Vampire Devil

by Rosemary A Johns

  Mischief grunted, nonchalantly wiping away the blood. ‘Why should I expect better from an Addict?’

  ‘Dry up,’ Rebel’s wings flamed. ‘Should we be after expecting anything better from a Brother of the Phoenix? Sweet Christ, did you think I didn’t recognise your muppet arse, Zophia?’

  I stared between them, hands on hips. ‘And why, McSecretPants,’ Rebel blushed; his pink tongue swiped his lips, ‘didn’t you tell me he’s a member of the Legion? A Mage’s boy?’

  ‘When? During the touching or the kissing…?’

  ‘Anytime, Master of Avoidance.’

  Rebel gazed down at his boots. ‘Even bad angels deserve a chance. Once you knew he worked for our enemy…?’

  ‘I’d do this?’ I choked Mischief; he gagged, beating his wings.

  Whish — thud.

  Numb, I shook at the remembered sound of the guillotine echoing in the waterfall cavern: the corrupted sweetness that had clung to me, the terrified wails of the slave twins, and the wing bones snapping underfoot. And I remembered Nathanael, the silver-haired Discipliner from the Legion who’d trained the Broken slaves…and chopped off their wings.

  My hands tightened around Mischief’s neck. ‘How many wings have you stolen, Discipliner?’

  Mischief coughed, rubbing at his forearms. He blanched as if he was as queasy as me — and I was close to hurling all over his glittery trousers. ‘S-stolen…wings? I’ve never…none. That’s not my department.’

  Rebel’s voice was quiet in the gloom. ‘And how many did you save?’

  Mischief’s gaze darkened. ‘We can’t all be heroes. I didn’t choose the Legion; it chose me.’

  Suddenly, Rebel grasped Mischief’s hair, tugging it; he yipped. ‘Holy saints, Nathanael’s your little brother…?’

  As if I’d been the one burned, I let go of Mischief’s neck, and he hissed, wrenching away his hair from Rebel and twirling free across the tunnel with deadly grace.

  Mischief pushed his hair behind his ears as he panted. ‘What consequence could my delightful brother possibly be to you?’

  Everything — because in the escape from Angel World the Lightning Angel we’d rescued had killed the teen assassin.

  And Mischief didn’t know.

  My gaze caught with Rebel who gave a quick shake of his head. ‘He was a brutal git to my brother, Haman. I wonder if it runs in the family?’

  Even I could catch that meaning: hide the death of the bloke’s psycho brother. And Rebel should know: I’d sacrificed his brother too.

  Mischief’s head bowed; his hair hung over his face. ‘Haman has potential. He’s powerful. I’ve never wished…for him to be harmed, far from it. But if you wonder if I am like my family, then I can reassure you.’ His laugh was bitter. ‘I’m the black sheep, who they would have sent for slaughter if my wool were not so valuable.’

  ‘You knew Haman?’ Rebel’s smile was dazzling. ‘That grants you one chance, Shadow.’

  ‘I’m honoured,’ Mischief inclined his head with a sneer, only to be bowled out of the way by a tumble of vampire.

  Ash: lit up will-o’-the-wisp style by the Spy Lights. His face had been painted by the fists of the FF, but I grinned because he was free and…

  Yeah, a bitch had to choose her words more carefully.

  Captive angels…

  Ash caught my expression and shook his head. ‘Still owned, and it still sucks. What happened to the Free the Vampires campaign?’

  I grimaced. ‘It brought out a charity single and a t-shirt: A Fang isn’t only for Christmas.’

  Ash fiddled with the holster of his shooter. It thrilled me that he’d be fighting at my side.

  ‘But I am your fam. So, double ownership: the FF and their princess. Who knew I’d be in such demand? Except,’ he glanced down the tunnel, tilting his head as if listening for something, ‘your refusing to sit up and beg for the Supreme Commander has twisted him Joker to your Batman.’

  ‘I’d say I was more of a Deadpool—’

  Mischief snorted. ‘Is not Wolverine more fitting?’

  ‘Shut your bitch mouth, Doctor Strange. Still with the beast jokes?’

  Mischief fluttered his eyelashes. ‘Why, I meant it as a compliment.’

  I growled. How could I fight, when my blokes were so divided?

  Ash’s gaze became flinty. ‘You freed him? You’d trust your father’s whore?’

  Mischief’s smile was venomous. ‘Yet she trusts the whore of the entire Under World.’

  Ash dived towards Mischief, but in a burst of red-and-black Rebel caught Ash around the waist and dashed him to the tunnel floor between the steel rails and sleepers.

  Crack.

  I flinched, as they hit the earth; the lights flickered, casting wild shadows. They rolled in a snarl of fangs, fists, and feathers.

  I fidgeted, hiding my hands under my armpits to stop myself leaping in and pulling them apart like it was a schoolyard squabble.

  This was between two ancient enemies who’d allied because of me. I wasn’t part of the tangled centuries they’d spent warring before me. Even if I howled inside at knowing I was the outsider.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ Mischief singsonged as he watched them on the rails, his smile widening.

  What did the bastard know that we didn’t, when he was as much a prisoner as the rest of us?

  Rebel pinned Ash with his wrists above him; Ash panted but didn’t struggle. ‘I don’t forgive you.’ Rebel banged Ash’s head against the girder as he whispered, ‘By all the saints, you promised you wouldn’t leave me alone in the dark. Wouldn’t…abandon me.’ His voice hitched. ‘I don’t forgive you, Brigadier.’

  ‘That’s all right, angel,’ Ash murmured, ‘because I don’t forgive myself.’

  My eyes prickled, but as I wiped my sleeve across them, I sniffed at the sudden whiff of ozone, followed by the gust of wind hot across my face.

  Can you say Screwed Choo-Choo?

  Not now, J, busy dying.

  ‘The Joker wouldn’t send me onto a real, human…unabandoned…Tube Line…?’ I spun to Ash.

  Ash had paled as he struggled out from under Rebel. ‘He would. In a heartbeat. Tried to tell you.’

  I soared down to snatch Rebel up into my arms, but my foot skidded out from under me on a slippery rail.

  ‘I truly wouldn’t do that…’ Mischief called, in genuine warning this time.

  But it was too late: I reached out with my palm to steady myself on the central rail, only to be hit by the live current coursing through it.

  As the first rumblings of the underground coming towards us vibrated through the tunnel walls, I was shocked to death.

  7

  When I first touched the live railway track, the shadowed tunnel that was lit only by the king’s lights vanished as if my brain had been fried and all that was left were the fragmented flashes of my life.

  And it’d make a bitching movie.

  My heart stopped.

  Then like a boot to the gut, a sensory overload hit me: my nerves screamed with the searing pain, just as I couldn’t open my spasming jaw to utter even a whimper against the agony burning me from the inside.

  I juddered under the intense heat, as my chest tightened and ached. Hell, could your heart explode bloody?

  Rumble, rattle, rumble.

  Even through my haze, the dissonant rumble of the tube train, blasting with it a whisper of ozone and cast-iron, shocked me out of the pain.

  I yanked at my hand; the roasted scent of my smoking palm filled my nostrils. I was stuck, as the rails trembled.

  J, I’m asking, help us.

  What do I look like, Miracle Workers For Hire? You’re fused, like a kid who lollipop licks a frozen lamppost, to a live rail, whilst a train roars towards you.

  Who needs a villain to tie down your ass? You tie yourself in knots.

  Don’t take up motivational speaking. Those could be the last words you ever speak to me.

  Then if these are
my last words: You’re more than feathers, blood, or bones. You’re the Protector. And you’ve always been mine.

  I was hoping for more along the lines of: Wait, I’ve just thought of a kickass escape plan…

  Not this time, Feathery-love.

  I wrenched again at my blistering hand. The blokes hollered, the tracks rattled, and the train thundered.

  Why hadn’t the others flown away and left me? Why had the current frozen shut my jaw, so I couldn’t scream at them to leave me…?

  Then I caught the shadow of the metal fiend out of the corner of my eye.

  Hell, this couldn’t be it… This was bastard it…

  I braced for impact. Only to lurch, as everything vanished in a rain of silver fire.

  Death smelt of tequila…?

  I sniffed: the funky pungent whiff of Blue Nectar, mixed with lime and sweat. I could’ve been back in the dive of a bar that played live rock gigs with my mate Gizem, before my twenty-first birthday and the supernatural world that’d fallen from the sky. I licked my lips, before realising that meant I could move again…

  Maybe I was back there…? And that would mean I had a lame arsed choice for my eternal reward.

  Figured.

  A mouth, soft against mine. It worshipped with gentle kisses, before tonguing open my lips and pressing deeper, insistent.

  My eternal reward wasn’t so lame arsed, after all.

  I blinked awake.

  Rebel drew back, smiling down at me. He pushed a strand of hair from my forehead, before rubbing it between his fingers as if checking I wasn’t an illusion or burnt to a crisp.

  ‘Angel kisses,’ he touched the back of his hand to my forehead like he was testing for a fever, ‘fierce powerful, remember?’

  I ached: electrocution was a bitch.

  The plum and black mosaic floor dug into my back; it stretched in a map of the world picked out in the British Empire, under the marble arches of a grand abandoned Victorian station. One that’d been transformed into a bar with those taste bud exploding tequila smells and bohemian sofas.

  Humans huddled in glinting eyed gangs, watching us like we were the Big Bads.

  Blood Lovers?

  ‘Even more powerful than vomit inducing fairy tales…’ Mischief shoved Rebel off me; his hair hung into my face, tickling my nose. ‘…is true magic.’

  When Mischief snatched my burnt hand, I hissed. Then I jolted: a silver trail quested through my body, like sweet popcorn, it crackled through me and then just as suddenly…it fizzled out.

  ‘Stop with the whammying…’ I snarled, but before I could grab Mischief, his legs buckled, and Rebel caught him.

  Mischief had healed me.

  A sheen of sweat coated Mischief’s forehead. Pale as he always was, he looked more sickly than normal, as if he was the one who needed healing.

  An unexpected jolt of concern shot through me. ‘What the hell’s up with your fae arse? Why the hell aren’t we crimson grease under the train’s wheels? And where the hell are we?’

  ‘Are all princesses so demanding?’ Mischief panted. I shoved myself up, exchanging a glance with Rebel that was more anxious than I’d intended: near death experiences do that to you. ‘I find that healing you has taken more energy than sensible, since I was already indisposed from saving our lives.’

  ‘All right, you win brownie points.’

  ‘Oh goodie, whatever shall I spend them on? After all, I’m bursting with the joys of life… Oh no, I’m gasping for breath explaining this to you, after expending my meagre reserves restoring you after your moronic playing on the tracks moment and—’

  Tap – tap – tap.

  I rapped my boot against the mosaic floor like an impatient headmistress. ‘Tantrum over?’

  Mischief took a breath, before nodding.

  ‘We. Alive. The. Hell. How?’

  Mischief swiped a bead of sweat off his upper lip. ‘Multi person teleportation.’

  I bounced up and down like I’d become the kid. Rebel lifted his eyebrow at me. But teleportation brought out the inner geek. The Mage had told me his boys had mutant superpowers and he hadn’t been bastard lying. ‘You just…magicked us out of there?’

  Mischief inclined his head, which would have made more of an impact if he hadn’t been shaking as if he had flu. ‘Of course, that means it was Legion magic that saved you…’

  ‘Better not use up all your brownie points at once.’

  Thud — Rebel dropped Mischief, and he yelped as his head hit the floor.

  ‘If you could do a flit whenever you wanted, why are you still here, pretending to be trapped like the rest of us?’ Rebel booted Mischief, and he rolled into a ball.

  Unicorn Boy was on his own with my enraged punk.

  ‘It only works…’ Mischief gasped, ‘when I’m with others.’ He glanced up, as if gauging whether I believed him. I wished I bastard believed him. Then I remembered that Drake on Angel World had shielded us with invisibility but hadn’t been able to hide himself. There were rules to the angels’ mental powers that I didn’t know. Maybe this was one of them? ‘And the king has magics woven over the Under World…I can’t teleport outside it without his permission.’

  When I glanced up, I caught sight of Ash; messiah-like, Ash strode amongst the humans, who stroked and pawed at him like his touch alone was as healing as Mischief’s.

  It was only when Rebel caught my hand that I realised I’d been growling. ‘Don’t get narky, but this is the Brigadier’s world. It’s nothing to think on before a fight, but these young ones are his too.’ I jerked, but Rebel held me steady. ‘He’s a Seducer, and that’s worse than me being an Addict because I was weak and chose that path. But he was forced.’

  ‘I’m not following, Riddle Master.’

  Rebel clasped my hand tighter. ‘The fib is that Blood Lifers are human: they were, once. But now they’re stronger and faster. They’re tied to the vampires. We go to war for the vampires’ eternal lovers.’

  Yet it was Ash who’d seduced them into the dark…

  Shaking, I stared at Ash across the shadows of the platform. He sprawled against the bar, whilst a skank in a sheer satin dress, which was held together at the side with chains, clung around his neck.

  I craved to claw out her eyes.

  The ancient powers inside burst to life in a volcanic explosion that shook me away from Rebel. I clenched my jaw until it ached to keep in the howl.

  ‘I’m a muppet. You know I’m no good at this blathering, I should never have—’

  ‘Don’t you dare take it back. For once you’re Mr Honesty and no way you’re regretting that.’

  Above, the roof shook; the roars of battle blasted down the far stairway.

  Flight whined, humming against my back in the gold-threaded harness and scabbard.

  ‘I missed you too, bitch,’ I murmured, ‘looks like we’re on.’

  Trick must truly be terrified he’d lose his wings if the Blood Lovers fell to the angelic army because my weapons — Flight, a huge sword with a hilt of feathers, which had once belonged to Commander Drake’s mother, and Star — had appeared in my room alongside my armour.

  When I’d held them again, it’d been like waking up.

  I drew Star, my dagger that Rebel had gifted me, and stalked towards the stairs.

  Rebel drifted after me, but I held him back with a hand on his chest. ‘You have a sassy mage to watch.’ I studied Mischief who was still curled up on the floor. ‘Plus, the freaky Blood Lifers, human or not, to protect down here.’ I glanced at Ash, who’d tensed, considering me back. ‘Ash too.’

  ‘And who’s going to be at your side, or your back, or bleeding at your feet? Because that’s my—’

  I silenced Rebel with a kiss because angel kisses are fierce powerful and sometimes they say more than words.

  Rebel melted into the kiss, accepting.

  I’d fight for the vampires, but I wouldn’t risk my angels — or my Seducer.

  Now I went to war alone.r />
  When the red-haired howl of a Glory — the female dominant bitches who ruled over the blokes in Angel World — dived at me, resplendent in gold armour over silk lavender dress, she expected to carry me off in triumph to Angel World, Helen of Troy style.

  She didn’t expect me to spin kick her hero arse skidding across the sapphire floor.

  Around the giant chamber, angel warriors clashed in clangs that hissed with violet fire against the vampire elite who tore at them with fangs and claws. Growls and groans, roars and moans: the two sides ripped each other bloody. Grey and violet feathers drifted on the draughts like party decorations.

  Here was the true carnival, everything else had only ever been playing.

  I’d protect the Blood Lovers but how could I fight for either side, when I was nothing but swag to them?

  I edged to the corner of the room, wincing when my back hit the wall. I forgot how much these two supernaturals hated each other. Just wind them up and let them go.

  Did the Matriarch truly want me back, or was she terrified of what would happen if I remained with the vampires?

  When a charred hand flew past my nose, hewn from its wailing owner, and waggled tarantula-like at my feet, I cringed back.

  I rolled my eyes, however, as the would-be Glory hero shook herself down dog-like and charged towards me again. I snatched her braids, swinging her round facefirst into the wall.

  Slam.

  ‘What the hell are you?’ Slam. ‘A Valkyrie?’

  ‘I shall rip out your disrespecting tongue,’ Valkyrie scratched at my hands, as I — slam — smashed her forehead into the wall again. ‘Then I shall pierce my blazing fire through—’

  Slam.

  ‘Primary kids on Utopia Estate are more creative with their death threats.’ I shook her. ‘Why attack now?’

  The Valkyrie bit back a laugh. ‘The Matriarch does not allow her possessions to be stolen, or escape, even a traitorous daughter such as you.’