At that moment, I craved the flash of a long red army coat, scent of clove studded orange, and tumble of sable hair.
My Geek Fang: Ash.
But Ash, the vampire who’d had my back the same as Rebel, had been caught by Albino, the vampire bastard who owned Ash’s Seducer arse, after Ash had fought alongside Rebel to save me. Ash had taken a hell of a beating in the battle. And treason must’ve earned him more than a spanking.
How could any of Drake’s…distractions…force me to forget my lost fam? Or that I was a prisoner?
Yet hunt…
Both powers inside coiled because this is what I was, free and unleashed.
A monster.
Even if this was nothing but sport.
“Let me go,” I hissed, before glancing at the peaks of rock far below and correcting hurriedly, “and that doesn’t mean drop me, chuckles.”
Drake peered at the waterfall. “Patience, your little toy will wait.”
“Gwyn,” I gritted out, “his bastard name is Gwyn.”
Drake’s eyes narrowed. “Higher Levels do not address the Broken by names.”
“Pricks do not piss off princesses without a boot to the balls. Now put me down.”
“Dare,” his arms tightened enough that I struggled for breath. “My turn.”
“The other player,” I gasped, “doesn’t get to choose.”
“Lie.” He loosened his grip, but repeated, “Dare.”
“What do you want? Me to run around my mum’s throne room bare arsed?”
Drake smiled, before smothering it. “Ask the Queen who your father is.” I jolted, and my hands clenched to fists. Some bastard vampire who’d abandoned me as a kid, just like my mum? Hell, did I want to discover who he was? It wasn’t as if my reunion with my mum had been the hugs and tears sort. “No one’s ever dared to…”
Now, doesn’t that fill you with expectations of happy father’s days?
“Not even you?” I asked.
Drake looked away. “Especially not me. But she’ll never admit it. Even if we all guess.”
“And what do you deduce, Sherlock?”
His lips quirked. “That would spoil our game, would it not?”
I squealed, as we dropped in a sudden plummet to the cavern floor.
When Drake hurled me, tumbling arse over tit, I caught my knee and shoulder in a lightning hot jolt. I dragged myself up to see him flying through the fields of fireflies: they danced around him, caught in his whirlwind.
Then Drake swooped on Gwyn.
I was up and running, even as I heard Gwyn’s wail.
Gwyn was my toy: a slave by any other name is still a bitching slave. Like my pretty dresses (and even prettier cell), my mum had presented me with Gwyn like owning an angel — using an angel — was part of my new princess duties. Just another distraction, the same as the hunt.
Why did Drake want him?
I’d promised Gwyn that I’d find him first. That it was only a game. Because I was a huntress, there was no way that I’d lose.
I grabbed Drake by the neck, jerking him away from Gwyn, who was cowering behind the fizzing spray of the waterfall. I shivered, as my dress stuck to my back.
Gwyn stared up at me with large eyes. He smiled, tugging at his crimson trousers. “Princess,” he breathed, ducking his head, “I’m yours.”
“He’s mine,” Drake’s voice shook, as he wiped his damp curls from his eyes. “I won the hunt.”
Why did it matter so much to Drake? Why had he wanted Gwyn?
I held my hand out to Gwyn, lifting him to his feet. “But I’m the princess, bro, so it looks like I won.”
Drake’s gaze darkened.
I’d stolen Drake’s prize and humiliated him. And he was right: I was alone in Angel World, apart from him and Gwyn.
I was screwed.
Plus, there was still the dare…
If Drake set up a meeting with the Matriarch, I’d be forced to do the one thing certain to piss off an angel queen: ask about my vampire dad.
I’d taken on Drake, and I hadn’t won; I’d bastard lost.
We were playing a dangerous game.
2
I flung Gwyn onto the giant nest in the corner of the cave, which I’d been given as both bedroom and cell.
Gwyn fell with a startled yip amongst the feathers that floated like violet snow around him.
Princess and prisoner, I’d stood atop a mountain of feathers once, looking down at a valley of bones. And now? I saw from atop the mountain, ghost wings itching at my shoulder blades.
What was I?
I’d demanded the truth from Rebel once, but he’d bled only secrets and lies.
No wings or fangs, but I still had an angelic and vampiric heritage that had marked me freak for twenty-one years lived amongst humans.
A monster.
Was I shut away because the angels feared a monster princess?
Then I was back in the quiet warmth of my room. Glass crystals throbbed and vibrated with the beat of my pulse, lining the walls and lighting us in the bleed of their glow.
In the heart of Angel World, we were underground; plants tangled over the walls. Stone ledges jutted out, piled with suede bound cushions, and Welsh oak cupboards grew from niches. At the back, rose stalactite fangs; leather straps crisscrossed between them.
I didn’t need to be bondage kinky to figure out that they were for a bitch’s Wings: her blokes.
When I’d been hunted through Hackney by Drake, I’d taken the piss that he was a harem boy. Yet the women here called the men that they owned Wings.
Drake wouldn’t tell me the name of the Glory who owned him. But he’d called her a monster.
I dove more gently after Gwyn, trapping him underneath me in the mound of feathers. I already loved the sweet angel who served me but who I’d never see as my slave. Gwyn’s skin smelled fresh: morning after the rain. He squirmed. A flash of snowy hair and cheeky face. No wings, however, only stumps because the Broken were wingless.
When I trapped Gwyn between my knees, pressing on his ribs, he smiled but stilled. I licked across his nipple, teasing the small bud with my teeth, until he arched.
Then he giggled.
I huffed, as a feather tickled my nose: it reminded me of Drake. And that’ll kill the tingles between your legs.
Let me read your feathery ass some realness, Miss Huntress of cutie pie elves, what slays the tingles is getting slain.
Here in Angel World? Harem pants Commander will put you in your grave.
Drake can’t touch me, not while they’re on this screwed up princess gig, J.
One deluded cocktail served to the bitch in the princess mask.
I rolled my eyes.
‘J’ was the sassy bitch voice in my head. He’d been there ever since I could remember: both devil and angel rolled into one. Who the hell knew what he was, but he was as real as anything else in my messed-up life. Plus, even if I couldn’t touch him, he’d become as close as any lover.
Drake’s stepped-up these last weeks. Without him? I’d have been one crazy bitch.
You’re already in cuckoo land, girl.
You’re the one that raised me.
Then I should know. Listen, Drake’s playing a game.
Cool down, drama queen.
You need to fortify the walls about my fabulousness and make sure no one finds me.
Because a war’s coming.
If Drake discovers that I exist…? You’ll wish he’d only killed you.
I tensed, stroking down Gwyn’s arm. The glass shards on the walls pulsated.
In the oak cupboard, there was a pile of sixty-two feathers: one for each day that I’d been doing time in this gold cage. It was the only way that I’d been able to track my captivity.
Each day, I’d worked on building mazes in my mind around J, so that the angels wouldn’t find him.
What would happen if they did?
I’ve been putting in the downtime; I have skills.
You have crazy skills. But you can only trust Rebel, and his Irish arse is still trapped in a birdcage prison. Have you forgotten his pretty in punk deliciousness already, Violet-cakes?
Was that true concern in J’s voice? His anguish at Rebel’s captivity wound around my own.
Except, I hadn’t forgotten my angel Custodian. I could feel the bond between us, pulling at me. Pain, despair, and longing. It ghosted across my skin; whispered at night.
Did Rebel think of me too?
Yet he was also my betrayer.
I shook my head.
Leave, J. Cutie elf deliciousness needs my attention.
I caught Gwyn’s lower lip between my teeth, and he whimpered. When I wrenched his head back by his hair, he struggled but it was all for show. I let his lip go, grinning against his mouth and surging with vibrating excitement.
Instead of white hair, I saw flame red. Instead of crimson silk harem trousers, I saw scarlet leather bondage…
“Rebel,” I breathed.
“Your Broken.” Gwyn blinked at me, confused, his voice a lilting Welsh. “Your toy.”
I snogged Gwyn harder than I’d intended, before licking across the pale outline of his lips.
I was a princess, my angelic side hissed, swelling and submerging the vampiric, strengthened after all these weeks in their world, why shouldn’t I take this…toy?
Yet the black murmured, oily through the cracks: aren’t you the queen’s captive too?
A slave, Broken, toy…?
“Gwyn,” I replied, “my Gwyn.”
He smiled softly, “Your Gwyn.”
I yanked his head to the side. “I hunted you.”
Then I nipped at his shoulder, marking him.
“You saved me.” Gwyn melted into my hold, trusting in his submission.
The bloke was a wallad. When was I safe?
“You miss him.” Tentative, Gwyn rubbed his hand in circles on my lower back, as if the touch was forbidden. “This…Rebel…who we know as Zachriel, the one they keep in the dark? I hear stories about him, innit? When water’s taken to him… There was never nothing more awful than the Lowest Levels, see. An Addict can be a toy if—”
“I can’t even free myself.”
And what if he hates me now, after I abandoned him to the dark…?
All at once, the exhaustion of the hunt caught up with me.
A twinge shot electric-hot through my back, my feet ached in my leather boots, and my guts growled.
I pushed myself off Gwyn with a sigh. “Sorry, bro, stomach Hulk calling, and you don’t want to see him when he’s angry.”
I crawled over to a wooden platter that I knew Gwyn would’ve laid out on the ledge.
Angel World knew how to train their slaves.
I studied the pyramid of dark chocolate slices, breathing in the rich scent and soaring on the smoothness.
I’d have to chat to Drake about what five a day meant again. A bitch couldn’t live on chocolate alone, although I’d give it a hell of a try.
I popped in one slice and sucked, as the chocolate melted.
Gwyn waded through my feathery nest and knelt next to me, watching with avid interest, whilst I swallowed.
“Here,” I took another slice, before cupping the back of Gwyn’s head and tonguing at his lips, slipping the chocolate into his mouth.
I reckoned that he’d spit it out.
Human food? A weakness, when angels lived on sunlight alone.
Instead, Gwyn groaned at the sensation. His throat bobbed, as he swallowed, and his eyelids fluttered. “Lush,” he whispered. “It’s like…flying. Even though they took my wings, see?”
I froze. My skin static-tingled.
Angels had stolen my sweet Gwyn’s wings?
“I know some other bastard Fallen — vampire fanatics — who chopped off their followers’ wings.” My eyes blazed. “I burned the Pure. You get me, bro?”
Righteous flames surged through me, sizzling along my arms. I grinned, flexing my fingers; the sparks danced ice-cold on my palms.
Gwyn’s eyes widened. “There’s a fine sight! Would you burn those who chopped off my wings, Feathers?”
I hated the haunted hope in his desperate gaze, as he clutched his hands in his lap, wringing the baggy trousers. Just as I loved my intimate nickname Feathers on his lips.
The fire died.
I knelt back on my heels. “Pull back on the Guy Fawkes; I’m not a pyro. I only came here to find my sister.”
Jade: the teenage girl who I’d adopted as my sister from the streets. Who’d disappeared on the day that Rebel had broken into my life. Who Drake had threatened to kill and who he swore was somewhere here in Angel World, along with the other disappeared kids of Hackney.
The sister who I’d promised to save.
A flash of devastated disappointment, before Gwyn hurriedly glanced down at the chamber’s floor. His shoulders hunched. “Sorry, sorry, sorry, please don’t tell—”
I stroked his cheek, and he flinched.
He’d never flinched from me before.
I stiffened, but forced myself to nudge the platter towards him. “Eat. You’re one meal away from a Bob Geldof appeal, cave elf.”
Gwyn fidgeted. “I’m the Broken, we’re not allowed… It’s the way here in Eyrie.” He peeked up at me, as his hair cascaded over his eyes. “Snowdonia, isn’t it.”
The Welsh mountains… Although hidden from hikers by a mental magic that I hadn’t figured out yet.
Someone powerful was pulling the strings.
Gwyn sneaked a glance at the chocolate, and his tongue swiped across his lips.
I nodded. “Go for it.”
Gwyn snaked out his hand, and another chocolate disappeared into his mouth with the same sound as he’d made earlier when I’d been snogging him.
Playing at Eve now?
He’s starving, hooker, look how thin he is. You reckon that there’s light down in slave land?
Aren’t you just Miss Halo, even if you grind your hoochie ass on the poor and needy?
You can’t have Rebel, so it’s Build Yourself a New Human Addict Day?
Mind your own. I need—
The Broken to be yours. Someone else bound to you. Another problem to fix.
Because the big one…that you’re trapped here…is too dangerous to face.
Remember, you’ll have to finish whatever you start because that’s how the game is played, Feathery-puss.
Hissing in frustration, I pushed up onto my knees. When I swept the platter off the ledge, the chocolates scattered like dark tears across the cavern.
Gwyn jumped, but instead of shrinking back, leaned against me. “Drake told me that you were a chocoholic.” He peeped up at me, worriedly. “You’re not ill, are you?”
I bit back a laugh.
Chocoholic?
Only Rebel knew that. How had Drake discovered it?
Torture?
When I shuddered, the glass crystals thrummed.
Or had Rebel confessed, so that I’d have comforts? But why did Drake want me to have them? What was his game?
When Rebel had kidnapped me and held me prisoner, I’d been stripped naked, bound to a bed, and then had been threatened by his adopted family of witches. It’d been a freakshow of punk rebellion, giggles, and chains.
Here? I was a princess. A guest of my own mum. Showered in chocolates, glimmering dresses, and fake hunts to fill my days. But I was more a prisoner than I’d ever been shackled to Rebel’s bed.
The crystals slowed their beat, along with my heart. Gwyn’s fingers spectered across my hair.
A shaft of slanted sunlight streamed through a crack in the wall, refracted rainbow by the crystals; there was more than one way to feed a starved Broken.
What would Drake have done to Gwyn if he’d won him?
I twisted Gwyn, until the stump of his wing bathed in the stream of sun. He arched, gasping.
Rebel was down in the dark, whilst I played in the light.
&nbs
p; My eyes burned, but I blinked away the tears.
“Princess,” I glanced up at the deep voice, respectful and low from the doorway.
Another Broken, in matching crimson trousers and bare-chested, with a short afro and smooth dark skin that was patterned in livid welts, stooped in the doorway as if to hide his height. He cast an assessing gaze at Gwyn; it was protective, like I was the same fiend as whoever had purpled him in stripes.
Then again, I was, wasn’t I?
I didn’t miss the scowl, which the Broken quickly hid by ducking his head, at the way my hands rested on Gwyn’s shoulders.
It was dark, dangerous, and possessive.
Gwyn squirmed away from me. “Dillon, you mustn’t—”
“The Queen summons you,” Dillon announced.
I shoved myself up, stalking to Dillon. “Finally remembered that she has a daughter? Shame I don’t do summoned.”
Dillon blinked, before looking over my head at Gwyn, who simply shrugged. “The whole of Angel World—”
“She keeps me here like some grounded kid, and then it’s a formal call to Buckingham Palace? Get lost.”
I’d spent my life dreaming of the day I’d discover my mum.
But now…?
I shook, half enraged and half terrified. I didn’t know which was my vampiric, and which my angelic side, but both howled at the danger.
Because if I was a bastard, my mother was a bitch.
Regretting condemning the one punk you could trust to the dark?
The pretty boy betrayed me…and I’ll save him as soon as I can save myself.
In the game of Angels vs Vampires, we’ve all betrayed each other. But the bondage angel loves you.
And without Rebel…?
You won’t survive your mummy’s twisted sports.
Yeah, twisted and sports. Two words no one wants to hear together.
The Matriarch’s a skank set to lead you to hell, and I can’t follow you down that rosy path.
Can’t or won’t?
Both.
Don’t leave, J…
I’m inside you. Just don’t lose yourself.
This is my home now.
Then your home will kill you.
I flinched at both the fear and tremble of tears in J’s voice. Before Angel World, he’d always been my home. I wished that I’d reassured him that he still was.
Rebel Angels: The Complete Series Page 29