, or indeed a city block, should that be their desire. Janx plays, mostly, at being frivolous and coy, which only heightens his power when he comes as he does now, rolling on fury and so laden with his immortal size that it is a wonder he can enter the room without damaging it.
But that is why we have chosen a church, an old and familiar place with room enough even for a dragon to stretch his wings. The gargoyle called Alban Korund slept beneath this place for over a century; it is, in so far as anywhere human-built can be, a sanctuary for the Old Races, and perhaps for those like myself, who are born of human magic, but are in no wise human themselves. A priest, white-haired and with a wild beard, watched us come in, but did not approach, and it is not my imagination that he spoke with those few humans lingering here late into the night, nor that they departed with more haste than they might otherwise have intended. I might like to speak with him, for his gaze had something of the uncanny about it; I do not think we are secrets to him, for all that he may not know exactly what any of us are. But that is for later; now there are other things to attend to.
Their first sighting of one another is as powerful as waves crashing on the shore. She rises, my sweet, shy daughter, and Janx comes to a stop, his anger bleeding away into awe. Jana is strengthened by that, and lifts her chin until she meets her father's gaze. Were I my mother, I could feed off the magic of that meeting for a hundred years, but instead I hold myself still, hardly daring to breathe; hardly able, as if the air has been pushed away by the invisible mass of two dragons.
They do not move, not for long and long and long again, and in that stillness it comes to me that I do not, in fact, belong here. Jana does not, in the end, need my protection, and my presence can only disrupt their introduction. I step back, and Janx finally moves. Only the turn of his head, his eyes finding mine in the quiet light of the church. "You," he says, softly, and if it is not a threat, that is only because I am born of human magic, and beyond the Old Races' grasp, "you I will deal with later."
I bow my head and leave, but the last thing I hear are the first words my daughter says to her father, in her clear light voice: "You will not."
#
She'd never met another dragon; they were too scarce, too old, and too canny to expose themselves, and she wasn't raised among any of the Old Races at all. But even if she had been brought up amongst the Old Races, unless she'd been raised by her birth mother, the black dragon called Fina, Jana thought meeting her father would probably be terrifying. She wasn't like Emma, half-vampire, half-witch, and easy with the world and its ways, letting them flow and ebb around her. She wasn't like their mother, either, who saw events and people as things to be shaped to make a better place. Jana only wanted two things: to keep her mother and sister safe, and to wreak unforgiving revenge on Eliseo Daisani and his people, for stealing her from the family she'd been meant to know. Very little else mattered, and beyond fighting for those two things, she knew perfectly well she was tentative and shy where she, a dragon in human form, had no need or reason to be at all.
Of all the things she had no reason to fear, the red dragon Janx was probably first among them. She was his daughter, the only pure-blood dragon born in centuries, and it was by no means her fault she'd been stolen from him before she'd even hatched. But he was Janx: he was immeasurably ancient, a leader—perhaps the leader—among their people. He cared, in broad and spectacular strokes, very little for humanity; and it was amidst humanity—more or less—that Jana had been raised. In the details he was worse: he could love and admire individual humans profoundly, which might seem a safety net for them, but was not. It would be better if he didn't care at all. Then she could understand his ruthless
ness, but Jana had read stories of the dragonlord Janx for a very long time, and he did care. He cared deeply.
And yet as he entered the church, Jana could smell Vanessa Grey's death on him, and when he spoke, it was to threaten her mother. "You," he said to her, "you I will deal with later," and Jana's own voice broke over his, calm and very certain: "You will not."
Her stomach knotted as she spoke, and her heart became a cold fist pounding in her chest, but her hands fisted too, and preposterous thoughts darted through her mind: she was small, perhaps quick compared to his vastness; she could hardly defeat him in a fight but she could at least prove she was willing to try. She might do him some little damage, with her litheness, and she put away the knowledge that he would never actually hurt her, the last daughter of a dying race. Perhaps he would treat her as an equal, if she fought for it. She had to try, because Emma and their mother were Jana's hoard, and she would protect them at all costs.
Janx turned his regard to her, jade eyes bright in the church's dim late-night light. Amusement glittered in that green gaze, but so, perhaps, did admiration. "You remind me of your mother."
"Which one?" Jana threw the question down as hard as she could, sending it bouncing off the stone walls and flickering the flames of what candles danced in their holders.
Janx smiled, full of daggered teeth and delight. "Both of them, now that you mention it, but I was thinking of Fina. You look…almost nothing like her," he conceded after a moment's examination. "But you have her ferocity. Baba Yaga's daughter is less fierce, if no less implacable. I expect that's in you, too. Very well. I will not…deal with her at all, if that's your wish. Will you tell me your name?"
"Jana. Spelled with a J."
"Yana." He repeated the sound, but his smile grew as she told him the spelling. "Jana. Well, damn the witch, I could hardly have named you better myself. Did she know what she was doing?"
"She's read her mother's grimoires," Jana replied. "She knows as much about the Old Races as anything human can."
"So instead of dealing with her, I shall have to thank her." Janx sighed theatrically, then let the pretense fall away; inside a breath he was no longer human, much less mocking. His eyes were very serious indeed, and he took a single step forward. "May I call you daughter, and claim my bloodline as your own? Do not mistake me, Jana: I do not ask only for my own sentimental satisfaction. You are the first of our children in eight hundred years, and to be your father is to command more power among our people than even I might have dreamed. We are living on the cusp of change, and I—we—will need every shred of leverage we can get. I will use you to that end," he said, and the flagstones of the church floor shivered with the depth of his voice, "and I will protect you at all costs. At all costs, Jana. I've lost you once; that will never happen again."
"And if I don't let you call me daughter? What then? Will you still protect me? Will you still imagine that my safety is actually yours to command? You couldn't keep me from being stolen when I was in the shell. What makes you think that now, when I have wings and a mind of my own, that you could keep me if I wanted to go? You don't get to decide whether you lose me or not. That's not how the world works." Jana's jaw thrust out, either petulant or challenging; even she didn't know which, but whichever it was, or her words, gave Janx pause, and then a sigh.
"You are like Fina. I stand corrected in the face of modern women, or dragons, or both. You're right. I cannot protect you. I can teach you to fight as a dragon, which I suspect you have little experience at, and in so doing I can offer you the skills to protect yourself. I can also lend you the measure of my name, which you bear in part already, damn the witch," he said a second time, more softly, as if he admired Baba Yaga's daughter and didn't want Jana to know it. "To be Jana is a great deal; to be Jana, daughter of Janx and Fina, renders you—"i
"A target," Jana interrupted thoughtfully. "You already said you would gain power by being my father, but I'd be painting a target on my belly to be your daughter, wouldn't I? And it might not be that helpful to you, for it to get out that you lost me to a vampire and a witch before I even hatched."
Janx's eyes glittered. "I'm supposed to be the clever one, lass."
"Try harder." Fire burned through Jana's mind, lighting pathways that had remained unknown until she stood before another dragon. Emma was the quick one, always putting things together that left Jana behind. That had never disturbed her; she'd been content to be quiet and slowly thoughtful, but she understood suddenly why Janx liked to be the clever one, and found delight in out-thinking him now. "And I was so afraid of meeting you," she breathed, then said, "The story would have to be that you've done it on purpose. Hidden away the last dragon child until she grew into her power, so chance or mishap couldn't take her from the world. Where better to hide me than with a witch? Human magic clashes with our kind's. No one would ever be able to find me, even if they were looking, if a witch raised me."
"And who would be looking," Janx asked softly.
"No one," Jana answered truthfully. "Humanity, perhaps, but not in this century, or the last. Not in my whole lifetime, not really. And Daisani," she said with venom, "knew where I was all along."
Janx's face hardened. "I've made the first cut in retaliation for your loss, Jana. It's hardly enough to make amends for losing you, but that is a revenge to be extracted over centuries."
"She didn't deserve to die."
"No." Janx dropped into a pew, suddenly long bones of regret and weariness. "No, she didn't, but she chose to, and she died well. I can't strike at him directly; it's against our strictures. Our laws."
"Laws are for the law-abiding." Jana remained where she was, studying the man sprawled in the pew. He looked almost nothing more than a man, just then, though if she softened her gaze she saw the shadows and weights that accompanied him, as if they were spectres drifting in another world. "You liked her."
"Very much."
"And you killed her for a daughter you'd never met. What if it turned out you preferred her to me?"
"Oddly," Janx replied softly, "it had almost nothing to do with you. Not as a person, at least. It was about the game. We've been in stasis a long time, he and I. Ever since—" He stopped as if he hadn't expected himself to say what he was saying, and Jana glanced where Baba Yaga's daughter had gone.
"Ever since my mother?"
Janx shook his head. "Long before that. He rescued me from the old witch, but he had to. We can't play the game alone. No, it was London, and the fire, and Sarah. We both lost too much with her, I think, and then the world began to change very quickly. Humans spread faster and faster, and we began to play closer and closer to our chests. But then there was Chicago, and it seems he made a move after all. He took a piece too valuable to ignore, once I finally learned it was him, and now…" Janx shrugged. "I take his piece in return. Regrets are immaterial. Do you want my protection?"
"No. Not the way you're offering it, as a cloak to hide beneath. I might like to learn to fight, but mostly I'd like to know you, and my birth mother. I want to belong in the world," Jana said, almost surprising herself. "Emma does, in her way. Mother does. But they're more like each other than I'm like them. They have magic, human magic, as well as Emma's other gifts. I…" She turned her palms up, as if she could call her dragonly hands to life around them. She couldn't; there were no halfway stages of transformation, not for a full-blooded member of the Old Races. Emma was more fluid, but Emma was only half a vampire. "I'm very human," she said to her hands, "for a dragon. You, though. You're very dragon, for a human." She looked up with a smile and found Janx grinning lazily back at her.
"I am. It's served me well enough. What do you want, Jana? To inherit my empire?"
"I'd make a terrible criminal."
"Give it time, my dear, give it time." Janx rose and sauntered to her, though his expression was far more serious than his stance. "Your mother went into the long sleep, after your egg was lost. It was that or wreak havoc on the world, and none of us could
afford that. I'll try to awaken her, if you wish. It may be that you would have more luck. She would know your voice, I think, even in dreams. And I must ask one more thing, Jana: you don't like that I've killed Vanessa Grey. What would you have done to Eliseo Daisani?"
"I want him dead. Him, and all his kin."
"He has no kin, save your sister. Would you sacrifice her, in your vengeance? No," Janx said softly, as Jana recoiled. "I thought not. We Old Races are very difficult to kill, Jana, and vampires are perhaps impossible to end. I would take everything from him save your sister, in retaliation for losing you, and count that a high enough cost; better that he should live, having lost, than you should die trying to murder the master of a race. And now you're angry," he murmured, which was true; Jana's hands were fists at her sides and her skin felt hot and flushed with suppressed rage, "but sometimes we're angriest when we fear someone's insight is right. I promise you myself," he said with an air of ritual. "I promise you your mother, and I promise you your revenge, my daughter. On my honor as a dragonlord, you will have these things." He tilted her chin up, jade gaze intense on her face. "Do you believe me?"
"Yes." Jana's voice shook on the word, and as swiftly as he'd slipped it on, Janx threw off the weight of vows.
"Splendid. There's an all-night diner a few blocks away, my dear. Shall we retire to its well-padded booths and see if they can feed us enough pie to satisfy two dragonly appetites whilst we catch up on a century or so's worth of important life events?"
Jana stared at him, then laughed. "Are you usually this mercurial?"
"Always."
"No wonder my mother likes you."
"My dear," Janx said, injured, "everybody likes me. And I call dibs on the lemon meringue."
"You can have it. Restaurant lemon meringue is horrible."
Janx stopped short of offering her his elbow. "You can't possibly be related to me."