Monsters, Book One: The Good, The Bad, The Cursed

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Chapter Sixty-Four

  Angel heard something crackling. It sounded like a Tessla coil generating its own electricity. It was distant at first, not quite as loud as the thrumming of her heartbeat in her ears and her inner screaming. But it grew in volume, gradually becoming strong enough to drown out the inner sounds of her fear.

  And then she felt something crackling. At first, it didn’t hurt as much as Michael’s teeth in her throat. That was excruciating. It was as if her blood was fighting him, pulling back from his attempts at drinking her in because he was not the one it wanted to be with. He was not the one it wanted to claim it.

  You’re not the one, she thought, echoing her blood’s resolution. But this only made things more painful for her, because Michael only sucked that much harder on her in order to get to what he wanted. Little by little, long drawn-out second by second, he took more of her into himself and swallowed it down.

  She was horribly bruised by now, not only her abused neck but her waist, where Michael had grabbed ahold of her and squeezed tight in anger. And her chin, where he’d done the same. And her hip bones, where his body had collided with hers in mounting rage as if he felt the need to use his strength to remind her body of his dominance.

  She would have continued to scream at each of these injustices, but she’d already screamed to the point of being hoarse, and her mouth and lungs didn’t seem to want to scream anymore. In fact, her body didn’t seem to want to move at all anymore.

  So when the unmistakable sound of lightning sizzled to life in the room, and grew to the point that it was licking along her body, she only managed a tiny, surprised gasp.

  Until Michael stilled against her, and she knew he was going to take his teeth from her throat. She just bloody knew it. And it was going to be the most painful thing ever.

  She wasn’t wrong. Something was happening in the room. Something was changing. Angel tried to force her eyes open to see what the hell it was, but they wouldn’t obey. Then everything went quiet; Michael stopped in his merciless draw against her wayward veins, and the only sound was that of Angel’s labored breathing.

  A tremendous cracking sound erupted, as if the very universe were breaking open. And just as she’d known he would do, Michael began to withdraw from her throat. His hands gripped her hips harder than ever, imprinting his fingers into her hipbones as he pulled his teeth out slowly, probably wanting to keep from too badly damaging his “property.” But he only succeeding in lengthening her torture.

  Now she did manage to make a sound. It was a long, low moan of unbelievable anguish that made Angel realize she had a lot more nerve endings in her neck than she’d previously believed.

  In the next second, Michael was suddenly completely gone from her – his teeth from her neck, his hands from her waist, his very presence ripped away so that it no longer crushed her body into the wall behind her.

  Angel, open your eyes, she told herself.

  Someone was shouting. She felt cool, soft hands moving over her. “It’s some kind of strong immobilizing spell,” said a female. “I can’t get it off her. It’s been laced inwardly.”

  In the background, further away, she recognized someone else shouting. It was Jake. His voice was raised in anger. “What the fuck?!” he bellowed.

  Jake, she called. But no sound came out.

  “Where the fuck did he go?!” the voice demanded, ripe with rage.

  Another voice answered him. This one was laced with an English accent. She thought she recognized it. “It was an auto-recall spell, Crow. There’s no telling where it took him.”

  I think I know that voice, she thought. But now the voices in the background were growing more distant. And she was caring less and less.

  “Angel, open your eyes and look at me,” commanded the female again. This voice probably belongs to the soft, cool hands on my face, Angel thought.

  Angel tried with all her might to obey the command, but she just couldn’t. What was wrong with her? She was so weak. If not for the magic holding her up against that wall, Angel was sure she’d not only fall to the floor, but through it.

  I can’t, she said. Or rather, she tried to say it, anyway. Her mouth wouldn’t move. It was starting to piss her off.

  The female turned and called to someone else. “Roman,” she said. She sounded so serious now. That’s not good, Angel thought.

  Her fingers and toes were tingling uncomfortably suddenly. All at once, nausea rolled through her hard and fast. Then it passed, and her body flushed hot. Then hotter.

  “She’s past the half way mark. It isn’t how much blood he took, but his magic…. It’s too strong. We can take solace in the fact that he never had a chance to give her his blood in return, so she won’t be bound to him. But she’ll change now one way or another. And someone needs to make that choice for her right now.”

  I’m burning up, thought Angel. No… there’s something wrong.

  The heat was stifling. She was going to burst into flames. It was shifting, rolling through her like the promise of something very bad. And then, just as she was positive she was spontaneously combusting, the heat faded – and she was cold.

  So fucking cold. Freezing.

  Help me, she thought miserably.

  “By the gods,” someone said. “Get her down from there.” She knew that voice too.

  Hands were on her again, moving her away from the wall. Then someone was lifting her. She felt the gentle bump of footsteps as someone carried her. She recognized the feel of these arms. Strong. Warm. Jake, she thought. Jake, she tried to say again.

  Then she felt another surface at her back, this one softer. He was laying her down somewhere. A couch, probably.

  “Angel,” said Jake. “Please open your eyes and see me, Angel.”

  So she did. Except she didn’t. And she wanted to punch herself in the face.

  It might just be very possible that I’m dying, she told herself quite sarcastically in retaliation, as if she were simply sharing the thought over tea.

  “She needs to be turned right now,” said someone else. Darius, she said. He heard me call for help. He was the one who took me down from the wall. But something he just said stuck in Angel’s mind and brought her right back around again.

  ….She needs to be turned right now.

  Oh hell, she thought numbly. They were talking about turning her… which meant she really was dying. She mentally put down her sarcastic tea cup and lowered her pinky finger before she muttered, Damn.

  “Angel, I’m right here,” said Darius. “We all are. We know you can’t talk. Clemens cast an immobilization on you and it’s the strongest I’ve ever seen. But it will fade very shortly, and everything is going to be okay.”

  No it’s not, she thought. I know I’m dying. Michael did something else to me too. She remembered his words, those horrible words that shook the foundations and walls and turned his eyes devil red from corner to corner. He’d changed her inside.

  Cool fingertips brushed her hair from her face. It felt so good, she almost forgot her fear. They were Jake’s fingertips. She wanted him to keep touching her. Anything to keep him touching her.

  “I can’t do this to her,” said Jake. Jake… don’t let me go. I want to be with you.

  “Yes you can, and you will,” said a woman. It was the same woman who had commanded Angel to open her eyes. “Her sentinel cannot heal this damage. The spell is too tightly wound with her body. Removing it would rip her apart. The only thing that will negate it is changing the body itself.”

  “Not without her consent,” Jake said.

  “You have her consent Jake, believe me,” insisted Darius.

  “He’s right, Crow.”

  That voice belonged to Cain. Angel knew it immediately, even though she’d never heard it before. There was just no mistaking the power in that voice. “She’s already made the decision,” Cain continued.

  “Cain’s right,” said Gabriel. “She has.”

  Gabriel is here too? A
ngel pushed her eyes open. Almost. Damn it!

  “She no longer wishes to be human,” said Gabe. “I sensed the change in her some time ago. She wants to be stronger than humanity allows.” I do, she thought. That’s true.

  Jake. Please help me. She was suddenly furious with herself for leaving her mental wards up. She had no control over them under the immobilization, so there they stayed. And if not for the wards, Jake could have entered her mind. He would have known how she felt immediately. That was what she got for being duplicitous.

  Jake replied to Gabe. “What makes you think she wouldn’t choose to be like you instead?”

  Angel frowned, or tried to. What? What was Jake talking about?

  Gabriel said, “It doesn’t matter. I can’t turn her like this. You know how my kind turn one another. It isn’t possible with Angel, not here and now.” Gabe, I have no idea what you’re talking about…. “And we’re running out of time,” he continued. “Her heart is becoming too weak.”

  “Well, I don’t know about you,” said the British man, “But if someone were to turn back time and give me the choice, I would certainly choose vampire over Withered. You never have to worry about how you smell, now do you?”

  Angel pushed her eyes open. This time, they obeyed. Finally.

  The world came to her in blurred contrasts that quickly straightened themselves out. The people around her gasped in surprise or fell silent. Then Cain said, “Well I’ll be damned... You’ve got yourself a live wire, Crow.”

  But Angel whispered, “Jake….” She lost it for a moment as a wave of oblivion rolled over her, temporarily paralyzing Angel in its power. But when it passed, she looked down into Jake’s green eyes where he knelt beside the couch, and she used them to ground her. With all the strength she could muster, she pushed her words through her teeth and very softly said, “Will you please… just do it already?”

  And suddenly Jake’s arms were snaking around her, and she was lifted against his hard chest as he stood. “Why yes, I believe I will,” he said with finality.

  She felt herself spinning back into motionlessness as he rapidly turned on his heel, and called up a portal.

  “Stay with me, Angel,” he told her when he strode into the portal and she could feel him rush it along. “I promise I’m going to make everything right.”

  Chapter Sixty-Five

  With Angel wrapped tight in his arms, Jake left the portal like the devil was chasing his heels and strode across the damp earth to the back door of his one true home. The log cabin had belonged to his fathers – all of them. His father, his father’s father, and his father before him. It resided on a private wooded lot of approximately twenty acres on the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota.

  He’d always known that if he’d ever decided he wanted to turn a woman into one of his kind – he would have to bring her here. This ground was saturated in the history and magic of his people. The air here had once been in their lungs, had been used to speak their words. The trees that soared above him now had been witness to the childhood play of ancestors who’d climbed their limbs and marked their trunks and used their branches for shade.

  As Jake approached the back door of the cabin, it unlocked and swung open for him. And it wasn’t his magic doing it. It was theirs.

  As if they too knew how desperately vital this moment was, as if they shared in their descendant’s emotions, their spirits gathered and helped him along. He felt them there, and it gave him hope. It gave him the strength to do what he was going to have to do.

  Angel turned her head against his chest. It was only the second time she’d moved since Jake and the cavalry had stormed into her apartment to find her magically strapped to the wall. But this movement was more natural than the last. It wasn’t forced. Darius had been right about the immobility spell’s duration being relatively short. It was already wearing off.

  Jake eyed the cruel bruise Clemens had left on Angel’s neck. The piercings from his teeth were gone; those marks always healed almost immediately on victims, no one knew exactly why, though there were theories. But the bruise remained, and it was clear evidence to Jake, an experienced vampire, that Angel’s blood hadn’t heeded his call. There was no reason to pull with such force against a vein unless blood wasn’t naturally rising.

  Clemens must have cast the immobility spell on Angel in a fit of rage, no doubt believing she was purposefully keeping her blood from him. Immobilizing her would prevent her from having any control over her body whatsoever and bring that defiance to a quick end.

  But Angel hadn’t been doing it on purpose; Jake knew that. He knew in his heart that her body had simply known he was not the one for her. That awareness of her spirit, that closeness of her soul on a deeper level, reminded him so much of his people.

  Angel moaned softly against his chest, whether from pain or fear, he wasn’t sure. Those damn wards were still up around her mind, sturdy and steady as ever. He was impressed with his little warrior. She was incredibly strong.

  It would be an honor riding with her should she choose to join the Monsters. His brothers had already welcomed her into their fold, whether she knew it or not. They would forever watch over her, forever keep guard, no matter what path she chose.

  But at this very moment, there was only one path for her. The others fell away like rubble as Jake stormed into the single bedroom in the cabin and made his way to the bed. It had been kept clean and fresh, per his long-standing instructions.

  Jake gently laid Angel down on top of the thick white quilt his grandmother had made long ago, and then he straightened and looked down at his beautiful healer. Her mass of soft, fine hair was spilled across the blanket like a waterfall of night, and her bright eyes were open. She was looking at him.

  Watching him.

  But she was so pale. “I have to take it all, Angel,” he told her. “Every last drop.”

  Angel’s breaths stilled, and he saw her pupils contract in fear. He listened to the sound of her heart speed up, despite its weakness. Whatever magic Clemens had cast on her was worming its evil way through her system in an attempt to change her make-up on a cellular level so that she would become Withered when Clemens drained her blood and in turn gave her his.

  Well, Jake was going to beat him to it.

  Jake was going to drink her dry so that it was only his vampire magic keeping her alive, and it was his damn blood she would swallow. And when she made the change, which she would, it would be to his kind. No one else’s.

  Because she was his. Now. Forever. Always, damn it.

  He was going to prove it to her right now.

  He lowered himself to the bed on one knee, listening as her breathing became more rapid. “You know me, Angel,” he told her softly as he climbed over her, straddling her body with his knees at her waist. “So you know you can trust me when I tell you that even though I have to take it all – I’m not going to hurt you. I never would. I’m not Michael,” he told her, wanting that to be very, very clear in her mind. “When I take this blood,” he said, lifting her arm to gently rub his thumb along the inside of her wrist across her pulse, “all you will feel is bliss.”

  He watched her weak pulse flutter at the base of her throat when she heard his words.

  Slowly, Angel smiled.

  Jake was struck still for a moment. It was such a stunning thing to see, that smile. But then she took a small breath and softly said, “I know.” And then she gave a small laugh. “I trust you, Jake.”

  Oh hell.

  Pride and joy flooded Jake’s soul, and his lower body flooded with blood, growing painfully hard almost at once. He was coming alive beneath the loving gaze of his chosen mate.

  There was a blue tint appearing beneath her eyes, and he knew he was running short on time; he would have given almost anything to do this slowly… over the course of days.

  Some day he was going to track down Michael Clemens and flay him alive for forcing Jake to rush through this act.

  But Jake lea
ned over, placed one hand beside Angel’s head on the pillows, and used the other to gently cup her cheek. The line of her chin was bruised where she’d been brutalized. So he said, “Angel,” and he placed a very soft kiss just above the bruise. “Drop your wards for me, baby.”

  He needed in. If he was going to do this right, he needed her to let him in – everywhere.

  Angel closed her eyes. Jake could feel ancient magic move around him lovingly, then move off him to surround Angel with the same love.

  She took a slow, deep breath in the midst of that love and let it out in a sigh, smiling. “Done,” she said.

  Jake tried not to let too much monster show when victory surged through him. Instead, he leaned over once more, and this time when he kissed her, he let loose with a little vampire influence, taking the pain of the bruise away from her. Ever so softly, his lips brushed across the marking, and Angel shuddered. But it wasn’t pain she was feeling now, it was pleasure.

  “Jake,” she said, drawing his eyes to hers. “I love you.”

  Something profound stole over Jake. This was the most magnificent moment in Jacob Crow’s life. This right here. Those very words. This singular, precious woman.

  As the words poured over him and then moved through him, he closed his eyes and heard distant shouts of joy echo through the past. He had to brace himself on the bed above her when he began to tremble in the midst of his happiness. Knowing Angel as he did, Jake gave her his best space rogue smile and said, “I know.”

  Angel laughed, and he read the happiness in her mind.

  Then Jake gently wove his fingers through her silken strands of hair and tilted her head, exposing the un-injured side of her neck. He leaned in and whispered in her ear. “This is it, Angel. You’ll be mine. I’ll be yours. Forever.”

  She shivered, her body already beginning to stir beneath him in anticipation. Jake moved down, parted his lips above her weakly pulsing vein, closed his eyes – and sank his fangs deep into her delicious throat.

  Chapter Sixty-Six