Craved: A Chosen Ones Novel

by Davenport, Nia

And checkmate to my grandmother. I was going to the dress fitting and the party now. There was no way Whitney would let me make her pass up a designer dress and an opportunity to wear it.

  “So you just weren’t going to tell me?” She asked after hanging up the phone.

  “No.” And she knew why.

  “Well, your dastardly plan just got foiled,” she smirked at me from across the table. “Move your butt Alex Sinclair. We have a dress fitting to get to. You will not make me miss out on an opportunity to pick out and wear a designer gown I will probably never be able to afford.”

  I didn’t even bother to argue. Whitney did not care about rubbing elbows with Atlanta’s elite but she lived, breathed, and slept fashion. Designer labels and couture were a religion to her. My grandmother had just used her knowledge of that to make sure I attended her charity ball.

  ******

  “Alexandria. Whitney.”

  I gritted my teeth against my grandmother’s use of my full name. She knew I hated it and preferred to be called Alex. Like every other preference I had about every other thing in my life, she ignored it and did whatever the hell suited her instead. “Alex,” she told me when I was eight, “is a boy’s name. Alexandria is much more appropriate for a lady.”

  “Grandmother,” I said simply to niggle her. If she insisted on calling me by a name other than the one I’d asked to be called by than I would insist on returning the favor. Besides calling her Madeleine was absurd.

  My grandmother pursed her lips at me then pointed to two dressing rooms where sale woman waiting dutifully by the door of each of them. “I have already had a few appropriate selections pulled from the rack for you, Alexandria. And Miss Pearson, there is a red Valentino and black Yves Saint Laurent waiting for you in yours.”

  Whitney emerged from her dressing room right after I walked out of mine. She’d chosen to try on the red Valentino first.

  “That’s the dress,” I told her. “Don’t even bother with the other one.”

  She twirled around in front of a mirror that covered the entire back wall of the boutique. The flowing layers of the gown danced around her legs in a whimsical swirl as she did so. The sweetheart neckline and capped sleeves hid way more skin than Whitney normally covered, but she was knockout sexy in it nonetheless. In fact, the modesty of the gown coupled with how its material fitted snugly against her tall, slender frame was what made it appear all the more gorgeous on her.

  “I think you’re right,” she grinned at me. Then she remembered she wasn’t the one paying for the gown and couldn’t afford it even if she used up her entire college fund.

  She turned sheepishly in my grandmother’s direction. “That is, if it is okay with your Mrs. Sinclair?”

  My grandmother raised her hand, waving away her hesitation. “I wouldn’t have had the sales woman pull it if it were not.”

  “How do you like yours?” Whitney asked.

  I spared a glance at the emerald colored Oscar de la Renta in the mirror. I only knew the name of the designer because Bridgette, my sales lady, kept telling me how his gowns were “so in season this spring,” as she stuffed me into it.

  “It’s cool.” I shrugged my shoulders apathetically. I liked nice clothes as much as the next girl, but designer labels and fancy dresses were more Whitney’s speed. It didn’t matter to me what I wore to an event I didn’t even want to attend in the first place.

  Whitney sighed. “‘It’s cool’ just won’t do. We need to find you a dress that you feel like you want to be buried in.”

  “If I were making arrangements for my funeral Whitney, I doubt a ball gown would be anywhere on my must-be-present-when-I-die list.”

  “Alexander McQueen might do her justice,” she ignored me, turning to Bridgette instead. “Do you have something in a warm hue that will complement her complexion nicely?”

  “I do!” Bridgette beamed. She walked to the opposite end of the store, disappearing behind a curtain of dresses, then reappeared with a champagne colored dress protected within a plastic garment bag. The expression on her face looked like there’d been a leprechaun holding a pot of gold behind the dresses. “This was featured on the runway in Paris at Fashion Week.”

  I glimpsed the price tag as she unzipped the bag and removed it from around the dress. “Holy shit!” I couldn’t stop myself from sputtering out. “That dress costs 50 grand!” Who needed a silly leprechaun when you had my grandmother sitting on your store’s sofa with a checkbook in hand. “I am not trying that on. It’s too expensive.”

  “I assure you money is of no consequence,” my grandmother smiled reassuringly at the sales woman. “Alexandria stop being dramatic and try the dress on.” Her tone is steeped in reproach.

  I roll my eyes but take the dress from Bridgette. “As you wish, Grandmother.” It was her money she was wasting not mine.

  “That’s the one,” Whitney shrieked when I walk out of the dressing room. “Look in the mirror.”

  I turned toward the mirror sure I would be just as apathetic as before. My breath hitched in my chest when I saw my reflection. The dress was gorgeous on. It was like something straight out of a Disney fairytale but way more grown up than any gown a Disney character would ever wear. It was completely strapless, leaving my shoulders bare. The corseted top clung to my upper body like a glove before fading into a fishtail skirt that clung to my lower body just as snugly then cascaded out in sweeping layers as the material neared my feet. Its champagne color, embellished with a thousand tiny Swarovski crystals, complemented my honey colored complexion perfectly, adding a warm brilliance to it that gave off the impression that my skin glowed. “It’s beautiful,” I whispered to no one in particular.

  “We will take it,” my grandmother said from behind me. I caught her reflection in the mirror. Something I couldn’t name shone within her eyes.

  Grandmother wrote a check for the dresses and gave Bridgette our address to have them delivered to. She also told her to take care of the shoes and send over ones that would match appropriately. I was glad I wouldn’t have to suffer through shoe shopping too.

  CHAPTER THREE

  This Is How I Die

  After suffering through Beauty and the Beast, I took the train to Downtown Atlanta to begin my shift. Bennett scheduled me to be on patrol in Five Points, the big one not the little one. The neighborhood was both a tourist attraction and local hangout spot during the day. World of Coke and Underground Station, the shopping district located there, drew daily crowds that were a mixture of locals and non-locals.

  At night, after the tourists left and with them the cops, Five Points turned into a much darker beast. The illegal gambling houses and prostitution rings that operated out of the back rooms of many of the shops after they closed attracted a more unsavory crowd than what roamed Five Points during the day. Thugs, gangsters, human traffickers and addicts alike, all flocked to the downtown neighborhood once the sun went down.

  The police knew what kind go shady shit went down in the area, but they chose to turn a blind eye. Most people thought that it was because as long as the tourists weren’t fucked with, and the enormous amount of money the city made off of them kept pouring in, the cops didn’t care. The real reason they pretended like Five Points shut down when the retail stores closed for business was because they were scared shitless, not apathetic.

  Strange things happened to people in Five Points when the sun no longer hung in the sky. The running joke in the city was that it was kind of like the Bermuda Triangle. People who ventured in, a lot of the time never made it out alive. And it wasn’t because of the gangsters and thugs. Some of them, if they didn’t have the right connections, didn’t make it out either.

  Daemons really ran the illegal gambling houses and prostitution rings set up in Five Points. For the past ten years, human trafficking in Atlanta had become more and more of a problem. Daemons were the ones behind it, just like they were behind the city’s influx of drug trafficking and homicides too. No one outside The Soci
ety knew this though, because no one knew daemons existed. City officials blamed it on the known kingpins of the city, but they were just humans being used by daemons to further corrupt other humans.

  That was their sole purpose for being on Earth— to corrupt human souls. They tempted people into murder, suicide, drugs, addiction, violence and any other despicable thing imaginable. They wreaked havoc among the human population, the more devastating the better, because the more humans that were tainted in the process the better.

  “Watch where you goin’ bitch,” a teenaged boy who could be no older than sixteen smiled lecherously at me. His skinny jeans sagged low on his butt, flashing checkered patterned boxers underneath. I’d never understood that particular fashion trend. What was the point of snug fitting jeans if you were just going to sag them anyway?

  He banged his shoulder hard against mine as he passed me. If I’d been only human, he might have shattered it. I didn’t need to check for dilated pupils the color of only to confirm what he was. No scrawny teenage boy would possess that amount of strength.

  “So…so…sorry,” I sputtered wide-eyed while biting my bottom lip. My heartbeat kicked into overdrive and I knew he could hear it. Good. Let him think it was because of fear and not the rush of adrenaline flooding my system. Epinephrine was definitely pumping through my bloodstream, but it was my fight not my flight response that had kicked in.

  I quickened my footsteps, hurrying away from him and turning down a side street bathed in nothing but shadows. The two light posts that lined the street had bulbs that had blown out.

  The daemon turned to follow me. He’d taken the bait, hook, line and sinker. I walked a couple of feet into the darkness then turned with lighting speed, withdrawing a silver knife and launching it at the heart of the thing posing as a human teenager. It soared through the air and hit home. His pupils swelled to cover the whites of his eyes then he dropped to his knees. A cloud of black smoke poured forth from him. It wavered in the air then dissipated. The daemon’s corporeal form winked out of existence soon afterward.

  “Now that wasn’t very nice.” The voice was deep, baritone, and devoid of emotion.

  Cold shivers I couldn’t explain ran the length of my spine. No sooner than the perplexing reaction occurred an impossibly beautiful blonde-haired man dressed in fitted denim without a shirt landed in front of me on the balls of his feet. Large black wings extended from behind him, flaring out on both sides of his muscular body. My mouth gaped open as my heart kicked into overdrive again. Only this time it was definitely the flight response that flooded my system.

  I knew from a theoretical, their-existence-is-written-about-in-nephilim-history-books standpoint that the being in front of me existed. There were supposedly hundreds like him that did. But no Brethren had walked the Earth since the time when the Archangels had.

  Then why is a real, live fucking Brethren standing in front of you on a side street in Five Points, I screeched at myself.

  The massive black wings, eyes ringed in silver, and elongated incisors left no doubt as to what he was.

  Run! Now! The deep, instinctual part of me that was keyed toward survival yelled. I looked around wildly for an escape, but there was nothing but solid brick behind me and the Brethren was standing directly in front of me and the only was out of the alley.

  Before the panic could fully settle in the Brethren was on me, moving faster than my eyes could track, gripping my chin and pressing his body violatingly into mine.

  “I know it’s bad form to play with your prey, but you’re too deliciously tempting to mind my manners.” The blinding smile that spread across his face said I really, really did not want to experience what was coming next. “I’ll make it slow and excruciating. I promise.”

  His incisors lengthened about two inches past their already lethal six inches and pain sliced into the side of my neck along with a burning sensation that felt like gasoline had been poured on the spot in the presence of a lit match.

  I swallowed the scream bubbling up in my throat. It would do me no good. No one would answer it, given where I was and the time. Hell, even if someone did, I’d still be up shit creek without a paddle. The Brethren would kill them too.

  I felt my heartbeat begin to slow as the life was tugged from my veins. My weight started to feel too heavy for my legs to support. This is it, I thought. This is how I die. Not exactly like my parents, but at the mercy of a monster all the same. At least my body wouldn’t be strewn across the pavement in pieces.

  The memory of my parents made me burn with something other than what the Brethren feeding from my neck made me feel. Rage and a gut-wrenching pain that kickstarted my will to live. I remembered I had a gun with a fully loaded clip of silver bullets at my back.

  As the Brethren distractedly, intentionally slowly, fed from my neck, he was so lost in consuming my blood that he was oblivious to my hand reaching behind my back then circling his. I unloaded the entire clip into him, praying to heaven none of the bullets exited through his front and tore into me. He staggered to the side and I didn’t think twice before shouldering past him and breaking into a sprint as if the devil himself was on my ass.

  I stumbled onto the well lit Peachtree Street. Car after car zoomed passed me. Not one of them stopped. I took all of maybe four additional steps before the world tilted on its axis and my legs refused to support my weight any longer. I felt myself crumbling to the ground, but I didn’t feel my head connecting with the pavement. Darkness claimed me before the impact.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Hot Guys With Killer Biceps

  I opened my eyes to sapphires. Flawless, brilliant, and a shade of deep blue that I didn’t think existed anywhere else on Earth. I puzzled why I looked at gemstones until the face they were set in came into focus.

  I must be dreaming. No, scratch that. I must have died and gone to heaven.

  Human men who were supermodels and movie stars didn’t look like that good. The unnaturally blue eyes were home to a face even more ethereal in its beauty. Sharp bone structure and a strong jawline made the face before me beautiful in a strikingly masculine kind of way while golden brown curls that fell softly into it, stopping just short of the eyes tempered its inherent roughness, adding a certain boyish softness to the face’s features.

  Yup, I’ve definitely died and gone to heaven. No man on Earth possesses a face like that.

  I raised a hand to my neck where there would have been puncture wounds if I were still alive. I frowned when my fingers grazed a textured cottony material that felt like gauze.

  If I am in heaven, why do I need gauze?

  Strong fingers closed over mine, stilling them, when I tried to tear the square patch of material away from my neck.

  “I wouldn’t if I were you. The Brethren tore straight into your external jugular vein, left a pretty vicious hole in your neck. I’d suggest keeping it covered until it fully heals or you’ll run the risk of an infection. It won’t kill you, of course, but you’ll end up with a pretty nasty fever and a bad case of chills for a few days.”

  It was then that I realized the face crowding my vision actually had a body to go along with it. A damn nice looking one if the defined biceps and corded muscle that the under armour shirt so nicely showed off were anything to go by.

  “If someone told me dying and going to heaven meant waking up to hot guys with killer biceps, I would have made it a point to get myself killed a lot sooner,” I mumbled in a groggy haze.

  The hot guy grinned at me and a pair of dimples so deep you could go for a swim in them graced his face making it even more aesthetically pleasing to look at.

  “You’re not in heaven baby but you’re right about the hot part and the killer biceps.”

  I swear said biceps purposely flexed a little as the words were spoken. Then I looked past them and noticed the backdrop of Atlanta’s skyline sprawling out behind a wall made entirely of glass panes.

  I shot to a sitting position in what I know realized was a be
d. I looked, actually looked, at my surroundings instead of dreamily staring at the too perfect to be real face I’d woken up to. Its cement walls and ceiling with exposed beams gave it a look of modernity that helped me narrow down my location. I was in one of the luxury high-rises that had started springing up all over downtown.

  My cheeks immediately enflamed at the embarrassment of uttering the words I’d said to an actual person.

  I was supposed to be talking to an angel in heaven. Not a living, breathing, stranger…Wait, have I been kidnapped?!

  Survival instincts kicked in, I threw the heavy blankets off of me and jumped to my feet. At least I tried to jump to my feet. I more realistically swayed on them before my knees buckled. The strange hot guy jumped out of the chair he’d been straddling and caught me by my elbow before I hit the floor.

  I snatched my arm out of his grip. The momentum from the force with which I did sent me stumbling a couple of steps backward and swaying on my feet again. I gritted my teeth against my legs’ protest to support my weight. It took considerable effort to remain upright, but I dug my heels in and forced my body to cooperate.

  “Who are you?” I eyed the stranger standing in front of me.

  “The person who saved your life.” His tone was haughty and arrogant. He crossed his arms over his broad chest, arching an eyebrow at me expectantly. He appeared to be waiting for me to gravel.

  Yeah, he’d keep on waiting for that one.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and arched an eyebrow of my own, mirroring his position. “That’s not an actual answer to my question.”

  His lips twitched at the corners. “No, I guess it’s not.”

  And yet, he still didn’t offer any additional information.

  “Um, okaaay.” Who the hell was he and how did he save me with a Brethren on my ass? Both of those unanswered questions automatically made me suspicious. Furthermore, when I’d first woken up, he’d advised me not to remove the gauze because of the damage the Brethren had done when he bit me. I was shocked as shit to encounter one and he’d casually tossed the word Brethren around like he encountered them everyday.