Dahlia (Blood Crave Series) (21 page)

“I guess I’ve known deep down I was different from others but still, I didn’t want to admit it, even to myself.” She glanced up from looking at her bloody hand and stared at Sam’s shocked face. “Sam, I’m—”

Just as she was about to tell him her secret, about fallen angels and vampires, her phone vibrated loudly against her dresser. Dahlia stopped mid-speech and finally dropping the letter opener onto her desk, she reached over to the phone as she stared at the unfamiliar number on the screen. She answered uncertainly as she slowly brought the phone to her ear.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” The harshness of Greyson’s voice caused Dahlia to wince.

She pretended not to know what he was talking about as she looked up, locking gaze with Sam’s still shocked face. “What do you mean?”

“What do I mean? Didn’t I tell you not to say anything to anyone? To go home and be as careful as possible? In order for that to happen, you need to keep quiet.”

“But it’s only Sam.” Sam’s face changed at the mention of his name over the phone and he opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted when—

“But Sam is human.” His voice was no longer coming from the phone but from Dahlia’s doorway, the door quickly swung open by a new presence. She glanced behind Sam to see Greyson standing there with a sour look on his face.

Phone still at her ear, Dahlia slowly lowered the phone to her side as she sighed in defeat. Sam, on the other hand, managed to find his voice again as he stared at Greyson. “Who the hell are you?”

Greyson stared hard back at Sam then slowly approached him until they were a breath away from each other, Greyson towering Sam slightly by a few inches. “I’m Greyson, fallen angel at your service. I’ve also fallen for your foster sister, both angel and vampire, with the ability to heal all things. That includes self-regeneration.”

“What the heck?” Sam replied dumbfounded. Had it been any other conversation, Dahlia would be laughing hysterically at his expression.

“And now you’re going to forget everything I just said.” Greyson stepped back slightly to give Sam some space.

Sam blinked, his gray eyes gleaming bright for a split second before it quickly disappeared. He shook his head slowly. “Whoa, I must have nodded off.” He looked over at Greyson, who was still standing in front of him and nodded his head toward him. “Where did you come from? Have we met before?”

Greyson smiled calmly as he shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. I’m a friend of Dahlia’s.”

“A friend, eh?” Sam looked from Greyson to Dahlia, who had a stunned look on her face. He eyed them suspiciously then shrugged nonchalantly.

“Alright,
friend.
” Sam smiled playfully as he looked over at Dahlia. “I’m outta here…you two have fun.” At with that, he left Dahlia and Greyson standing in the room alone. She stared after Sam, unable to look Greyson in the face.

“Now you don’t have to feel bad about him not knowing. He knows, somewhere inside his brain. Just can’t remember.” Greyson sounded so matter-of-fact with his words.

Dahlia’s eyes quickly darted toward him as she looked at him with a frown on her face. “How did you even know I was going to tell him?”

“When a lapsus is as open as you are, it is easy to track your thoughts, your actions, your whereabouts.” He gave her a smirk. “You make my job very easy, baby doll.”

She bit her lip to prevent herself from sticking her tongue out at him then just shook her. She turned her head toward her window as she focused her gaze on a brightly lit star.

She knew it was for the best, Sam not knowing. Frankly, she had other thoughts on her mind. She no longer felt conflicted as before and was happy Greyson was back in her presence. She thought about what he just said to Sam. Almost in a whisper, she spoke as she continued to look at the star that caught her eye. “What you said earlier…did you mean it?”
Are you falling for me?

“What did I say earlier?” He was suddenly right behind her as he spoke quietly in her ear.

Exasperated, Dahlia turned around and roughly hit him on the arm. Greyson just smiled in return. “There you go again being all violent. You should know one thing about me. I only say things I mean.” Then he gave her a serious look and she knew he was going to kiss her again.

She closed her eyes as she waited for his lips to brush against hers but startled at the feel of his mouth against her neck instead. She immediately felt a shiver run through her body at the contact and she opened her eyes, only to close them again as he continued to rain light kisses against her throat, her pulse beating rapidly in return. She wrapped her arms around his body as she delighted in the feeling of his mouth on her skin, Greyson altering from soft kisses to playful bites to leisurely licks. Running her hands against his strong back, Dahlia trailed her hands lower as they caught the hem of his shirt from behind, his skin instantly sizzling against her fingertips.

She jumped back in surprise as she looked down at her hand, which still felt as if they were tingling. “Greyson. What was that?”

“Hmm?” He ignored her state and brought her back in his arms, inhaling the side of her neck.

“It burned,” she whispered as she looked at her fingertips. “Where I touched you, it burned.”

Greyson lifted his head as he cleared his throat and looked at Dahlia hard. All of a sudden his beautiful green eyes glowed unbelievably bright as he grabbed her hand and brought it back to his back where again, it burned to the touch.

“When the lapsus uses their power,” his glowing green eyes looked at her directly as he continued. “Or when they feel too much emotions, the energy needs to be released. It’s shown through our eyes and from the marks on our back.”

He grinned then moved closer to kiss her again.

“Greyson,” Dahlia managed to grab a hold of his face and she looked him straight in the eyes. They were still glowing unbelievably bright. She glanced toward her mirror on her left and realized hers were shining equally bright too.

She sobered up completely, her eyes turning back to her normal hazel as she blinked a couple of times. She looked back up into his face and confided, “This is going a little too fast. My mind’s still trying to catch up with these new feelings.”

Greyson stayed quiet for a moment then nodded his head. “I’m sorry.” He let go of her slowly then walked over to the other side of the room, sitting on her computer chair. Dahlia sat down on the edge of her bed as she crossed her legs and then stared over at Greyson, finding it slightly strange that he was actually in her room.

His eyes finally began to dim, going back to their normal color.

Greyson cleared his throat. “So…” he seemed at a loss for words. “Where are your parents?”

Dahlia bit the corner of her lip then answered. “They decided to go a cruise for a week. They tend to be spontaneous at times.”

It was strange. When Sam had mentioned that Deb and Glen were going on a cruise, she didn’t know it would be so soon. She didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye—just a note that was left on the refrigerator door when she got home last night.

The tone in Greyson’s voice slightly changed. “So it’s just you and Sam in the house?”

Dahlia looked up at him out of the corner of her eyes, eyeing him slyly. “Yes. What of it?”

Caught off guard, she was surprised when he more or less stalked back toward her and ran his hand through her hair. His fingers twirling the ends for a while before he glanced up. “Be good.”

With that, he disappeared from view, the only trace of him ever being there the distinct fresh scent of the forest and wild flowers that Dahlia had come to know as Greyson.

Frowning, she spoke aloud to the empty room, “I’m never going to get used to that.”

Chapter 19

It was the next day and Dahlia decided to skip school. Instead of her usual nightmares, they were surprisingly peaceful, featuring lots of quality time with Greyson.

She rolled unto her back at the thought and stared up at the ceiling where she laid comfortably on her bed, hair sprawled all over her pillow. She wondered how Greyson would take the surprise of visiting him and slowly smiled. The two times that he had kissed her were earth shattering in Dahlia’s book, and she secretly wished for a third.

She blushed, thinking back to his confession of falling for her. All of this was so surreal to her but she didn’t want to let go. She wanted to see his face again. To just be with him and forget all the craziness going on.

If only for a little while.

Plus she wanted to avoid the ride to school with Sam. She honestly didn’t know what to say to him after last night. She would be putting herself in an awkward situation and frankly couldn’t act as if nothing was out of ordinary with him.

A sudden thought came to mind as she turned her head and eyed her laptop on her computer table. Scrambling out of bed, she made her way to the desk and sat down as she opened her laptop, turning it on. Waiting for the home screen to appear, she realized she hadn’t written in her journal for quite some time and was saddened by the thought.

She definitely had some stuff to write.

Clicking on the Internet icon, she waited for the page to load, face scrunched up in concentration. The Internet was automatically set to her search engine, so Dahlia did not waste any time as she typed in the words “fallen angels” in the text box. Hundreds of thousands of hits filled the screen as she clicked from one link to the next, all filled with stories of angels falling from God’s good graces, things that could be read from the Bible or any theology book.

Wanting to find more information, Dahlia changed her search and typed in “witches as fallen angels,” as she remembered Greyson did mention humans had referred to them as that in the past, however unbecoming. She wondered if she’d find anything using that term instead, and gave it a shot as she hit the Enter button, however slim the chance would be. Fewer results showed up and nothing looked out of the ordinary, just a lot of separate information on witches and fallen angels.

That is, until one link caught Dahlia’s eyes.

She quickly clicked on it where it brought her to a page titled:
Witches—Masquerading as God’s Fallen Angels
. It was a short article written by an on-line magazine writer named Remy C.

Stripped of their wings, fallen angels were said to walk the streets alongside the humans that they hated the most. From an outward appearance, it was difficult to distinguish between mere mortals and the beings that hated them with a fury so strong, it ran deep within their veins.

These fallen angels bared the marks where their wings were painfully ripped away from their skin. As ex-heavenly beings, they possessed powers and abilities that no human could ever dream. These powers emitted from their eyes, which gleamed with fright. As well as the scars that ravished their backs—where God himself plucked their wings. These two characteristics alone were the only things that humans could distinguish between themselves and the fallen angels.

With fallen angels long extinguished for centuries, their descendants, through mixing with humans, thought to also bear the marks of their ancestors and possess the powers that they had. From reading people’s minds, vanishing without a trace, and conjuring up the elements, just to list a few.

A link created between fallen angels and animals made them bounded to one another in body and mind. These animals, named Familiars, exist as a gesture of good faith from God Himself. To display the love He still had for his fallen angels, despite their ultimate betrayal.

Familiars were never far away from their master…

Dahlia involuntarily shivered from the words on the page. There was more, but she slowly closed her laptop shut feeling she could probably get even more information directly from the source. The fact that this information was readily available on the Internet was almost laughable. Who was Remy C. for that matter? He seemed to know a lot of information about the lapsus, almost too much, probably knowing a few of them.

Unless he was one himself.

He also mentioned Familiars, the same word that Ava had used to describe her wolf. Dahlia glanced back at the closed laptop, tempted to look up information on vampires, but decided against it. She feared what she would find. Although slowly assimilating into the lapsus role, thanks to Greyson, she still didn’t feel comfortable associating herself as a blood drinker.

Dahlia quickly dressed, then brushed her teeth and washed her face. She jogged lightly down the stairs, not wanting to wake Sam up as she grabbed two cereal bars from the kitchen. She scribbled a quick note telling Sam she wouldn’t need a ride to school and quickly shut the front door.

Then she ran.

She ran as fast as she could down the street, across the park and finally through the forest, ignoring the bristling of the trees as she passed them. She didn’t stop until she reached the wooden door that was suddenly becoming all too familiar. Turning the knob on the door, she opened it slowly as she stared at the room, finally catching her breath.

She finally took the time to really look inside the cabin, all other times being totally caught up in Greyson. The place was bare, only a couch and a table with a laptop on it, a few chairs. She figured she’d find Greyson here, but the place was empty.

“Greyson,” she whispered his name quietly as if wanting some kind of response but heard nothing in return.