16
The Angel

 

 

 

I observed every escape route and the number of guards on every post, not that the guards concerned me much. It was a habit for me to take in everything within the enemy realm.

Jasmine tried to touch me at every opportunity, laying her hand on my arm, or brushing her fingers against mine. She was especially fascinated with my wings.

My mind drifted to my mate again.

Fiammetta had once come to watch me train. I’d spread my broken wings to their full expanse, ignoring the sharp pain, to impress her. But my witch had only flicked her silver gaze away from me, dismissing my efforts.

I remembered how the dry breeze had sent her perfume toward me, and I’d wanted to bury my face in her lustrous, glossy hair and inhale her scent. My primal instinct had recognized her as my fated mate, only my mind had been too slow to catch up, believing she had put a lust spell on me. 

And now, as I was separated from her, every breath I took sent agony into my lungs.

In contrast to my mate’s caress, the vampiress’ touch repulsed me. I kept my expression blank. As long as I was her captive, it wouldn’t do me any good to piss off the vampiress too much. But when she reached for my wings, I shoved her away and said through my gritted teeth. “Stop it! Your touch brings pain and nausea because of the Wickedest Witch’s spell.”

She blinked. “Shouldn’t it be waning now?”

“Not in the slightest.” I smirked at her nastily. With vampires lot, one had to play their game to come out a winner. “Her curse seems more powerful than your blood bond. Check yourself.”

She arched an eyebrow. When my witch had done that, all I had wanted was to fuck her. But when the vampiress did it, I wanted to smack her and send her crashing against the wall.

“Won’t you sustain pain for me?” Jasmine asked.

“The pain is the easy part, but the nausea is killing me,” I said. “And why should I? You’ve done nothing for me other than burn me with your venom and try to turn me and control me. I’m not like those man-toys you used to play with.”

“I saved your life, and all I got from you was a ban on touching you?”

“Spare me that speech, Princess.”

She actually liked it that I talked rough. This primordial vampiress was an adolescent beneath her vicious exterior. She might have read too many romance novels. I spotted a few of them on the shelves in her suite, something like Seduced by the Vampire Lord, The Dragonian’s Woman, and Mate With All the Dragons: A Reverse Harem Romance. The last title got me wondering how the female could possibly handle even one dragon, considering he had all those big fangs, hard scales, and a harder tail.

The women had gone too far on the wild side.

And from my experience hunting dragons, I knew they didn’t like to fuck mortal or immortal women; they preferred to toast them before eating them.

And here, no one had ever set boundaries with the vampire princess, but I was establishing one. So, this was refreshing and even inspirational for her. For the first time, she couldn’t always get what she wanted, and she was giddy about it.

No matter how nasty and volatile she could be, it was actually easy to handle her. It had been damn hard to charm my own mate. Thinking of Fiammetta, painful longing burst in my chest. Would I ever see her again? By now, her memories must have reset, and she couldn’t remember a damn thing about me.

I was totally forgotten in the past on Pandemonium, hanging out with the vampire kind as a half-slave. And my ThunderSong still hovered above the planet in the present time, searching for me, but would never find me. My crew would only realize that they’d lost their great captain forever when they saw the gray planet explode before their eyes.

When I reached the bottom of the long marble stairs and saw the vast door enhanced by a steel gate at the ground floor, my foul mood improved a little.

This might be my chance to break out.

I charged past Jasmine toward the door, and the vampire guards all ducked out of my way like shadow arrows.

“What are you doing, Gabriel?” Jasmine called behind me.

I kicked the door, then the gate, open and dashed outside.

I’d never felt so good to see the overcast sky above the City of Nine, and I inhaled the air of freedom and laughed.

I’d come out. I was free.

Just before I spread my wings and sprang as far as I could from the vampire tower, an unseen force, more powerful than my Archangel strength, pulled me back into the tower.

I collided with the hard floor, denting it, my laugh dying in my throat.

Jasmine crouched beside me, gazing down at me with a doting smile. Before she reached for my wings, which draped limply behind me, I bared my teeth to warn her, and she jerked back her hand.

I had a strong feeling the Dark Prince was watching all this, somewhere. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t spot the freak. The entire tower served as his eyes and ears.

“You’ll only hurt yourself if you keep doing this,” Jasmine said. “You’ll be happier the sooner you accept your new reality. Life in the tower isn’t that bad. You’ll get used to it and grow to love it, as I do. And don’t worry about the witch’s spell. We’ll fix it before the next two moons. Oh, silly me, there’s no moon here.”

I sat up straight, still dazed about having to face the facts: I could never leave.

Jasmine looked at my face, then turned to the surrounding vampires. “Leave us.”

The guards rushed out the door, and in a moment, it was only the vampire princess and me in the ground-floor hall.

I stared at the door indignantly. “Why can they come and go freely?!” 

Jasmine settled on the stairs next to me, her chin on her long fingers, and regarded me.

“They’re full-fledged vampires,” she said. “They’ve sworn fealty to my brother and me, so, the tower recognizes them as ours. You, on the other hand, aren’t exactly a vampire, even with half of my blood flowing in your veins. I wonder if I can ever turn you into my kind, even in time. If you swear a blood oath to me, you’ll be able to leave the tower on an assignment, but you’ll always have to return here—your new home.”

I got to my feet, my wings dragging behind me. I wondered if they would ever be whole again.

“That’s a fucking joke,” I said. 

“No, my love,” Jasmine said. “I understand you’re a work-in-progress, but for you, I can be patient, as I’ve never been patient with any others. I’m confident you’ll come around. Give it time, Gabriel.”

“I’ll come around sooner if you have your brother release this voodoo on me, so I can go to the Witch Tower to make the Wickedest Witch unhex me. Then you can have me for you forever.”

She rose and leaned to leer at me. “You’re shrewd, Angel. That only makes me fancy you more, because we’re alike.” She cocked her head to the side. “But do you honestly think I’d hand you over to her like that? Do you know how hard it was to acquire you?”

“I’m not some commodity. Drill that into your small head, vamp—Princess.” Then her earlier comments about fixing the curse on me set off an alarm bell in my head. “And what do you mean, not to worry about the witch’s spell?”

“You caught my slip of the tongue, didn’t you?” She smiled intimately. “The Wickedest Witch will be coming to our tower.”

My heart startled, and through Jasmine’s eyes, I could see how my face must have darkened, like the sky before a thunderstorm.

“Oh, don’t give me that pouting look, love,” she said. “She won’t be coming for you, if that’s what you’re worried about. She’s coming for Dark Prince Desdemona, for the date she agreed a long time ago.”

I sneered. “If she’s coming for him, then why didn’t she come a long time ago?”

“You really think highly of yourself, don’t you? You probably believe the universe revolves around you. But, no matter, no one’s perfect.” She giggled like a little girl. “I’m only telling you because I know you’ll be thrilled, as I’ll make the witch unhex you in no time. No matter how powerful and wicked she is, once she crosses the threshold of that door, she’s not only my brother’s. Her ass is mine as well. If I ask her to crawl, she’ll crawl and lick the ground I walk on. You have the flame in you, so, you can somehow resist me. The Wickedest Witch’s dark magic won’t work in the tower, but her blood will taste only sweeter. Love, after she removes the malicious spell on you, our first night together will be as explosive as firecrackers!”

There would be no firecrackers. By then, I’d have torn her white throat out.

But the news of my mate’s coming into the vampire nest chilled my bones. Then rage and anxiety sizzled in my blood.

What would she gain by coming to this living tomb? How foolish and ruthless was the witch!

I stormed up the stairs. I needed to be alone, to figure out a way to stop my mate from entering the trap. Once she stepped into the tower, she could never leave. She’d be as damned as I, and it would be far worse for her.

“Gabriel,” Jasmine called after me in a high-pitched voice. “Where are you going?”

Fucking skies! How long must I suffer this one?