4
There are dark kisses that bruise your soul as well as your mouth. Kisses as soft as feathers. Light. Gentle. Kind. Whereas others blaze and burn to ash.
And then there are kisses that are a revelation.
As I drifted back towards the grey, once more out of the black, soft lips kissed mine.
The kiss didn’t bruise or burn but it was firm and possessive.
Right.
Until it wasn’t.
I bit hard. The bastard gasped, and the mouth pulled back. But not before a coppery sweet blood crescendo exploded; my tongue chased after heaven.
It’d been Rebel’s kiss…and blood.
The new, fluttering forces deep within me awoke and roared at the taste, claiming Rebel. Wanting him, even if I didn’t.
How had I lost control even of myself?
Then I blinked awake.
Rebel peered down at me, concerned. He stroked my arm, as he had when I’d first awoken; I reckon it soothed him more than me. He hadn’t chained me this time, only snapped steel handcuffs around my wrists.
Maybe he was experimenting with bondage techniques.
When he leaned closer, I elbowed him — oomph — in the guts. ‘Congratulations, you’ve just made my List of Asses to Kick.’
‘You have a list?’ He grinned uncertainly, like a kid discovering Father Christmas was real but had written him onto his Naughty List.
‘Yeah, it helps when men molest you.’
Rebel snatched up his ripped t-shirt from the wolf throw and began sewing on leather patches around slashes in the back, even though his hand shook. I realised the gaps were for his wings and then, with a jolt, that he must’ve been sitting on the edge of my four-poster, under the burgundy frills and enshrouded in cinnamon and saffron — sewing — and watching me whilst I slept.
Or guarding me.
At last, Rebel’s fingers hesitated. ‘Angel kisses are fierce powerful. They heal. And you were…’
I jacked up, kicking off the fur throw and wriggling to the far side of the bed.
I steeled myself for the bump as I hit the floor, but a hand grasped my ankle and I was hauled back amongst the pillows like a winded catch of the day.
I bucked again, hissing.
‘Take it easy, princess.’ Rebel glanced at the open door, before whispering, his body taut with tension against mine, ‘If you promise to stay here with me and my family, the Deadmans, then I’ll promise to help find your sister. Deal?’
I became still. My freedom to find my sister?
Hell, no contest.
‘Deal. But you’re taking me back to Utopia Estate. I adopted Jade. And what you don’t seem to understand is that doesn’t mean I own her, yet she’s still mine. She’s my estate sister. And that’s closer than blood.’ Rebel’s confusion was painful. My gaze softened. ‘Angels kisses can’t heal me, whilst my fam is missing.’
Clank — my handcuffed wrist jangled against Rebel’s in the pocket of his leather jacket.
Handcuffed together, we stumbled through London Fields park, between taekwondo classes, bike trails, and shabby buggies in the clear winter sunlight like a lame-arsed comedy duo.
I tripped against Rebel, and we tangled in a crazy waltz. My nose pressed to his jacket; I took a snort of leather and metal.
But no copper sweetness.
Its loss was a boot to my gut, and I didn’t know either why I cared, or why it’d faded. Yet the chance to escape the danger of Rebel’s family was like being able to breath, after being crushed under heavy stones. I dreaded being dragged back there.
With a growl of frustration, I shoved away Rebel, and we both crashed into the scaly trunk of a London Plane tree.
He raised an unamused pierced eyebrow. ‘Problem, princess?’
I snatched his fingers inside the pocket and squeezed.
He smothered a yelp, struggling underneath me to get away.
Just as I’d done in the bedroom.
Yet when Rebel discovered he was trapped, he melted into me, trembling with pain.
It was…delicious.
Violet snaked between us, licking, tasting, and feasting.
Put the pretty boy down before you break him.
Where have you been, J? You left me chained in that Tudor mansion. Alone.
You’re never alone. But sometimes, Feathery-puss, you can’t hear me.
At last I let Rebel go, with a final warning stroke of my thumb. ‘I’m still in handcuffs, even outside the house. You’re a proper kinky bastard.’
He tilted his head, his wide eyes thoughtful, as he bit at his lip. ‘Trust is a brilliant thing, to be sure. You can fly on trust. But you?’ He flexed his swollen hand. ‘I don’t trust.’
And that was the true boot to the gut.
I scowled. ‘Because I’m all down with trusting the killer angel. Look, kids took pictures of me with a knife in my hand. Then I disappeared from a murder scene. You don’t reckon the pigs will be looking for me?’
Rebel shrugged, but he shuffled from foot to foot. When a football bounced against his ankle, his face lit up with a childish joy I hadn’t seen before. He kicked it back to the lads in grey hoodies, who skulked by the benches, in a flawless arc that had the lads whistling and clapping. They gestured for Rebel — the bondage punk — to join the game.
In London Fields, Hackney.
Yeah, nothing was regular anymore.
I reckon if Rebel hadn’t been handcuffed to me, he’d have bounded to join his new gang, with their designer saddlebags of cocaine, knives, and bottled acid stashed underneath the slanted benches, as if he was Peter Pan leading the Lost Boys.
I shivered, battling to drag my khaki jacket closer.
Hell, I’m wearing a stab victim’s clothes, even if I’m the victim.
The punk cleaned and mended your clothes.
Want to tell me how the wallad magicked out bloodstains?
Magic…interesting word to choose.
Magic too?
I wasn’t sure I was ready to believe that yet. In fact, all I wanted was to find my sister and get as far from Rebel and his freaky secret world as I could.
When I yanked Rebel, he strolled after me across the playing field towards the road looping Utopia Estate like we were any couple, huddled against the cold.
Waves of grease from the burger bar on the corner melded with spice from the kebab shop opposite.
‘Why’d you bother rescuing my clothes?’ I patted at my jacket.
‘Duds are important,’ Rebel glanced at me from underneath his eyelashes. ‘Ma helped.’
I clenched my handcuffed fist, only for Rebel’s bruised fingers to gently caress over it. Yet somehow his — kindness, calmness, submission — only made me madder. ‘Your family, these Deadmans, are bastards. Why are you hiding with them?’
‘I warned you I wasn’t good, I was righteous. But I fibbed.’ He gnawed at his sore lip again. ‘I’m a bad angel. I ask for your trust and say you can fly on it. But you shouldn’t trust me.’ He stared at the ground, refusing to look up. ‘I did a flit from Angel World and bolted here to yours. Now I’m the hunted.’
Finally, he sneaked a glance at me, as if expecting me to either clout him or recoil.
Instead, I clutched his hand in mine, stroking him as he had me. Because his shame called to my own.
For the first time, he released his tortured lip.
‘Still, why stay with humans who beat—’
‘They know magics that keep me safe.’
On the edge of the road, in the shadow of Tower Block A, I pulled him to a stop. I steeled myself, wishing I didn’t have to ask. ‘Are you telling me I’m the prisoner of spell lobbers?’
‘You’re a guest of my family. Who happen to be witches.’
An angel had been adopted by witches, and now I was their guest in handcuffs?
A flash of neon blue and the wail of siren, as a panda car — all blues and twos — flew through the estate.
Rebel spun me, as if to haul me into a snog, but I jerked backwards. ‘We’re not in a movie, hiding from the feds. Learn some swag, if you don’t want to get licked.’ His smacked puppy nose pout made me wish I’d snogged him, even more than the strange new buzzing murmur inside: mine, take, devour… And stoked my rage even higher. ‘But you’ve already been licked. How’s the arse?’
‘I can sit down again, thank you.’
‘See, kinky angel.’
‘I’m Da’s.’ Rebel bristled, dragging me after him across the road between the beeping cars and vans. ‘I left him. So, he punished me. How’s that turn you on?’
I flushed, as he marched us up the stairs into Tower Block A. The guard was missing: Toben’s soldiers weren’t stretched out, like a lion pride on weed, along the concrete.
Everything had changed.
We slipped into the inky dark of the stairwell. The quiet suffocated me.
Suddenly the idea of someone else’s hands touching Rebel — punishing, exciting, or comforting — made the hidden force that’d claimed him boil.
‘You can kill a bloke with your hands,’ Toben kneeling, adoring, and then dead with a snap of his chicken neck, ‘but you’ll let this slipper wearing, daddy issues perv turn you over his knee because you were late home?’
Rebel smiled brightly. ‘Get on with you. Da would be mortified to wear slippers. And I wasn’t just late. I disappeared for over forty years.’
When we clattered up the stairs, a schoolgirl paled as she passed us.
Before I could duck, the kid had snapped me with a whoop and a victory dance. She’d been there on the night I’d fought with Bisi too.
The bitch had pulled down the world on us, simply with her mobile.
Rebel and me glanced at each other once, and then we ran. When Rebel booted in the door to Apartment 333, we burst inside, diving for the death-quiet of Jade’s room.
‘She’s not here. Maybe…she’s just with mates.’
I didn’t even dare say back on the streets.
I wandered through the stale room to the pine wardrobe that Jade had painted black and then decorated with glow-in-the-dark skulls, yanking open the door.
Rebel jittered. ‘I told you, you’re not—’
‘Connected,’ I muttered, running my hand over Jade’s favourite pink-and-white striped tunic.
If Jade bolted to be with some boy, or…if she’s alive…why didn’t she take her clothes?
Your sis’s alive, Violet-sweets. What scares you, is that you can choose the world you want now. You’re free of Jade and this Estate.
For the first time, you can choose who you are.
I recoiled from J’s truth. The devil’s whisper and temptation.
Sirens wailed outside the block; the police’s panda cars circled like hyenas.
‘Time to scatter,’ Rebel pulled me towards the door.
I caught a glimpse of gold on the bedside table.
I dug in my heels, leading Rebel to the necklace, before threading it between my fingers. When I heard his intake of breath, I knew he recognised it from my memories.
We shared Jade now and the promise to find her.
Jade would never have left without her necklace. It was my last birthday gift to her. The only present she’d been given that day because I alone loved her.
But she hadn’t cared. Because we’d been sisters.
Someone must’ve taken her.
Rebel’s forehead against mine brought me down from the rush; he raised the necklace to my neck and with one hand each, we did up the catch. I longed to rip off the handcuffs and escape the claustrophobic closeness, at the same time as the other half of me relaxed into it.
Then I gave a nod, and we bolted.
Halfway down the open stairs that overlooked the playground and sweeping crescent of the Estate’s main road, we peered over at the swarming pigs in blue amidst the snarling pandas.
Click — my stomach dropped, like I’d tumbled over the ledge, when I heard the trigger cocked on a shooter.
Yet when I risked peeking over my shoulder, the gun was pressed to Rebel’s head.
By Bisi.
Bisi met my glare, but he was trembling. I’d never seen him tremble. ‘You stole my shank.’ He rammed the snout of the gun harder into the base of Rebel’s skull. ‘So, I stepped-up. It’s all about the straps.’
I’d wondered what becoming the victim would do to Bisi.
Now I knew. If you took a man’s shank, he bought a shooter. No one could risk being invisible in London. And no one ignored a bloke with a gun.
Except Rebel.
‘Friend of yours, Feathers?’ Rebel leaned his arms on the ledge, as if he was sightseeing.
Bisi puffed up, rubbing one hand against his stiffie. ‘Word on the street is this freak took out Toben. Are you muscling in on my turf? Monsters and murderers hungering to be the new top boys?’
I shrank against Rebel. ‘Do your righteous thing.’
Rebel stretched his shoulders, flexing his wings underneath his jacket. ‘It doesn’t work like that.’ He pushed back against the shooter, like he didn’t realise Bisi wasn’t bluffing. ‘Lay off, muppet.’
At last, Bisi eased off the trigger, before grinning — a slash of gold in the concrete grey of the day — and turning the shooter on me. He pressed almost as close to me as the cold round snout of the gun.
I’d been knifed, beaten, dodged acid and meat cleavers but I’d never had a gun to my head.
Since Rebel had fallen from the ceiling, it’d been nothing but a world of firsts.
I hadn’t expected the wash of terror, edged by impotent fury; I vibrated with it.
Then I yowled, as my wrist was wrenched up, and Rebel spun us, his expression transformed from studied boredom to tight grimness. He knocked the shooter up and away from my head, before clouting Bisi across the mouth.
‘This is what a bro gets for going soft,’ Bisi scrambled backwards. ‘As soon as your man fell short, I should’ve shanked you and your sis.’
Violet hit like a tsunami.
I rode it to a plateau of feathers, where I was stronger, faster, more powerful and nothing mattered but…righteousness.
I ruled over the land of bones below, gnashing my teeth in vicious victory.
Someone was battling me, holding me back.
‘Princess…mind yourself.’
But there was nothing beyond the feathers and bones.
I was lost, as something else took over, and it wasn’t human.
A scream. Bang. Howl.
I couldn’t stop. My hand was around Bisi’s neck. He hung ragdoll limp over the ledge.
‘Feathers, wise up! Let him go!’ The voice came out in gulped gasps, as an angel tugged at my arm.
My angel…
The world blurred back to multicolour.
And I was balanced on the open stairs of Tower Block A, with my hand clutched around Bisi’s throat, as he dangled over the sweep of flashing lights below.
I eased my hold, heart beating wildly. Yet when Bisi edged himself back over the ledge, he jerked me off balance, and then snapped at my thumb with his golden teeth, trying to bite and kiss me all at once.
I shoved Bisi back, and he fell, windmilling through the cold winter sky like a dark angel with broken wings.
Crash — Bisi slammed onto the windscreen of a panda car; the crack spider webbed scarlet.
The alarm screamed; pigs hollered and pointed up at me.
Bisi had been right: I was a monster and, like Rebel, I was a murderer too.
Maybe that’s what being an angel meant.
Sometimes kisses are a revelation because it wasn’t the soft lips that’d awoken me, but the blood when I’d bitten.
I’d known ever since Rebel had kissed me: I was part angel. His blood had sung to my own.
Sirens shrieked, whilst the heavy stomp of police boots echoed up the stairwell.
I clutched at Rebel, only to be dragged down, as he sank to the floor.
When he touched his shoulder, his hand came back sticky crimson from a gunshot wound. I pulled him up; he swayed, and I clasped him close to my chest.
Then we became the hunted.