‘Password protected, like a computer.’
He cocked his head. ‘What’s a computer?’
Now it was my turn to snigger. ‘Isn’t the brave warrior of boom plugged into social media?’
He booted at the platform; the block vibrated, deepening to burgundy. ‘Since this…’ He raised his stump, and I fought not to flinch. ‘I’m one of the Imperfect. Confined to barracks. Humans could’ve invented flying horses, and I’d be clueless.’
‘I’d better not explain about iPods, smartphones, and YouTube then. I don’t want my outfit brain splattered when I blow your mind.’
‘Back at you, when I blow your mind,’ he pouted, ‘you haven’t read one of my books yet.’
‘Cool comeback, bro. This is me, quaking in my leather boots.’
The blocks on the lower levels bellowed, and I cowered.
Way to go with the diplomacy, Feathery-cakes.
Don’t piss off the freaky glowing stones, I get you.
‘If I wasn’t in the Lower Level of Angels, you’d be dangling upside down in those pretty leather boots.’ Harahel scowled, before grinning. ‘But hey, when you’re the Wing of a General like Anpiel, who worries about a little ash mixed in with the violet? It’s not like I care…what they say.’ He waggled his eyebrows. ‘And look at me, taking the mighty princess back to school.’
His eyes widened, as if his brain had caught up with the words spilling out of his mouth. He fell to his knees in front of me, spreading out his delicate wings, in what I’d learned with horror to be the punishment position.
‘Get up,’ I grimaced.
Harahel had just spoken to me in the most human way since I’d been dragged to Angel World.
His cringing fear…?
He could stick that.
‘Sorry, I forget myself...that I’m now Imperfect.’
I nudged Harahel with my toe. ‘Do I look like I’ve been drinking the Psycho Juice? You’re just you, and I’m just me. Nobody’s perfect.’
Flight hummed, flapping against my back and stroking me in tingling waves.
I could be losing it A Clockwork Orange style, but Drake’s surrogate mummy just patted me on the back.
Harem pants has you by your feathery pussy, girl.
Do you want to discover what the skank sword does if it decides to punish your ass?
I flinched, as the sword settled.
Harahel stared at me, before pushing himself up, his back straight. ‘Anpiel will love you, and believe me, she hates most Glories. In Angel World? You need allies.’ When I looked away, he frowned. ‘You do have allies?’
‘Does a Commander count, who’s threatened to get medieval on my ass if I don’t become the model princess?’
‘That would be a no.’ Harahel snatched my arm, and I was wrapped in a warm apple scent, as he dragged me in front of the platform. The burgundy block snarled even louder. ‘Well, now you have me, and I bet Anpiel too. She’s sister to the Supreme Commander, so—’
‘Joking again, yeah?’
He bowed his head. ‘Who’d joke about having Hasmal as family?’
I snorted.
That solved the Matriarch trusting him sized puzzle, but not whether I could truly trust Harahel or Anpiel…
Harahel shook me, and I blinked. ‘Concentrate. Do you want to be torn — rip — into a million itty pieces and then barbequed?’
‘That’d be a no.’
‘Do you train for the queen, or for yourself?’
I crossed my arms. ‘Why? Do rainbows spout sparkling out of your arse if I say myself?’
‘You don’t die.’
I swallowed, looking away. ‘I didn’t decide to train but I choose to grow strong, so…train the hell out of me.’
‘All I needed to know.’ He shoved me closer to the block.
Grrrrrr.
I jumped, before narrowing my eyes. ‘Calm your Gremlin arse down, I’m on the side of the angels.’
Harrumph.
The block flopped on the plinth, shrugging pompously to itself.
I scrutinized the smooth block. There was one stone thorn in the centre, like the tip of a sharp nose.
When I was a teenager, I’d once seen a bloke discovered on a building site, who’d drowned in cement. Only the tip of his nose had peeked out.
What was hidden inside this block?
‘How’d I read this sexy slab?’ I tapped its edge.
Mrrrrr….
Screw me sideways, I could swear that was a purr.
Just call me Ambassador of Diplomacy.
Harahel clicked his tongue between his teeth. ‘Hey, you haven’t called your favourite Trainer sexy. And we use these Gateways to search.’
‘Like the Internet for spell casters,’ I muttered.
Harahel tilted his head. ‘Does your Internet work with blood as well?’
I traced my fingers over the Gateway’s warm skin-like surface; it shivered. ‘Blood…?’
He crushed my palm down over the Gateway.
I howled, as my skin was pricked Sleeping Beauty style by the stone thorn.
My blood trickled, melding with the Gateway, whilst it roared along with every other pulsing block.
I jerked, fighting the drag towards the Gateway.
Into it.
My brain was torn to a million itty pieces. My body juddered, fried with electric currents down my spinal column and tree branch spreading to my fingertips. And I flew the crimson path of my blood into the roaring mouth of the Gateway.
When it swallowed me, I screamed.
6
I flew over the blood rainbow into the world inside the Gateway.
Fat scarlet tears soaked my dress. I shivered, even as I screamed into the gushing red that was frying me from the inside out.
Then I was falling.
I twisted, clawing at the void. My guts lurched. Copper stickiness coated my nostrils, sweet and tangy.
Nothing but this tumble into...
My blood.
I hollered.
J, help me, I’m asking.
Two things you’re the mistress of: blood and gaming.
Didn’t you tell Mr Sweet Thing Librarian (and I’d stamp his ass property of J’s any day), that this was a computer?
This gory nightmare isn’t real?
Oh, you can bet your hoochie mama ass it’s real.
If you bleed out in here, then you’ll be the most beautiful corpse in the cemetery out there as well.
Cheers for the visual.
So, how’s this like Angels vs Vampires? When I design a game, I’m the bitch in charge of the controls.
You still are. You just don’t know whether to swipe left or right yet. But you better work it out fast before you hit the blood brick road.
I groaned, somersaulting.
Harahel was taking the piss.
If these Gateways were like interactive books, however, then what was Harahel showing me? Or was the Gateway calling the shots?
Or my own blood?
Yet Harahel had said it was a search, and I was a computer’s mistress. I could make a search engine lick my leather boots.
I concentrated, hauling back against the hissing pull of the red. One final yank downwards, before I stilled, hanging mid-air. ‘This is my gametime. And I’m about to God-out.’
Crimson strands wove around me. Glittering sparks crackled across my skin, jolted through my heart, and burnt me to another Level of Perfection.
They shot me up…up…up…
Until I burst free of the blood rainbow and into an enwombing golden chamber.
No wonder Ash’s geek heart sought out every gadget and console for his gamer’s heaven apartment on earth if he’d been exiled as the Fallen from this.
‘Now show me how I become the princess I need to survive and escape?’ I demanded. ‘What does royal blood mean?’
I hoped Harahel couldn’t see me. Hacking the database to find ways to escape Angel World wasn’t what the Matrirach had meant b
y training.
I yelped, stepping back, as ranks of Wings bowed down before me, materialising in the gold.
Their wings were cauterised stumps just like Gwyn’s or Rebel’s in the vision Drake had shown me in London. Drake had claimed it was a future path if I didn’t return with him to Angel World.
Had it been a lie, or were visions one of Drake’s Angelic Powers? And if so, what else could he see?
I gasped.
Streaks of blood seeped from the blokes’ backs, before coiling out of the gashed wounds into curled letters:
Love touched
Blood Princess
We fly Again.
What was it with the riddles?
Are you seeing this, J?
Receiving loud and clear the screwed-up alternative to ink on those pretty boys.
I’m a Blood Princess?
What the hell is that? I survive by becoming the Big Bad?
You asked to see the meaning of royal blood: here’s the answer, Feathery-highness.
And who do I get love touching?
Maybe it’s who touches you…?
Both Rebel and Ash, angel and vampire, knelt for you. You need them. You can’t fly alone.
‘Princess…’ The holler fractured the gold, shook the walls, and bled the bowed angels melting into the floor. ‘Princess, please…’
Harahel.
A wail.
Then, moaned this time, ‘Princess…’
Harahel hadn’t called me by my title before. Whoever was hurting the librarian enough to push the word from his lips was going down Hackney style.
‘Time to return to real life.’ I closed my eyes, clicking my heels three times because how many times would I have the chance to take the piss like that? ‘Next stop, Angel World.’
I screamed, ripping into itty million pieces and frying electric chair in reverse. Then I was back in the stuffy room of spiralling books.
I tottered, falling with a panicked flail of my arms. My joints wobbled elastic-like, snapped by the travel through the Gateway.
Crack — there went my knee-caps on the floor.
And Harahel?
He gazed at me pleadingly, held on his knees against the back wall. His head had been wrenched to the side by his long curls, the graceful line of his neck exposed as if in vampire porn.
And he was naked.
He flinched, when my scrutiny dropped to his trousers pooled next to him.
When I raised my gaze to the Glory who was holding him down, sparks skittered over my skin bonfire-crackling in defence of Harahel, my first ally.
‘You dare raise your eyes to a Glory?’ The angelic asshole, her silver threaded hair held back in a bun by two diagonal feathers, although she had more muscles than any granny I’d ever seen, twisted her hand in Harahel’s hair, and he yowled. ‘Your status is less than a Glory child, Imperfect. If you behave as one, shall I not treat you as one?’
‘I’ll tell my bonded my misbehaviour, Pronoia,’ Harahel bit out. ‘She has the right to punish me.’
He didn’t add not you. But he may as well have rapped it, before blowing a raspberry.
Harahel had some swag.
‘I’ll inform Anpiel myself, Imperfect,’ Pronoia pursed her mouth in disdain, ‘once I’ve handed out my own chastisement.’
‘Enough with the Psycho Gran routine.’ I fought to push myself up; my calves quivered. ‘And since when did the naughty step involve a bare bum?’
Flight hummed her approval, flapping on my back.
‘You’ll get your chance soon, girl,’ I muttered.
Pronoia tutted. ‘By the Matriarch, princess, you are ill behaved. But what is to be expected of a mongrel?’
I reddened.
What had I reckoned? She’d bow? Grovel? Kiss my arse? Just because I was a princess? Or because she was frightened of the Matriarch?
But mongrel? Is that what the Glories thought of me behind my back?
‘A mongrel with royal blood,’ Harahel snarled, and I blinked at the sudden fight in his eyes, even as he held himself still. ‘Who’s already fought the Pure. She’d bite through your wrinkled old neck, just like I could…before.’
Pronoia hissed, shaking Harahel.
I tried once again to battle up, but my thighs shook, dropping me to my knees.
Pronoia dragged Harahel onto his tiptoes, before slamming him round to face the howling blocks. ‘If you were mine, I’d break the pride from you, feather by feather. Like a child Broken, bare bum, as the princess states, is the only way to discipline an Imperfect.’
‘Don’t touch him, bitch.’
A sly smile swept across Pronoia’s pinched face. ‘Like this?’
Smack — Pronoia slapped her hand down on the pale centre of Harahel’s right bum cheek, marking him with a scarlet handprint.
She nodded, satisfied, before pulling back her hand again.
Smack — Pronoia marked him on the other cheek.
Harahel panted, screwing closed his eyes. A pink flush crept down his neck.
Think, before you reveal yourself on the side of the poor and spanked.
The Glories are the pussies with the power. If you want allies, do you choose the cute red arse, or the one who smacks it?
Bitch disrespected me, J, called me mongrel.
Aren’t you one? Are you ashamed of the vampire inside?
What if the Glories don’t accept me as princess?
Tell me something, hooker, when did you even start to want to be their princess? When did the craving for power first sink in its fangs? Or was it too late, the first time you met Queen Miniel?
‘I can see computers aren’t the only thing you bastards are behind with, if this is your Good Parenting Guide.’ I shuffled closer on my knees. ‘So, here’s the deal: piss off now, and I won’t tell the Matriarch what you called her precious daughter.’
Pronoia cackled. ‘You would hide behind her? By my Wing, I should love to see you attempt such folly. The Matriarch would break you for lacking the strength to save yourself.’ Good to know, but also: hell. ‘Should we curtsy before a monster like you…? When you need just such correction.’
Pronoia slammed Harahel’s forehead into the wall — bang — before finally dropping him in a heap at her feet.
Then she marched towards me.
I bottom shuffled away, before sprawling on my back, as my arms gave out.
I stared up at Paronoia’s smug face before she flipped me onto my stomach and reached for the hem of my dress.
No way I was being stripped and spanked like a naughty kid from whatever era Pronoia was born.
How had I gone from ruling to…this?
A squawk. Gasp. Choking.
I flopped round onto my back again.
Black braids weaving like snakes and the stink of leather.
Battle crushed Pronoia against the wall, throttling her stringy chicken neck. ‘I’m the lass’ Trainer now,’ Battle hissed, ‘no one skelps her but me.’
Battle pressed her thumbs deeper into the back of Pronoia’s neck.
Pronoia juddered; her eyes rolled to white.
Battle dropped Pronoia’s limp body with a thud. She wiped her hands down her ringed skirt with a snort of disgust. ‘Head case.’
‘Safe, you’re my Trainer too?’ I lounged with my arms behind my head, as if I was choosing to sprawl on the floor.
Battle stared down at me. ‘Not before time, madam. This is what you call training? Acting the princess? On the night we hold War Council too. And you…?’ She twisted Harahel’s arm behind his back; he groaned. She hauled him across the dusty floor to lie stranded next to me like a second upended beetle. ‘Wee man, I should’ve known you’d cause trouble. If you don’t stop misbehaving—’
‘What, Hasmal? What more will you do?’ A flurry of mauve-tipped curls and blazing eyes in a dark face, which was Amazonian in its fury. The new Glory scooped Harahel up, swinging him round and caressing his wings, as she checked him for injury. When she stroked
over the two purpling handprints on his arse, she growled. ‘Will you not get it through your idiot self, you don’t touch my Wing.’
‘Keep your head, Anpiel,’ Battle waved her hand towards the crumpled Psycho Gran. ‘It wasn’t me. This time. In fact, I saved the daft brat. Our madam princess too.’
Anpiel paused in her frantic soothing of Harahel and stared at me. ‘What’s wrong with the lass?’
Harahel grinned like I’d just taken my first step, even if I had face planted. ‘She worked the Gateway on her first attempt. Manipulated it too like the legend she is. And…’ He rubbed his forehead against Anpiel’s; the gesture was more tender than anything I’d seen between Glory and Wing. ‘…she protected me. Except, her legs are jellified. Remember when I first worked it? I couldn’t walk for a week.’
I didn’t miss the silent communication going on between the two, as they gazed at each other.
Anpiel nodded. ‘You were always a big Jessie. Bet you a kiss, the princess can stand right now.’
Harahel grinned. ‘You’re on. And hey, I’m all warrior. Even if…’
Anpiel raised Harahel’s stump gently to her lips and kissed it. ‘There, enough of that,’ her voice was soft. ‘See, you already won the kiss.’
Why did their love make my guts burn?
‘You’re giving me the boak,’ Battle spat, wrenching me up by the arm. My head span, and I tipped forward; she caught me by the scruff of the neck, and I stayed up. ‘If we’re going to fight for this floozy, then the least she can do is stand and listen to the War Council.’
War Council, J? Why couldn’t it be Candy Council? Or Cute Puppy Council?
The war is ancient. The great schism.
Here’s the tea: it’s the break-up of Angel World all over the earth, throwing down the rebellious and casting them out.
Their sweet cakes Fell, becoming the Fallen.
Humans call them vampires.
And those Fanged dicks want your peachy ass, just as much as the angelic assholes.
Vampire Princess (Rebel Angels Book 2) Page 5