The Angel Gift (Dark World: The Angel Trials Book 4)

by Michelle Madow

  There was a staircase straight ahead and two rooms to the side—a dining room and living room. Both of the rooms were empty.

  Thomas was the last of us in. Right after he clicked the front door shut, a vampire turned the corner to investigate.

  She held up duel daggers as she examined the room. She was short and thin, with dishwasher blonde hair and cunning eyes. Of course, she couldn’t see or smell us, and we all stood in place so we didn’t risk setting off a creaky floorboard. As long as she didn’t walk straight into one of us, she wouldn’t know we were here.

  “Who’s there?” another vampire called from the other room—a male. He had a strange accent I couldn’t place.

  “No one,” she said in a matching accent, although she still looked around suspiciously. “It must have been the wind.”

  She didn’t sound like she believed it.

  But she didn’t have time to speculate further, because I whipped out my slicer and rammed it through her heart.

  She collapsed to the floor, dead.

  I would have taken one of her weapons and given the other to another our group. But while our weapons were all invisible since we’d had them on us while drinking the invisibility potion, her weapons were visible. Holding onto them would ruin our element of surprise.

  “Natasha?” the man asked, sounding worried. “Is everything okay?”

  Not getting a response, he came around the same corner as Natasha. He was short and thin, with similar dishwater blond hair. They were likely siblings.

  His eyes widened when he saw his sister crumpled on the floor. He ran to her and repeated her name, rolling her over to see the hole my dagger had left in her chest.

  Before he could process Natasha’s death, Bella whipped out her longsword and sliced it clean through his neck.

  His head clunked to the ground beside him, his body falling down on top of his sister’s corpse.

  The silence of death descended upon the room.

  “Their eyes weren’t red,” Cassandra said softly. “We were only going to kill the demons or anyone working with them. We don’t know why these vampires were here…” She stared down at the bodies, clearly traumatized.

  “They were up here where they could leave freely. They weren’t locked in the bunker,” I said. “They might not have been blood bound, but they were working with the demons.” I leaned down and wiped my slicer on the guy’s shirt to get Natasha’s blood off of it. The blood wasn’t invisible, and a floating bit of blood in the shape of a dagger would be a clear giveaway that we were walking around after drinking invisibility potion.

  Bella did the same with her longsword.

  “We can’t know that for sure,” Cassandra said.

  “Maybe not,” Thomas said. “But Noah’s right that they weren’t being kept here involuntarily. Letting them live would have put our entire plan at risk. And given that we’re untraceable, we couldn’t exactly wait for them to strike first. Killing them was the only logical choice.”

  “I guess.” Cassandra shrugged, although she kept looking at the dead vampire siblings.

  I didn’t like killing them either. But if we’d let them live, they would have been able to alert the demons that we were coming.

  I wouldn’t let anyone stop me from saving Raven. I’d come too far to fail now.

  Bella glanced down at her watch. “They’re already ten minutes into lunch,” she said. “We need to find the entrance to the bunker.”

  “No problem.” Thomas reached for the nearest light switch.

  Apparently, just touching something electronic in the house gave him a picture in his mind of the entire electric system. It allowed him to control the system too.

  Along with finding the entrance to the bunker, this was when he was going shut off the security cameras and make it look like they were showing what he’d recorded during lunch yesterday. That way, the demons wouldn’t see doors opening seemingly by themselves—and anyone watching from outside wouldn’t know about the break-in while they could still stop it.

  Thomas stared straight ahead, his eyes glazed over for a few seconds. Then he regained focus and lowered his hand from the switch. “Done,” he said, heading toward the stairs. “Follow me.”

  We didn’t have to go far before he stopped in front of a plain door on the side of the stairs and opened it.

  Behind it was another door. This one was sleek and metallic, with a big clunky box right at eye level.

  And the moment the first door was fully open, a red laser beam shot out of the box.

  Noah

  Thomas moved out of the way and held his arm out, stopping any of us from stepping into the laser’s path.

  “It’s a retinal scanner,” he said. “It won’t hurt anyone. But we shouldn’t let it scan any of our eyes, since we’re not registered in the system.”

  I glanced over at the two dead vampires on the floor. “Should I go cut one of their eyeballs out?” I asked. “Scratch that—I’ll just bring the guy’s head over. It’ll be less messy.”

  “No need.” Thomas reached below the laser beam and touched the box. The lock clicked open a second later.

  I reached for the handle, and sure enough, the door opened.

  Behind it was a staircase that led to a basement. Staring down the stairs, my heart raced with excitement. We were so close to Raven. She was going to be okay.

  I was the first down the stairs, the others following on my heels. There was another door at the bottom. This one also had a box attached to it, but no laser beams shot out of this one.

  On this box was a screen with a keyboard. It looked like a mini computer.

  Thomas took one look at the door, recognition filling his gaze. “A keypad entry,” he said, stepping toward it. “I’ve got this.” He pressed his hand to the box, just like he’d done to the retinol scan one earlier. This time, he looked concerned.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  If he couldn’t break into this door, I’d run it down myself to get to Raven.

  “Nothing.” He shook the thought away and started tapping at the keys.

  “Lucifer,” Cassandra said after he pressed the final letter. “Figures the demons would choose that as the password.”

  The lock clicked open, and I made a mental note to ask more about Lucifer later.

  Of course, I’d heard stories about Lucifer—he was the first and most dangerous of all the demons. The wolves of the Vale liked to tell scary stories about him to the pups at night. But he’d been locked up deep in the pits of Hell to make sure he’d never return to Earth again. It would take more than a few minutes of a Hell Gate being opened for Lucifer to escape.

  But it was pointless to think about now, since Lucifer wasn’t here. Raven was. At least, she was close.

  I’d think more about Lucifer and the possible implications of the demons using his name as a password once Raven was safe.

  Thomas reached for the door’s handle, but he didn’t open it. “This door leads straight into the hall of the bunker,” he said, and I immediately pictured the layout of the bunker in my mind, since we’d been studying it for days through the surveillance cameras. “As we already know, all the doors inside the bunker use fingerprint recognition technology to open. I just overrode the code and took control of the doors. They’re all sealed until I choose to open them. Which means it’s go time.”

  “You all know what we’re doing.” Suddenly it was like I was back in the Vale, preparing the wolves to march into the vampire kingdom.

  Before that battle, Marigold—the possessed witch who was leading the wolves—had given one final pep talk to get everyone in the right mental space for what was to come. Now I wanted to give the others one final reminder of our plan, since so much was on the line.

  “There’s four of us and four demons,” I said. “Once we’re inside the dining hall, Thomas will seal the door behind us so the demons can’t escape. My slicer is the only weapon that can kill the demons, but I can only kill o
ne at a time. Your job is to hold the other demons off—and keep them from hurting the humans—until I reach your demon to kill it. Since we’re all undetectable, it should be easy for each of you to get the upper hand until I reach you. Got it?”

  “Got it.” Bella unsheathed her sword, anticipation flickering in her eyes as she stared at the shining blade. “Let’s kill the demons and figure out what they wanted with those humans.”

  And save Raven, I thought, although I didn’t say it out loud. They knew I wanted to save her.

  We each had different reasons for wanting to save the humans. All that mattered was that our end goal was the same.

  Thomas opened the door, and together, the four of us hurried down the empty hall toward the door that led to the dining hall, ready to fight.

  Raven

  I was in my seat in the dining hall, forcing down the same lunch we got every day. A turkey sandwich on wheat bread, a side salad, and a glass of milk.

  The milk was the hardest to force down. I hated drinking milk. One of the few good things about being raised vegan was that I was never forced to drink it.

  As I ate, I kept glancing at Jessica’s empty seat. When Marco took her, she’d looked terrified. And I’d felt so helpless.

  Because what Marco had said about me just being a human… he was right. I was trapped here, powerless against the demons.

  I hated it.

  I was staring at my glass of milk, disillusioned with the world, when my chest surged with warmth. It was like the imprint bond had lit up inside of me.

  Noah.

  I sat up and looked around. He wasn’t in here. But I knew that feeling in my chest.

  He was close.

  Suddenly, the doors to the dining hall opened and the warmth of the imprint bond increased.

  I whipped my head around, expecting Noah to be standing there with his slicer.

  No one was there.

  Strange. The doors never opened during mealtimes. Especially not by themselves.

  Everyone else looked equally as confused—including the demons.

  “There must be some kind of technology glitch,” Marco said, strolling toward the open door. “It’ll get fixed later. Keep eating your lunch. No one is leaving here until every plate is clean.”

  He barely got the last word out before a hole formed in his chest. He lurched forward in pain, his mouth open in shock.

  As he was frozen there, the door closed shut again.

  Then something came out of the hole in his chest. Something in the shape of a dagger… except all that was visible was the blood around the dagger.

  Once the dagger was out of Marco’s chest, he disintegrated on the spot. He left behind a pile of ashes. All that remained were his teeth.

  That wasn’t just any dagger.

  It was the slicer.

  Excitement surged through my veins. Noah was here. He was invisible… but he was here.

  He also had three enraged demon guards aware of exactly where he was standing, thanks to Marco’s blood covering the slicer.

  The closest demon to Marco’s remains ran toward where Noah was standing. But he was stopped by an invisible force.

  Another invisible person.

  Suddenly, the other two demons were getting punched, kicked, and sliced at with invisible forces too. They recovered from the blows and were trying to return the attacks on the invisible assaulters, but they were swinging their swords blindly. Their attempts to fight forces they couldn’t see were so pathetic it was comical.

  At the same time, the other humans were getting up from their seats, running toward the door.

  Harry pressed a finger against the scanner, but it didn’t let him through. He cursed and kicked at the door. It didn’t budge.

  Dr. Foster also ran to the door, but it didn’t open for him, either.

  The place was a madhouse of humans running around like chickens with their heads cut off and demons unsuccessfully fighting invisible foes.

  The only invisible attacker I could locate was Noah, because he was holding the blood coated slicer and because our imprint bond pulled me in his direction. He ran over to the nearest demon and ran the slicer straight through its back.

  The demon cried out and arched back, his features twisted in pain.

  He was a pile of ashes and teeth a moment later.

  I jumped up in victory. But it didn’t last long. Because there were two more demons left still alive.

  The one on the opposite side of the room ran toward the nearest human—Magic 8-Ball Donna. He swung his sword across her middle and split her in two.

  Her eyes went wide with shock, then they glazed over. The two pieces separated and fell to the ground. Her intestines hung out of the openings, dripping out blood, milk, and other types of digested food that I didn’t want to think about.

  Whoever was invisibly fighting that demon ran straight at him and forced his back to the wall.

  The demon jammed his sword repeatedly at the empty space in front of him.

  Panic filled every inch of my body. Not my own panic—Noah’s.

  Something was happening to one of the people who had come with him. Something I couldn’t see.

  I wished I could help. But there was only one thing I could do to help right now, and it certainly wasn’t joining in on the fight. That would only get more people killed. Donna was example enough of that.

  “We need to get out of the way!” I yelled, making my way toward the door where Harry and Dr. Foster were already standing. “Everyone, come over here!”

  I wasn’t sure if they were going to listen to me, but they did. Everyone scurried over to me as quickly as they could, gathering in a huge clump near the door.

  Now that the area was clear, the bloodied slicer whizzed across the room. Noah was running. He shoved the demon from the side and pushed it to the floor.

  Before I could blink, that demon had turned to ashes, too.

  But the victory was semi-sweet. Because as the demon turned to ashes, something in front of him shimmered into view. A body sprawled out on the floor.

  Cassandra.

  The witch had multiple stab wounds in her stomach, and she was lying in a puddle of her own blood. There was blood everywhere. She was covered in it. Her hands, her clothes… it was even coming out of her mouth. And her eyes were open and unblinking.

  Dead.

  The invisibility potion must have stopped working upon her death.

  Except that it started wearing off on the others as well. Three more people shimmered into view. A woman whose name I didn’t know wearing boots that seemed impossible to fight in, Thomas, and of course, Noah.

  Noah held the slicer up and stared at the only remaining demon. His cheeks were splattered with blood, his eyes fierce as ever.

  He looked super hot and badass.

  The woman was standing closest to the demon, and she jammed her stiletto into his chest. She knocked the wind out of him, giving Noah the perfect opportunity to run at him with the slicer.

  The slicer pierced the demon’s heart, and he disintegrated to ashes.

  Now that all the demons were dead, I ran toward Noah. I threw my arms around him, he picked me right off the ground, and we were a tangle of limbs holding onto each other as he pressed his lips to mine. It felt like we were the only two people in the room, and we kissed each other with as much passion as ever.

  “You came,” I said once he set me back down.

  “Of course I did.” His eyes darkened, like he couldn’t imagine not coming. “I’d never leave you here. You know that, right?”

  “You never answered back.” I lowered my gaze, feeling foolish. I sounded like a girl upset that her crush never texted her back.

  He reached for my chin and lifted it, forcing my eyes to meet his. “I tried,” he said. “You have no idea how hard I tried. But tapping into the imprint bond across such a far distance is impossible. You shouldn’t have been able to get that message through to me. But you did. Somehow, yo
u did.”

  He looked at me, as if I had the answer. But I didn’t.

  “I’m new to this whole imprinting thing. I didn’t know what was supposed to be possible or not,” I said. “All I’d knew was that I needed to tell you where I was. I couldn’t get out of here myself… but I knew you’d think of something. And look—I was right.”

  “So you pushed past the limits of the imprint bond through sheer stubbornness.” He chuckled, watching me with pure admiration. “You’re one determined human, Raven Danvers. And I’m so lucky that you’re my determined human.”

  “Anyone would have done the same in my situation,” I said with a shrug, although I couldn’t help smiling, since him calling me his made me happier than I’d ever imagined possible.

  “They might have wanted to,” he said. “But they wouldn’t have been able to. The imprint bond only works when we’re in the same room as each other. Like I said, what you did was impossible.”

  “I’ve seen a lot these past few weeks that I used to think was impossible,” I reminded him. “Apparently, there’s no limit to what we can do if we truly set our minds to it.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Don’t get me wrong—you’re one of the most determined, stubborn people I’ve ever met. But even you can’t change the laws of nature.”

  Suddenly, I was reminded about what Jessica had said the other night in the bunker. “Maybe I can,” I said. “Maybe that’s my gift. Stubbornness. You said yourself that I shouldn’t have survived after holding onto the slicer so long. But I did. I can also resist the demons’ glamour, I convinced Marco to give me my privacy, and I reached you through the bond when I shouldn’t have been able to…” As I thought about it, it made more and more sense.

  My mom always told me I was too stubborn for my own good.

  It was going to be pretty amusing once I finally told her that was my ability.

  “Gift?” Noah asked. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a long story,” I said, realizing just how much I’d learned while we’d been apart. “I’ve got a lot to catch you up on once we’re out of here.”