Forbidden (The Preternaturals) (10 page)

The vampires wore black leather gloves, and each held a silver cross.

Before Hadrian could escape, the magic users threw their balls of energy at
him. He winced and roared as they hit and burned his skin. One of the
vampires rushed him, and the two of them began to scuffle, rolling in
the sand. He howled and jerked away from the cross as it pressed
against his skin. Another vampire jumped onto his back, tearing into
him with fangs, using another silver cross to inflict more damage.

As the rest of the vampires moved in to overtake him, the magic users
closed in, their arms outstretched, chanting in a language he didn’t
know. Not Latin. That would have been too easy. Latin he could have
deciphered.

Lightning lit the sky, and a wailing shriek filled the air. He looked up into
the gathering clouds to see what their magic had brought down on him.
But the activity in the sky wasn’t the magic users. It was
Angeline.

Her wings were outstretched as she swooped down from the sky, causing
sand to swirl up all around her. She landed on the ground a couple of
yards from him as a powerful light burst forth from her wings,
shoving everyone away from her, including him. While the others were
disoriented, she rushed to his side and shielded him, her wings
closing around to protect him from the vampires and magic.

Hadrian’s attackers cried out from the power of the light and the protective
energetic field she’d erected. He was too weak to protest. He
didn’t want her protecting him. He didn’t want her swooping in with her righteous outstretched
angel wings saving the day and shielding him like some barely
crawling infant.

The magic users continued to chant and kept throwing balls of energy at
them. Even inside the circle of her wings he felt the tiniest
pressure when they hit, like harmless drops of water falling against
bare flesh in a spring rain.

The chanting became angrier, the energy balls growing in strength until
the witches and sorcerers ran out of juice. Their voices grew weary,
and the energy died. Angeline was quiet and patient through it all.

Hadrian knew she must feel his hatred, but so close to her and so near death,
he hadn’t been able to bring out the angry words to drive her off.
He wasn’t sure it would have worked anyway. His guardian stalker
angel seemed determined.

“Goddammit. That bitch’s walls are impenetrable. Where the fuck did he get an
angel?” One of them shouted in disgust.

“We’ll be back for you, vampire. She can’t protect you forever.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

Angeline remained still and quiet while they dispersed. She hadn’t spoken a
single word since she’d arrived and as much as he hated her, as
much as he still wanted revenge, he couldn’t bring himself to break
the spell of silence.

There had been no quips from her. No threats. Nothing but wings and power
and the certainty that she could protect him as long as she was
there.

He didn’t want her protection.

When they were alone, her wings opened to reveal the starry night sky
above him. The clouds had disappeared, and all was clear and calm.
She rose, her dress sliding down over her body, her wings shrinking
and hiding their power back inside her, making her look innocent and
unassuming once again.

She reached down to help him stand, but he scrambled away and groaned in
pain from the damage that had been inflicted before her arrival.

“Let me help you back to the church.”

“No. Go away.”

Tears formed in the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them away.

“Haven’t you done enough?” he asked.

“You’re not healing. Why aren’t you healing?”

“I’ll be FINE. Leave me.”

“So they can just come back and take you? No. I know you hate me. I’m
sorry. You have every right to hate me, but please, please let me
make something right between us. Just this one time, and then I’ll
go away.”

He growled but relented, allowing her to help him stand. Then her wings
were out again, and before he could blink, she’d scooped him up and
flew over the desert, back to the city. What a manly vampire day he
was having.

When they were a few blocks from the church, she landed. “We can walk
the rest of the way if you can make it… It was just so far out
that…”

“I can walk. I don’t need you coddling me.”

“I’m sorry.”

He bared his fangs and snarled. “Stop saying you’re sorry. It’s
just a word. It doesn’t undo anything. It doesn’t make it right,
and if you think I’m ever forgiving you, you are insane. Do you
understand? In my eyes you will always be a demon. You’ll always be
the evil thing that tried to take my will away.”

She looked at the ground. “I understand. I’m s—I understand.”

A small crowd gathered nearby.

“Put your wings away. You’re drawing attention.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. The humans know. Shouldn’t they also know
there is good out there? That the supernatural isn’t just things
that will hurt them?”

Hadrian snorted. “Good? I hope that’s not the camp you’ve assigned
yourself to.”

She didn’t return his barb. It seemed she might crumble to pieces from
his words, as if she were a fragile porcelain doll instead of the
powerful badass that she clearly was. Her skin was still that same
milky white, nearly glowing against the dark curtain of her hair. A
twisted part of him wanted to run his tongue over that skin.

Angeline didn’t say anything else as she helped him to his church and down
the back stairwell into the basement. She seemed surprised by what
he’d done with the place. He’d fixed it up, turning it into a
cozy apartment, his own bachelor pad. He’d enthralled the church’s
two remaining priests never to venture down there. There was a second
wine cellar they were instructed to use, instead.

She led him to his black leather chair, and he dropped into it with a
grunt. He wouldn’t show weakness, but every place a vampire had
bitten or burned him tonight, and all the places the energy balls had
hit him still burned and seemed to be burning even more than before.

He glared while she looked on with concern. “I thought you said you’d
leave.”

“But you aren’t healing. Something is very wrong.” She moved with that
same grace she’d had when she’d first seduced him into her
darkness. He tensed as she knelt beside the chair and pulled her hair
back from her neck. “Drink. Whatever they did, I know my blood can
heal it.”

Hadrian swallowed around the lump in his throat. It was a sign of wisdom that
she hadn’t had the temerity to sit on his lap. He would have dumped
her onto the floor if she’d presumed such familiarity. But the
offer of her blood… Maybe she could atone for her sins after all.

His gaze went to the pulse throbbing in her throat. There were
legends about angel blood. Hell, there were ballads and shrines and
all manner of art and culture devoted to the power of angel blood. It
was the most coveted thing that could ever touch a vampire’s lips.

There was a hierarchy of blood when it came to potency and taste. Animal
and bagged blood were at the bottom and practically worthless. Human
blood came next. It was delicious if you’d never had better, and it
would sustain and keep a vampire strong. Then there was therian and
witch blood. Then guardian—because they were fallen angels. And
finally at the top, angel blood. But angels didn’t give it freely,
and a vampire didn’t have the power to just take it, so Hadrian
doubted many vampires had ever had the honor.

“Father Hadrian? Please, drink.”

“And if I don’t? I’m weak, and sick, and you’re probably stronger
than me right now. Will the temptation to force me be too great for
you again?”

Guilty eyes rose to his. “I… no, I would never…”

“Wouldn’t you? Isn’t that how I came to be a vampire?”

She crumpled then and began to cry in earnest.
It was decades ago, let
it go, Hadrian.
It wasn’t as if he hated everything about being
a vampire. It had its highlights. And it wasn’t as if he couldn’t
go lie out in a field and wait for the sun to claim him if it became
too much to continue on.

But he couldn’t let go of the anger that she’d tried to make him her
toy. There was something inside her that called to the darkest parts
in him. The light that glowed off her… the sweetness made him
crazy. The idea of taking her vein might drive him to madness.

Before he could stop himself, his hand had moved underneath her cascade of
dark hair to stroke the back of her neck. “Poor, lost little
angel.”

She flinched but didn’t pull away from his touch, and he didn’t stop
petting her for several minutes. The silence was broken only by her
muffled crying. He wanted to make her cry forever.

“You know I can’t enthrall you,” he said. Those tricks only worked on
the humans.

“I know.”

“So if I feed, it will hurt.”

“I-I understand.”

His hand tightened on her neck. “Do you, little angel? Let’s find
out.”

Before she could protest, Hadrian picked her up and settled her on his lap.
A frisson of fear came upon him. She couldn’t have weighed more
than one twenty, but it had been hard to lift her. Whatever the magic
users had done, not only was he not healing… he was getting
progressively worse.

He brushed her hair out of the way. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut.
She cried out as his fangs sank into her throat, and he gripped her
harder around the waist. Honest guilt. He loved the taste of it, and
in an angel, it became a rare delicacy.

She was such a novelty. He couldn’t get inside her mind to see her
dirty secrets. He could neither absolve her of her past, nor kill
her. The only thing he could do was taste her, enjoy her. He growled
against her throat as he savored the delicate sweetness of her blood.
They were right. Angel blood was a sweet nectar that deserved every
sonnet ever written about it. Every ballad. Every legend. It was
true. All of it.

Hadrian felt his strength return. The pain faded as he drank and Angeline
whimpered and trembled beneath his fangs. Human blood never could
have healed him so quickly. How would he ever drink another human
after this? He found the strength to pull away and ran his tongue
over his bite marks to seal and help heal them, even though he knew
she must have her own healing abilities.

She sat quiet and still, her breath moving in and out of her like a
prayer. The back of her dress seemed to have a million buttons from
just below the middle of her back and going the rest of the way down.
He started to unbutton them.

“W-what are you doing?”

“Whatever I want.”

Her breath caught in her throat, and she nodded. When he’d worked
through all the buttons, he pushed the dress down around her waist.
It was exactly as he’d thought when he’d held her against him. A
corset. The back was lower, but he hadn’t been wrong when his
fingers had pressed against the hard boning. Why did she wear them?
Perhaps his little angel liked pain.

Hadrian still remembered the black corset underneath the dress she’d worn
the night she’d fucked him on the altar and turned him. That night
she’d seemed wanton and worldly. Now she seemed somehow innocent,
as if none of that had ever happened.

“How long has it been?”

A slow, shuddering breath was the only response. He wondered if she
knew what he was asking.

An eternity later, she answered. “You were the last time.”

“But that’s… six decades.”

She shrugged, her gaze fixed on a marble St. Francis statue in the
corner. “We aren’t allowed… we don’t. Even what we just did…
it’s an abomination. If they ever found out that I…”

“Who will tell them?”

She gasped when he cinched the corset tighter and bit her again. He drank
less this time, having already been satisfied by the first feeding.
When he withdrew his fangs and sealed the wound, he carefully
buttoned her dress and nudged her off his lap. He could neither bring
himself to be particularly cruel or kind at the moment, still
processing the experience of her blood and the revelation that no one
else had taken her since that night.

***

Angeline felt his eyes on her. She should leave. It had taken everything in
her not to flee when he’d called her
little angel
. It was
what Linus had called her. The endearment had always been followed by
something terrible when it had come from the mouth of her sire.

She’d had to mentally remind herself that she’d watched Hadrian for
years. She
knew
him. He wasn’t Linus. A pet name wouldn’t
change that. And further, she’d seen plenty of reasons over the
years to trust Hadrian. Most evil acts for him occurred in a gray
area in service to a greater good.

She wandered the basement. The decor was mostly modern. Sharp lines and
hard planes. Cold marble statues watching her and documenting all her
sins. Only a little comfort or warmth here or there… a comfy
leather chair, a rug, a large, ornate bed with sheer black curtains
around it. Lots of white candles and Gothic candle stands.

Everything was black and gray and white with a few flourishes of gold here and
there. The only thing that didn’t fit the bland color scheme was a
wardrobe and trunk in the corner made from rich dark oak. The other
corner had racks and racks of wine.

A familiar piece of fabric peeked from behind the trunk. It was the bag
she’d left behind years ago. She tensed, afraid the rosary would
burn when her fingers brushed over the cross, but of course it
didn’t. Instead, when she held it, she felt herself glow.

“You kept this?”

She jumped when his arms closed around her waist. He’d moved across the
room so quickly and quietly she hadn’t noticed him behind her.

“I never bothered throwing it out. It’s not as if I live here all the
time.”

She put the rosary and drawing back into the bag and placed it on the
trunk. It felt wrong to keep it. It only reminded her of things she
wanted to forget.