Forbidden (The Preternaturals) (6 page)

Was he killing her to release her from her own hell, to protect himself,
or out of vengeance? And if he truly believed he was trapped in Hell,
shouldn’t he greet the morning with her? Without the demon
influencing him, he would have met the sun. But the demon’s
pragmatism along with his own human curiosity was a damning
combination. What would life be like as a vampire? And should he miss
the opportunity to find out? The old man’s warning from the
in-between place seemed like a distant wisp of a dream now. Hardly
worth heeding.

“Sit,” he said.

Angeline collapsed in the chair, and he used the ropes to bind her. He met her
eyes, keeping her gaze in his, his hand holding her chin firm. “Good
girl. You will not try to escape. Do you understand?” He wasn’t
sure if the force of his power was strong enough to override her
survival instinct, but that plus ropes should be enough.

“This is cruel. Why are you doing this? I’m sorry. Okay? Just let me go
and I’ll leave you alone. You can have your freedom. Just let me
have mine.”

“Remember, Angeline, I’ve heard thousands of confessions. I know when one is
truly sorry. I’ll be back to talk with you, but first I need to
hunt and think.” He went back to the cemetery and retrieved the
gag, not that he thought anyone would hear her. After he’d gagged
her, he stalked off into the night to explore his new powers.

An exciting idea was forming, and he was intoxicated with it. Now he’d
know who was worth saving.

***

Angeline blinked back the tears clouding her vision. Didn’t Father Hadrian
know what she’d given him? She’d freed him! She’d made him into
a god, young and beautiful and strong for eternity. And this was how
he repaid her?

She’d been foolish for not paying more attention to what he’d been
chanting. Although her Latin was weak, at least one of those words
should have tipped her off.
Exorcizo.

She’d been too drunk on his blood—the purity and sweetness of it. Father
Hadrian had been a good man. Good like she’d been once. She didn’t
know what she’d expected, but him being able to fight back hadn’t
been on the list.
She
hadn’t been able to fight back. It
wasn’t fair. Nothing about any of it was fair.

Surely there was enough good left in him to let her go. But then, if he had
goodness in him it would rebel against the darkness in her. Who was
she kidding? She was in trouble either way. Deep trouble.

The vampire who’d turned her had been vicious beyond imagining. His
name was Linus, a name of Greek origin which means
flax.
Not a
name that strikes terror—until you meet him.

Angeline tried to shut out the memory, but it surrounded her, a
three-dimensional vision that wouldn’t go away.

She was sitting in a dank cell that had been built by her sire. They were
deep in the bowels of an opera house. Angeline suspected he kept her
here so she could hear the voices of angels while she was trapped in
Hell. Why would God let this happen to her? How could she be
abandoned like this to a demon?

She hadn’t fed in two weeks. She was weak, emaciated, seeing things.
Unfortunately what she was seeing in front of her right now, was
real. Linus paced outside her cell, lecturing her as if she were a
small child in need of basic survival instruction.

“The next human I give you to feed from, you’ll drain them and you’ll
like it. Keep feeling this guilt, my little angel, and see where it
gets you.” He stopped and faced her, his expression dark. “Or
maybe you
do
see now. I’ve never encountered a vampire quite
like you. I think I should like to start a menagerie with such
oddities. It would entertain me greatly.”

He’d left her for an hour, then returned with a noblewoman who had come to
see the opera. She shook, her face streaked with tears. Linus hadn’t
bothered to put her under.

“Angeline, dear? Pay attention. This is how a real vampire feeds.” The woman
struggled in his arms, her screams so loud surely someone would hear.

But he’d timed the feeding to the climax of the opera when the voices
above were far louder than the screams below, drowning out the
woman’s cries. He let her body drop when he’d finished feeding.
She wasn’t quite gone yet, but she was weak, sobbing, staring up at
Angeline with wide, terrified eyes.

“P-please,” she said.

As if Angeline could help. There was nothing she could do, standing
inside the makeshift cell, gripping the bars, her knuckles going
whiter than normal at the smell of the fresh blood.

The woman was bleeding to death on the stone ground less than a foot
away, her wrist within easy reach. Angeline eased herself to the
ground and pulled the woman’s wrist through the bars, her fangs
descending.

Then the human was against the opposite wall where she’d been flung,
dead.

“I didn’t say you could eat yet. You can eat when you’re ready to be
a proper vampire.” He’d left her again. She’d screamed for
hours, but no one ever heard her.

Angeline shook herself out of the memory, her gaze darting around the dark
cemetery as she renewed her struggle. What if Linus was near? What if
he found her here somehow before Hadrian returned? He’d take her
back.

She took slow steady breaths to calm herself. The last she’d heard, her
sire was on the other side of the Atlantic. He rarely came to the
states. He couldn’t know where she was, and he’d left her alone
for almost a century since she’d escaped him.

Although she’d broken free, there was no saving the woman she’d been. That
person was gone. Linus had poisoned her.

She kept her human half locked away because that part of her couldn’t
take all the horror. She’d had to become the horror to survive. If
she was the villain, she could never be the victim again. Only, her
calculations on that score had been a bit off, because here she
was—the victim again.

I thought I could trust Hadrian. How could he turn on me?

The many months she’d come to Mass watching him, waiting for those
brief moments to feel his hand grasping hers, to talk with him and
dream about the day they’d be together. That first night, the
drug-induced vision had felt like something real, like a sign that he
was hers. How could it have been wrong? The universe had opened to
her that night and shown her everything.

She wondered if she’d approached the priest differently if things would
have still gone this way. Maybe if she’d gradually introduced him
to what she was—if she’d given him a choice. She hadn’t been
given a choice. How could she make the same mistake? If only he
hadn’t done that stupid chant, things would be different.

Angeline was so lost in self-pity and self-recriminations that she didn’t
hear the small, quiet footsteps until they were in front of her. The
first thing she noticed when her vision cleared from the tears were
delicate, bare feet.

She startled as her gaze rose to take in the girl in front of her. She
couldn’t have been older than twelve. The vampire licked her lips.
It had been a while since she’d had a good veal. The girl still had
the tiniest bit of baby fat around her face. If only Angeline could
get the gag out of her mouth and the ropes off.

Had he sent some child out here to taunt her? Was that part of the
punishment he’d cultivated for her sins? Was it penance? Whatever
happened to the Hail Mary?

“Can you kill me?” the girl said as if she were asking someone to pass
the butter.

Now Angeline knew the priest was messing with her. And with the gag still
in her mouth, she couldn’t even yell at the stupid child.

“Can you?” the girl persisted. “Your priest was too young. I knew he
was, but figured it was worth a try anyway. If you’re older, maybe
it will work this time.”

Angeline’s eyes widened as she looked more closely at the girl. Blonde,
shoulder-length hair, delicate pixie features. Her white dress
swallowed her, but would have perfectly fit the adult witch the
vampire had brought for Hadrian’s first feeding.

But she was dead. Angeline had seen it. She’d heard her heartbeat slow
and stop like butterfly wings on their last flap. She’d carried the
lifeless body and laid it on the altar.

“I’d hoped that death card was for me,” Tam said. “It has to be for
me.” The girl pulled the gag from Angeline’s mouth and spoke to
her as if she were the child. “I want you to try, all right?”

The vampire looked around. This had to be a trick, a test. If she bit the
girl, Hadrian would be upset. Or would he? He’d killed her the
first time around, after all.

“What are you?”

The witch rolled her eyes. “Something far older than you. I’m hard to
kill, and I’m tired of running. My power needs to die with me. I
can’t allow it to get into his hands.”

“Hadrian?” Angeline hated when people spoke in riddles.

The girl laughed. “No, silly. Someone else.”
Madame Tam
gave
her an assessing once-over. “How old are you?”

Angeline balked at giving the girl her age. It was such a personal question
for a vampire, filled with so much nuance. It was more than just a
number. It was the evidence of how much you’d survived, how much
history you’d seen and lived.

“Two hundred and twenty.”

“Hmmm.” Tam paced, lost in thought. It was strange seeing such a grown-up
look on such a young girl. “My kind can only be killed, truly
killed, by another of our kind, or a very old and very strong being.
I know because one of us has been killed that way, by a
three-thousand-year-old vampire. As you can imagine, those are hard
to find, and they tend to be gruesomely creative with killing,
something I’m not too keen on. I don’t think you’re nearly old
enough, but we can try.”

The girl sat across Angeline’s lap and pulled her hair back. The
vampiress was going mad. She had to be. None of this was happening.
It was a dream. Some crazy daymare. Perhaps Hadrian hadn’t risen
yet. Maybe she was still in her resting place below ground, dreaming.
It was all too unreal and strange.

Although the promise of the girl’s blood was intoxicating, Angeline hoped it
was a dream and that she could start this night over without making
the same mistakes. Maybe she’d stake Hadrian before he rose, just
in case his chanting was a genuine threat.

The girl cleared her throat. “This is the most formal invitation you’re
getting. I know my blood is delicious. I’ve been fed on by vampires
a few times before. They went on about me like I was a royal feast.”

Angeline knew just by the smell of the girl that it was true. “How long have
you had this death wish?”

“Off and on for about a thousand years, more often since he’s started
hunting more deliberately and the others of my kind have been picked
off. If he kills me, he’ll take all my power. He’s a far greater
evil than you’ve ever thought about being. I have to break the
cycle, and I won’t contribute to the things he wants to do by dying
at his hands.”

“You little… ” Who the hell did this girl think she was? She didn’t
know how evil Angeline was or wasn’t.

The girl tilted her head again, trailing her index finger up and down the
column of her throat. “Eat up. From the looks of things, this will
be your last meal. At least it’ll be a good one.”

Well, if the girl wanted to die so very badly, Angeline would oblige her.
All the riddles as well as the creepiness of an adult woman dying and
then coming back a child all in the same night was enough incentive.
Who needed a formal invitation to shut up
that
nonsense?

“Untie me,” Angeline said, locking eyes with the girl.

The blonde giggled. “Oh, nice try. Remember you’re only two hundred
and twenty.”

Angeline growled, but leaned forward, sinking her fangs into the girl’s
neck. The angle was awkward. This was no way to enjoy a meal. It was
humiliating in the extreme, but she intended to suck every drop out
of her, far past the point of death, so the obnoxious brat didn’t
rise again. She still didn’t know how that worked, nor did she
care.

Tam’s blood was a fine wine, aged to perfection. But it was also the youth
and excitement of childhood. It was the best of both worlds, the
rarest thing the vampire had ever tasted. If by some miracle, Hadrian
let her go, she could see keeping this girl as a blood doll—if she
couldn’t permanently kill her, that is. Because she really wanted
to kill her.

The girl’s pulse grew thready and then slowed and stopped. Angeline
continued to drink, squeezing every last drop of blood out. Tam
became a corpse for the second time that night, still draped across
her killer.

Angeline snarled in frustration, unable to move her. But then a slow smile
formed on her face.

She’d just fed from the strongest blood she’d ever tasted. Probably not
more than Hadrian had consumed, since the smaller, younger body held
less blood than her former size, but she’d had at least as much as
he’d had. If she focused all her energy and will, she might
convince her arms to obey her will instead of his and escape.

A long time passed before her arm twitched against her restraints. This
might not be her final night on Earth.

***

Hadrian thought taking control of Angeline had been easy enough, but being
barely risen, one human, no matter how powerful, just hadn’t been
enough. He’d need a few more pints before he was ready to deal with
his sire fully.

The city was noisier than he remembered. With his
new senses, voices, thoughts, traffic, heartbeats, the buzzing of the
neon signs,
everything
combined to create a din that stuffed his head and threatened to
squeeze his sanity out through his eye sockets.

The ability to shield one’s mind from a vampire varied from person to
person, because some people seemed to throw their thoughts out at
him, almost begging him to hear them, while others faded into the
background in quiet whispers. Still others required him to focus
intently and specifically on them to get direct thoughts. A few were
blank slates that he couldn’t read at all.