8
When Rebel reached for my hand, my first instinct was to pull back.
The foxes watched us with their sharp eyes as they prowled either side of the hissing map towards us.
The walls in the shadowy Great Hall trembled; the curtains swayed in a wild dance. I grabbed Rebel’s fingers between mine, unnerved. The handcuffs clinked, cold against my skin.
What the hell did it matter if I’d used Rebel or he was an Addict? Fam was fam, these demons were free, and our arses were being hunted.
‘Bolt!’ Rebel hauled me after him through the hallway.
There was the skitter of claws on the oak floors behind us. A primal fear spiked my adrenaline.
Rebel booted open the rough side-door, and we scrambled through to the stone terrace.
Rusty-red on one side, bright red on the other.
The foxes circled hungrily.
We dodged through the stone pieces of the giant red and green chess set, as the foxes slunk close to the ground on either side, into the thickets of thorny rose bushes, stripped bare in winter, before weaving in and out between the stems.
I pricked myself on a thorn, and watched the blood bead; well, I’d wanted to be Sleeping Beauty.
I frowned. ‘So, which of these bastards is Spark?’
‘The one with green eyes and white tail,’ Rebel spun round, his wings beating, as Spark danced towards him, before retreating. The little wallad was playing us. ‘The big fellah with amber eyes and black paws? That’s Blaze. They’re brothers. Christ…’
Blaze had jumped from the bushes and sunk his canines into Rebel’s ankle.
I swirled with fury that the fox had tasted my angel. Taken blood that should only be mine.
Yet Rebel’s blood was his own; I’d never enslave him. I wasn’t like Bisi.
Was I?
When Spark tried the same trick on me, I booted him in the head. He rolled onto his back and wriggled, whining.
‘Lay off,’ Rebel panted, trying to prise Blaze off his ankle, ‘don’t hurt the idiots.’
‘You’re joking?’ I met Blaze’s serious stare with a snarl, and he let go of Rebel’s leg.
Blaze lashed his tail back and forth and bounded over to his brother. He nudged Spark with a nip that made Spark yelp, and together they skulked deeper into the gardens.
Rebel had snapped my boyfriend’s neck like it was a game at a funfair but he drew the line at kicking a magic fox?
Rebel took one limping step towards the mansion.
A furious guttural chattering howl. Dark shapes flittered fast across the path.
‘They’re after hounding us. It’s a fox hunt in reverse.’ Rebel’s mouth became a tight line. ‘Sometimes you can’t face the worst. You have to hide.’ He drew me towards a maze of high privet hedges; foxes were pruned into the topiary like plant gargoyles. I pulled back, but he shook his head. ‘No other way, Feathers.’
‘Not until you tell me why we’re hiding from a pair of juiced foxes.’
‘They’re Blood Familiars.’ Rebel fiddled with the skull on his bondage trousers. ‘Da owns them. Please, they’ve been ordered to hurt us.’
Rebel knew because he’d suffered this training before.
That was all it took to kick my arse into dashing after him down the gravel paths of the maze. Every twist and turn was as familiar as the routine in the study for Rebel.
I trusted Rebel because otherwise I was lost.
Howls.
As we darted to the centre of the maze, they echoed around us. I remembered the slice of those teeth biting into Rebel’s ankle, noticing the blood trail he left behind like breadcrumbs for the foxes.
The howls were closer. The familiars’ hot panted breath on my boots. Flashes of red.
The centre of the maze arose up ahead like the holy land.
Rebel hobbled towards the fountain, which was a carved marble rose, blossoming open and as if being born from it, a fox and a wolf. The fountain wasn’t running because it’d been frozen to ice.
I snorted. This was the big prize that would save us?
Rebel clambered over the lip of the fountain, before skidding across the thick ice to the statue of the fox.
I stared at him blankly. ‘For real?’
He slipped, bumping to his arse. ‘They don’t cross ice. Muppets can swim though; I found that out the hard way.’
I slapped my hand against my thigh. ‘Then step-up and work the bastards.’
Amber and green beamed out of the dark. The two brothers stalked into the centre of the maze.
Towards us.
‘Spark and Blaze don’t have a choice. They’re under my family’s power.’ Rebel was clutching hard to the fountain; his breath came in dragon puffs. He looked troubled and distant as he murmured, ‘And I refuse to hurt slaves.’
‘Even if they’re about to hurt me?’
The Blood Familiars slunk closer in ever decreasing circles. They held their brushes — one black and one white — proudly aloft, chattering. Never once did they look away from me.
‘Princess,’ Rebel hissed, flapping his wings in agonised indecision, ‘please will you stir yourself?’
Blaze rested back on his haunches next to Spark, and I sensed it. The moment he’d signalled to his brother for the attack.
Yet as they leapt through the air towards me, I didn’t hesitate. I wrenched off my sunglasses, and then held out my handcuffed hands.
The familiars didn’t stop.
Then I was being knocked backwards, the air driven from my lungs. I hit my head on the gravel path.
Rebel’s cries, shrieking whines, and soft heavy creatures trampling me.
I shoved at the handfuls of dense silky fur, until I could sit up. The two foxes crouched, with their ears pressed to their skulls, whining and doing everything but batting their eyelashes at me in submission.
It’d been a risk, taken on nothing but the urging of the shadows under my skin. A certainty the familiars would recognise its power.
Spark nudged his head cautiously into my hand.
‘What did you do?’ Rebel murmured, ‘I’ve never seen them like this.’
I grinned. ‘I tamed them. Now I’m top boy.’ I stroked Blaze’s back. ‘They’re mine.’
When I slipped on my sunglasses, I was still high: I welcomed the surge of strength. This was flying, no longer prisoner to the dark but mistress of it.
Until Rebel’s cautious hand on my shoulder. ‘You’re taking slaves?’
I surveyed the fox brothers cowering at my feet. Then ran my hand lightly over their heads, tickling behind Spark’s ears. He glanced up at me, through laughing green eyes. ‘No, bro, I’m freeing them.’
I marched back towards the house, with the foxes trotting at my heels.
When I burst into the Great Hall, with the Blood Familiars winding around me like my guard dogs, the Deadmans startled. Then they gawped at me, as if I was the one with the magic.
‘Training’s over,’ I held out my handcuffed wrists, ‘time to free me.’
Da glanced at Ma, for once uncertain. Then he abandoned the rose quartz crystals he’d been examining and prowled towards me, the grisly brush, stained with his own blood, still at his neck. He scowled at the familiars. ‘I see you have mastered my children. Very clever.’
I tilted my head. ‘You have daddy issues. And your kids are going Hackney style.’
Da snatched my hands, roughly pulling them forward, before a snarl from the familiars stilled him.
‘Zach, go and wait for me for me in the study.’ Da’s intent gaze never left mine, as he withdrew a key from his waistcoat pocket, and the handcuffs clattered to the floorboards. ‘You seem to have forgotten important lessons.’ I saw the struggle, but Rebel still nodded, before disappearing out into the hallway. ‘You may dominate my children, but not my angel.’
The Blood Familiars’ tails lashed.
‘I freed your familiars. And I will free Rebel. Just like I’ll get free. And when I do, you’ll be the one in the dark.’
Da stepped back, as if I’d bitten him.
Yeah, I was flying.
The short coal-black sword flamed in the bleak underground cellar, like the eclipse of a violet sun.
Rebel trembled as he held the sword, his wings vibrating.
I lounged against the wall, next to a cobwebbed wire rack of pricey bottles of wine, Spark and Blaze smart at my heels. I smirked, when the Deadmans dropped to their knees in worship.
Was it possible to worship a prisoner?
When the witches had opened the iron trapdoor, shoving us down the stone steps into the musty pitch-black cellar, I’d been dreading the shooter to the head or wand action into gargoyle.
Instead?
Da had spun the lock on a fire-proof safe that hung on the wall, before reverentially drawing out a sword.
Rebel had stared at him in confusion. ‘My Eclipse? But you said—’
‘You’ve earned your sword back.’ Da had lifted out a light leather harness that was threaded with gold and a scabbard, which he’d thrown to Rebel. ‘You deserve to wear it again.’
‘Thank you,’ Rebel had murmured, shucking his leathers and buckling the harness and scabbard between his folded wings. ‘Does this mean I’m not grounded?’
Da had glanced at me and then the Blood Familiars, who’d bared a flash of sharp canine. ‘It means, boy, someone convinced me to free you. I do not believe you can be trusted. You ran once. Abandoning others is what you do, is it not? But we shall see. Do you prefer prisoner, or hunter?’
Something in me had thrilled at hunter. And between hunter or prisoner? I’d train any way Rebel wanted to become even a half-arsed angel without wings, if I’d also be a huntress.
A flash of hot thrumming excitement had shot through me.
I’d needed Rebel. And part of me…?
Wanted him.
Da had finally passed Rebel the sword, although he’d hesitated at the last moment, and his hands had met Rebel’s. They’d both tugged on the hilt, before at last Da had let go.
‘This is your choice,’ Da had stared at me, swiping his forehead with his russet handkerchief. ‘Are we safe now?’
Then Rebel had raised the sword, his thumb caressing the sparkling crescent moon hilt. He’d been lost in it; I’d recognised the surge of power, the same as mine, curling through him. He’d shuddered as he’d whispered, ‘Eclipse’.
Then the sword had blazed to life, Rebel’s wings had burst wide, and the witches had prostrated themselves at his feet.
What had I just freed? And could I trust Rebel?
I shrank back against the damp wall, away from the zoned angel; the pretty punk was flying.
When the flame cooled, Rebel swung to me. His pupils were dilated and his skin feverish. ‘See, princess, I’m more than an Addict. I’m Zachriel — the Rebel — and this is Eclipse,’ he slashed the sword in an overexcited cross through the air. ‘I’ve made a hash of things but I’m free now and—’
‘Blitzed. You’re broken, so how about you put the sword down?’
‘If I were mad, I would! I’m a hunter. I’m on the hunt.’
‘You’re tripping.’ I stepped towards him.
Rebel didn’t even hesitate. He raised Eclipse to my throat.