Rebel pressed his hand across my mouth.
I struggled, snapping at his palm with my teeth. My breath came in panicked snorts through my nostrils. Rebel simply backed me carefully through the crunching glass, until we’d edged behind the wine rack. Then he pushed down a corner of stone, and a black hole gaped.
A tunnel.
I glared at Rebel. We’d roasted in this cellar — his family’s coffin — and all along there’d been a tunnel out of here…?
The Blood Familiars hauled themselves up, trotting to my side.
Eden sang out, “Your protection spell is dying, like the house. Maybe I shan’t feast on the witches, instead we’ll burn them in the flames. Would you like to watch?”
Rebel shoved me into the tunnel, sealing us in a narrow dark, which was lit only by the twin points of our weapons. At last, he pulled his hand away from my mouth.
I twirled around, wiping my sleeve across my lips. “Why?” I whispered.
I knew that he understood.
“This is why they died.” Rebel’s gaze was cast down. The light reflected on his tear tracks; they gleamed like violet pearls. “This priest hole. Witches have always helped the persecuted. They rescued Catholic Priests and hid them here. But…” he stumbled, unable to name his family; his grief had swallowed them. “They couldn’t run fast enough. Nor fight like us. The vampires would have their scent; they’re hunters, the same as us. Except, they hunt humans.”
“Your family sacrificed themselves because they knew that you’d never leave them behind?”
“I don’t deserve it,” Rebel muttered.
“Bastards don’t get what they deserve.” I grabbed his arm, hauling him after me down the stone tunnel.
When black mud tumbled from above, I was smothered in the earthy underground stench. I shook my head, frantically patting at my hair to dislodge the mud. Next to me, Rebel trembled.
Burned or buried alive? This wasn’t a day for good choices.
The Blood Familiars dashed between my feet, tripping me. One glance at Spark’s anxious green eyes, however, and I forced myself to smile. Spark’s ears perked and he barked softly.
I listened, expecting to hear echoed footsteps behind us, but there was nothing but a smothering silence.
Then my nose smashed into solid stone. Groaning, I stepped back, stretching out my fingers to test the uneven wall.
We’d reached the end of the tunnel.
Hell, there had to be some way out. After everything, please…
I scrabbled against the stone, ripping my fingernails. Then Rebel’s hands were over mine, stilling them, before he shunted his shoulder against the tunnel’s ceiling.
A hidden trapdoor…and it was stuck.
I giggled: high and hysterical. Bastards don’t get what they deserve…
Snap your losing it The Shining style ass out of it and help your weeping angel lift the trapdoor.
I need you, J. Please… I’m asking.
Why didn’t you say?
I sighed, as the familiar violet power swirled. I rolled my neck like I was psyching up to enter a boxing ring. Then I shoved upwards next to Rebel.
The trapdoor burst open in a shower of dirt and twigs.
Rebel pulled himself out first, before offering me his hand. I stared up, through the square opening, at the sharp stars in the night-time sky, the speared tops of trees, and Rebel’s hand, held out to pull me to safety. I took it, allowing him to haul me into the glade. It was the same one, in which we’d trained to the punk blast of the Sex Pistols: I recognized the oaks charred by our flames.
I took deep breaths of the crisp night air. Smoke stung my nostrils, as if someone was having a bonfire.
Then I remembered just what was burning.
Rebel leaned back into the tunnel, lifting out the squirming Blood Familiars, whilst I turned to look back at the House of Rose, Wolf, and Fox, through the winter trees.
At the bonfire of Rebel’s life.
A dull, smoldering light, like the embers of a cigarette, glowed from the blackened shell of the mansion. Only one section in the middle, didn’t burn. The iron cellar, where the protection spell must still be holding out and creating a barrier around it.
Dark shapes swarmed over the middle section, infesting their fallen enemy.
Suddenly, I sensed Rebel at my shoulder. His gaze was blank, however, as he watched. Yet neither of us looked away, until two vampires prowled into the glade. They wore pinstripe suits and fancy bow ties. They could’ve been bankers, except for the claws and the fangs.
No one spoke a word.
The dance was brutal and short.
Blaze and Spark launched themselves at pinstripe with the pink bow tie, knocking him onto his back, and then savaging his wrists. The vampire tried to scream, but I stabbed Star through his vocal cords. Bright light exploded from Star, an imploding sun, bursting out into points, until the vampire’s head fried.
A quick kill.
See, bastards don’t get what they deserve.
I lurched over to where Rebel had golfing cufflinks and polka dot bow tie pinned to the ground. Rebel stabbed Eclipse in and out of the vampire like he was a voodoo doll.
The vampire’s eyes were closed; he groaned on each thrust.
Rebel shook: in and out, in and out…
I didn’t know if Rebel would hear me, but I said quietly, “Kill him.”
Rebel jerked, his gaze focusing. He stumbled back, swallowing convulsively. He gave a shaky nod. Then he slashed Eclipse across the vampire’s throat, before he turned to me, horrified. “I’m not the same as them. I’m not…”
“We’re all monsters. We just call it by different names.”
Rebel was dazed; grief had devoured him.
I hauled him up. “It’s time that you follow me for a change.”
He nodded, blinking.
I realized then that it was Christmas morning.
On the air was smoke and blood, and like I’d promised, I’d left behind nothing but death.
Yeah, we were all monsters.
I stuck out my tongue to catch the snow lizard-like. The snowflake melted to nothing. I stole its life.
Soft sun, suffused through the snow cloud, stained the sky. Rebel shielded his eyes against the light, moaning at the throbbing between his temples.
Christmas day was born, as Rebel and I staggered into Hackney Cemetery. We’d clambered up the locked Egyptian gates, which had been flanked by plinths carved with hieroglyphics, like we’d been seeking refuge in the Underworld. The Blood Familiars had slunk between the wrought iron bars. Their ears had been pressed to their heads, and they’d nudged each other forlornly, limping. I’d only then realized that their paws must’ve been burned by the heat in the cellar; I’d wished that I could heal them.
I didn’t know why I’d dragged us here.
Yeah, I did.
Abney Park Cemetery, Hackney, was where, clutching nothing but a violet feather, I’d been found as a baby.
Foundling. Orphan. Outcast.
I’d always hoped that someone would come to claim me but now I’d witnessed the somethings that carved their way bloody through the world…?
I was better off on my own.
Rebel groaned, sinking down behind a stone monument of a majestic lion, which roared like Aslan risen from the dead. Rebel rested his head in its shadow, away from the dawn light. The punk had a migraine: I’d suffered their kiss enough to know. Yet I’d never seen him shudder with one before. He curled up on himself, amongst a bed of green wood spurge, as if he could disappear. His shoulders were shaking, although he didn’t make a sound.
I reckoned that he was sobbing.
The granite gravestones, eaten away by lichen, tumbled amongst the dense woodland, feasting itself on human death.
Here was Sleeping Beauty’s kingdom.
I dodged around the trunk of a pale gray hornbeam, before the fox brothers settled at its base. Then I ran my fingers over the white marble of a memorial gravestone. It was
carved with a powerful but sorrowful angel; I’d visited it every weekend when I was a kid.
The epitaph read:
Violet Lazarus
1896 — 1918
I don’t die; I sleep
I snorted.
Except, when I’d traced her name — Violet — given to me too because I’d been found at the statue’s feet, I’d spent years hoping that she’d wake up and claim me as hers.
Yet she’d been dead for a hundred years, and I wasn’t even human.
When I smashed my fist against the marble, I gasped with the pain, as my knuckles split.
But I needed it: To wake up.
This is no dream, Feathery-death, this is a slab of hot reality. You have to work out why that sky-blue cutie pie of crazy, and his merry band The Pure, want you so bad or—
Get out of my head, J.
You asked, remember?
For the first time in a month, this is my choice. So much has changed. I need to know that I’m making decisions on my own.
Since when was I a lodger? We’re in this together. Don’t you understand yet what you mean to me? I own this mind, hooker, I don’t get my ass booted out.
Who am I?
Mine.
I shrieked, tugging at my hair. I couldn’t breathe. The memory of that cellar, the tunnel, and the vampires…it was all too much. I’d lost my human life, and now all I had was this supernatural world and its death.
“Stop that.” Rebel shoved himself up with his back against the stone. He held his arm across his red-rimmed eyes; this time his eyeliner had run. “Don’t go hurting yourself because of—”
“You?” When I turned my predator gaze on Rebel, he shrank back. “A liar? Kidnapper? Killer? How about we have that quiet chat about respect, trust, and how angels don’t lie to monsters?”
I was breathing too fast but I couldn’t control it. I was desperate for Rebel’s wings to be wrapped tight around me, cocooning me as they had during Da’s punishment, but if he wouldn’t hold me, then I’d make sure that he fought me.
Rebel scrabbled for Eclipse, at the same time as I drew Star. Twin violet flames lit up the snow shrouded cemetery.
Rebels eyes widened as he realized — at the same time as the twisted awareness coursed through me — that I was no longer his prisoner.
And he was now alone: a grieving angel in the snow.
I shuddered. Star’s power surged and swelled with mine, driving me higher and higher, until I shook to slash and burn the world. I craved my freedom, rather than a Custodian. Now that I was no longer a prisoner of the witches, I wouldn’t be Rebel’s.
The powers coiled inside me, whispering that this was the only way to survive, save my sister, and stop the Hackney disappearances.
It was time for a bitch to wake up.
Yet weak and broken as he was, Rebel also knew the stakes of the fight; his lips thinned. Then he slashed his sword in a sizzling arc straight for my head.
16
As a teenager, I’d hacked and customized avatars for the geeks of the gaming world.
Hell, I’d been that geek gamer.
Angels, vampires, knights, or beasts… whatever a bitch desired to be, I’d woven their dream. Then watched, as my customers had disappeared into their drug of choice, far away from the real world. Later, I’d followed them down the rabbit hole but only because I’d been able to control the avatar that I’d created.
Mine.
Real blokes? I hadn’t been able to control or create. Their free will had disappointed me.
Until I’d met Rebel.
A stream of flames hissed towards my face. I spun away, raising Star.
My panted breaths were loud in the silence of Hackney Cemetery. Snowflakes landed on my eyelashes, melting when I blinked. A blast of light and tremors shook through me, as the blade reflected Rebel’s attack.
The bastard had been aiming directly at me.
I flinched, pinching my lips together to stop them quivering. This was nothing like training. This was kill or be killed. It was no longer a game.
I booted the wood spurge, flattening it against the snowy ground. When I stared at Rebel, shuddering with a raw hurt that I didn’t know I could feel, even though I’d been the one to start this dance, I gasped.
Rebel crouched by the lion monument, his eyes sparking with the same righteous fury as the day that he’d snapped Toben’s neck. I backed against the hornbeam, snaking my arm around the icy trunk.
Rebel’s lips curled into a sneer. “What’s wrong, Feathers? You’re bold taking on an angel, but then you reckon that I’m broken. You never did understand. Or are you after getting off on kicking me, when I’ve just lost…”
I thrust away from the trunk, leaping over a gravestone. Rage buzzed through me, hungering to taste Rebel’s pain, just as he’d hurt me. A flash blasted from my hands at him, but he dodged, springing onto the lion’s head. The wood spurge burst alight beneath him.
The Blood Familiars hopped back from the blaze. Hell, I hadn’t meant for Spark and Blaze to be caught up in the fight. I was still shocked by the fox brothers’ furious gekkering chatter, as they turned, shooting me accusing glares over their shoulders. Then they skulked away, flashes of red weaving between the gravestones and into the woodland.
“Hey, get your arses back here, foxies. I promise, this battle is over.” The familiars ignored me, although their ears twitched. I swished Star through the air like a wand. “What happened to always serving me?”
“Everything’s about you, so it is, princess.” Rebel rubbed his throbbing temple. He might not be broken, but he was weak, and that’s when you shanked sharp. “I protect and train you, as well as risking my life. But it’s never enough for Lady Muck. I fell that day for you, but when have you ever fallen?”
The fox brothers had vanished into the gardens of Hackney Cemetery. There was nothing left to control me now. No Custodian or Blood Familiars. I’d even banished J. I ached at their loss but at the same time, I shuddered, stiffening. Rebel had taught me self-discipline in his sessions, but now the chains had snapped.
Finally, it was time to let out the dark.
“Are you still channeling Bambi?” I smirked, licking my lips. “You’re the kidnapper, and I’m the innocent prisoner. You shackled me that day, and when I win, I’ll be free.”
I roundhouse kicked Rebel, knocking him back. He let out a shocked yowl. His knees buckled, and he staggered off the monument into the fire.
Bubbled in violet and soaring on Star’s power, I swaggered to Rebel, who was crawling out of the burning patch of undergrowth and beating at his smoldering leathers. When he flung himself on his back, swinging Eclipse at me, I stamped on his wrist to force him to drop his sword. Then I kicked away Eclipse.
“Is your victory worth this?” Rebel panted
I straddled him, pinning his hands above his head. The first flash of true panic skittered across Rebel’s face.
Unlike the time that we’d trained together in the glade behind the House of Rose, Wolf, and Fox, and I’d pinned Rebel like this, he didn’t arch or buck beneath me. Instead, there was only a resigned stillness, and nothing hard in his red bondage trousers.
I grinned. “I won, and this time without tricks. That means we can be equals now. Partners.”
Rebel snorted. “You do talk some shite.”
“Then let’s not talk, pretty boy.”
A wicked rapture surged at my triumph. If Rebel didn’t want to be equals, then I’d be top boy.
Hurt me, kiss me, burn me…
I pressed my mouth against Rebel’s, before biting his lip and sucking at the sweet copper. I trembled as the — slam — sweetness shivered through me.
Rebel’s blood was mine. I needed it, and now I could take it.
Then I tasted the salt. It soured the sweet, shaking me out of the ecstatic haze.
Rebel’s eyes were closed, and he was weeping.
His family had killed themselves. His home had been burned to the
ground. And I’d just forced him to fight me…
I scrambled off Rebel, backing up onto my heels.
Rebel didn’t move. His face was turned away from me, and his hands were clenched.
Slowly, I stood up. Everything ached. Now the angelic power had ebbed, it all felt more…real. Is this what it was like for Rebel? When he soared on his righteousness?
I flushed as I held out my hand to Rebel. When I didn’t say anything, he carefully opened his eyes. Then he glanced at me, startled. He wet his lips, before grasping my hand and allowing me to haul him to his feet.
“It turns out,” I scuffed my foot backwards and forwards against a gravestone, “I talk a lot of shite.”
Rebel stared at me, before barking with laughter through his tears. “Nobody’s perfect. Not even a princess.”
When I raised Star, I hated that Rebel flinched. “We’ll search for your dad.”
Rebel touched the velvet pouch at his neck. “And your sister. Look, I didn’t mean to lie but…”
“No secrets. Honesty only from here on, or the angry monster comes out to play.”
“No secrets,” Rebel wiped away his tears against the back of his sleeve, “just a promise. I’ll punish Eden and the bloody gits who killed my family.”
I nodded.
After what Eden had put me through, the bastard was top of my List of Asses to Kick too. Yet I reckoned that there was more to this than a feud between angels and vampires, or even Rebel and Eden. I didn’t know why, but I was also top of Eden’s List.
I was free. I’d defeated Rebel. Yet I was still the hunted.
I’d passed from Dr Watt’s Walk onto the boggy heath of Chapel lawns, striding briskly through the snow, crunching my boots on each step, when I’d sensed, like an electric buzzing in my shoulder blades, that I was being watched.
A Big Bad lounged in the shadows of Abney Park Chapel: a fanged stalker.
I stopped, clutching my shopping bag protectively to my chest. I’d broken into the back of a closed corner shop for essentials: water, baked beans, and painkillers for Rebel’s migraine.
It’d been a risk though, taking the precious cargo.
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