Crave (Tainted Angels Book 1) (7 page)

As I narrowed my eyes on his offering, he tutted loudly. “I’m not going to poison you, Seraph. It’s just tea.”

Giving in to the dryness in my parched throat, I hesitantly took the drink from him, my fingers curling around the warm mug. He looked around and as if he sensed my chill, he shivered and walked to an open window, slamming it closed.

“Are you feeling okay?” he asked again, his eyes narrowing as they ran down the length of my body.

Nodding, I pressed my fingers to my temples attempting to soothe the ache there. “I’m fine.”

“I’m glad you are.” He winced and rubbed his own head, mumbling as if he was talking to himself. “I have a killer of a headache.”

I rolled my eyes, typical male.

“I can’t believe you fell for a Roué, Willa. Jesus, we need to buy you a gun.”

I stiffened, annoyed by his mocking tone. “There’s nothing wrong with my fighting skills!”

“Really? A Roué batted you across the carpark like you were just a moth!”

Ignoring him, I huffed and slammed my cup down on the table. “Where am I, anyway?” He stiffened. And I didn’t miss it. “Rax?”

He smiled as if he was guilty of something. My gut twirled apprehensively. “That’s the thing,” he said quietly as he watched me closely. “You’re at my friend’s house.”

“Right, so can you call me a cab?”

His mouth popped open then his brow furrowed. “You –are – at – my – friend’s – house,” he reiterated slowly as though I was too thick to understand. But his next words saw me dropping on to the sofa that was conveniently situated beside the bed. “Jaron, my father’s second in command’s house.”

“What?” My mouth watered and I quickly closed my lips together to stop the drool dripping down my chin. “But that would mean …”

“That you’re in Gehenna. Yes.”

My head shook as my eyes widened. “Stop fucking me about, Rax!”

His head slowly moved from side to side. “No shit, sweet thing.” Plopping down heavily on the sofa beside me, he screwed up his face and shook his head again. “Doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense.”

I stared back at him. “How?”

He shrugged. “No idea. My hatch allowed you through.”

“Your hatch?”

“Mmm, my portal, gateway, that I conjure.”

I curled a lip at him. The Gehenna had abilities to summon portals, but only because the beckoning used dark magic. Didn’t mean I wasn’t jealous, dark magic or not. Taxis were expensive, and I hated buses. I needed to buy a car. Or learn to use dark magic … damn it!

“But this is Gehenna. No Empyrean can enter. It’s not possible.”

“And yet, here you are,” he whispered as though it had now become top secret. We both winced at the same time when a pain tore through the top of my skull, one of my migraines imminent. Both of us slapped our hands on the right side of our heads and cringed at the nauseating pain. “Fuck!” we both hissed together.

I froze. Rax froze. Our gazes clashed and we stared in horror. Quickly snatching up my hot cup of tea I didn’t think twice as I poured some down his bare arm. The cup dropped to the floor when a scorch sizzled across the skin on my own arm.

“Holy shit!”

My head shook, my body trembled. What the hell was happening? Shooting off the sofa, I backed across the room, shock rendering me stupid when my back pressed against a wall and I tried to keep going, my fingers digging into the rough plaster of the wall.

It was implausible, so much so that trying to figure out what was happening caused my migraine to worsen. “Jesus Christ!” Rax moaned as he screwed up his face. “Do you get these pains often?”

“I want to go home.” It was all I could manage but it was all I craved for. I needed something familiar, something to ground me to reality, because this shit was fucked up. “I want to go home!” I shouted, tears popping from my eyes as my distress broke.

“Okay, calm down,” Rax grumbled, yet there was a softness to his features, a concern in his eyes. “It’s okay.” He nodded slowly, encouraging me to chill out. But I couldn’t, everything was wrong, the world I knew had just altered so dramatically that I found it difficult to breathe.

I was hyperventilating, the space around me shifting as I attempted to suck air into my lungs. Rax, appearing to struggle himself, slowly crept towards me. “Calm down, I’m struggling with you. And if I go down then we’ve no hope.”

What he was saying registered in my mind finally. He could ‘feel’ me. He could feel my distress, my pain, my own breath. And the realisation of what that meant made my eyes roll into the back of my head and the darkness took me under.

B
obby smiled at me when I walked into Fred’s the next night.

I’d woken in my own room that morning, my headache gone but my body still aching, which was unusual. All Empyreans usually healed within hours, yet I could still feel the fragility in my bones from where the Roué had tossed me against the car.

Rax had been nowhere in sight and since our ‘meeting’ the previous night, I’d heard nothing more from him. I hated that I was a little concerned about him, but I had too much pride to link with him. He’d stormed into my life, turned it upside down within hours and now everything was wrong. It wasn’t his fault, I knew it wasn’t, but it still didn’t mean my mind didn’t hold him responsible.

“Usual, Willa?”

Smiling, I nodded to Bobby and scanned the room. “Where is everyone?” There were all of three patrons in the usually packed bar.

“There’s a gig at Ronnie’s,” Bobby explained when he placed my Bud on the bar and pushed in a few tiny cranberries; my usual concoction.

“Frannie was supposed to meet me.”

He shrugged, wiping down the already clean counter. “Haven’t seen her.”

Sighing, I said, “I wanted to get wasted.”

He grinned at me then slammed two shot glasses on the bar between us and snatched up a bottle of tequila. “Can’t see it getting much busier, and you read my mind. Let’s get drunk!”

And so we did. Two hours later we were both leaning on the bar, the only thing holding us up as we whined about life and struggled to focus on each other.

“But I love her.” Tears spilled from Bobby’s eyes, his heartbreak over his recent split with his fiancée saddening both of us. “You ever want to get married, Willa?”

My chest hurt and I shook my head. “Not possible for people like me, I’m afraid.”

“People like you?” His brow crinkled as he stared at me, puzzled.

Realising I’d slipped up, I waved his bafflement away. “I just meant I’m too independent.”

He nodded knowingly as he wobbled across the room when the last of his customers left, and he slid the bolts into their housing. Not realising it was closing time, I slipped off the stool, then grabbed hold of the bar when the floor shifted under my feet. “Shit!” I slurred. “How much have we had?”

Bobby tutted. “Too much. I’ll have to call a cab. You want to share?”

Shaking my head, I smiled, grateful for his consideration. “Nah, think I’ll walk.”

He scowled at me and I couldn’t help but giggle at how his face screwed up. “I’m not really sure that’s a good idea, Willa. Been a lot of muggings lately.”

Patting him softly on his cheek as he ordered his cab, I winked and whispered, “I can look after myself.” Rax’s mockery of my fighting skills rumbled through my head and I huffed to myself as I bid him goodbye and slipped out of the door he’d just locked.

It was a warm night and I swayed as I started up the street, the alcohol in my system mixing with the oxygen in the air and trebling my drunkenness. I grabbed hold of the wall, realising maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to walk, and turned back towards Fred’s to take Bobby up on the offer of sharing a cab.

Banging on the doors, I groused to myself when Bobby didn’t answer. He must have already left but when I turned to leave, a muffled but loud sound from the car park at the side of the building caught my ears.

“Bobby?” I shouted as I walked round the wall. My feet slammed to a halt and I stared in horror as a man slowly moved away from my friend, who dropped to the ground clutching his stomach. My eyes zeroed in on the ooze of blood flowing over Bobby’s white t-shirt. His eyes met mine and the air shimmered with my rage when, very slowly, his aura changed from green to grey. He was dying – and quickly.

“NO!” I screamed as I raced forwards.

My way through was blocked by his attacker, his long, pale face pulled into a vicious sneer as his eyes raked down my body. “Ahh, two for one night.”

“Move!” I demanded as I tried to shift past him and get to Bobby before it was too late.

“Not a hope, gorgeous.”

My attention and focus was on Bobby as I willed his aura to stay grey and not shift to black, and I didn’t see the blade until it was too late, until it penetrated my chest, right in the centre.

I dropped to my knees, my hands instinctively pressing against my wound when the bastard pulled his knife back out. I was too shocked to do anything. I was struggling to breathe and I tried to concentrate on filling my lungs bit by bit but it was becoming impossible. Where the hell were my healing abilities? Rax had been right. I was stupid and useless.

The man pushed me back until I was laid flat on the floor. Bobby whimpered when the bastard tore at my jeans. The pain in my chest became unbearable and it was all I could concentrate on, my mind unable to focus on my powers.

My head flew to the side when he punched me on the side of my head. I didn’t have the energy to turn back to look. My eyes fixed on Bobby as I tried to reach out to him – just one touch, that was all he needed. His aura was morphing, the shimmering air around him turning dark. “Bobby,” I choked out as I stretched my fingers in attempt to just fucking reach him. “God damn you!” I screamed as my body refused to do what my brain tried to instruct.

For a moment I thought I was imagining it. The trickle of my blood that weaved across the pale grey concrete seemed to shift as it appeared to … move.

I moaned when I heard my attacker yank at his zip. I tried to shake my head but the icy chill that was taking over refused me any movement. My body was paralyzed, my mind the only thing working, but not properly by the look of my blood trail twisting and morphing. It had to be the alcohol that was giving me hallucinations. It had to be. Either that or I had finally lost my marbles.

“What in …”

The whole of me froze, even my mind, when each spilt cell of my blood came together, mutating, altering and gluing together. I stared in horror and amazement as the most stunning succubus I had ever seen emerged out of the red liquid. She stood tall, her long, shapely legs sheathed in fishnet stockings and black leather boots. Her supple body was encased in a black leather basque, her face perfection, entrancing me in her beauty as a curtain of black hair fell down past her shoulders and over her pert buttocks.

She grinned down at me, her ruby red lips lifting high. She winked at me with a glint of wickedness twinkling in her pure blue eyes when, from behind her back, the most elegant whip snaked through the air and took my assailant down in one single strike, his severed head bouncing across the car park and coming to rest directly in front of Bobby, whose eyes were so wide and on the glorious nymph that I was unsure if he was still alive.

“My mistress is served.” The succubus inclined her head reverently and then kind of melted into me.

I gasped loudly as my lungs filled, the pain ceased and the shimmer in the air disappeared. Looking down, I stared as the wound in my chest disappeared in record time. My body felt good, my bones tingling with pleasure.

Bobby moaned, taking my attention back to him.

Closing my eyes for a moment, I looked up into the night sky. “I know this is against the rules,” I whispered to him, “but he’s my friend.”

And then I lifted Bobby into my arms and took him inside.