Like he’d protected me.
I stumbled, fading the fire on my hands. Hell, I couldn’t do this. I craved to hold the three Drakes, stroking their injured wings and comforting them…not hurt them again.
Yet there were more ways to win than blood. Drake and I might be both coated in Rebel’s, but Drake had always been hurt more by tender touches than pain.
I hated the way that the clones cringed back from me, as I crouched over them. The true Drake, however, met my gaze, even if his breath hitched.
I reached out, stroking Drake One’s feathers from the shoulder to the wing tip; Drake shuddered as he too felt the echo of the sensation. I traced over Drake Three’s nipple; he panted, whining. Then I twisted.
All three Drakes arched.
Drake turned away his head. “I’m the real Drake,” he muttered. “You need not…”
I slipped my hand beneath his harem trousers to caress his inner thigh, as I continued to twist Drake Three’s nipple, and kissed Drake One’s wing tip.
Drake writhed, overloaded with sensation. “Enough. It’s me,” he murmured. “Don’t violate my shadows; they’re innocents.” He steeled himself, before raising shaking fingers to touch my hair. “I hid them from your mother; she believed that they could only appear in battle. Have me if you wish, but they’ve never… They don’t know what it is to be forced at the hands of a Glory. Do not steal that from them.”
I instantly pulled my hands away from them. How had the dominant bitch inside managed to escape: The Glory that these blokes feared and needed to hide from here on the island? No wonder they hated Angel World.
And me.
I shook, drawing back.
Drake wrenched on his clones. Finally, they merged into him. He fell back, closing his eyes. “Allow me to congratulate you on your win.”
I ran my fingers through his curls, which were stiff with Rebel’s blood. His eyes snapped open with shock.
Catcalls and jeers.
Drake flushed.
“Look at me.” I grabbed Drake’s chin; his eyes were wide and his pupils blown. “You have the only bitch in the castle; this is most bloke’s wet dream. What do those pricks have but a cold bed and their own hand? Let them watch because you’re the only one I see.”
Then I kissed him: desperate, hard, and exploding with frankincense stars.
Drake was real, beneath me, and mine.
“As you like.” Drake breathed in slowly, as if trying to breathe me in: to live on my scent alone. “It has always been as you like.”
He smiled, shy and uncertain.
My chest ached. I’d used Drake’s fondness but why hadn’t I seen that it was love, as fierce as Rebel’s or Ash’s? Just…different…because had anyone ever loved Drake before?
Did I truly love him now as he loved me?
Rahab’s clapping, followed by the sudden stamping of feet and beating of wings broke me out of my daze.
Drake tensed, his face becoming the rigid mask that I understood so much more now.
Lazarus rises! Rises! Rises! And we will rise!
I gritted my teeth, as the chant swelled around the Bailey, before dying down at last.
“Was I not right to trust in my royal guest? Like a good father, I knew you merely needed the correct push for the win. The motivation.” Rahab rose over the Bailey; his bow lips curled into a smile. “You are now an official apprentice in the Brotherhood. You may work to become a mage: my true child. Whereas my blood son…” His smile died an ugly death into a glare; Drake quailed. “Well, we all know that he’s not worthy.”
Smatters of laugher.
My fists clenched, as I fought not to unleash my fire on the smug bastards.
Rahab waved his hand. “The contest is over. Violet is entered into the Brotherhood, and Duma is humbled to Underserving.” His eyes sparked. “You’ve already trained to serve her mother, Duma, you should know how to satisfy her daughter.”
“I’ll satisfy myself by kicking your arse.” I launched myself up, but Drake snatched hold of my skirt, yanking me back down.
Drake shook his head. “Be silent. Now is the time to celebrate. Don’t you want to see your brother again at the Initiation Feast?”
My brother?
A bruised shoulder beneath golden sheets in the Through the Looking Glass room…
At last, I’d meet my magical monster brother at a feast in my honor. I’d know if he was safe.
I forced myself to give a careful nod. “I’m always down for partying hard.”
Rahab swooped towards Phoenix Hall on the edge of the castle. “Party and punishment. I promised both lover and brother remember? Consistency is the key: I shall never break a promise. Now, follow.”
In waves of gold and bronze, Rahab’s boys rose into the air after him, circling towards Phoenix Hall.
I offered my hand to Drake, pulling him to his feet. We both wore Rebel’s blood like second skins. Now scarlet painted, we flew after the tide of gold towards my reward, brother, and my punishment.
11
As a kid in the children’s home at night — alone — I’d weave tales of my birth brother: older, braver, and my protector.
I imagined that we’d been separated by mistake, but he was searching for me and would find me. Then I wouldn’t be the only freak with mismatched eyes anymore because he’d be the same as me, only he’d be able to stop the monsters creeping into my bed at night.
He’d save me.
Except, now my brother and I were the monsters, and I was the one who had to save my older brother: The Invisible Prince.
In fact, so invisible that as I squirmed on the turquoise bench at High Table, straining from my vantage point on the dais at the end of Phoenix Hall, I couldn’t even see him.
At least, I didn’t think so…
Yet would I even recognize him? My half-brother was nothing more to me than a flash of brunet hair and pale skin.
A stranger.
My claws shot out, screeching along the table top. Drake’s hand rested on my shoulder, before he leaned over to refill my gold tankard with mead.
I snorted: when I’d said partying hard, never in Medieval Ville had I thought that it’d be with mead.
Drake straightened, keeping his gaze averted from mine. His silk trousers had already been changed to silver: Undeserving. I itched to rip them off his slender thighs — not because of the 101 Dirty Reasons that’d be fun — but because he shouldn’t be reduced to the ranks of servant…because his dad had wanted to prove my worth before the Legion.
“Problem?” Rahab rapped his fingers on the table in imitation of my claws; I sharply retracted my talons. “Aren’t you enjoying your reward?”
“Because it’s never a problem to brutally flog someone’s fam.” I slammed my tankard against the table; the foam slopped out in a fizzing sea. “This is mutiny, bro”
“I believe that to be my line,” he replied dryly, sprawling back in the armchair at the head of the table, which was draped with a golden canopy.
Och perched next to me, clutching his tankard like his firstborn.
Guess that’s what a guilty conscience looked like. Except, it hadn’t stopped Och putting his back into swinging the cat o’nine tails.
I scanned the hall again, over the bowed heads of the apprentices on the lower trestle tables and the mages, rowdy and drunken, on the silk covered tables closer to us.
Cheers and whistles.
I pinked: the party was for me. I’d told Mischief that I’d never wanted power. But respect? Adulation? To fit in?
Yeah, I bastard thirsted for those.
Tapestries as rich as the table coverings hung on the stone walls, between the gold and green banners of the Legion: angels battled vampires, witches fell before mages, and in the most glorious shone the prophecy of the Rising…
I shivered, caught in the thrill.
Could it be real? Could I be the one who led the Brotherhood to that wondrous moment of victory: The Chosen who they’
d been waiting for?
Unexpectedly, music burst through the hall: the seductive spell of Katy Perry’s “Dark Horse”. I closed my eyes, snared in the song’s relentless, unstoppable black magic. Its chorus rose in brooding crescendos: magic as a weapon of love.
“Are you making a point?” I forced out, opening my eyes with difficulty against the force of the music.
Rahab blinked. “My tastes lean more towards Mozart than hip hop, but the mages discovered this music from their human Brothers. I’m not the Matriarch: indulging in humanity isn’t punished, as long as they don’t lose themselves in it.”
I caught Drake’s smirk, before he covered his mouth with his hand. “Your son wasn’t in charge of this playlist?”
Rahab’s gaze shifted to Drake. “And if he was?”
Drake’s expression instantly stilled. Yeah, I got the joke: I’d cast a love spell on him, and now he was screwed. There was something legendary about Drake pulling that kind of trick at my own celebratory feast to get back at me for winning, and no way was he being punished for it.
I grinned. “Then his choice of song doesn’t suck.”
This time, Drake didn’t hide his smile.
A whine, loud enough to startle me even over the icy rhythms of “Dark Horse”.
Startled, I caught a movement in the shadows at the back of the hall. Then the mages laughed again, and this time it had nothing to do with me and everything to do with humiliating the naked vampire, who they’d forced to all fours in the sole patch of shadow on the bare floor.
Ash wore the Compulsion Collar around his neck, and his chain had been wound around a table leg. Even though he was out of direct sunlight, the rays through the phoenix stained-glass in the arched windows must be giving him the mother of all migraines.
When a mage bent to pour a dribble of blood — not enough to do more than bank the fires of starvation — into a bowl on the floor, and Ash desperately lapped it up, I fought not to remember the way that I’d fed his sisters.
How I’d once had my own pets.
Sneering snickers.
I shrank back on the bench. Why had I even for a moment wanted to lead these pricks? What magic was woven into those tapestries?
When I glared at Rahab, he didn’t even try to hide the smug grin. “Feeling any…different?”
“I’ll be in the sharing mood, when you tell me where Rebel and Mischief are.”
Rahab sighed. “All this is in your honor, yet you worry about an Addict and an Underserving…?”
“Guess I’m a sentimental bitch.”
“Then I imagine I am too because they’re recovering in the Mirror Lodge.” Rahab tilted his head. “Do you not approve?”
“You’ve earned a Feathers Medal. You want your second…? Where’s my brother?”
“Patience,” Rahab tutted. “The show is about to begin.”
I stiffened. Why did I think that this wouldn’t be the rabbits out of a hat variety, unless it included cutting someone truly in half? “Patience is overrated, like shower sex, birthdays, power, dieting, perfection, money, parents—”
“I’m intrigued to discover what isn’t overrated in your world?”
“Fam: their loyalty, courage, and sacrifice. Love.”
Drake’s fingers ghosted across my shoulder again, grounding me down from the high. I gripped onto the edge of the table.
“You may not believe me, but I hold the same truth.” Tiny crinkles radiated around Rahab’s eyes, as he smiled. “My Legion, here and amongst the humans, are my fam. I prize the same values as you. Yet perhaps it’s merely hard for you to accept the authority of another? Remember, I understand; I seek to help bring you into our Brotherhood.”
If it hadn’t been for Drake’s touch on my shoulder — Rahab’s true son, who’d been cast out — I’d have believed Rahab.
How to Be a Cult Leader for Beginners. And I’d almost fallen for it.
My eyes narrowed. “Yeah, so let’s get with the bringing already.”
Rahab frowned, perplexed. “It’s not a celebration without a feast.”
As the music died, Drake slipped a golden platter in front of me, then a second before his dad. I groaned, sinking into the heady roasted aromas. Thick wedges of beef towered over flanks of venison and pheasant wings. I half-expected a wild boar to be stuffed at the head of the table next to a slaughtered swan.
A bitch from the streets of Hackney had never feasted Henry the Eighth style, and after a month on Dickensian gruel, my stomach grumbled.
This meat was going down.
I snatched up a leg of…something dead…and gnawed, ripping off the flesh, as the juices ran sticky down my chin. Rahab only grinned, whilst he nibbled delicately on a bread roll.
Hell, let him. This would be meaty heaven, if I had a pizza slice underneath it…
“You bastards don’t have to eat,” I accused between mouthfuls. “You get all your yummy nutrition from the sun. So, why do you act the Addicts and copy humans? After all, don’t you think that they’re worthless?”
“Not worthless.” Rahab ripped the roll in half, crumbling it between his fingers. “Many have magic. The rest? Must be reminded of their place.”
Suddenly, the mages beat their fists — bang, bang, bang — on the table. Then they cheered, as Kunel swept to his feet with a bow. When Kunel swaggered towards us, I slumped.
“Here comes the jester,” I muttered.
Rahab’s lips quirked. “One of those at this table is quite enough.”
Fair point.
“On this Initiation Feast, let us remember the story of the Legion of the Phoenix!” Kunel swung back to his audience, who shuffled in their seats in anticipation.
I rolled my eyes, shoveling in another mouthful of beef, before slurping on my mead. More fairy tales…
These angel mages were no different to the vampires, Blood Lovers, or kids in the children’s home. They ritualized fantasies to hide from the terror of the truth beneath.
Including the monster who was sitting in a golden chair like a benevolent god right here amongst them.
Kunel glanced over his shoulder at Rahab, who gestured for him to go on. When Kunel raised his hands, shadows slithered out of the tapestries, dancing across the hall.
I knew that there’d been something shady about those threads.
“Bastard,” I half-pushed off the bench.
“Only a tale for children,” Och muttered, settling his hand on my knee to keep me seated. “Do not show fear now, my Queen, Kunel would delight in that.” Why did he speak with more hushed reverence than the First Reformer ever had? Yet all I could imagine was the spray of blood across Rebel’s back, along with the swish of Och’s whip.
I shoved Och’s hand off my knee. “And you wouldn’t?”
Och’s expression darkened. “My brother is unable to walk, shuddering through the agonies of a whipping that I laid onto your boy. I do not delight in it, nor your fear. I simply do my duty, and if you’d done the same, neither of them would be suffering now. Nor would your brother be soon.”
My breath caught, even as Och leaned away from me again, as if he hadn’t been shanking me with each word.
Tears pricked my eyes.
What did being a rebel count for in a world ruled by the Code and strict ranks of Brotherhood? Wasn’t it easier to obey, do my duty, and be rewarded, than to risk punishment?
To become part of the fairy tale?
I battled to hide my vibrating fear, as the shadows grew into grotesque puppets: vampires, angels, and witches. Nightmarish, they waged silent battles above our heads, slithering cold trails across my exposed skin, as they slunk between their living audience.
The shadows inside me clamored, surging out in trailing fingers to join the fight. I hung between the two: the true puppet.
Kunel spun between the tables, weaving the shadow war. “In the name of the Brotherhood, there arose a great conflict. Witches and the Fallen became a plague. One angel with the most powerful mental
powers of them all arose…” A pure light shone on Rahab, as if he wasn’t already going for the Deity of the Year award. I swallowed my mouthful with difficulty; way to make a bitch lose her appetite. “And built the Brotherhood and Phoenix Code. Yet still the mages weren’t strong enough to rise…” Shadow angel mages soared from the tapestries. “So, the secret of resurrection was taken from the blood of one special angel, Phoenix, to raise an army of dead angels.”
I hurled down the venison leg that I’d been holding; a glob of fat splattered onto Rahab’s chin. He wiped it off with a thin finger.
Shadow angels rose — resurrected — but leashed behind the mages like fighting dogs: Phoenix slaves.
Phoenix had been my first kiss. The first vampire to try and either kill me or transform me into a Blood Lover. And when Rebel and I had been hunters, we’d killed him.
If Phoenix could resurrect himself, however, was he even dead?
It didn’t sound like his life before he’d Fallen — having the secret taken from him — would’ve led him into the Land of the Balanced, which explained our encounters. Because how had Rahab transferred Phoenix’s miracle blood to resurrect his angel slaves? With a little needle prick and this won’t hurt…? Yet Phoenix hadn’t changed his angel name, unlike every other vampire. Had he lost so much more than them, that he couldn’t bear to lose his name as well?
Kunel crouched down. “By my feathers, Phoenix was kidnapped from the Legion…”
Boos and hisses.
I huffed: I’d always hated pantomimes.
When Kunel cast a sly glance back at me, however, my guts churned. “Phoenix had already conceived a son with the Matriarch, however, who’d hoped to birth a talented daughter with his powers. And the son’s blood was just as potent at resurrection.”
My brother.
I hadn’t realized that I’d doubled over the table, until Drake’s arms were clasped around my neck; his curls swept across my face, as his cheek brushed against mine.
They’d been…bleeding…my brother to steal his blood to raise their slave army.
My half-brother — the Invisible Prince — was Phoenix’s son.
Rebel Angels: The Complete Series Page 87