I was tripping on that drugged moment of elation and godlike power.
‘Go on,’ Bisi’s gaze was feverish as he whispered, like we were performing a holy ritual, ‘you need this. Take it.’
I pushed down harder.
My new power flowed through me in furious, hissing waves. It did need this: to control, consume, and kill.
But you don’t, Feathers-pie, and it’s time to put the tricks back into the box.
Ice-cold froze the fury; it cracked, and shattered, fragile as glass.
I quivered, throwing myself off Bisi.
His eyes were unfocused and confused. I wondered if he’d ever been the one under the knife before, his soul at another’s mercy. Whether that would now become his new addiction.
‘Where’s my sister?’ I demanded.
‘I didn’t touch her, I swear. I only made the deal with Toben. He said he’d step-up and deliver Jade this evening.’
I lurched backwards, the Zombie Slayer still clutched in my crimson hands. Then I stumbled up the stairs towards Jade.
College was finished; Jade knew to be back at this time.
I gripped the steel handrail, hauling myself up, but my feet were heavy and each step was torture. My back blazed. Blood dripped down to stain my jeans.
A clatter of footsteps, and a giggle of schoolgirls surrounded me, sucking on lollipops and filming me with their phones. I snarled at them, but they only tittered, waving their phones at me. I’d be plastered over social media at a press of their hyperactive thumbs.
Feathery-puss, welcome to Screwed City.
I slammed into the door of my apartment, hammering on the white wood — bang, bang, bang — leaving scarlet daubs, like a serial killer’s finger painting. No way could I fumble for my own key.
When Toben opened the door, and I tumbled inside — knifed, ashen, and grasping a bloody blade — he almost looked concerned.
Toben reached out to me: a toxic mix of gentle giant meets predator in designer trainers. ‘Hey, what’s going on, sweet thing?’
‘You turning slave trader, bastard.’
He shrugged. ‘Sometimes you’ve got to take the licks, and it was Jade or us. That little bitch isn’t even true fam.’
I bristled, barging past him through the narrow corridor and into Jade’s room.
It was empty.
I wandered into the black-painted bedroom, running my hand over the purple velvet curtains and throws. I plumped the skull embroidered cushions, which were heaped on the bed. I gazed around at the wilting flowers, with which Jade had decorated the walls one weekend, and the sad blinking of the Christmas lights that hung from the ceiling.
Yeah, Jade’s gang was emo.
I glared at Toben. ‘Where is she?’
‘How should I know? Now a man has food to sell and p’s to make.’
Because life is all about p’s — money — when you come from Utopia Estate.
Toben with his alpha prick and designer…everything…reckoned his drug money gave him the power. Except, there’s always someone further up the ladder. There was Bisi: top boy. Boss of the Estate.
When Toben strolled into the sitting room, snatching up a wad of cash to count from the neat piles on the tacky carpet, I stalked after him. Tasers, guns, and shanks lay on our sunken brown leather sofa as casual as guests.
‘I’m not going to stop asking.’
He continued to flip through the notes; I could see the numbers whirring through his mind. He was a bright bastard. It was why I fell for him.
I have a habit of falling for bastards. I’ve been trying to break it, but then they give me that look...
Yet in the light of day, I’d always kicked them out of bed in the morning. That was, before Toben, when I was trapped.
Because men were only good in fantasy.
When I hurled the Zombie Slayer onto the coffee table, it scattered the white and brown bags, scales and needles like a drug waterfall.
Toben’s lips thinned. ‘Stop playing, sweet thing.’
‘You sell my sister to pay off a debt, and now she’s missing? You can’t sweet thing out of this.’
He dropped the cash onto the sofa, before pressing me gently down next to it. His hard chest pinned me against the leather.
I gasped. My wound throbbed dully at the pressure. My vision greyed.
When I pushed at his shoulders, my hands trembled. After a moment, they fell back.
He stroked my cheek with his rough finger. ‘You need to go to hospital, sweet thing.’
I shook my head. ‘Jade—’
His lips stopped my words, as he tongued open my mouth.
You know what I said about Screwed City…?
And you know what you promised about only having to ask…?
It doesn’t work like a switch, on and off when you showboat your ass and need saving from Satan. If you tempt the devil, then you better be ready to battle the flames.
Toben wrenched back my head by the hair, feather-kissing up my throat.
A tear chased down my cheek, but I rested my neck on the leather, closing my eyes. I couldn’t feel my body.
Maybe this was death.
Maybe I didn’t care.
Then drowsily, I opened my eyes again.
A flash of red and black.
I forced my heavy eyelids to open further, before shock widened them.
Rebel lounged in the doorway, his arms crossed and pierced eyebrow raised. His lip was split bloody, but he didn’t need rescuing.
I did.
Yet ambling into a drug dealer’s den looking like a punk rocker with a flame for hair, was either brave or dim.
I was going with dim.
Toben was too lost in licking down my throat to notice the new bloke on his turf. I jerked away from the wet slurping of his tongue with my last burst of strength.
He gripped my chin. ‘You don’t say no to me, bitch. Or do you want me to sell you too?’
A roar of rage-shadowed punk, and Toben was tossed across the sitting room; he slammed into the striped wallpaper with a crack.
Rebel’s face was hard, cold, and suddenly ancient in a way so terrifying, I quailed.
How had I ever reckoned the bloke was innocent?
Toben hauled himself up, snatching a taser from the scattered weapons. ‘You come to my yard and play the big man?’ He wiped his hand across his nose, smearing the scarlet. ‘You’re going to get dashed.’
He charged the taser, and a blue flame leapt.
Rebel didn’t move. Yet he burned with a power that paled my fury to child’s play. Then he smiled: dark and terrible.
As if emerging from a black cocoon, he shed his leather jacket, and I gasped.
Violet wings unfolded in a glorious flutter of sparks. One swept upwards in a blazing arc, yet Rebel’s left wing was bent like it’d been broken. The feathers glowed, each one more beautiful than any fantasy I’d designed.
They sang to me in words I didn’t understand and of worlds I’d never imagined.
It was…awe-inspiring.
The Irish punk was a proper angel. I guess that made me a unicorn. And Toben no longer the alpha prick.
Toben dropped the taser, falling to his knees instead. He gibbered prayers like a rap song.
Rebel prowled closer. When he placed his hands on the sides of Toben’s head, hushing him softly, Toben quietened.
Toben held his breath, his eyes wide and dazed.
Rebel’s wings beat, just once. Their breath kissed my face.
Crack — Rebel twisted, breaking Toben’s neck.
Hell, hell, hell…
I tried to struggle away but I couldn’t move.
Rebel wiped his hands down his trousers and then hung his head for a moment, as if calming himself, before turning back to me. The glow in his wings faded. The same spark as I’d seen (and then doubted) in his eyes outside Spirit and Fire Gaming Company died. His wings folded close to his back like a bird’s at rest. ‘Bloody ape,’ his smile was tri
umphant. ‘Brilliant the way he fell on his knees like—’
‘I thought angels were good,’ I whispered.
Rebel frowned. ‘Righteous. It’s not the same thing.’
‘You’re a killer. That makes you the Big Bad, not the hero.’
He tilted his head. ‘Who said I was the hero?’
This isn’t the devil I’ve temped, J, this is an angel. What do I do?
You can’t let him know about me. If he finds out, then he’ll snap your neck, as quickly as he did your asshole boyfriend’s.
Why?
Because I’m special, of course. And so are you.
Rebel sauntered closer, peering down at the burgundy pooling from my back onto the sofa. He grimaced. ‘That’s a brutal wound. You’re dying.’
‘Angel and social inadequate.’
A flash of hurt, before he smothered it.
Why the hell did that boot me in the gut?
‘I’m taking you home,’ Rebel crouched down, winding his arm around my waist.
‘Heaven?’
This was it then. Game over. At least a demon wasn’t hoisting me downstairs to the stink of sulfur.
Rebel’s lips quirked. ‘Kingston upon Thames.’
‘No way, bro. I’m not swag to carry home all shiny.’
He sighed. ‘You’ll be my prisoner then.’
When he pressed into the base of my neck, I juddered with an electric jolt that shocked my shoulder blades. It overwhelmed me with an unexpected sense of violation.
See? All men are bastards. And angels are the worst.
I stared into Rebel’s eyes, which were blurred to indigo skies through the blur of my tears, as I slipped into the dark.
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Flying, fluttering, floating. Nothing to hold onto, only the threads of a vision: flaming wings and raging righteousness.
Angels were real. Rebel was a kidnapper. And I was lost in the black.
I flailed, battling to rise up to the light.
J, this is no time for the strong and silent act. I’ve been abducted and I can’t wake up.
Silence.
Alone, I stomped hard on the sickening terror rising in my gut.
I need you. I’m asking.
My own thoughts echoed deafening, now that the voice in my head had been silenced.
Help me, help me, help me…
My eyes opened. And I awoke from the dark…into the dark.
I gasped, shivering. Then I sniffed: spicy cinnamon spelled the air. Whatever I was stretched on, hugged me softly like a…bed?
I tried to sit up but I couldn’t. Something tight but caressing encircled my wrists and ankles. When I tugged at my arms experimentally, a chain clanked.
Kinky bastard angel.
I’d been spread-eagled to a bed by the punk who’d slaughtered Toben.
And I’d reckoned losing my job had been a screw up?
I sighed, booting my foot and clinking the chains.
I’d never played the damsel before and no way in any kinky angel’s dream was I playing it sacrificial now.
Yet it was there again: the slam — slam — slam of sweetness in line with my heartbeat. A rhythmic, tingling tide of sensation and taste. Sweet, coppery, and impossible to deny.
It was in me. For me. Rebel’s blood, I knew now. Familiar, I rode it.
Hell, it was my new addiction. And it told me that Rebel must be near.
Creak — a white ray of light bled in through the opened door, along with a burst of anarchic punk music: Angelic Upstarts’ “Teenage Warning”.
Then came a throaty giggle — but it wasn’t Rebel’s. Some bitch was out there with him.
Punk rebellion, giggles, and chains? It wasn’t as if I’d expected a freakshow like Rebel to kidnap regular style.
I blinked as the room awoke from the gloom in all its Tudor, oak panelled glory. When stone carvings of wolf heads snarled out of the ceiling’s corners, I flinched. The four-poster bed I was shackled to by suede lined gold cuffs had twisted front posts, intricate roses carved into the bedrails and frilly burgundy curtains: a princess’ wet dream.
Yet I was no captured princess; I was the beast.
I thumped my head back against a pile of scarlet rose embroidered pillows.
When the music died, Rebel slunk into my fancy prison cell. His studded leather once more hid his wings.
I screwed shut my eyes.
Rebel wanted a fairy tale? Then I’d play Sleeping Beauty, but he’d better hope he didn’t awake what was hidden, slithering inside me since my twenty-first, with a kiss.
Except, I hated the relief. It flooded me when I’d glimpsed Rebel’s familiar flame of hair and slouch around the door, his hands tucked into the pockets of his trousers.
I’d been caught in that shank-sharp line between craving my kidnapper, so I wouldn’t be abandoned, and terror at being powerless.
I don’t do powerless, not even for angels, the kinky sort who were stroking the backs of their fingers down my arm.
My bare arm.
I was naked, under the caress of a black wolf fur throw; the midnight strands tickled my tits. ‘Call a bitch romantic,’ I bit out, ‘but I like to save the bondage for the second date.’
My eyes snapped open, only to be staring directly into Rebel’s startled gaze.
A true angel with violet eyes.
So, what did that make me, with my one violet eye, and one black?
Rebel drew in his breath, stumbling backwards and landing on his arse. He gazed up at me with such meekness, the bloke could be mistaken for a cherub, not a killer angel.
Fool me once…
‘You’re awake then?’ Rebel grinned, bottom shuffling to the four-poster, before kneeling next to me, as if he was the slave, and I wasn’t bound to the bed. ‘You gave me a fierce scare with the almost dying bollocks these two weeks gone.’
I gawped at him. ‘Two weeks?’
‘Some git stabbed you.’ I jolted with the flash shot memory of Bisi twisting the Zombie Slayer into my kidney. But there was no pain remaining, not even a dull ache. I felt the strongest…fittest…most powerful…I ever had. ‘We’ve been healing you.’
‘You mean stripping me? Where are my clothes?’
He flushed. ‘I didn’t… I mean, I haven’t…’
‘The newbie desperate to see a human woman’s—’
‘Lay off, Lady Muck. Ma said—’
‘Angels have mummies?’
‘It was humans who helped you, like Ma. And she said you should be dead.’ He smoothed his fingers through the wolf fur throw, soothing himself. ‘I’m adopted.’
Who wouldn’t want to adopt an angel? Just as no one had wanted to adopt a freak with mismatched eyes.
Rebel’s scrutiny was suddenly too intense.
Hell, where were my sunglasses?
I bit my tongue to stop the scream. Clothes were nothing but cloth. But stealing my sunglasses was a violation that burrowed deep to the places where the nightmares gnawed.
I thrashed in the chains; my shoulder sockets pulled. I arched like a wild cat, until even the suede chaffed my ankles.
Someone lay over me, holding me down and still.
Safe.
I sobbed, resting my cheek against this someone’s cheek, as their heartbeat throbbed against mine and our legs tangled.
I was cocooned in the sugar copper of their scent.
‘My sunglasses,’ I gulped out.
‘I’m a muppet.’ Rebel petted my hair, and — in that moment — I didn’t want to break his fingers.
A gossamer press of lips to my forehead, before he eased off me. He opened a drawer in an oak chest of drawers beside the bed, snatching out my sunglasses. When he pushed them onto my nose, I cringed.
How had I allowed myself to sob in Rebel’s arms exactly like that captured princess?
‘If you ever touch my neck again, like you did when you kidnapped me?’ At my snarl, Rebel slumped onto the bed, his own collared neck swan-like and exposed, a
s if in supplication. ‘I’ll snap yours.’
Rebel fidgeted with the frilly edges of my pillow, before nodding. ‘I’m sorry,’ I was shocked by the pained contrition in his eyes, ‘I had no right. But you’re alive—’
‘I’m your prisoner. In a creepy arsed mansion. Strange, but I’m all out of happy juice.’
‘Ma said you had to keep still for the herbs to work.’
‘To hell with that, mummy’s boy. Where are the other angels? Because if I believe in you, then there must be others, you get me?’
‘They’re not here.’
Rebel’s gaze slid away from mine: definite shiftiness.
‘Cheers, Mr Specific.’ I banged my wrist cuffs together. ‘Now I’m all fixed up, where’s the key?’
He rubbed his thumb over the bruises, where I’d pulled against the cuffs. ‘It’s too soon. I have to protect you.’
‘From what?’
His thumb traced circles on my inner wrist. ‘Everything.’
‘Too late, pretty boy,’ I hissed, hating that I couldn’t move or shank with more than words, ‘epic fail. I’ve lost my job, apartment…life. Oh yeah, and you killed my boyfriend.’
This time there was no contrition. ‘Git deserved to die. He was after selling you. And your sister.’
Jade.
Rebel could shank with a word.
‘You reckon I’d cower here, whilst my sis is missing?’
He leaned closer as he whispered, ‘Don’t tell.’
Then his fingers pressed into my neck, and I shuddered at the invasion, as unexpectedly our bodies, minds, and souls became melded. His power surged through me, holding me motionless in its thrall.
In the bondage of my chains, Rebel also held me in the bondage of my mind, suspended above an abyss, whilst he flicked through my memories, so quickly they blurred like life seen from the back of a motorbike. Narrower and narrower, they focused on Jade: the flick of her pink-streaked black hair and shy beam, when she’d curled up with me to open her birthday present.
A crystal angel on delicate gold chain.
Suddenly, as if the memory was the launching pad he’d been searching for, Rebel was soaring. Then he was gone. And I was alone above an abyss.
I howled into the void, before a pull dragged me back to the wood-panelled room scented with cinnamon.
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