Crave (Tainted Angels Book 1) (11 page)

“Really?”

My skin sizzled with heat when he concealed me in his wrath. “Don’t test me with this. This is way out of your hands, son.” He was attempting to keep calm with me. He was used to my reckless behaviour by now but I’d never seen him so furious or resolute about something. “Tabitha is promised to you. I suggest you forget all about the halfbreed and concentrate on someone created specifically for you.”

My teeth cracked under the clench of my jaw. “I can promise that I have no incentive to pursue a relationship with the seraph, Father. I’m only after her blood …”

“Well, it is forbidden!”

I reared back into the chair. “Why?”

He closed his eyes and sighed, rubbing at his temples as if he had a headache. “Because her blood will kill you, Rax. And that is exactly what she is planning on! Why can’t you see that?”

Nodding when I realised he had a point, I lifted out of the chair, the pounding in my head becoming unbearable with the heat from the fire. Sweat beaded my brow. I knew Willa had another migraine. Fuck, that woman was having them more and more lately. She needed to get some damn pain relief for them. I squinted to myself at that thought. Seraphs were healers, so why the fuck couldn’t she just heal herself?

“Rax?”

“Sorry. Headache. What did you say?”

“I was just checking we’re all sorted.” He eyed me intently and I bit the tip of my tongue.

“Of course. I get it, it’s her fighting mechanism.”

“Exactly! We were created to kill each other, Rax. Empyrean are manipulative. They don’t have the darkness like we do so they learn to fight with what they have, and in the seraph’s case, it’s her beauty and her blood. But beware.” He stepped closer. “Both will kill you.”

Perhaps he was right. Maybe the hot little siren had a plan up her sleeve, to slay me with her body and her blood. Yet as I walked away I couldn’t help but smile at the visions that concoction played in my head.

“H
ave you been to see the doctor?” Lincoln asked as we walked through Battersea Park. It was a balmy night, the sky clear and the glowing moon lighting us a path across the peaceful common. If spring was this warm I wondered how hot a summer we would be given; it was unusual to have this much heat so early in the year. The area was quiet with the late hour, many revellers in their homes hours earlier. It was coming up to the end of mine and Linc’s shift and I shook my head as I yawned. I was exhausted, the migraine I’d suffered from since the previous night telling me it had had enough of waking hours.

“It’s just a headache, Linc.”

“I’m not talking about the headaches,” he muttered, causing me to stop and frown at him. “I’m talking about everything else that’s going on with you.”

“Everything else?”

He sighed and stopped, grabbing my hand in his. His hand was icy but clammy and I blinked at the peculiar feeling. When he started to cough, a deep rattle in his chest making me wince, everything inside me froze. For a moment, I couldn’t move, the ground beneath me moving as I swayed. Lifting my eyes to his, I shook my head. “No. No, Linc!”

Why hadn’t I seen it? How had I missed that my brother was dying? I had been so wrapped up in my own fucking problems. I noticed the usual bright blue mist around him had dimmed, now a soft grey quality shifting fluidly around him.

Lowering his eyes when he realised I had figured it out, he sat on a bench at the edge of the path.

“I knew something was different about you,” I choked out, his face blurring through my tears. “But I thought it was because I was changing. I … Fuck, Linc.”

He gripped my hand harder when a sob ripped up my throat. “Shh, Bean. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” I yelled, disturbing something in the undergrowth when a bush rustled loudly. “It’s not! How can you say that?”

He shrugged, focussing in the distance as his eyes glazed over. “If I knew I wasn’t going to miss you so damn much, I’d be eager for death.”

“Don’t you say that!” I wept as I slapped him in the chest. He caught me when an almighty pain tore through my own chest with the torrent of grief. “Don’t! You can’t leave me, Linc! I need you!”

“Shh,” he breathed in my ear as he pulled me close. “It will be okay.”

“How long have you known?”

“A few weeks.” He coughed once again, a deep hacking sound that broke my heart.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

He gazed at me, his hands cupping my cheeks as he wiped at my tears with his thumbs. “Because you’ve had enough to deal with of late.” I frowned at him, misunderstanding his meaning when he narrowed his eyes. “You should talk to me, Willa. I’m your brother. I want to help.”

“I don’t know …”

“Don’t lie to me! How can you think I don’t know when you’re going through shit?”

Turning away from him, I sighed. “It’s nothing I can’t deal with.”

“Will, you’ve been seeing a damn halam!” I gawped at him, amazed that he knew so much. “How the hell can you handle that?”

“He won’t hurt me, Linc.”

He scoffed, shaking his head sternly. “You’re an even bigger fool than I thought if you believe that!”

Stiffening with his spite, I looked away. “You need to trust me!”

Pinching my chin in his fingers and turning my face to him, his expression softened. “I do trust you, it’s him I don’t. He wants your blood, Willa. He needs it! That is all he wants, and when he gets it, what do you think he’ll do then, huh?”

I hated hearing my thoughts from my brother and friend, the very thoughts I had been arguing with myself over in the last few days. “But my blood will kill him.”

“He’s dying anyway, Will. He has nothing to lose. No one knows exactly what will happen. He will risk anything to stop death,” he said before dropping his voice. “We all would.”

“Oh, Linc,” I whispered, framing his face. I had thought the virus was specific to Gehenna and the dredgen but obviously it had spread, and it was doing it quickly by the looks of it. “I want nothing more than to let you drain me but I can’t.”

He nodded, sighing deeply as he stared up at the moon. “I know, Bean, and I wouldn’t want you to. I’m ready to go. I’ve accepted it.”

“Well I haven’t!” How could he just give up, accept death without even trying to find a cure? “There has to be something! Have you let Doctor Nolan run tests?”

He smiled sadly. “All of them. You know there’s no way out of it. This disease is incurable. It’s been taking the Gehenna one by one and now it’s turning to us. You need to accept it, Willa. You need …”

We both tensed, our breaths stilling so our ears could hone in on the sound we had both heard. A sickly, pungent scent filled the air and I gagged.

“The same smell?” Lincoln asked quietly. When I nodded, he slowly rose from the seat and I felt the quickening of his heartbeat in my own chest. “Shit!”

“Tobias,”
I called in my head, trying him again when I got no answer. “Where the hell is that man lately?” I hissed softly, spinning slowly in a circle as I hunted for our hunters.

“If you’re talking about Tobias,” Lincoln whispered, pressing his back to mine as we moved in a circle to see every angle. “He’s banging Mavis in accounts; you’ve no hope of contacting him.”

“Mavis with the super long toenails and hairy mole on her cheek?” I asked in astonishment.

“The very one!”

“Eww.” I shivered with that thought. “Thanks for that image, Linc.”

He chuckled quietly. “Anytime.”

A pop in the air caused us both to cease turning as four dredgen materialised around us. “Shit!” I mumbled when Brendal stepped forward. He lifted his nose and inhaled deeply, his eyes rolling back in his head as though he was intoxicated on my smell alone.

“Oh, so sweet.” His long tongue swiped down the length of his descended teeth as he raked his eyes over me.

“You touch her in your dreams, filth. Never in reality,” Lincoln spat.

Brendal’s lip curled, his eyes fixing on Lincoln. “Share nicely.” He laughed. “Or are you saving her hot little cunt for yourself?”

I caught Lincoln’s arm when he stepped forward. My eyes caught another three dredgen in the shadows. “There’s too many, Linc.”

“I’m going to rip this fucker’s head off,” he growled. He slipped from my hold and launched himself at Brendal before I could stop him.

“Fuck!” I sighed, shaking my head at my brother’s stupidity before I turned to the two dredgen approaching me and glared at them. “Don’t!”

They both laughed, spit flying at me when their long tongues flapped around their thin lips. “You should think yourself lucky,” one of them taunted. “We’re not allowed to kill you.”

I gaped at them, moving back a step as they grew closer. “What?”

“Orders. We’re to take you in alive.”

“What orders? Take me where?”

“Back with us,” he said, coming closer. “Although, I’m not sure that’s actually good for you, Angel. Unfortunately it means you’ll be awake when Gage and I tear that tight little ass in two.”

I gagged at the thought. No way were these two fuckers going anywhere near my arse. “Not a chance, freak!”

“Freak?” The other one laughed. “Says her!”

Spinning, I kicked out and managed to catch one in the groin with the heel of my foot, sending him scuttling backwards as the other jumped at me. His fist in my face knocked me flying but I managed to jump up before he rounded on me again.

“Just give in. You know you don’t have a chance.”

I looked around, noticing more dredgen heading my way. “Not a chance!”

Flinging my elbow into some ribs when I felt one come up behind me, I flung my head back and savoured the crunch of a nose. Lincoln was struggling with four of his own and I clenched my teeth. We had no chance with so many. Two against eight didn’t make great odds.

“Just one taste,” one hissed as he advanced slowly. “That’s all we want.”

I yanked out of a hold again, more hands grabbing at me from behind. Managing to push him back, I swiftly built a fire shield around me. The flames blazed high, the scorching heat burning blue with its intensity. But like the last time, they kept coming, through the wall. It was impossible; dredgen couldn’t withstand seraph fire, it should have burned straight through them.

“New breed.” Brendal chuckled in my ear from behind me.

I spun around, staring wide eyed at him as another four dredgen flanked him, each one grinning manically at me and licking their lips like I was a spit roast with an apple perched temptingly between my teeth. Lincoln was held in what appeared to be paranormal chains, his body writhing uncontrollably in them.

“I think you’re outnumbered, pretty girl. Time to have some fun!”

My body bucked as the air fractured. One by one, Rax, Jaron, Zak, and Dexter stepped up beside a furious Delilah. Her whip skimmed the air as she hissed at a gobsmacked Brendal. “No one threatens my mistress. Eat shit and die, motherfucker!”

And then all hell broke loose.

Rax tore into Brendal like a demon possessed, his fury burning the particles in the air around him as he pulled out a big sword from nowhere and took Brendal’s head off in one clean swipe. “What the succubus said,” he raged. “Don’t touch what is mine!”

I stood in shocked silence as my new friends ripped my attackers to bits.

I squealed when a piece of someone’s brain flicked into my hair. “Sorry, Bab,” Jaron shouted.

I turned to him just in time to catch him driving a long blade up through the throat of a dredgen, pulling it back out with the tongue still flapping on the tip.

Delilah was in her element, her whip doing her bidding as she beheaded any halfbreed that came within range of it. Each time she tore something off, she whooped in delight.

Zak went a little crazy, his choice of weapon a mace, the spiked ball spinning through the air and removing body parts bit by bit.

One by one the dredgen were torn to bits as my protectors relished in the carnage they left behind.

“Holy shit!” Lincoln breathed beside me, the chains still snaking around him as he stood, as stunned as me.

Delilah cleared her throat and it was only when I looked up at her that I realised they’d worked their way through over ten dredgen. “My mistress is served,” she said then merged back into me, causing me to gasp yet again.