by Selena Kitt
But I know. Sometimes the weight of what we do, what we see, gets to be too much. Maybe that’s why The Maker doesn’t tell us everything.
“I was charged to protect her, Sam,” he tells me, his voice hoarse. “I couldn’t stand by and just let it happen.”
“So what did you do?” I ask, already knowing somehow.
“I killed it.” There’s no apology in his voice, no regret. It’s simply a fact. Something done that cannot be undone. “I killed the dark fey who had come to kill Maya.”
“And The Maker punished you?”
“Yes, this is my punishment.” He gives a short, strangled laugh. “I have to watch it all unravel. Damned to an eternity of seeing it happen and being unable to do anything to stop it.”
“So you were never human,” I muse aloud, wondering at it. “You were just… sent here?”
“No vampire was ever human,” he tells me. “We bring our immortality with us when we fall and we wake with an insatiable hunger only human blood will satisfy. That’s how The Maker links us to mankind for all eternity.”
“Muriel,” I murmur. “She was… she fell? Like you? She was an angel? Char too?”
Zeph just nods. Everything I overheard makes so much more sense now.
“So you can’t turn a human into a vampire?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “If we could turn humans, there’d probably be millions of us. No, Sam, vampires have to be immortal in the first place. We are… mirror images of our former selves. Dark reflections of what we once were.”
“So what Char said—wasn’t true? You can’t make me like you?” I feel my lip quivering. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been hoping, wishing…
“I said I couldn’t turn humans,” he replies, touching his finger to my trembling mouth. “But we can turn the fey. Char wasn’t wrong.”
And once again, my heart soars.
Chapter Fourteen
“You could turn me,” I urge. “Then we could be together. Char even said so!”
“Sam, no.” Zeph shakes his head. “I know you overheard us. Even Char said he wouldn’t have turned Muriel if he’d been given a choice.”
I sigh in frustration. The thought of being separated from this man is killing me. Is this what dying feels like?
“But she fell,” I murmur, pondering this. “How? What did she do?”
“She fell in love,” Zeph tells me. “She loved someone more than she loved The Maker. That’s a deal breaker for us. Angels—we have to be completely devoted to The Maker.”
“She fell in love with Char?”
Zeph nods again. He looks so sad, but it doesn’t make me feel that way. I feel delighted, triumphant even. Muriel had loved Char so much, she was willing to sacrifice everything for him. She even knew what her punishment would be, because the man she loved wasn’t human, had never been. And he wasn’t an angel anymore either. He’d already fallen. She knew what confessing her love for him would mean—and she’d done it so she could be with him.
Zeph is reading my mind even now. He watches this realization come over me, his fingertips cool against my cheek.
“Who is he to you?” I frown, feeling that little zing of jealousy. I don’t like thinking of Zeph being close anyone else, even this other vampire-slash-angel.
“Chariel’s the vampire who advised me, when I first fell,” he says, tucking my wet hair behind my ears. “I woke like you did—naked, alone, and hungry.”
“Like Muriel?” I ask, remembering the dark red thirst in her eyes.
“Char takes us in, when he finds us.”
“How many of you are there?” I wonder aloud.
“I don’t know. We mostly suffer alone.” He smiles grimly. “The hunger you feel as a human? That’s nothing compared to our bloodlust. You saw Muriel? The way she went after you?”
I nod, shivering. My teeth are chattering. I don’t like to think about nearly being Muriel’s first meal on earth as some fallen angel vampire.
“Without blood… if we deny ourselves, if we try to hide away from the world, it consumes us. It’s like… being eaten from the inside out. Except it never ends. There’s no relief.”
The look on his face tells me he’s done this—he’s tried to escape what he is, what he’s become. The pain in his eyes is just a reflection of what he’s experienced.
“Oh Zeph, I’m so sorry…”
“I’ve accepted what I am.” He shrugs. “And I know now that I shouldn’t have interfered. It was my own arrogance, believing I was in control, that I knew what was best…”
“But you saved Maya,” I protest, wondering what I would have done.
All of my existence has been about helping humans—saving them from lives cut short by automobiles or fires, changing the course of their fates to align with something greater. But if I had been Zeph, if I could see the malevolent forces around me pushing humans toward a darker destiny, would I have interfered? I wonder.
“She lived,” he agreed. “But, Sam, she was supposed to die.”
“No, Zeph.” I touch his cheek, cold and damp, like mine. I don’t know if it’s all this information all at once, or the knowledge that I have to go back, but it’s overwhelming me. My voice is growing fainter, my thoughts muddled. I can’t make sense of any of it. “You can’t know that.”
“But I do know it,” he insists. “If she hadn’t been meant to die, The Maker would have sent you or one of your kind to save her, Sam.”
And I know he’s right. I can’t argue with his logic. If her fate had been to live, one of us would have intervened to stop the wicked little sprite who had come to seal Maya’s demise. The dark fey—the ones we never even knew existed. I feel a hot rage heating my chest at The Maker. Why hadn’t they told us?
“Why?” I wonder aloud.
“I’ve asked myself that question every day since. I wish I knew the answer.” Zeph’s arms tighten around my waist, answering the question for himself. “Maybe The Maker meant to save her from the pain of her childhood.”
“She was abused?” I’ve seen it all before. I’d been sent to save more than one child from such a plight.
“Horribly.” Zeph shudders. “She was put into foster care with a family who… oh Sam, it was brutal. And I had to watch it all. Because of course, I watched her. I still felt I had to protect her…”
I imagine him, alone, cut-off, suffering, watching the little girl he’d saved from death in a hell of his own making. I remember the scars I’d seen on Maya’s body when she was in the bath and knew, without having to ask, where they’d come from. I understand the bond between them now, and I’m not jealous anymore.
“But in the end, I think it was her brother who was supposed to live,” Zeph says finally. I hear the break in his voice. “Maybe he was supposed to fulfill some other fate. I don’t know, and doubt I ever will.”
“Her brother?” I slant my head at him, confused. Gloria and Steve had never had another child. I remember asking them.
“The family Maya was placed with got another little boy.” Zeph swallows, his voice small. “They did horrible things to her. I don’t… I can’t even tell you… They’d been reported a few times, but they put another child with them anyway. This sweet, innocent, little boy.”
“What happened?” I ask when he stops talking, urging him to speak. I have to know.
“Maya was just trying to protect him,” Zeph tells me, his voice so low I have to lean in to hear. “The father was drunk, volatile. He took a belt to Maya and was threatening to beat the baby with it if he didn’t shut up. So Maya… she hid him.”
“She hid him?” I repeat softly, imagining all sorts of deadly scenarios, knowing that one of them had played out. My heart breaks for all of them as I watch it happen in my mind, Zeph’s words creating a horrid picture.
“She took him into the closet with her and tried to keep him quiet,” he whispers. Snow is falling again, melting on his eyelashes. “She was only three years old. She smothered him.”
I can’t fathom. My human heart feels like it’s being torn in half. The tragedy of the human condition is hard enough to bear when you’re immortal and can, at least in some small part, change it. When I close my eyes, I see three-year-old Maya, her little hand over the infant’s mouth, and it’s more than I can bear.
Zeph holds me tight as I sob against his neck. I’m crying for her, for the baby, for the brutality, for the humanity. I’m crying for us too, for me and for Zeph. Not just for the pain of humans, but for the suffering of immortality, of knowing the pain never ends.
“The good news is they placed her with another family after that.” Zeph laughs. It’s a short, hysterical sort of laugh and it sends a shudder through me. “So it all works out in the end, doesn’t it?”
I cling to him, my tears wetting his neck, melting the snow.
“What if it does?” I lift my face to look at him. I’m quivering all over, from cold or feeling, I don’t know. “What if saving Maya was your fate? What if you were meant to fall? And I was meant to find you?”
My lips quiver as I press them to his, tasting the salt of my own tears. He kisses me back in the darkness and I am lost completely to any other world but this one.
“I’m meant to be here,” I tell him when we part. I’m so cold now I’m numb, but that’s just on the outside. On the inside, I’m burning with fever. “I’m meant to be with you. I’m yours, Zeph, and you’re mine.”
“I can’t,” he cries, shaking his dark head. “It’s too selfish. I won’t damn you to this hell.”
“Then protect me,” I whisper into his ear. “Protect me from the pain of losing you. I can’t bear it. Please don’t make me.”
“Sam…” He groans softly, like he’s in pain too.
“This was meant to be,” I tell him, vehement. I’m sure of it. “It’s your fate—and mine.”
I’m not shivering anymore, I realize. This human body is still here, and I’m still in it, but things are beginning to fade, to grow soft around the edges. I can’t feel my fingertips or my toes anymore. I’m changing. I don’t need to see a clock to know we’re almost out of time.
“Zeph, please,” I beg him. “Make me like you.”
“I want you so much,” he whispers, cradling my head in his hand, pressing my cheek to his chest. “But you don’t know what you’re asking.”
“I do know!” I protest, struggling in his arms, when I hear a familiar voice. “I saw Muriel. I know what you are. And I know she loved him enough to fall.”
“Sam, please…” he pleads. “I can’t. I can’t…”
“I love you, Zeph,” I whisper. I’m so tired. I haven’t slept much in twenty-four hours and my human body is feeling it. “I want to be with you. Only you.”
“It’s almost time,” Zeph whispers.
The weight of it crushes me. I can’t breathe.
“Hey, Sam.”
The voice comes from above my head. I glance up to see Alex hovering above us.
“Alex! What are you doing here?” My voice sounds so far away, even to me.
Of course I know what he’s doing here. He’s here to collect me and take me back.
But I don’t want to go back!
“Hi Alex,” Zeph says.
“You can see him?” I blink at Zeph in surprise. “How?”
“I don’t know.” Zeph shrugs.
“Didn’t you wonder why they granted your wish so easily, Sam?” Alex’s wings buzz. He’s trying hard to stay aloft in the falling snow, and I remember what it’s like, for a moment, to have wings.
“What are you talking about, Alex?” None of this is making sense, and I don’t like it, not one bit. I sit up in the snow, staring up at him. He looks so different to me now, so tiny and strange.
“I’m just here to say goodbye.” Alex glances at Zeph and gives him a sad smile.
“Did you wish it, Alex?” Zeph asks, eyes growing wide.
“Yes.” Alex buzzes over to me, landing on my bare knee.
I’m blue with cold and soaked to the skin but it doesn’t matter. I can feel myself changing, leaving this place. I’m becoming fey again. I want to struggle against it, but I’m too weak, too tired.
“Zeph.” I whisper his name as I fall back into the snow, staring up at the stars and the vast expanse of the sky. I’ll be able to fly soon. I just wish I didn’t have to.
“Take care of her,” Alex says. He’s talking to Zeph but it’s far away.
Oh I’m leaving, I’m going, please, Zeph, kiss me one last time.
I think the words but I can’t say them.
“She’ll die of hypothermia if you don’t do it now.” Alex is talking but I’m listening to something else. There’s a rush in my ears, like running water. And I’m so hot. I pull at my clothes, thrashing in the snow, as if I could take off my own skin and emerge as someone else, something else.
“Shh, Sam,” Zeph whispers and I’m so grateful when he leans in to kiss me, first my mouth, soft and tender, and then my throat.
His hands move in my hair, gripping me hard, holding me steady, and I hear myself moan from a great distance. There’s a sudden, sharp sting, and then a searing, burning pain. I’ve never known such agony. I want to cry out, but I can’t. My whole body is on fire. Zeph drinks me in, all of me, drawing from the hot, hard throb of my heart. It goes on and on.
I watch it from above, Alex beside me, and there’s a moment when I know I have a choice. I can let go and fly, or I can return, and become something else altogether.
Then I feel a hand at my back, a gentle nudge. Alex’s whisper, which is just a thought, Go. I love you. Goodbye, Sam.
And then I open my eyes to see Zeph, his mouth smeared red, looking down at me.
“Am I gone?” I whisper, glancing at a dark rose of blood blooming in the snow beside my head. Is it my blood? Zeph’s? But they are the same now. We are the same.
“No, little one,” he says, pressing the inside of his wrist to my lips. “You’re here. You’re mine.”
And I know just what to do. It’s like flying, only better.
It’s freedom.
My new fangs puncture the soft skin of his wrist and I drink the blood of angels.
The End
Want to read Muriel and Char’s story?
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THE KISS OF ANGELS
What happens when Cupid falls in love with the Angel of Death?
The human notion of Cupid as a sweet cherub who only works on Valentine’s Day couldn’t be further from the truth. The real entity humans call “Cupid” is actually an angel named Muriel who works tirelessly all year round matching up soul mates at the behest of a higher power.
Muriel is a sharp shooter on a mission and her arrow always hits its mark.
But she’s grown tired over the centuries of delivering romance to everyone else while secretly longing for someone to call her own. The problem is, angels aren’t allowed to fall in love. As her friend, Jariel, often reminds her, angels don’t even have bodies, so what would be the point?
Muriel knows her arrows are only meant for the lucky race of humans, who can experience such delicious emotions as love and lust and passion. But when she crosses paths with Chariel, who just happens to be the Angel of Death, she finally gets her wish, and discovers how the sting of Cupid’s arrow can make anyone—even angels—do anything for love.
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ABOUT SELENA KITT
Selena Kitt is a NEW YORK TIMES bestselling and award-winning author of erotic and romance fiction. She is one of the highest selling erotic writers in the business with over a million books sold!
Her writing embodies everything from the spicy to the scandalous, but watch out-this kitty also has sharp claws and her stories often include intriguing edges and twists that take readers to new, thought-provoking depths.
When she's not pawing away at her keyboard, Selena runs an innovative publishing company (excessica.com) and in her spare time, she devotes herself to her family--a husband and four children--and her growing organic garden. She does belly dancing and photography, and she loves four poster beds, tattoos, voyeurism, blindfolds, velvet, baby oil, the smell of leather, and playing kitty cat.
Her books EcoErotica (2009), The Real Mother Goose (2010) and Heidi and the Kaiser (2011) were all Epic Award Finalists. Her only gay male romance, Second Chance, won the Epic Award in Erotica in 2011. Her story, Connections, was one of the runners-up for the 2006 Rauxa Prize, given annually to an erotic short story of "exceptional literary quality," out of over 1,000 nominees, where awards are judged by a select jury and all entries are read "blind" (without author's name available.)
She can be reached on her website at www.selenakitt.com
BONUS EXCERPT
HIGHLAND WOLF PACT
By Selena Kitt
Sibyl Blackthorne isn't afraid of anything--except maybe being sold into marriage to a man she doesn't love. A man she's never even met. A man who, by reputation, is one of Scotland's cruelest lairds in over a century.
But what choice does she have, with her father dead and her uncle now married to his brother's widow, putting him in charge of not only the Blackthorne fortune, but Sibyl's future as well?
Then her betrothed turns out to actually be far worse than his reputation, so headstrong Sibyl decides life as a peasant, or even death, would be preferable to a future with such a despicable man, and makes plans to run away.