I caught my boot on a goat skin rug, and the Matriarch’s cold fingers caught my wrist before I could trip.
“Cheers.” I shrugged out of her grip. “When are we slaying the Minotaur because that bitch has it coming?”
I trembled with fury that Drake had tricked me up to Angel World, leading me to feel like I’d lost my sister all over again. Even though it’d been his job to persuade me to leave earth, using my sister had been cruel. I’d known that Drake had been a calculating and deadly Commander, but maybe over the last weeks that we’d played together, I’d allowed myself to forget it...and that was even more dangerous than Drake.
The Matriarch laughed: a dark Tinkerbelle.
I cringed.
“Drake’s not the monster, baby bird.” She pressed against me. “He’s the damsel, tied up for us dragons to gobble up. My Wing is yours to play with or punish, indeed he has been since you arrived. Do you think that I’d entrust my precious to anyone less?”
I gaped. “The Commander is your Wing?”
And you’re the monster that he serves?
Hell, why did a surge of protectiveness flood through me that almost swept away my anger at Drake, just as fear of the Matriarch seeped in? I’d seen every day how Drake’s Glory hurt him, and I’d raged against her…and now I knew that it was the Matriarch.
I hadn’t realized that I’d been backing away, until I hit the wall.
Crunch.
I grimaced and shifted.
Crunch.
The emerald metallic wall, striped in blue and red, fluttered in the light as if alive.
I pushed my arse against it again.
Crunch.
The Matriarch eased away from me. “Rainbow beetles. Dead? Their casings are mine. A perfect beauty. Alive? Their troops swarm our walls in glory to my tune.”
Dead bastard beetles?
I lunged away from the wall, puking onto the goat skin rug like an offering.
I clutched my guts, sweating.
Yeah, too many chocolates.
“Sorry…” I waved at the mess on the rug.
Princess? Dragon? Who was I kidding?
The Matriarch scrutinized me like I was the beetle. “By my wing, you’ll become mine again, just as Drake is my pretty boy. Then you’ll see that there’s only perfection in the cycle of life and death.”
I wiped my hand across the back of my mouth, before pushing myself up onto shaky legs. “Let’s focus on the life.”
“And life is dark amusement.” When the Matriarch brushed her knuckles down my cheek, I was caught between recoiling and leaning into the touch. I huffed with frustration. “A show put on for me alone. And now? For you. Even the war is a dance; every battle is a step. Do you know my Angelic Power?”
Psycho freakery?
She leaned closer. “I corrupt love,” she whispered. “I poison it: pain with pleasure, obsession with adoration. I control with love. I rule with it.” I shuddered; her lips were against mine. She dragged me by the elbow into the next cave, which was lined with oak chests. Her diamond stilettos clacked. “And now, my daughter, so do you.”
My eyes widened.
Drake: my pressie for the night.
I remembered how Drake — our enemy — had hunted Rebel and me in Hackney Cemetery.
How he’d tormented Rebel, kissing his wings and touching the hardness in his bondage trousers.
How he’d pressed the base of Rebel’s neck until he’d screamed.
Then how he’d wept for Rebel.
I shook my head; I also hadn’t forgotten Drake’s predatory smile.
Drake had lied about my missing sister. Tempted me here to Angel World with false promises. Dared me to expose a truth about my dad, for which I couldn’t help hating myself.
And wasn’t that screwed up?
Worse? Drake had done it, just when I’d allowed myself to believe that maybe he had my back and could be fam.
But Drake wasn’t smiling now.
Like the rainbow beetles, his wings were stretched out and pinned either side by steel pitons hammered through their tips into the wall. I winced. Of course, the Commander had been stripped of more than his title, and now was naked. Tear tracks stained his face, and his curls covered his eyes.
The candy-floss of his blood buzzed through me, even over the mask of the myrrh. I bounced on my tiptoes; my tongue swiped at my lips.
Damsel and the dragon…?
I craved to sink in my teeth and devour the beautiful bastard, almost as much as something inside begged me to save him… Yet how could I escape this mountainous world without wings?
Even though I shook, remembering the lash marks on Drake’s creamy back, as well as the times that he’d limped to my room with multi-colored bruises, burns, and broken bones. How I’d held him quietly in my nest, stroking his curls. Although, we never spoke about it afterwards… Yet, he still sought out my comfort every time.
Pretending — everything a mask.
A game.
And the Matriarch was Queen of the Circus.
Then I noticed the leather straps that wound around the cave roof, which held Drake suspended on tiptoe, just as leather straps bound Rebel’s left wing down in his cell, breaking it… Drake was Rebel’s jailer, just as he’d been our hunter. Was it truly wrong to give him a taste of everything that Rebel had suffered…and was suffering now? After all, payback was a bitch.
My gaze hardened. “Pain with pleasure, yeah?”
When I traced my hand down Drake’s chest, his head jerked up at the touch. There was a flash of devastated humiliation before he turned away. I hurriedly withdrew my hand.
“Now, now, naughty Wing.” The Matriarch gripped Drake’s chin so hard that her long violet nails sliced crescents into his skin, as she twisted his head back. “Look at her.”
Frankincense battled with waves of myrrh.
“You’re mine, remember?” I stroked Drake’s curl behind his ear with mock tenderness, mimicking the touch that we never mentioned in the silence of my room; I didn’t miss his quickly hidden hurt. “If you’re in the game, the loser gets ganked.”
Drake shuddered, before he lifted his gaze to mine. His eyes sparked with such intense hatred that I shrank back.
I’d never meant to make him look at me like that.
Slap — the Matriarch’s scarlet handprint marked Drake’s cheek.
He breathed hard through his nose but he didn’t struggle.
“Boy, we need to do something about your rebellion.” The Matriarch burrowed her nails deeper, and Drake writhed in his bonds. I battled not to lick up the trails of sweetness dribbling down his chin. “My daughter may make use of you, pleasure to your pain. That’s what you’re for, pretty Wing. To teach my daughter to let out her inner Glory.”
The dominant black inside rose up, gnashing its fangs to transform Drake’s hatred to humiliation, and then to tears. To break him, like he’d broken Rebel.
I touched the pouch at my neck.
To hurt him, like he’d hurt me.
Was this the true face of Sleeping Beauty awoken?
“Can’t you take your licks?” When I pressed on Drake’s pinned wing tip, he moaned. “My turn. And I want truth. Don’t you remember offering me your arse?”
“You would play now?” Drake demanded.
“Have we ever stopped?”
Drake’s shoulders slumped. “It is noble of you to force me to speak my place. I am yours, if you wish to have me, and the Matriarch allows.”
I flushed; hell, I’d wanted him to be admit that he’d been willing…and wanted me, at least in the same confusing way that I wanted him. But not to force him into further submission. “I wasn’t—”
“I warned you, princess, that our world may not be as you hoped.” Drake’s scrutiny was assessing. “Is this truly the ruler that you wish to become?”
“A daughter flies in the shadow of her mother, even as mine will now learn. Or else, she falls from the sky.” The Matriarch knelt do
wn to a chest that was engraved with Merlins on each of its sides and lifted out a steel clamp. Then she sidled to Drake, who flinched back, his gaze locked on the wicked toy. “The question is: what type of ruler do I wish her to become?”
She opened the clamp and bit its cruel teeth into Drake’s exposed right wing, and he howled.
The Matriarch draped her arms around Drake’s neck and snogged him, swallowing the howl and feeding off the pain as if it was nectar. Then she drew back, lifting the chest towards me. “Show him who has the power. The woman that you have become at my side. Show him what it means to play the trickster with a princess.”
I gingerly picked up a crocodile clamp, opening and closing the teeth. Then I caressed my hand up and down the beautiful taut line of Drake’s left wing.
It looked agonizing, quivering at such tension.
The violet rapture sang with pleasure: my angelic side thrummed with excitement, even as I fought to stop it…the angel princess that delighted in punishing Drake.
“Where to start…?” I hesitated, before remembering Rebel’s bent wing. How he was unable to fly properly because of Drake. “Here.”
I bit the toy hard into sensitive flesh.
Drake yowled, tossing his head against the pain.
I was lifted in a heady blur that cottonwooled my mind.
Corrupt, poison, control…
Rule with love.
I wasn’t in charge of my own mind anymore.
I pressed clamp after clamp down Drake’s left wing, as intent on the task as a surgeon. I only stopped when I reached the quivering tip. Then I stood back to admire my sculpture.
My dark amusement.
Except, then Drake’s wails broke through the black waves clouding my mind; I saw his broken body, hanging limp in his bondage.
How had I lost control to the Queen of Corrupted Love?
I blinked, rocking back on my heels. My vision blurred.
I never wanted to be that princess…woman…again.
“Doesn’t he look beautiful suffering? And you, I see, beautiful inflicting it.” I flinched, as the Matriarch flung down the chest — clatter. When she sidled closer, her long hair swished against the floor. “We must play with pain together often.”
What would she do if I puked all over her this time?
Still, Commander Drake had disrespected by playing the Loki, so the sorry-face wasn’t pouting, until the Matriarch plucked one of his bleeding feathers and braided it into my hair.
“Now the Wing is ours to share,” the Matriarch announced. I jolted at the touch of the feather at my cheek, as she brushed the braid behind my ear in the same way that I’d tucked Drake’s curl behind his. “I always love to watch him weeping on his knees for your little Addict. I don’t know who loathes it more, and the pain is delicious. You’ll soar to the heavens with me, baby bird.”
I caught Drake’s gaze: he was…lost.
And I’d done that.
All I wanted was to take away his pain…but I’d been the one to hurt him.
Rebel and Ash had once knelt, broken and bleeding with mutilated wings at the feet of a fanatic, and I’d been the bitch to rescue them. I’d burned the bastard for touching what was mine. But how was I any different?
I staggered away, slamming against the wall so hard that I winced. I opened my mouth to tell my mum where to stick it, but Drake stared at me, shaking his head frantically.
I closed my mouth with a snap.
Rule with love? Corrupted, poisoned, and controlling…
In London, we called that hate.
What the hell was I doing?
It’d take more than one kinky session to become the ruler that the Matriarch wanted. I’d never be anyone’s shadow. But a fall from the sky would kill me.
The Matriarch grasped Drake’s hair. “It seems to hunt an Addict, you become an Addict. So much training forgotten. Why do you move, when your queen doesn’t wish it?”
She ripped off the clamps, pulling out Drake’s feathers in clumps and shoving her hand over his mouth to stifle his shrieking. He struggled, before slumping with his head bowed. I cringed, shaking almost as much as he was.
The Matriarch tossed the bloodied clamps onto the floor, like an infestation of predator bugs. When she turned to me, she blinked; her ice mask back in place.
There was no way that she couldn’t read my expression, as I fidgeted from foot to foot.
“You’ll learn.” The Matriarch ducked under Drake’s wing to the back of the cave. “If Wings aren’t kept with a firm hand? You end up with creatures like the Fallen. Or your father. Monsters.” Her eyes flashed from the black like a snow tiger’s. I’d hated my dad for abandoning me and now I hated him even for creating me. Did my mum hate me too? “Don’t fear the dark, my daughter, because with me, you’ll soar in the light. You’re home now. You won’t ever be weak or alone again. You’re of royal blood; no one can change what courses inside. As long as you learn.”
Never weak or alone…?
I clenched my hands to stop their shaking. Because the Matriarch was singing my siren song.
She opened a chest, which rested along the length of the back wall, drawing out a huge sword with a hilt built out of violet feathers. The same sword that Drake had laid in fizzing fire over Rebel’s dad’s neck, before he’d sliced it down and executed him.
“Please…” Drake could barely raise his head. “My Flight…”
“My Flight,” the Matriarch amended, before holding out the feathered hilt to me. “And now yours.”
“I will not allow you to take the only thing I have left.” Drake’s slender throat worked with suppressed sobs. “I apologize for my disobedience. But allow me to retain my mother’s weapon. I swear—”
“You dare speak?” The Matriarch nudged the weapon at me again. “Take it.”
I glanced at Drake questioningly, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze. When I clasped the hilt, the surge of power hit me, electrifying me to the tips of my fingers.
I gasped, curling my toes.
“We fly the same path, but can you control yours? Are you a fighter, or feeble as the Wings? What use have I for a feeble daughter? Do you wish to discover what I do to the Imperfect?” The Matriarch raised her eyebrow.
“No one but I shall command Flight.” Drake’s eyes blazed.
Flight jumped in my hands. The hilt heated, searing my palms. I squealed, trying to drop the sword, but it stuck to my blistered palms before it swung.
I was thrown against the wall; my wrists were crushed. I yelped, struggling to control Drake’s weapon that’d been taken from him in the ultimate unmanning.
“Allow it, Hal-sword-feathery-arse. This is your new mistress. And if you don’t stop, I’ll bust your shank balls, you get me?” I growled.
The sword twirled me in a circle, like a freakshow Catherine wheel.
I hollered, collapsing to my knees.
White power soared through Flight: not out to an enemy but into me, holding back both violet and black, binding it with magic.
My mind was folding in on itself, snared by Flight.
I writhed, struggling to speak, but my lips wouldn’t move. I tried to reach out to my mum, but the Matriarch simply studied me as she had the beetles.
This was a game between Drake and me with only one winner. Except, Flight was Drake’s last link to his mum. Who could blame Drake for making sure that this time I lost?
My hands clutched the hilt, even as my skin peeled and reddened.
Then the blade tipped towards me.
I fought to force it away again, but slowly the blade pressed under my chin and pierced my throat.
5
The first time I’d smelled my own sizzling flesh had been at the tip of Rebel’s flaming sword.
The second time…?
My neck seared under the blistering fizz of Drake’s Flight.
Bitch could get a complex.
The blade sliced my throat; scarlet slicked my sweating skin. I staggered
back, tripping over the steel clamps like bloodied booby traps, skittering them across the stone floor of the Matriarch’s chamber into the Merlin chests.
Clink — clink — clink.
The Matriarch twirled a feather that was woven into her waterfall hair. She lounged in the gloom with a haughty boredom, as if a sword wasn’t battling to kill its new mistress: her daughter.
But then, the Matriarch had set up this contest.
My shoulders ached; my arms strained from forcing back the blade. Inside, violet and black clashed with smothering white. I licked my lips, forcing my charred fingers looser on the hot hilt.
Just one inch more, and I’d be a fine red mist.
I glanced up from the crackling blade and caught Drake’s eye.
Then I wished that I hadn’t.
Still pinned with his wings hammered into the wall, with his quivering arms suspended from the ceiling, Drake no longer slumped in his bondage. Instead, he could’ve been ruling atop the mountain of feathers with me, looking down on the valley of bones and the world that he’d subdued.
Painted with crimson, glorious in pain, awe-inspiring in righteousness.
I quailed, taking a step towards Drake, before slipping in a puddle of his candyfloss blood. Flight soared out of my hands, I stumbled forwards, catching myself around Drake’s neck, and frankincense tongued me.
I panted, hazy with agony, fear, and a desire that flushed me with guilt because…Drake was the enemy.
Wasn’t he?
Angel Blood: world’s best black-market aphrodisiac.
At last, Flight blasted back into my hand, like a question, and I screamed.
White-hot flames feathered out between both our guts, kissing along our arched bodies; we gasped in unison. Then Drake’s lips were against mine, as hot as Flight.
I jerked back, but Drake’s whisper stopped me, “Dare.”
His gaze was desperate, pleading.
Did I trust him?
Hell, I wasn’t a wallad.
But strung up and unweaponed, a bloke needed some respect.
I gave a curt nod.
Drake bit at my lip, pulling me closer, before he murmured, “Be still. I propose: seven days to become a different kind of monster princess, rather than slipping into the monstrous shadow of your mother. Or my Flight shall kill you.”
Rebel Angels: The Complete Series Page 31