by Zoe Winters
If I have any humanity left, I’ll be fine. She was well aware it was only her human side that could keep her safe, a side she’d spent the better part of the last several centuries suppressing.
She’d just reached the steps when the church clock began chiming out the midnight hour in ominous greeting. She jumped when the door swung open.
“Miss, are you here for the midnight service?”
A deep, graceful baritone. Angeline’s heart almost stopped. He was so damn beautiful. So tall—at least six foot five, and broad. He filled the entire double doorway with his presence. He was the one. She could feel it. Still she just stood there, unable to speak and partially afraid to go in.
He extended his hand to take hers. “I’m Father Hadrian. We’re just about to start. You’re welcome here.” His hands wrapped around hers were so warm.
The invitation took away the last of her fear of the place. Although vampires didn’t need invitations to get into human homes, a church felt more dangerous, as if the demon half of her could condemn her. Surely his invitation as well as her partial humanity would protect her. She glanced up at him through a fringe of lashes, overtaken with a sudden bit of shyness as she stepped inside the church.
What was wrong with her? She didn’t get shy around men. She moved to an empty pew and sat, her gaze moving back to him, tracking his every movement. She couldn’t help it, he was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen. Hadrian. She rolled his name over in her mind. She was a great fan of etymology. Her name, of course, no longer fit—she was far from an angel. Hadrian meant dark one.
His looks matched. In addition to being tall and broad, he was swarthy, with dark hair and eyes black as coal. Everything in his image screamed danger, but the kindness he projected was warmth and light. The contrast fascinated her. She wanted to tease out the dark edges, to have a partner in crime, but she also wanted someone she could trust.
In its own way, the church was a welcome retreat—familiar. It was dark—almost sinister—illuminated only by candles. The ornate Our Lady of Guadalupe statue glowed in the candlelight, as did the crucifix over the altar. In the dark it looked like a scene from a horror film rather than a symbol of hope and forgiveness.
Angeline reached absently inside her bag, clutching the beads of the old rosary inside. She let out a sharp hiss as her hand accidentally brushed the cross, leaving a condemning burn in its wake. She quickly composed herself, looking around to see if anyone had noticed a visible change in her demeanor. Had her eyes glowed? Had her fangs popped out? If either of those things had happened, no one noticed before her human mask fell back into place.
She looked at her hand as the red mark faded and the cross-shaped scar disappeared completely, the healing process completed in a matter of seconds, since she’d just consumed so much fresh human blood.
God didn’t want her anymore. Well fine, fuck him anyway. She’d carried this anger for a long time now, and yet, she stubbornly kept the rosary, carrying it around with her like a tarnished ticket into heaven.
Every time it burned her skin it was a reminder the ticket was no longer valid. It was of little consequence how faithful she’d been in her human life. It was that faithfulness that had ultimately killed her. If she hadn’t been at church that night…
Angeline brushed the stray tear off her cheek, pulling the wall up high around herself. It was easier to be the monster than the woman. The woman was still too vulnerable. She turned her attention back to the priest and the liturgy that was so familiar and yet so alien now.
She didn’t participate; she merely sat and observed the standing, sitting, kneeling—rote repetition that carried her off into another experience more quiet, but no less profound than the drugs that had moved within her earlier in the evening. The priest’s voice held a trace of an accent, but she couldn’t place it.
Occasionally his eyes drifted to hers. It took everything in her not to enthrall him, not to put suggestions into his head. She wanted to observe him in his natural state, like a researcher in the savannah watching a wild animal. She wanted to know who he was, not who she would mold him to be. That would come later.
His hands were mesmerizing, strong, and sure. Compared with her strength he was feeble right now, but he would become an awesome force of nature, like a tornado that couldn’t be contained. Her shyness had evaporated inside the cocoon of the church. Now she was only a predator watching her prey.
She licked her lips almost unconsciously.
The congregants began to stand and form a line to receive the bread and wine. She felt Father Hadrian’s eyes burn through her and looked away. He must have noticed she didn’t take part in the service. She felt exposed, and wanted to leave. She wouldn’t turn him tonight, but she remained in her seat. Angeline wanted to feel his warm hands over hers again and didn’t want to wait a week for the experience.
***
Hadrian had tried to keep his focus on the Mass, yet he couldn’t stop looking at the woman he kept thinking of as the dark angel. He’d seen human nature in all its intriguing, delightful, and disappointing forms, but this woman was a study in contrasts he couldn’t quite unravel.
His gaze lingered on her lips, which were painted a lush red that invited him to taste her. Her skin was a smooth, milky white that contrasted sharply against her long dark hair. Her glittering blue eyes offered an additional contrast to her shiny brown locks.
Given the style of her clothing and the smallness of her waist, Hadrian wouldn’t be surprised if she was wearing a corset underneath the dress, a corset painstakingly laced and tied by the hands of another. A lover perhaps? He imagined her flushed after a hurried coupling, leaning against the bedpost, sucking in a breath so the corset could be cinched just a little tighter.
She seemed barely real, and he feared she might disappear into the dark, cold night from whence she came, never to be heard from again. As he moved to the next parishioner kneeling at the bench, he glanced again at the dark angel.
Don’t leave.
Her eyes rose to his immediately as if she’d heard his thought. Her face was a mixture of hope, pain, and longing. He quickly dropped his gaze. He knew that look. With his face and physique he’d been the object of many female sexual desires. This woman was fire.
He tried to ignore her and focus on the rite, the guilt curling inside him that he wasn’t fully present for what was supposed to be Holy Communion. Hadrian passed through the rest of the service by habit, the part of his brain familiar with the exercise taking control while he waited for it to be over.
The midnight service was lonely. There was no choir or other participants, just him, offering a scaled-down version of the Mass for those who felt more comfortable in the dark. These were the people who needed him the most, and yet he didn’t know who was worth saving, who could change and find redemption and who couldn’t.
He’d grown weary of having faith in people, praying for them and hoping they’d change, only to see them fall further, many dying in despair, leaving the world worse than when they’d entered it. It was wrong to think such things, but he couldn’t help it. He’d seen too much—both human and otherworldly. He could no longer look at the world as the fresh-faced youth entering the priesthood. That had only been five years ago when he’d had a brief mystical experience, his own Damascus Road. But it felt like forever, like he’d aged centuries. He was far too jaded for thirty-five.
Like every priest initiated into the mysteries of the Catholic Church, he knew the score about demons. He knew they were out there, flesh and blood beings who could compel and work their dark magic. At times, as he looked out at the assembled congregants at the midnight service, wondering if there might be one hiding among the flock. But no, they couldn’t get inside a church—not standard demons anyway. Whatever else may lurk out there amongst the shadows, Hadrian wasn’t sure of the rules for them. He didn’t know where they could go or how they could hide, and felt ill-prepared to deal with realities he hadn’t been taught t
o handle.
Beyond exorcisms and the knowledge of reincarnation, dimensions, and the awareness he was in hell—literally—there wasn’t much else they were encouraged to explore or know a lot about. They’d been charged with keeping the flock in the dark about these matters and guiding them to do the best they could in life. Hadrian often wondered what other secrets were hidden in the higher levels of the Church. What did bishops and archbishops know? What did the Holy See know?
Hadrian blinked. The assembled were watching from their pews with rapt attention, waiting for him to close with the benediction and blessings of peace upon them. He hurried through the remainder of the service, then escaped to the back of the church to greet each individual as they left. He wasn’t surprised to see the dark angel at the back of the group. Of course temptation would only visit when all other distractions had exited the building. Life would be too easy otherwise.
He turned his attention back to the front of the line. A red-headed woman in her early twenties stood before him, a batch of freckles dancing along her cheeks, skipping her nose altogether. The innocence in her appearance was a deep deception.
“Mary, it’s good to see you. I’m glad you could make it tonight.”
The guilt was plain in her eyes. She danced for men in a club on the Strip. He hadn’t been there, of course, but he didn’t doubt some of the other late night parishioners had seen far more of Mary than he ever would.
“You know how it is,” was all she would offer him in return.
He nodded and tried to give her the benefit of the doubt. She’d spoken to him in confession on many occasions, but still she repeated the same mistakes. It wasn’t charitable, but he wondered if she was worth saving at all. Would she forever remain trapped in this loop of confession and regression? Would she ever transcend it? Did she even want to?
She pulled her hand from his and made her way out the door. She’d be back in a few months maybe. He sighed and worked his way through the line, feeling increasing guilt over his pattern of thought this evening.
He greeted them all: Winos, prostitutes, drug runners, crime family members, until the line dwindled to nothing.
The heavy church door echoed as it shut, leaving Father Hadrian alone with the dark angel. He took her hand, overwhelmed by how cool it still was after being in the warm church so long.
“I’m glad you could join us tonight.”
“Thank you for having me,” she said, a brief bit of color coming into her cheeks. How could one woman seem so dark and so vulnerable all at once? He simultaneously wanted to hold her in an embrace and fling her out of the church with an admonition never to return. Finally, realizing he was still holding her hand, he let it drop.
“I didn’t catch your name earlier?” His voice rose at the end, hoping she’d acknowledge the question therein.
She smiled, the shyness leaving her all at once. “I didn’t throw it.”
Before his eyes she transformed from an uncertain, vulnerable creature into a femme fatale who could certainly be his undoing, given time. He pushed that thought away.
The woman laughed. “I’m Angeline.”
So his instincts had been correct on that one. Dark angel indeed.
“There is a pamphlet on the table beside the front door with our hours. If you ever need to come to confession or… ” He faltered. What was he even trying to say? “If you’d like to know about catechism classes or have any questions about the Church, I’d be happy to… ” I’d be happy to continue to stand here, grasping for vocabulary like a bumbling idiot.
Her finger pressed against his lips to stop his babbling. He swallowed. Danger. Danger. Danger. The inappropriate action ended as quickly as it had begun. She was no longer touching him, but he could still feel her finger there, pressed against his mouth.
For the briefest moment, he’d wanted to suck it between his lips to taste her skin. Suddenly an image of the dark angel sprawled across the altar with him on top of her bloomed in his mind. He took a physical step back to shake the thoughts free.
“I really must go,” she said after a beat. “You’re too much temptation.”
He should have called her on her forwardness, but he couldn’t bring himself to take the light out of her eyes. Her confidence was mesmerizing; watching it crumble in shame at her behavior wasn’t something he could bring himself to do. Not after observing how timid she’d seemed upon entering the church. It was as if her brief visit had breathed new life into her even though she’d remained an observer.
“I hope you can stand a new regular,” she said, “because I’ll be here every week indefinitely.”
God help me. Perhaps another of Our Lady of Mercy’s priests could take over the midnight Mass—someone of stronger constitution. Hadrian found his eyes raking over her cleavage, pushed up by an old-fashioned evening gown of sorts. A heavy antique pendant nestled there between her breasts, drawing his eye. He imagined the heavy weight pressing there against her chest and wished that weight was his hand, or his mouth.
When he collected himself and looked up, her eyes were sharp. Her perception seemed clear and precise, as if she could read each thought as it tumbled from his mind even before he could line them up into sentences, ideas, and longings.
Her fingers ran along the edge of the pendant, the backs of them slowly dragging across her skin. Hadrian struggled for breath.
She sighed. “All right, I’ll stop tormenting you for now. You might need the full week to recover. Pick your jaw up off the floor like a good boy.”
She turned then, her skirts whispering around her as she glided out of the church, leaving Hadrian speechless, without even the ability to stop her or chastise her for her behavior.
If you enjoyed this excerpt, please consider picking up Dark Mercy. Dark Mercy is a novella in the Pretverse that focuses on Hadrian and the story of his turning.
About the Author
Zoe Winters writes quirky and sometimes dark paranormal romance. Her favorite colors are rainbow and clear.
For updates on new releases, freebies, and contests, sign up for the newsletter via the contact form at: zoewintersbooks.com or for a free copy of Kept, by sending a blank email to [email protected]
If you enjoyed Life Cycle, check out the other stories in this world:
Books in the Preternaturals Series:
Blood Lust (book 1)
Save My Soul (book 2)
The Catalyst (book 3)
Available in print, audio book, and ebook.
Preternaturals Shorts:
Cat Fight (a Dayne and Greta Story [Blood Lust])
Dark Mercy (novella)