Crave (Tainted Angels Book 1) (3 page)

I shivered when we walked through the hall, Lincoln’s hand still in mine like I was five years old.

I sighed when all the sentries moved aside and dipped their heads respectfully.

“Hey, Lincoln.” Sally smiled, her eyes popping wide as she practically drooled over Lincoln. I squeezed my lips together but snorted when he smiled politely at her and pulled me harder.

“Hey, Lincoln,” I mimicked in a sickly sweet voice.

“Don’t start.”

“When are you going to make Sally’s year and show her some attention? That girl is smitten with you.”

He scoffed, shaking his head. “The only attention I give girls isn’t always welcomed, especially from girls like Sally. She could never handle me.”

Rolling my eyes, I groaned at him. “Oh, you stud!”

He winked and clicked his tongue. “It’s this face of an angel, Bean. I can’t help it.”

I chuckled at his huge ego but stiffened when I found my mother and father staring at me from their perches at the head of the room, their scrutiny making me alert and curious.

“What did you do now?” Lincoln whispered when he noticed their expressions.

“God knows!”

“Yeah, well,” Lincoln mocked. “This time he’s grassed on you.”

“What do you mean
this time
?” I hissed back. “The guy has it in for me. He’s always snitching.”

“Well, wouldn’t you? Stuck up there, bored stiff. I’d be the same. The poor fella needs some entertainment. And let’s face it, Willa, there’s no one more entertaining than you.”

“Fuck off!”

“I can’t. Sally’s disappeared.”

“Willa!” my father boomed, making me flinch.

“Oh, he’s livid,” Lincoln murmured. I glared at him when I caught the humour in his voice. “This should be fun.”

“Fuck off or I’ll tell Vixen exactly what you would like to do to her.”

His eyes narrowed, his glower full of warning. Clicking my tongue, I copied his gesture and winked back before bracing myself and walking over to face their wrath.

“Sit down, Willa,” my father said as he snapped his hand to one of the chairs situated around the large table that seemed to go on forever, eating up the room with the vast slab of wood. “You can go, Lincoln.”

I shifted my eyes to Linc. His brow furrowed as his eyes shifted from me to my father then back to me. We always accepted missions together, our unity making us literally a pair. For my father to dismiss him was a shock to us both.

He nodded respectfully then glanced at me. I nodded slightly, telling him it was okay to go. Although my parents ruled our regional division, Lincoln wouldn’t blink at taking either of them out if they hurt me. It was engrained in us to protect the other with our lives, even against our own family.

Waiting until Lincoln had left, my father turned to me. Sadness covered his face, the anger previously radiating from him evaporating in the air around us. He sighed and leaned forwards, propping his elbows on the table as my mother gazed at me.

“I need to know what happened when you were confronted with Brendal the other night.”

I shrugged. “Nothing much. I fought him off.”

He nodded slowly then leaned back in his chair and folded his hands in his lap. “And the halam?”

I swallowed and camouflaged my shock. “The halam?”

He scowled at me. “Don’t toy with me, Willa. You know exactly who I mean. The halam. Rax Torres.”

I shook my head and frowned. “What about him? He pinned me down, then Lincoln came. He disappeared. That’s it.”

He blinked and ran his tongue around the inside of his cheek, a habit he had when he was nervous. My curiosity piqued further. Why would he be nervous? “Did he … the halam, did he do
anything
?”

“I’m sorry, Father. I don’t quite understand what you’re getting at.”

“Did he link with you, Willa?” he barked, making me jump.

“No, why would he? That’s impossible,” I lied.

Halams and seraphs couldn’t link; we were a completely different race, it was impossible. Or so I’d thought until the other night. And my father’s curiosity over that fact surprised me. Why would he ask if the halam had linked minds with me if it was deemed impossible?

He peered at me. I swallowed and pictured Brendal; his sneer, his thin lips and his glowing green eyes. Eventually he nodded. “You may go.”

Okay. Just like that. Strange.

“Thank you.” My chair screeched when I pushed it back, generating a frustrated sigh from my mother.

“Aren’t you able to do anything quietly?”

I turned and grinned at her. “You wouldn’t have me any other way.”

Her smile widened, the love she had for me reflected in her deep brown eyes, but it dropped, sorrow flittering across her eyes.

“Oh, and Willa,” my father cut in as I was about to shut the door. “Be careful out there tonight. The dredgen seem to be out in their drones lately. Something is shifting.”

I nodded. “Of course.”

“And stay close to Lincoln,” my mother added.

“He never allows it any other way.” I smiled to reassure her.

“Good.” She nodded briskly, swallowing as though in pain. “We chose wisely with Lincoln.”

I stalled, looking from my mother to my father, noticing their apprehension. “Is everything okay?”

My father nodded once, back to his usual brusque self, but my mother shifted uncomfortably, her gaze on me making my heart slow as she wrung her hands together.

“Of course.” She smiled and pulled her shoulders back. “Just …” My father coughed and narrowed his eyes on her. She flinched slightly but forced another smile and looked up at me. “Just that … well we love you, Willa. Don’t ever forget that. And we’re proud of you. Proud to call you our daughter.”

My father hissed something under his breath and my mother lowered her eyes, chastised and probably already preparing for his wrath once I’d left the room.

“I know, and I love you both.”

She smiled but it was watery, sorrow consuming her. “You’ve grown up so fast, honey. So beautiful and strong.”

“Mother?”

My father closed his eyes for a moment then coughed and brought himself back to his stern commanding self. “That’ll be all, Willa. Don’t forget, stay close to Lincoln. He will know what to do.”

“Know what to do?” I stared at them. What the hell was up with them?

“I mean he’ll look after you. You promise.”

I nodded slowly. “I promise.”

“Good girl.”

Closing the door quietly, I found Lincoln waiting for me. “Everything okay?”

“I don’t know. They were … weird.”

“Weird?” he asked as we pushed through the doors to our apartment that led off from my parents’ quarters. I couldn’t describe their behaviour so I didn’t try, just shrugged at him. He gazed at me, his head tipped slightly as he examined me.

“What?” He ran his tongue across his teeth. “Spit it out, Linc.”

He blinked and smiled, pulling himself out of his musings. “Nothing. Come on, we need to eat before we go out. I have a feeling it’ll be a long night.”

Something in his tone made my skin tingle. His and my parents’ strange manner were completely out of character.

I watched him as he pulled out various ingredients from the fridge and started doing what he did best; taking care of me. His hard body was lean and muscled but not overly bulky. Although he was virtually my brother, I admitted he was good-looking. There was always some girl after him, and Lincoln being Lincoln didn’t have any problem using them for what they offered, but he never committed. But lately, in the past couple of weeks, since we’d both become twenty-one on the same day, I noticed that he had also changed. He’d look at me with a deep frown on his face, as though he was seeing the change in me, the something that had always been hidden deep inside me trying to get out. The darkness.

I wondered if he secretly had his own thoughts about ‘the other side’, the dark side. As seraphs we were brought up to consider the human race our children. We were trained and nurtured to protect them, often from themselves. It was drilled into us that each person was worthy of our blessings and our abilities to pass them over. But I knew that not all of them were. Don’t get me wrong, most of them deserved so much more from life, and I did my best to grant as much peace and comfort as I could to these individuals. But lately, after patrolling the earth for the past three years, I saw much degradation and hatred out there. Some people were beyond redemption and I couldn’t understand the council’s need to try to save those souls. I saw their very essence, and believe me, some of them shocked the shit out of me.

The halam were kind of the same as us. They fought for the souls that would make good soldiers for their army; the bad people. And that was what we were supposed to do out there. Fight for each one, whether I thought they deserved to be granted deliverance or not.

I was good at my job, but lately I’d been struggling with something. Both our races, The Empyrean and The Gehenna, had fought for souls for many eternities. The halam who were my counterparts fought to take each dark soul. My job was to stop them, take the soul with me and deliver it unto the Cleansers, and send them onto the afterlife to live peacefully. Yeah, like they deserved to live in peace forever more. If it was up to me, I’d have sent them down to Diablo and hoped he tortured them for infinity.

However, a change in me since my birthday had given me an ability to see what each soul would become, and I couldn’t understand why, even after they were cleansed, I saw nothing but abomination and bloodshed. Weren’t we supposed to make them worthy to be granted eternity in peace? For some reason, my ‘talent’ wasn’t showing me that, but a slow destruction of Utopia, the land blessed for the afterlife. A gradual but definite obliteration of the Promised Land. I’d tried to tell Lincoln about it, but as usual, he’d halted any talk of my feelings on the matter. He refused to see what I saw. He said it was just my hormones altering now I’d reached twenty-one. That in itself had made me suspicious. What a crock of bullshit. He was referring to my unique blood. Since the age of eighteen something had started to transform in me and my blood had become addictive to the Gehenna; just the scent of it had them hounding me. God only knew why but it made my job, and Lincoln’s, a damn sight harder.

I sighed at my thoughts, hating to be different, making Lincoln frown at me. Shaking his head when I didn’t publicize my internal musings, he scowled and slid my plate across the table to me. “Eat.”

I saluted him and dived in to his speciality, mushroom lasagne. Lincoln loved to cook. I hated it, and to be honest, my lack of skill saw Lincoln doing it all. But it was our thing; he cooked, I cleaned. We worked together well but over the past few weeks, as I‘d had a feeling of something shifting in the atmosphere and in me, I’d felt more than seen a change in him. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was but I knew it scared the shit out of me.

Something was coming. It was more knowledge than a feeling. I had no idea what but I knew that when it hit, it would change both the Empyrean and the Gehenna forever.

Doomsday was coming. And fast.

“S
he was … hot. What can I say?”

I shook my head, exasperated, but turned my face away so he wouldn’t see my smile. I stared at our reflections through the shop windows as we walked down Corporation Street, a quiet but well known street for drug deals and prostitution. “I can’t believe you bedded Francis, Linc.”

He snorted. “Believe me, Bean. I didn’t bed her. Far from it.”

“Okay.” I held my hand up to stop him. “I do not want an itinerary of every surface you
did
screw her on. All I’m saying is, when Philippe finds out, you’re gonna lose your balls.”

He laughed again and just as he was about to say something, I shushed him. My nose twitched, my head snapping to the side as a wave of sweetness rushed through the air.

Lincoln frowned at me, sniffing hard. “I don’t sense anything.”

“Shush.”

Moving my head more to the left, another wave of the god awful scent hit me. Bile tore up my throat and I slapped my hand over my mouth to contain the vomit that was trying to explode. “Shit, Linc. Don’t tell me you can’t smell that?”