A sudden hush.
My arms shook, as I held aloft the blood.
Then there was a wild scramble as the Broken rushed towards the wall beneath the ledge.
Except, the vampires had listened just as intently and the bastards already had wings.
Hell, hell, hell…
I cowered back, clutching the bowl of blood to my chest like it was a baby before the onslaught of vampires.
28
Red — like the ocher staining my palms from the walls of the echoing Hollow, the scarlet of the Broken’s trousers who scrambled below me, and the blood in the bowl clasped to my chest — it caught and lifted me.
Nothing but blood-red wool, whilst pressed to the chest of one vampire, I tumbled off the ledge and through the gray-winged tornado of an army of vampires.
Black claws sliced my hip; heavy wings beat against my back.
When blood slopped down the front of my dress, I hissed. I’d already been shanked once; I might be the savior but I wasn’t a saint. And bleeding out the good stuff was a onetime only deal.
Ash’s arms tightened around me, as he ducked and swooped. He dodged the vampires through the gloomy cavern, below the shafts.
When I craned my neck, I could see the stars.
“Stealthy?” Ash snorted. “There are stealthier cave trolls. What was the Lion King moment back there?”
“Just land this bitch.” Another congealed slosh of blood sticky down my dress. “This Blood Princess has an epic “Circle of Life” moment to kill.”
Ash swung us to the side, as we were slammed by two vampires in motorbike leathers. He gritted his teeth, before he stilled, pulling his wings up: a ballet-like pose.
The Motorbike Brothers slashed Ash’s back, and his mouth tightened. Then we were falling straight-down between the converging swarm of gray, caught only by the smallest beats of Ash’s wings.
Ash had skills.
He landed us circus entertainer-like in the center of the mass of Broken.
I smiled. “They were some crazy stunts. Your flying is beautiful, bro.”
Ash caught the bowl from my hands. “When you fly for the first time? That’s beautiful.”
He soared over the Broken, holding out the bowl to their outstretched hands.
Mesmerized, the vampires hesitated above our heads, as the Broken pressed their bloody fingers to each other’s shoulder blades with excited, ecstatic whispers.
A drum of feet on the dirt floor followed by a wail of joy.
The Broken parted, backing away with respectful steps.
Gwyn stood with his back to me; the stumps on his shoulders had sprouted blood-red feathers that exploded even as I watched into a pair of magnificent wings.
The wings flamed, streaked darker ruby on their edges and tips, larger than other angel wings. The feathers ruffled, as Gwyn felt them, before he glanced over his shoulder at me. His cheeks were stained with tears.
I realized just how long he’d gone without feeling wings on his back. That something stolen was being returned.
Then in a flurry of flaming scarlet, wings burst out on the backs of the Broken across the Hollow like flowers awakening in a blaze of spring.
I stumbled back, only for Rebel’s arm to wind around my waist. His chin rested on my shoulder.
Wonder, tinged with a shamed sadness, brushed against me through the bond.
I curled my fingers over Rebel’s at my waist; even though I could grow new wings, I couldn’t fix his broken one.
Life was a cruel bitch.
When like a storm darkening above, the vampires tornado-twisted lower, I thrilled with sparks on my finger-tips to firebolt the bastards from the sky in defense of…
The new species that I’d birthed.
But the vampires only pulled back in chaos to dive out of the Hollow.
Rebel breathed, “Holy Mary, am I after being as mad as a box of frogs for real?”
Red — like drying blood — the Brokens’ eyes blazed flare stars.
I shuddered. “When a bitch gods-out, she makes one freaky arsed angel.”
Gwyn and Dillon, the true Pied Pipers, led the kids past Harahel, who waved across at me, whilst he dodged from one Imperfect to another, and down the center of the Broken. They crouched in front of each kid, daubing my blood onto their stumps.
…Two twins with black mops of hair, who’d hugged each other desperately as they’d been led to their Initiation…
Two brothers who I’d failed to save. But now Gwyn anointed their backs.
As the twins hugged each other once more, where their sweet wings had been chopped off by the guillotine, new wings bloomed.
I didn’t notice Haman’s head resting on my chest and his own tears wetting my dress, until Rebel petted his head.
I’d forgotten that I wasn’t the only one to feel guilty.
Silence.
The Broken swung towards me, dropping to their knees. My pulse pounded, as they waited.
Yet inside, violet and black surged to rush forward and claim this new-born power: A slave army in need of a leader.
I stumbled away from Rebel and Haman, wrapping my arms around myself in the battle not to speak as I rested my hand on Gwyn’s bowed head.
These baby — Blood Angels — are for the gods. Who knew that you were all maternal?
Or that you’d turn Spartacus to Emperor?
They’re not slaves. I freed them from the ancient bitches inside me as well.
Maybe I’ve been blinded by the scarlet bling, but if they’re free, why are they kneeling?
Because they don’t get what I’ve done yet. But they will.
Without a private army, how will you fight your rebellion? With your kickass tits?
They are kickass.
But I’m not the Mage, and I’m not my mum.
Oh girl, you’ve no idea what you are.
I crouched in front of Gwyn, taking his hands in mine, before I lifted him to his feet.
At only a nod from me, Dillon was rising at his side, watching us both guardedly.
“You don’t bastard kneel for anyone because you’re Blood Angels.” I squeezed Gwyn’s hands. “A princess’ angels, so show respect for yourselves.”
Gwyn’s smile was radiant, before he hollered, “Stand up. You heard the princess.”
A flutter, shifting of feet, and the Broken were standing.
Bastard better.
Still holding onto Gwyn, I turned to face the circle of Broken. Their expressions were nervous, but they didn’t lower their gazes.
“Here’s the deal: The Legion don’t own your arses anymore. You’re in charge of yourselves, and it’ll be difficult. You’ll be hunted.” A murmuring. The kids sniffled, curling around each other. “But life’s not fair. Suck it up and deal with it. Your choices were stolen, like your wings and your families.” When I swung Gwyn’s arm up, his fingers entwined with mine, he glanced at me, startled. “First choice? Gwyn as father of your people.”
Gwyn wrenched away his hand. “We’re not people, see, and I can’t be a son, let alone a father.”
I gripped him by his shoulders. “To hell with that. You’re real angels. Does Gwyn get the vote?”
The stamping of feet and beating of new wings.
I grinned, “Congratulations, you’re a father.”
Gwyn stroked his fingers through Dillon’s ruby feathers; Dillon shuddered, tipping back his head. “Tidy.” He stepped further into the ring of Broken. His face was scrunched in thought. “Second choice? We’re not Broken anymore, but born again as Blood Angels, birthed by the princess.”
A storm of stomping and flapping. It echoed through the Hollow.
Congratulations, I was a mother.
Gwyn nodded, before his shoulders straightened. The flares deep in his eyes raged higher. “I’ll lead us to save our Broken brothers.”
A rebellion?
I’d only thought about Angel HQ. Rebel had told me that he hadn’t grown up here, however, and I k
new angels and vampires lived around the world.
How many more Broken were enslaved? And how could I fight to save a world, whilst a people suffered?
The bowl, empty now apart from a scarlet gilding, was held up beneath me.
I glanced down at Ash and Rebel, who’d knelt in front of me, each grasping one side of the bowl.
“I said no bastard kneeling,” I muttered, pulling my hand through my hair.
“Do we look like Blood Angels?” Ash smirked.
“I told you that I’d never kneel by order,” Rebel’s voice shook; his collar was dark against the pale of his neck. “This is me, willingly at your feet.”
My eyes widened. When I gently kissed Rebel, sparks jumped between us.
…Hurt me, kiss me, burn me…
Rebel didn’t pull away, even as his lips blistered. It was me who leapt back, pressing my fingertips against the flames.
Rebel’s look was soft, sad, and understanding. “Take it easy, Feathers, you can’t help who you are. Not in this poisoned place.”
My gaze was determined. “Then blood me up. The Bitch of Utopia is busting out of her cage.”
Ash and Rebel nodded at each other. Then they scraped over the bottom of the bowl. They tore back my slashed dress, before their fingers trailed over my shoulder blades, one each. Finally, they stepped back.
It wasn’t working.
My mouth dry, I stared at the ground.
Those hysteria giggles were working their way up my throat again; I clamped my lips together to hold them inside.
I hadn’t craved wings before but if I was the only one left out of this bonding, then it’d be a replay of every other time that I’d been labeled freak. Able to grant wings to others, but wingless myself.
Suddenly, there was a tingle on my left shoulder blade and then on my right.
I held my breath, shivering, as I rode the electric waves that rippled under the taut skin of my back. Bucking forwards, wings erupted from my back in a single burst.
I choked on the — hell, blood magic — veiling me. Finally, I staggered upright under an unexpected weight.
And they were there: wings.
How did I even move them?
As soon as I thought it, however, my wings folded round instinctively like a limb.
I gasped.
Deep violet mixed with black feathers. Wing tips that pulsed obsidian. I stroked a silky feather and arched at the touch.
My wings were violet and black, like my eyes.
When I snatched off my sunglasses, I stamped down on the panic attack, shame, and then a surge of rage that I’d hidden my eyes for so long. Hidden myself, just like the Broken down in this Hollow.
Half vampire and half angel: a monster.
And I’d own it.
When Ash caressed his fingers along my black wingtip, and Rebel traced his thumb under my violet eye, I almost had that big ‘O’ moment right there.
It would’ve given my Blood Angels a legendary first story.
As I stood in the shadows with my new wings, and for the first time without anything hiding my true eyes, I got that the Blood Angels hadn’t knelt because they belonged to me but because we all belonged to each other: Addict, Seducer, Imperfect, the freed…monster.
And now it was time to fly away from perfection. Above it.
Because I was the rebel princess.
I nodded to Gwyn, and he darted after me towards the stairs and Barakiel.
I’d abandoned Drake: it hurt because I could feel the tug towards him and his pain. But I could keep my promise to protect the Lightning Angel.
I drew the blanket off Barakiel. He lay, drained and unmoving, with his spindly arms limp at his sides. My own wings fluttered at the sight of his bound wings. I bent over, ripping off the leather and hurling it against the wall. His wings lay in mangled ruin: broken, bent, and plucked.
Gwyn’s gaze shot to mine. “Not to worry. We’ll look after him fine, the same as the other Imperfects. They’ll have to vote themselves a new name as well, isn’t it?”
I smiled. “Their choice, bro.”
Small as he was, Gwyn lifted Barakiel like he was a kid, after all, he didn’t weigh more than one. Then Gwyn gave his wings an experimental flap.
All around the Hollow, Broken were pairing up with Imperfects like partners at a dance club.
Ash had shrugged off his jacket, before handing it to Harahel. He’d slipped his strong arms around Harahel’s shoulders, and Harahel’s brunet curls rested on his shoulders.
In the middle, Rebel stood with his hands in his pockets, shuffling from foot to foot.
Alone.
My bondage punk who couldn’t find a date but was as beautiful as a god.
Or monster.
I caught Rebel around the waist, spinning him. He laughed, before shuddering, as our wings wrapped around each other more intimate than any kiss.
“If we rise out of Angel World and back to the human,” I murmured, “eventually, you’ll Fall.”
Rebel shook his head. “I was an idiot to fear the dark when the true monsters sun themselves here in the light. And your Blood Angels? They’re new. Who knows if they’ll even Fall? If they do, they have us to bleeding rescue them.”
He peeked at me, before pressing one earbud from my sister’s iPod into my ear, and the other into his own.
Around us, Blood Angels and their partners rose towards the shafts and the star shimmering sky: crimson bleeding into violet.
Rising towards freedom.
I laughed: bubbling bliss swept away all doubts.
We’d bastard done it. We’d escaped Angel World.
Haman brushed against my shoulder, before grinning at Rebel and diving up towards the moon’s light.
Rebel nodded after his brother, and I gripped him tighter. When I beat my wings, it was like I’d always had them but they’d been stolen from me.
And now I’d taken them back.
Eels’ grungy “Novocaine for the Soul” wove its spell through the iPod, and Rebel and I held onto each other, soaring up through the Hollow towards the shafts and the night-time sky. I shook, lost in the beat of my wings, Rebel’s intense gaze into my eyes without the shield of my sunglasses, and the dark anthem for the outcast misfits.
Yeah, we were monsters.
And it bitching rocked.
Suddenly, there was a pull, far below: melancholy and loss. It lassoed me through my mind.
I hesitated.
“My daughter, why do you abandon me?” The Matriarch’s sorrowful voice echoed telepathically. “Look at your splendor! Together we shall rule as wonders. You may fashion all worlds to your liking, and then they shall tremble at the beat of your wings.”
Below, the Matriarch, whose long hair and dress were stained crimson, stretched out her hands, offering her toxic love.
And the world.
Lurid, flashing images forced themselves on a white-hot rainbow arcing from the Matriarch’s brain and into my own.
I was dictator: human, angel, supernatural and Fallen alike knelt for me.
I swayed, sweating, as Rebel hollered at me, alarmed. Mesmerized by the illusion, I craved to claim that future.
I blinked against the haze. Then I plummeted towards the Matriarch’s poisonous embrace: the Blood Princess falling into the arms of a blood-soaked queen.
29
Abandoned amongst the humans as a baby on a gravestone with nothing but a feather in my tiny hand, for twenty-one years my reality had been fighting to survive Hackney’s shanks, sex, and pain.
My geek supernatural games had been my escape. But I wasn’t playing anymore.
I was a princess. Yet what did that make me?
A Warrior? Rebel? Mother?
Monster?
Or no different to the Matriarch?
My eyelashes fluttered against the mists milking my vision, as I tumbled towards the Matriarch, away from the shafts through the roof of the burnt orange Hollow.
Someone holler
ed, their eyes blown wide with panic, but their name was lost beneath the flickering movie-show blast of triumph, bowed heads, bones and feathers and blood…
I panted, whining.
Then I shrieked.
That — someone — who was clinging around my middle, whilst I dived, had sunk his blunt teeth into my neck. The bright pain shocked me back into myself, breaking me free of the rainbow arc.
Free of the Matriarch.
Wisps of intoxicating myrrh lashed from the arc to entangle me again, but I shook my head, focusing on that someone: Rebel.
Rebel licked the red from his lips and then the snaking stream down my throat. “Belt me one when we’re out of here, Feathers, but I wasn’t stealing a taste. You wouldn’t wake up. And that’s the Matriarch’s power to call to you and corrupt your desire.”
“Psycho queen and siren.” I clasped Rebel closer. He mouthed at the pouch around my neck that held my sister’s necklace, before nudging it with his nose. “I get it, bro, enough with the charades.”
The Matriarch had shown me power, but my true love was held in that pouch: the sister who I’d adopted.
I had a chance to find her and the other disappeared kids of Hackney, whether they were with the vampires, or no longer human.
The Matriarch stamped her stiletto and howled: a Valkyries’ wet dream in blood-splattered chic.
I smirked down at her, whilst soaring higher. “Like mother, like daughter. You wanted me to rule with love? Then here’s a taste of abandonment, bitch.”
Rebel stiffened. “How about not poking the powerful Glory seeing as she could fly up and—”
I frowned. “Then why the hell isn’t she?”
Haman: his small scarlet wings soared past my shoulder. His eyes were glazed. Then he dived towards the Matriarch’s welcoming arms.
The Matriarch’s lips twisted — bitter and knowing — as she met my gaze.
Checkmate.
I’d thought that all my pieces were safe; I’d been bastard wrong.
“Haman,” Rebel hollered, squirming in my clasp. “Jesus, will you listen to me, brother?”
Rebel Angels: The Complete Series Page 51