Today he’d lost his dad, chance of redemption, freedom…and me.
I leaned over Rebel. My sparking fingers stroked down his cheek, shocking him in bursts. He jumped but didn’t pull away. His eyes were large in the luminous light; his long neck was bare without the collar. But the pouch still hung there: my gift to the bloke who’d lied to me for weeks.
I reached through into the cell, wrenching Rebel’s head against the bars. I held him still by his hair.
Then I Judas kissed his forehead, as he’d kissed mine.
The angelic powers, freed and overwhelming, roared. Flames seared Rebel’s skin. He didn’t flinch. Instead, he pressed closer into my cruel lips.
…hurt me, kiss me, burn me…
The inferno built, screaming for release. To burn Rebel, along with the secrets and lies, to ash.
To purge the pain, weeping now down my face.
Slam.
The sugary copper scent blasted through me. But this time it tasted bitter because I knew that it was nothing but a trap. Yet it didn’t stop my craving for Rebel’s blood, our bond, and for him.
Hell, I was addicted too.
I battled the roar, dampening the flames to embers. Shaking, I pulled back. Then I released Rebel’s hair, shoving him away.
He snatched the bars to stop himself tumbling. Blisters branded his forehead, but he peered out at me with a tentative smile. “Princess…?”
All I wanted was to sooth his hurt and kiss him gently this time. Yet that wasn’t what Rebel needed…or what the angelic power inside craved.
“You were right,” I said, forcing myself not to choke on the quiet words. Rebel tilted his head. “You are bad.”
Rebel’s eyes widened, before he crumpled like I’d clouted him.
I clenched my jaw, before ripping the pouch with my sister’s necklace inside — the only thing shielding Rebel from complete nakedness — from around his neck.
“Please…it’s all I have…and your gift…” Rebel scrabbled through the bars.
I stuffed the pouch into my jean’s pocket with shaky fingers. “You don’t deserve my gift right now.”
I turned to Drake, as Rebel curled back on his side, keening. I cringed, clenching my fists and refusing to watch Rebel’s expression as I walked away from him. If I had, I’d have forgiven his betrayal.
Despite everything, Rebel was still family, and I’d find a way to free him from the dark. But he wasn’t the only one who needed saving.
“I want to see my sister,” I demanded.
When Drake smiled, just as he had before he’d shanked me over Rebel, I stiffened. Then he beckoned me to follow him through the cavern. “Patience.”
I strode after him, as he marched faster along the freezing tunnel. Through spears of rock, I glimpsed violet flashes.
More cells and more prisoners like Rebel. My guts churned with fear.
“Where’s Jade?” I insisted.
Drake bowed his head. “First, you must meet your mother.”
I stumbled, hanging onto the wall.
My mother…?
I was trapped in the treacherous Angel World, where J had warned I could trust no one but the one ally, who was locked in a birdcage prison.
Yet now I was being taken to meet the woman who’d abandoned me to the humans at birth.
And it terrified me worse than any fight.
Why had my mum abandoned me? And why had Rebel and Ash worked so hard to protect me from her?
I pushed my sunglasses more firmly onto my nose.
If my angelic mum expected an angel for a daughter, she was in for a bitch of a surprise.
I was all monster.
After all, nobody’s perfect.
The End…For Now
Continue Violet’s adventures in VAMPIRE PRINCESS, Book 2 in the Rebel Angels Series.
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Author Note
I wrote this series because I wanted to create the ultimate British anti-heroine who spoke in her own voice and I just fell in love with Violet and her angel and vampire fam! I’m a rebel and I’ve always been passionate about writing stories with rebels at their heart.
You are total stars for your recommendations, word of mouth, and reviews of this series because it’s how my books reach new readers. I’m truly grateful to you. Even a single line review raises the series’ visibility.
I’m excited for you to read the next book and discover the secrets of Angel World and Violet’s mother…!
I love this series. I hope you do too.
Thanks, you’re awesome - my Rebel family :)
Rosemary A Johns
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Vampire Princess
VAMPIRE PRINCESS
REBEL ANGELS BOOK TWO
Rosemary A Johns
VAMPIRE PRINCESS: REBEL ANGELS BOOK TWO © copyright 2018 Rosemary A Johns
www.rosemaryajohns.com
First Edition 2018
Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Fantasy Rebel Limited
Vampire Princess
REBEL ANGELS BOOK TWO
Angel World is no heaven…
Held prisoner, Violet never anticipated her long-lost mother would be the Queen of Angel World. Or that she’d be forced to rule as a corrupted princess or risk a perilous escape.
When a harem boy angel draws Violet into the dark court, she’s thrown into deadly trials that even her monstrous powers may not be able to overcome. If she refuses, both the snarky angel and geek vampire she loves will be enslaved to a powerful cult.
No matter what she chooses, she’ll be facing the dangers of Angel World on the eve of war…
1
Vampires? Angels?
I hunt the bastards because they hunt me.
But it turns out, I’m their princess.
So, who’s the bastard now?
Until I’d turned twenty-one, only months and a candy-bloodied world away, I’d been a regular geek gamer, designing the supernatural because it stole me away from the truth of Hackney life: shanks, sex, and pain.
Until a rebel angel fell, my sister disappeared, and I let out the monster.
My eyes ached with the blackness, as I stumbled, wrinkling my nose against the dank.
I pushed my ash-blonde hair behind my ears, before running my hand across the wall; I shuddered at the squelch as my fingers squashed something soft and wriggling…
I staggered back, slipping on the cavern’s floor and landing on my arse.
A low laugh in the gloom.
I growled.
Princess? This bitch could get with that. Captive princess? No way in a kinky angel’s dream.
Hell, I’d known Angel World wouldn’t be a land of unicorns when I’d been forced here by Commander Drake. As a half vampire, half angel with one black eye and one violet, whose long-lost mother just happened to be t
he angelic queen, I was lucky not to be in a circus for devils…
And when vampires were in fact Fallen Angels, who knew if that could be a thing.
But why had my mum — the Matriarch — imprisoned me with the harem boy who’d hunted my arse across London, no matter how beautiful he was?
Why had she imprisoned me at all?
“Do you like pretending to be the Big Bad?” I snarled, pushing my cats-eye mirror sunglasses more firmly onto my nose. “When we both know that you’re the genie with a Mistress wish-lashing you.”
Pale violet blazed from Drake’s wings, flooding the chamber in fae light. Drake hovered above the ground, curling his feet away from the wet. He clutched his arms across his bare chest. His golden curls fell over his eyes, as he scrutinized me.
The scent of ancient churches — frankincense – wrapped around me, intoxicating.
“Hush, now.” Drake hitched up his indigo harem boy trousers, stroking the tip of his wing along my cheek. “Still words are your blade? Yet you requested a hunt, did you not? The prey is through these caverns.” He ran a feather under my chin this time. No way in hell you can scowl when you’re being tickled: sneaky-arsed angel. “Hunt.”
I shoved myself up to a crouch, smacking Drake’s wing away, before wiping my grimy hands down my lilac dress. Every day a different shade of silk was laid out for me, depending on my Level of Perfection (and who needed that psycho freakery?).
Hunt: violet and black entwined, ancient and alive inside me, threatening to break out.
“My hunt.” I stalked towards the break through into the next chamber, as my knee-high leather boots clacked on the rock. “You’re the clown who got stuck with putting on a show, so your prisoner doesn’t burn off her own head with boredom: no PlayStation, iPod, or Game of Thrones...”
“Our hunt.” Drake swooped over my head; his wings were like a slow beating moth. “If I’m a clown, it’s you have reduced me to one.” I flushed: Drake was right about that, at least. Drake was a Commander and even if he was a pretty bully…and my enemy…he’d been reduced to entertainer because of me. He flew past me into the cavern. “I propose stakes. Whoever wins the hunt, wins the prey as their prize for the night.”
My pulse pounded, and I stiffened. “No way, bro.”
“Who’s the clown now?” Drake raised his eyebrow and then dived for the tunnel.
Gaping out of rock, the tunnel was so low that he had to land, barreling onto his stomach and squirming like a feathery worm into its dark mouth, baby bird swallowed.
No bastard way…
I was the Bitch of Utopia. Princess of Angel World. No gaoler, playmate, pretty boy angel would win in a hunt.
Back in Hackney, before I’d even been trained as a huntress of vampires, I’d learned how to scatter, either before the feds, or other gangs. In Jerusalem Children’s Home, where I’d been raised after being abandoned as a baby amongst the humans, if you didn’t run fast enough, you were the loser who took the beating.
I learned not to be that loser. And to stick in the shank first.
I snatched Drake’s ankles, hauling him out with one yank: he was lighter than I’d expected.
He squawked, scrabbling at the rock. His wings beat and pulsed furiously, whilst he clutched at the edges of the tunnel; the rock sliced his palms.
One more tug, and Drake’s silk trousers slipped down his slight hips; he gave up his hold on the tunnel to pull them over the milk-white of his arse and maintain his modesty.
Not like I hadn’t seen it all before.
I still couldn’t help the way that I reddened, whilst my skin suddenly felt too tight. My skin tingled where I’d touched him, and I wished that every time it wasn’t in a game, anger….or nothing but an act.
Drake twisted around, and his ice-cold eyes were suddenly predatory, as I allowed him to back against the wall.
Only a crazy bitch forgot how dangerous Drake was beneath the beauty.
“Don’t freak out,” I smirked. “What’s with the Mr Competitive?”
He shrugged.
“Is it from the loss of balls when you were busted from Commander to guard duty?”
“If you were not so difficult, princess, I wouldn’t have to suffer being your…guard.” Drake’s gaze was hard. “But then, is not everything about you?”
Crack.
My punch pinned Drake’s left wing to the wall. Violet flared, rising in hallelujahs, even as I shrank back from his panted pain…hating it.
Drake couldn’t fight back; he could only hurt lesser angels, and I was a princess.
Even if he did hunt, torture, and jail other angels.
Yet I couldn’t think about that because Drake held the one angel who was family but who’d betrayed me, and who I’d betrayed to the dark.
Rebel: my Irish punk — Zachriel, to the angels.
Rebel had fallen into my lap, transforming my world to the supernatural and training me to hunt vampires to save humans.
Had I become the type of person who hurt those who wouldn’t fight back?
Hell, yeah.
Crack.
There went Drake’s other wing.
Since the long weeks at the Matriarch’s pleasure, with only Drake and the toy she’d gifted, my angelic side had blazed, burning away the skin of my humanity.
I shrank, terrified at the cruelty of the bitch left behind. Who the hell was now in control…?
“I have a game of my own,” I whispered, close to Drake’s ear. “Truth or dare.”
“Is it a game for warriors?” Drake stared at me through wild, agonized eyes.
“Pissed warriors at parties,” I grinned, “or in your case, brat genies who’ve been put back in their lamp.”
“At least I have a lamp. You’re alone in Angel World. Perhaps you should not be acting the wolf, when you’re the lamb.”
I bit with my blunt teeth, just where Drake’s shoulder met his collarbone.
I didn’t know who was more startled: him or me.
Then Drake whimpered, leaning into the bite.
Brilliant, white candyfloss blood: it tripped through me like frankincense infused stars dripping from the heavens.
Magic, sex, and power.
I moaned, as he arched against me. Hell, I wanted Drake to be mine… Then I gasped, staggering back a step, even though I still pinned him by a hand against the rock. If I hadn’t, he’d have tumbled to his knees. His eyes were glassy and unfocused.
The taste of Drake’s blood zinged through me, just as Drake buzzed and spider-webbed inside.
I was shocked by the craving to kiss him…or say sorry for biting him, at least…but I couldn’t forget that he was the one who’d hunted Rebel and me. It couldn’t matter what the powers inside me wanted. I forced myself to lick my tongue along the crimson still staining my lips and canines. “Do I look like a lamb, bitch?”
Drake blinked, before his gaze cleared. “I apologize for the mistake. I’d hoped that you wouldn’t become a greater monster, but here with us I fear you will.”
I flinched, snatching my hand away from him.
Buried in Angel World — this mountain caught in its own reality away from the humans — primal forces had sung to the newly woken bitches inside me. I shivered at the thought of what stirred.
Drake furled away his wings, before forcing himself to stand straight as if on parade. “Now, I’m to play Truth or Dare, am I not?”
I shook my head to clear it, and feathers rustled and settled inside, dissatisfied.
I wasn’t bonded to Drake; I was bonded to Rebel, my Irish punk angel. And Drake was Rebel’s jailer.
“Right, newbie, so the player chooses and no backing out.” My grin was tight. “And I choose Truth.”
Drake’s piercing gaze made me shrink back. “This is a dangerous game.”
“Truth: why won’t my mum see me? Why has she stuck me with you as a lame-arsed guard, playing in these dungeon labyrinths?”
“That’s two questions.”
“Your mother: The Matriarch… Queen Miniel …” He edged away from me. His feet splashed in the puddles, as he sidled towards the tunnel. His fingers fluttered in the air, like he could create the answers there. “The Matriarch hasn’t told me why she’s given me — and your toy, of course — to your use. I shall ask her again to see you.”
I didn’t understand the flash of fear but I also didn’t miss the again.
Then Drake had dived into the tunnel, and there was nothing but the soft pink of the soles of his feet.
I snarled, squirming after him and elbowing through the grime.
My dress snagged on the rock — rip — there went the shoulder. The flaps, like mouths, gaped and flapped.
I gasped against the rotten egg stink, hauling myself through the murk, after the scitter scatter of Drake and the flame of his wings ahead.
Silence.
Nothing in the dark, only my own panted breath.
I struggled across the rock that grazed my arms, kicking with my legs like I was swimming.
Until suddenly, I was falling.
Hell, hell, hell…
What a way to be wiped out, wiggling out of a tunnel, only to fall to my death in an angel’s dungeon…
Small but surprisingly strong arms around my waist, curls brushing across my cheek, and a blinding blast of violet.
Drake caught me from my tumble into the deep stalagmite cavern, even though his damaged wings trembled with the effort — and no, I wasn’t icy-balled with guilt, just frost tingled.
Drake’s wings sparked, before like the turning on of Christmas lights, fireflies across the chamber lit in flickering waves. Then I caught my first glimpse of our prey: the point of the hunt.
Our prize.
A snow-white wave of hair, elfin face, and deep violet eyes.
My toy, gifted by the Matriarch, peeked out at us from the other side of the frothing mouth of a waterfall, which foamed down the cavern.
Rebel Angels: The Complete Series Page 28