‘I warned you, bro, I’d snap your neck.’
‘Away with you, an empty threat,’ Rebel shrugged, even as he peered at me anxiously. ‘I’m thinking you’ll be after knowing about your sister?’ I didn’t understand his glance at the open door or the flash of guilt across his pale face, before he murmured against my ear, ‘All I know for sure is she’s no longer connected to you.’
My heart thudded. ‘Listen, bastard, Jade will always be—’
‘Rebel, come here. You are in need of your lesson.’ A man’s deep, aristocratic command from the corridor outside.
Rebel jumped and grimaced.
I remembered his urgent Don’t tell.
What the hell frightened an angel? Or made him hang his head like a naughty school kid?
Rebel dawdled across the bedroom, clomping his boots on the oak floor, before glancing over his shoulder at me with a tight smile. He curled his hand around the door, glancing back at me with a rebellious grimace. ‘I won’t leave you in the dark.’
Except, without my sister, or J, and now without Rebel, that’s all I was.
Not connected to me? Screw that.
A long moment’s silence and then…
Whish — crack.
I startled.
Whish — crack.
Then a stifled yelp. Rebel’s yelp.
Whish — crack.
The beating washed over me in a whistling wave, as Rebel’s cries broke to weeping.
This was the lesson being taught by the owner of that deep voice, which Rebel had jumped to obey?
Despite the cuffs at my wrists and the annihilation of my world on Utopia Estate, I remembered the glory of Rebel’s wings and the awe that had pushed Toben to his knees. I whirlwind spun, a rage of bone and feathers, that a human would dare thrash an angel.
Whish — crack.
Rebel keened.
I hid my face against the pillow, clenching my fists. Then I let out a strangled choke.
A rattan cane bit into my throat like a garrote.
My eyes rolled back. I couldn’t breathe. My skin bruised.
‘When I first saw what the naughty boy had dragged home, I voted to feed you to the wolves.’ That throaty giggle again. The brush of petalled silk, as the woman slithered onto me like a rose oil scented snake; I gagged. ‘But no, I can’t touch what’s special. Are you, I wonder, worth the price?’
The cane eased at my throat. I retched, struggling to scrutinize the skank in crimson velvet sweater and billowing emerald skirt who was straddling me. Her wild black curls thwapped me in the face, as she swung the whippy cane like she was trying to hypnotise me.
One of Rebel’s humans. And a definite Big Bad.
‘Let me go and maybe you’ll find out,’ I growled.
The rose and thorn bitch smirked. ‘I’m not naïve like Rebel. Try harder, or don’t.’ She shrugged. A sickly rose perfume clung to her clothes, hair, and eyelashes; it sweated from her skin. ‘In Tudor times, this House of Rose, Wolf, and Fox was a schoolhouse. My uncle and aunt are, you could say, teachers of sorts. And I’ve grown up here,’ she scowled, and I shrank back, ‘in the shadow of one thing: the angel they loved as teenagers and lost.’
‘Boo hoo, yeah? Poor little rich girl. Do you want to swap childhood survival stories? Because I’m not in the mood.’
Swish — the savage with curls raised the cane above her head to cut it down across my cheek.
I recoiled against the pillows.
‘If you’re vexed, Evie, then punish me.’ Rebel caught the blow. It raised a livid red line down his palm, but he clung onto the thin cane.
Evie wrenched away the cane, flinging it to the other side of the room against the oak panelling.
Tear tracks stained Rebel’s face, and he avoided meeting my gaze.
Why would my own abductor protect me? But then why had he saved me from Toben?
Evie made a point of sneering at me, before simpering at Rebel. She wound her arms around his neck. Then she snogged him like he was the sacrifice at a cannibal’s feast.
‘You didn’t tell me your new toy was awake, my wicked love,’ Evie pouted, her ruby lips thick and wet, when she finally drew back.
‘Didn’t get the chance,’ Rebel shifted uncomfortably.
‘Want me to kiss it all better?’ When Evie dragged Rebel towards the door, I noticed he was limping.
He glanced back at me with an apologetic shrug.
‘Why are you letting these humans own you?’ I asked.
He stiffened, faltering in the doorway. ‘They don’t own me, but I’m their boy because they adopted me.’
Naïve? That’d be right. These humans had twisted the beauty of true adoption, but Rebel didn’t have a clue.
I lay in the twilight, amongst the silk, fur, and chains, unable to escape the squeak of bedsprings, banging of the headboard, and the moaned ecstasy, whilst my enemies screwed.
As Evie shrieked her way to a climax, an older woman clopped into my bedroom in over the knee boots. ‘As Rebel’s Ma, I should introduce myself.’
I lay motionless, expecting another vicious attack, but unlike her niece, Ma was English country woman does mindfulness, in a vintage ruched black dress lined with fur and a sharp silver bob. A large wolf pendant glowered at me from around her neck.
Ma perched on the edge of the bed, before pressing a gold goblet of water to my lips.
Too parched to do careful, I gulped. ‘Cheers.’
Ma didn’t reply. Instead, she broke off a piece of dry toast from an oak platter, and I nibbled from her thin fingers like a baby.
It hurt to swallow.
Ma’s gaze was shuttered, as if she wasn’t handfeeding a naked prisoner to the soundtrack of shagging just next door.
How had my life become being the prisoner of an angel and his crazy adoptive family?
At least Ma was acting kind. When she brushed crumbs from my mouth, I smiled.
Until Ma murmured, soft as honey but sharp as a shank, ‘Fool that you are, little girl, you imagine you’ve faced this world’s nightmares or — dream on — that you’re the nightmare. Whatever.’ Her lip curled, like a surly teenager. ‘The angel is ours. And if you ever think to steal him…’
A dry hand clamped over my mouth. Another pinched shut my nose. I hollered against the gag. My lungs struggled and strained. Panic clawed.
Ma’s eyes — crinkled at the edges but not with kindness, I realised with shock, rather with a dancing cruelty — chased me into the dark.
4
There are dark kisses that bruise your soul as well as your mouth. Kisses as soft as feathers. Light. Gentle. Kind. Whereas others blaze and burn to ash.
And then there are kisses that are a revelation.
As I drifted back towards the grey, once more out of the black, soft lips kissed mine.
The kiss didn’t bruise or burn but it was firm and possessive.
Right.
Until it wasn’t.
I bit hard. The bastard gasped, and the mouth pulled back. But not before a coppery sweet blood crescendo exploded; my tongue chased after heaven.
It’d been Rebel’s kiss…and blood.
The new, fluttering forces deep within me awoke and roared at the taste, claiming Rebel. Wanting him, even if I didn’t.
How had I lost control even of myself?
Then I blinked awake.
Rebel peered down at me, concerned. He stroked my arm, as he had when I’d first awoken; I reckon it soothed him more than me. He hadn’t chained me this time, only snapped steel handcuffs around my wrists.
Maybe he was experimenting with bondage techniques.
When he leaned closer, I elbowed him — oomph — in the guts. ‘Congratulations, you’ve just made my List of Asses to Kick.’
‘You have a list?’ He grinned uncertainly, like a kid discovering Father Christmas was real but had written him onto his Naughty List.
‘Yeah, it helps when men molest you.’
Rebel snatched
up his ripped t-shirt from the wolf throw and began sewing on leather patches around slashes in the back, even though his hand shook. I realised the gaps were for his wings and then, with a jolt, that he must’ve been sitting on the edge of my four-poster, under the burgundy frills and enshrouded in cinnamon and saffron — sewing — and watching me whilst I slept.
Or guarding me.
At last, Rebel’s fingers hesitated. ‘Angel kisses are fierce powerful. They heal. And you were…’
I jacked up, kicking off the fur throw and wriggling to the far side of the bed.
I steeled myself for the bump as I hit the floor, but a hand grasped my ankle and I was hauled back amongst the pillows like a winded catch of the day.
I bucked again, hissing.
‘Take it easy, princess.’ Rebel glanced at the open door, before whispering, his body taut with tension against mine, ‘If you promise to stay here with me and my family, the Deadmans, then I’ll promise to help find your sister. Deal?’
I became still. My freedom to find my sister?
Hell, no contest.
‘Deal. But you’re taking me back to Utopia Estate. I adopted Jade. And what you don’t seem to understand is that doesn’t mean I own her, yet she’s still mine. She’s my estate sister. And that’s closer than blood.’ Rebel’s confusion was painful. My gaze softened. ‘Angels kisses can’t heal me, whilst my fam is missing.’
Clank — my handcuffed wrist jangled against Rebel’s in the pocket of his leather jacket.
Handcuffed together, we stumbled through London Fields park, between taekwondo classes, bike trails, and shabby buggies in the clear winter sunlight like a lame-arsed comedy duo.
I tripped against Rebel, and we tangled in a crazy waltz. My nose pressed to his jacket; I took a snort of leather and metal.
But no copper sweetness.
Its loss was a boot to my gut, and I didn’t know either why I cared, or why it’d faded. Yet the chance to escape the danger of Rebel’s family was like being able to breath, after being crushed under heavy stones. I dreaded being dragged back there.
With a growl of frustration, I shoved away Rebel, and we both crashed into the scaly trunk of a London Plane tree.
He raised an unamused pierced eyebrow. ‘Problem, princess?’
I snatched his fingers inside the pocket and squeezed.
He smothered a yelp, struggling underneath me to get away.
Just as I’d done in the bedroom.
Yet when Rebel discovered he was trapped, he melted into me, trembling with pain.
It was…delicious.
Violet snaked between us, licking, tasting, and feasting.
Put the pretty boy down before you break him.
Where have you been, J? You left me chained in that Tudor mansion. Alone.
You’re never alone. But sometimes, Feathery-puss, you can’t hear me.
At last I let Rebel go, with a final warning stroke of my thumb. ‘I’m still in handcuffs, even outside the house. You’re a proper kinky bastard.’
He tilted his head, his wide eyes thoughtful, as he bit at his lip. ‘Trust is a brilliant thing, to be sure. You can fly on trust. But you?’ He flexed his swollen hand. ‘I don’t trust.’
And that was the true boot to the gut.
I scowled. ‘Because I’m all down with trusting the killer angel. Look, kids took pictures of me with a knife in my hand. Then I disappeared from a murder scene. You don’t reckon the pigs will be looking for me?’
Rebel shrugged, but he shuffled from foot to foot. When a football bounced against his ankle, his face lit up with a childish joy I hadn’t seen before. He kicked it back to the lads in grey hoodies, who skulked by the benches, in a flawless arc that had the lads whistling and clapping. They gestured for Rebel — the bondage punk — to join the game.
In London Fields, Hackney.
Yeah, nothing was regular anymore.
I reckon if Rebel hadn’t been handcuffed to me, he’d have bounded to join his new gang, with their designer saddlebags of cocaine, knives, and bottled acid stashed underneath the slanted benches, as if he was Peter Pan leading the Lost Boys.
I shivered, battling to drag my khaki jacket closer.
Hell, I’m wearing a stab victim’s clothes, even if I’m the victim.
The punk cleaned and mended your clothes.
Want to tell me how the wallad magicked out bloodstains?
Magic…interesting word to choose.
Magic too?
I wasn’t sure I was ready to believe that yet. In fact, all I wanted was to find my sister and get as far from Rebel and his freaky secret world as I could.
When I yanked Rebel, he strolled after me across the playing field towards the road looping Utopia Estate like we were any couple, huddled against the cold.
Waves of grease from the burger bar on the corner melded with spice from the kebab shop opposite.
‘Why’d you bother rescuing my clothes?’ I patted at my jacket.
‘Duds are important,’ Rebel glanced at me from underneath his eyelashes. ‘Ma helped.’
I clenched my handcuffed fist, only for Rebel’s bruised fingers to gently caress over it. Yet somehow his — kindness, calmness, submission — only made me madder. ‘Your family, these Deadmans, are bastards. Why are you hiding with them?’
‘I warned you I wasn’t good, I was righteous. But I fibbed.’ He gnawed at his sore lip again. ‘I’m a bad angel. I ask for your trust and say you can fly on it. But you shouldn’t trust me.’ He stared at the ground, refusing to look up. ‘I did a flit from Angel World and bolted here to yours. Now I’m the hunted.’
Finally, he sneaked a glance at me, as if expecting me to either clout him or recoil.
Instead, I clutched his hand in mine, stroking him as he had me. Because his shame called to my own.
For the first time, he released his tortured lip.
‘Still, why stay with humans who beat—’
‘They know magics that keep me safe.’
On the edge of the road, in the shadow of Tower Block A, I pulled him to a stop. I steeled myself, wishing I didn’t have to ask. ‘Are you telling me I’m the prisoner of spell lobbers?’
‘You’re a guest of my family. Who happen to be witches.’
An angel had been adopted by witches, and now I was their guest in handcuffs?
A flash of neon blue and the wail of siren, as a panda car — all blues and twos — flew through the estate.
Rebel spun me, as if to haul me into a snog, but I jerked backwards. ‘We’re not in a movie, hiding from the feds. Learn some swag, if you don’t want to get licked.’ His smacked puppy nose pout made me wish I’d snogged him, even more than the strange new buzzing murmur inside: mine, take, devour… And stoked my rage even higher. ‘But you’ve already been licked. How’s the arse?’
‘I can sit down again, thank you.’
‘See, kinky angel.’
‘I’m Da’s.’ Rebel bristled, dragging me after him across the road between the beeping cars and vans. ‘I left him. So, he punished me. How’s that turn you on?’
I flushed, as he marched us up the stairs into Tower Block A. The guard was missing: Toben’s soldiers weren’t stretched out, like a lion pride on weed, along the concrete.
Everything had changed.
We slipped into the inky dark of the stairwell. The quiet suffocated me.
Suddenly the idea of someone else’s hands touching Rebel — punishing, exciting, or comforting — made the hidden force that’d claimed him boil.
‘You can kill a bloke with your hands,’ Toben kneeling, adoring, and then dead with a snap of his chicken neck, ‘but you’ll let this slipper wearing, daddy issues perv turn you over his knee because you were late home?’
Rebel smiled brightly. ‘Get on with you. Da would be mortified to wear slippers. And I wasn’t just late. I disappeared for over forty years.’
When we clattered up the stairs, a schoolgirl paled as she passed us.
Before I could duck, the kid had snapped me with a whoop and a victory dance. She’d been there on the night I’d fought with Bisi too.
The bitch had pulled down the world on us, simply with her mobile.
Rebel and me glanced at each other once, and then we ran. When Rebel booted in the door to Apartment 333, we burst inside, diving for the death-quiet of Jade’s room.
‘She’s not here. Maybe…she’s just with mates.’
I didn’t even dare say back on the streets.
I wandered through the stale room to the pine wardrobe that Jade had painted black and then decorated with glow-in-the-dark skulls, yanking open the door.
Rebel jittered. ‘I told you, you’re not—’
‘Connected,’ I muttered, running my hand over Jade’s favourite pink-and-white striped tunic.
If Jade bolted to be with some boy, or…if she’s alive…why didn’t she take her clothes?
Your sis’s alive, Violet-sweets. What scares you, is that you can choose the world you want now. You’re free of Jade and this Estate.
For the first time, you can choose who you are.
I recoiled from J’s truth. The devil’s whisper and temptation.
Sirens wailed outside the block; the police’s panda cars circled like hyenas.
‘Time to scatter,’ Rebel pulled me towards the door.
I caught a glimpse of gold on the bedside table.
I dug in my heels, leading Rebel to the necklace, before threading it between my fingers. When I heard his intake of breath, I knew he recognised it from my memories.
We shared Jade now and the promise to find her.
Jade would never have left without her necklace. It was my last birthday gift to her. The only present she’d been given that day because I alone loved her.
But she hadn’t cared. Because we’d been sisters.
Someone must’ve taken her.
Rebel’s forehead against mine brought me down from the rush; he raised the necklace to my neck and with one hand each, we did up the catch. I longed to rip off the handcuffs and escape the claustrophobic closeness, at the same time as the other half of me relaxed into it.
Vampire Huntress Page 4