Chapter Nine
Once Cass and Elena went home, Angel stood alone in the coffee shop parking lot and turned a slow circle, her eyes searching the darkness of lining trees and buildings. Earlier inside, she’d had the feeling she was being watched. But the truth was, she’d had that feeling a lot lately. And if she was being honest, she had to admit there were other feelings, too.
Yes, she’d had Jacob Crow on her mind. But when she wasn’t thinking about him, other things would hit her, and at random times. There were unpleasant sensations like dizziness and weakness, and there were voices and dreams that haunted her well into waking hours. There were unsolicited good feelings too, sensations of weightlessness, comfort and warmth, even euphoria and of blatantly sexual pleasure.
All of these sudden impressions, whether good or bad, always came without provocation or explanation, and they were fleeting. They were there one second, gone the next.
As Angel stood alone in the lot and sensed absolutely nothing again, she finally wondered… if maybe she was going a little crazy. It would be about time.
What happened to her fifteen years ago had been traumatic, to say the least. She’d never seen anyone professional about it. No counselors, no therapists, nothing like that. She’d simply been snatched up by Gabriel Santiago and she’d become a warden. But she hadn’t climbed back on a bike since. Clearly she hadn’t really dealt with it at all.
Gabriel had been there that night, the night she faced off with Dmitri once and for all. At that point, he’d already been a warden for several years, and apparently he’d been assigned to Dmitri’s case. Wardens were good at tracking rogues. Dmitri Voronin was a rogue vampire who’d chosen to break the rules due to an obsession.
Gabriel tracked the vampire to Angel’s location that night, and as it turned out, he arrived just in time. But in the end, Gabe wasn’t the one to kill Dmitri. Angel was.
She would never forget it, could never forget it, and she knew damn well no therapist in Hell could make it otherwise….
(Fifteen years ago)
She was taking a walk in the Bronx. Alone. On a Saturday night. She had a death wish.
And Death had come to grant it.
Angel stopped in the middle of New York’s High Bridge when she felt him approach. Harlem River flowed fast and deep below. She’d come here because this bridge had been closed to pedestrians for eons. It was empty. No one else needed to get hurt.
She stared straight ahead along the empty cement walkway, but her gaze was unseeing. Her eyes were tired and no longer wanted to bear witness to the reality that was the world. The world without Michael.
As the vampire drew near, Angel’s fingers curled around the small ring of metal in the left pocket of her jacket. The authorities had found it in Michael’s pack after the accident. It had been tucked inside an emerald colored box with her name on it. The box had probably been green to match the emerald in the ring. Emerald, not diamond. Because she didn’t care for diamonds, and because emerald was her birthstone. Michael was like that. How he’d managed to afford it, she would never know. And she was sure she would never care.
Her other pocket held something else. And that was the thing she hid from her pursuer, blocked him from detecting as he came upon her.
Angel sensed the vampire’s magic attempt to wrap around her as usual, but this time he failed to take control. Through sheer will and dying determination, she defied him. There was too much pain in her this time, so much that it was numbing her from the inside out, acting like a barrier of static, pulsing misery that kept his influence at bay. Inch by inch, her insides were changing. They were molting into hatred.
As if he sensed the difference in her, Dmitri finally stepped out of the shadows, no doubt wanting to come physically closer. He was off to her right, so she couldn’t see him, but she heard his boot touch the cement. She remained still and listened to him as he began circling her. His fingers of power continued to inch around her, curious, testing, and adamant. She ignored them.
When he was directly behind her, he stopped.
And she spoke up. “You killed him,” she said. The words came out of her mouth monotone, as dead as her heart.
“Yes. I did.” He admitted it freely, if softly.
“How could you ever believe this would change my mind about you?” She almost didn’t realize she was asking the question. Her mouth was running without forethought now. She was simply speaking because some part of her somewhere had yet to go numb, and that part was terribly confused.
“You misunderstand,” he told her, still speaking softly. “I am under no misconceptions.” He stepped closer; she felt as well as heard him close the distance. “I knew you would lament his passing. But I also knew this would be easier on you in the long run.”
Angel felt a bucking of something inside. Was it rage? Was there still something of that left in her? Some kind of spark still smoldering underneath all that ash that was the wasted remains of her spirit?
Dmitri stopped at her back, so close that she could hear him breathe. “You know,” he said, his accented words laced with quiet menace. “If you had wed him, he would have been a lot harder to get rid of. Breaking up a couple is one thing,” he paused, and she imagined he shook his head. “But splitting a union like that calls for much more force.”
Angel still didn’t move. “More force than death?”
“Oh yes.” Dmitri then continued to circle her like a shark, hungry but patient and calculating.
Someone had once said that there was nothing more dangerous than a man with nothing left to lose. But now Angel knew they’d been wrong. There was. The only thing more deadly than a man with nothing left to lose – was a woman. She’d known Michael such a short time, and yet she’d fallen for him completely. He’d had her, body and soul. And now he was gone.
For Angel, there was no point to anything any longer. No reason to keep going, no reason to get up in the morning. That was the worst, she knew now. There was no circumstance more ruinous than when there was nothing left to look forward to. That was the moment when the individual atoms making up a living being became the most volatile, erratic and uncontrollable.
She was a time bomb. The ticking echoed loudly in her eardrums.
Slowly, cautiously, like the predator hemming in his skittish prey, Dmitri moved around her until he was standing in front of her, towering over her like the beautiful monster he was. She let him come and still didn’t move. She remained stoic, her gaze fixed on some point in the distance, some point right through his body. Her fingers curled around the hidden ring.
She slipped it on. It fit perfectly.
Despite the bewildering numbness wreaking havoc with her soul, Angel had meticulously executed her plan to the letter. She’d robotically gone through the motions of this final, momentous act as if they were instructions in a cake recipe. She’d ticked them off in her mind one after the other without emotion, and without pause. She hadn’t slept in three days. She’d barely eaten. Electricity rode along her nerve endings, static and strange.
“Are you finally done running, little one?” He whispered to her, but he didn’t touch her.
She almost smiled at his hesitation. “Yes,” she admitted. She was definitely done running.
She wasn’t sure how much longer she would be able to keep his magic from invading her mind. It was pushing hard now; the vampire could sense something was wrong and he wanted in. But she needed to keep her secret from him a little while yet. Just long enough for him to do what he’d come to do.
“Then why don’t you let me in?” he asked, a playful smile on his lips.
“My thoughts of Michael are my own,” she admitted. That much was true, at least. “You’ve no right to them.”
He lifted his chin. She wouldn’t look up at him, but she could sense that her reply had satisfied him to some degree. “Ah, I see,” he sighed. “You wish to mourn him in private.”
She swallowed hard, pretending to hold back tears. But the truth was, she had no tears left. She was utterly and completely dry.
He raised the backs of his fingers to her cheek, and she managed to keep herself from flinching. She did have to close her eyes, however. His touch was powerful, and with it came an influx of his magic that battered at her defenses like a hurricane on a straw house. She was losing control.
Her body shivered.
“Always having to be so strong,” he whispered next. He’d lowered his head, and his words were spoken against her lips like a caress. “It must be exhausting. Give in to me now. There’s no need to be strong any longer. I will take the pain from you, Angel love. You need never hurt again.” He brushed her lips delicately with his own, a butterfly kiss that nearly forced her to her knees. “Let me make you mine.”
Now was the time. Angel exhaled a shaking, defeated sigh – and nodded. Just once.
That was all Dmitri needed.
He’d been waiting for this since the beginning. He’d been waiting for her consent. Not that he needed it. He just wanted it. He was that kind of creature. And now that he had it, he moved over her like a tidal wave.
Swiftly his hand slid around her neck to fist in her hair, and his arm came around her lower back to hold her against him. His body hit hers like a brick wall filled with otherworldly power. His fangs lengthened deadly and sharp, and as he sank them into her now exposed throat Angel’s defenses came crashing down with the internal noise of an avalanche.
She cried out in shock, outrage and bliss. But she thanked the Storyteller for the oblivious state that would now come over the vampire, because in that blurring world of colorless grays, in his complete distraction at finally taking what he wanted, Angel was able to pull the second item out of her other pocket.
And plunge it into his neck.
He went still against her as she depressed the syringe, emptying its contents into his bloodstream. Magic then carried the poison throughout his body, and Dmitri very slowly let her go.
He pulled his fangs from her throat with oddly tender care and straightened before her with bizarre calm. It was surreal to Angel. In that moment all she could do was stare up at him wide-eyed. The now empty syringe fell from her limp fingers, clattering to the cement. She’d always hated needles.
Dmitri’s vivid eyes sparkled, shifting at once from ruby red into amethyst purple, and finally their original electric blue. “Clever Angel,” he whispered.
The poison had literally cost Angel everything she owned. All but one hundred dollars of her savings and all of her jewelry but the ring in her pocket, she’d handed over without emotion. Along with a full pint of her blood.
Apparently healer blood was worth a small fortune in the shadows of the supernatural underworld. She was learning something new and disturbing every day.
Made from hawthorn tree ash, colloidal gold containing gold nanorods, the blood of a dead vampire and a powerful warlock spell to hold it all together, the poison worked like a very strong sedative at first. After a few seconds, it would begin to burn. And by the time a minute had passed, every last drop of blood in a vampire’s veins would be dried up, leaving them dead – truly dead – at long last.
Dmitri smiled sadly. “I should have known you had it in you.”