Her gaze fell to the floor. “We can’t. Not now.” The minutes were ticking past too quickly. Her shoulders squared. “Time is running out. Get dressed. We have to go.”
He rose slowly. Had he missed the whole “time is running out” part? He dressed, never taking his eyes from her, then Ben stalked toward Simone. She exhaled on a relieved breath. “I move fast,” she told him. Simone figured he needed the warning. Her wings spread behind her. “So just hold on to me. You can even close your eyes, if you want. When you open them, we’ll be at our first stop.”
“Screw that,” he said as his fingers closed around her and he pulled her against him. “I want you to stay right—”
Her wings flapped. She locked her hands on him and shot into the air, nearly ramming into the roof of the cabin. Her hold jerked Ben up with her.
“Shit,” Ben muttered. “
Shit.”
Simone almost smiled. Then she flew them right through the nearest window and out into the night.
***
Ben’s feet slammed into the ground and he nearly fell to his knees as his stomach finally left his throat and returned to its normal position. “What was that?”
Simone pushed back her long, blonde hair and grinned at him. “Angel speed.” Her dark eyes seemed to shine.
He never wanted to experience angel speed again.
“It’s how we can get to so many places in moments.” She snapped her fingers together. “Just like that.”
No, he thought it was more like the speed of light. Ben heaved out a breath as he straightened. The last thing he wanted was to look weak in front of Simone.
Simone.
Her sweet, vanilla scent filled his nose. He could still taste her on his lips. She was real. Not some desperate dream. And he’d had plenty of desperate dreams about her over the years.
She wouldn’t tell him where she’d been. But he would find out. It was only a matter of time. He’d find out all of her secrets, and then Ben would never let her go again.
Her wings were gone now as she approached the cell—an actual prison cell. She’d flown into an open window in the prison. They shouldn’t have fit through that window, but she’d worked some kind of magic and—
bam
—they’d gotten inside. Ben didn’t know why Simone had brought him to that dim prison but—
“I’m innocent!” A man yelled. Ben saw the guy’s bloody fists curl around the prison bars. “You’ve got to believe me! I didn’t hurt anyone!”
Ben took a few fast steps forward. He knew that voice.
“Don’t worry,” Simone said softly. “He can’t see us or hear us.”
The
he
in question—the man behind the prison bars—was Miles Gavin. Ben’s lips peeled away from his fangs as a snarl built in his throat.
“It’s an angel trick,” Simone added. Her fingers slid over Ben’s arm, as if she were trying to soothe him. “Angels usually move on the astral plane, and that’s why humans don’t see us.”
The astral plane? That bit of info actually succeeded in temporarily pulling his gaze away from Miles.
Simone licked her lips. “I was granted…special permission so that my magic would cover you, too. We’re in the astral plane right now—that’s how we managed to fit through the window. Space and time distort here.”
Well, at least that was one mystery solved. Or semi-solved. He still didn’t understand half of the shit that was happening.
“Humans can’t see us,” Simone continued softly. “They can never see angels in this plane.” She gave a faint shrug of her shoulders. “That’s why you didn’t see me all those times in New York. Before we met at that shelter, I’d been watching you for quite a while. You just never realized it.”
Apparently, he’d missed one hell of a lot.
“
Let me out!”
Miles yelled.
Ben narrowed his eyes as he focused on the human. That man should already be dead. Instead, Miles looked far too
alive.
His blond hair hung over his forehead. A bandage had been applied to his neck. Red stained his cheeks as Miles shouted, “You’ve got the wrong guy! Please,
please!
It wasn’t me!”
“Bullshit,” Ben growled. “He’s a murdering SOB. I should’ve ripped out his throat when I had the chance.”
“Like you did to the others?” No emotion was in Simone’s voice when she asked this question.
His muscles locked. “I’m a vampire. I have to feed in order to survive.” It was kind of his thing. Ben figured an angel should know that.
Miles was still begging. Hell, it even looked like the man was crying.
Did your victims cry, too? Did they beg?
Ben knew they had.
“You have to feed, but you don’t have to kill. That’s a choice you make.” Simone took a step away from him.
Ben advanced toward that cell. He was nearly right in front of Miles now, and the man showed no sign of being aware of his presence at all. Ben even waved his hand in front of the guy’s face.
No response.
He glanced back at Simone.
“You can take from your prey and still leave them alive.” Simone shifted a bit to the right when a guard entered the area.
“Leave them alive? And what? Let them turn out like me?”
Simone shook her head. “A vampire is only made—
usually
—if a human is drained of blood and then ingests some of the vampire’s blood. There has to be an exchange.” Her head tilted to the right as she studied him. “But after ten years, you’re well aware of how vampires are made. So don’t try to tell me that you kill them because—”
“I kill them because they deserve to die.”
The guard unlocked the cell.
“They’ve killed,” Ben said flatly. “Tortured. It’s not like I’m hurting innocents.” Were there any innocents any longer? Sometimes, he wasn’t so sure. “I’m taking out the trash.” He was doing a fucking public service. Simone should be thanking him instead of lecturing him.
“
You’re free to go, sir
,” the guard told Miles.
Miles sucked in a deep gulp of air.
“No.” Ben’s hands fisted. “He killed five women. Strangled them. He—”
“The last attack victim survived,” Simone said, cutting through his words. “But you knew that, of course, because she’s the one who cemented your belief in his guilt. You looked into her memories, and you saw her attacker.”
Angels weren’t the only ones with special powers. She could fly and enter some damn astral plane. Vamps, on the other hand…vamps could compel humans. He’d learned that he could gain entrance into an individual’s mind just by using a mild compulsion. Ben could use his power to see the person’s memories.
When he hunted, he used those memories to guide him. He saw what survivors had witnessed. “I always punish the guilty.” Because he was dead certain of that guilt. “Jasmine Duncan saw
him.
”
The guard was leading Miles out of the cell. Ben hurried to follow the two men. This was a mistake. A huge, fucking mistake. Miles Gavin would just go out and kill again. He needed to be in the ground. He needed—
“
Daddy!”
A little, red-haired boy ran toward Miles. The child threw his arms around Miles’s legs and held tight.
And…a few feet away, another tall, blond man slouched in a chair, with his wrists cuffed in front of him. That man looked up at the boy’s cry.
His face…the man had the same face as Miles.
“Miles has a twin brother,” Simone said as her arm brushed against Ben’s. “Your victim didn’t know that. Since she didn’t know it, neither did you.”
Miles sank to his knees and buried his face in his son’s neck.
A twin?
Simone cleared her throat. “His brother stole his name. They shared the same face, so the deception was easy. Alex—that’s his brother—he used Miles’s money, he used his connections, and he took as much as he could from his brother.”
Miles was holding tightly to the little boy.
“But there are some things you just can’t take away,” Simone murmured.
Ben looked over at her.
Her gaze held his. “Tonight was important for you. This kill…taking Miles Gavin’s life would have changed you.”
His hands were shaking.
I was wrong?
“You’re not meant to be judge, jury, and executioner.” Simone’s hands curled around his shoulders as she turned Ben to fully face her. “And you’re not supposed to just be a monster hiding in the dark.”
“So what am I supposed to be?” His voice was little more than a growl. He didn’t know how to be anything other than a monster now.
“More,” Simone whispered. “I need you to be more. For me. For yourself.” He saw her wings began to rise from her back again.
Oh, shit. “Wait—”
It was too late. His stomach hit his throat once more as they took off.
“Where in the hell are we now?” Ben asked as he jerked away from her.
“This is a long way from hell,” Simone murmured. “Trust me on that one.”
He was shaken, she could see it. She’d hoped for that exact reaction when she took him to the little jail in Desolate.
Ben had almost killed an innocent man. If William hadn’t stopped him, Miles Gavin would have died in that alley.
Instead, Miles would be spending the night with his son.
And she and Ben had returned to the alley in question. The spot that had started everything on Christmas Eve. “This is where you almost killed him,” she said as she pointed to the dirty brick wall just a few feet away.
His eyes widened. “
You
sent the demon, didn’t you?”
Yes, she had. She’d paid a heavy price for the night’s work. “I wanted to save you.” Okay, so maybe she’d never completely stopped watching over him. Maybe she couldn’t. Love didn’t stop, no matter how much time passed. “You were so intent on killing tonight that you missed a few things here…”
He growled at her.
“Don’t bite the messenger,” she told him, aware that her voice held more than a little bite of its own. “Because you need to hear this message.”
While there was still time.
She exhaled slowly. “Maybe you should have gone a little deeper into the alley.” She led the way as they advanced into the darkness of the alley. A dumpster waited in the far back, near the rear entrance to a restaurant.
She heard the rustle then. Such a faint sound. Easily overlooked.
As overlooked as the person who’d made the sound.
Ben grabbed her arm and pushed her behind him. Simone smiled. He was protecting her. It was sweet, really. The big, bad vampire—trying to shield her. She’d been right about Ben. He wasn’t a lost cause, not yet.
“You’re so busy punishing the world,” she told him, her heart aching, “that you forget you can save it.”
Help.
When she’d first been assigned duty as Ben’s angel, she’d whispered that message into his ear so many times.
The rustle came again. She looked up and saw a hand curve over the edge of the dumpster. A second hand joined it as a young boy—around seventeen—pulled his body up and out of that garbage-filled bin. He was wearing old, mismatched clothes, and when he hit the ground, she saw that his too-big shoes were lined with holes.
“He saw you, by the way,” Simone added. “When you nearly killed Miles, he was watching.”
Ben’s gaze was on the boy.
“That’s Cale. He pretty much lives in this alley, but after seeing you, he’s getting ready to rush off. He’s afraid the cops will come back and find him here.”
The boy’s stare darted nervously around the alley.
“Or he’s afraid that
you’ll
come find him.” Simone was pretty sure that particular fear consumed the boy’s mind.
The boy ran past them. Simone could feel the heat of his body, just for a moment, then he was gone.
Ben stared after him.
“Cale hid when he heard you come into the alley. He jumped into the dumpster…” Simone wrinkled her nose. That dumpster was
foul.
“He stayed there until the cops were gone. You scared him so much that he was afraid to move…until now.”
Slowly, Ben’s stare came back to her. Though it hurt Simone, she had to tell him the rest. She took a deep breath and said, “You’ve become the monster in the shadows that others fear.”
“I…didn’t know he was here.”
“But you should have known. You have vampire senses, Ben. They’re far more enhanced than a human’s. You should’ve heard him. Smelled him.
Something.
But you were just so focused on your kill that you missed what was right in front of you.” And now the boy’s life would be changed forever. Simone was so desperate to make Ben understand what was happening. One life could impact so many others.
For better.
For…worse.
One life could do so much good, or so much terrible evil.
The air around her seemed to grow colder. “We don’t have much time left.” She offered Ben her hand.
He didn’t take it. “Can’t I just walk?”
“Ben—”
“This little show and tell routine is interesting and all, but I’d rather not fly angel anymore if that’s all the same to you.”
She grabbed his hand.
“Shit,” Ben muttered.
***
They touched down on an old, snow-covered road. Trees surrounded each side of the road. The leaves had long since vanished from those trees, and the gray tree trunks and limbs were frozen in the winter silence.
Simone pointed to the left. “This way will take you out of Desolate.” She looked to the right. “And that path will just take you back to your cabin.” Her gaze came back to his. Her dark gaze gleamed with emotion. “You have to choose the direction you take, Ben. It’s all on you.”
He stared into her eyes. There were deep golden flecks in her eyes. How had he missed those before?
“I don’t want you to return to that cabin.” She shook her head, and her hair slipped over her shoulders. “I don’t want you closing yourself off from what
could
be in this world.”
No snow was falling. Ben glanced up and saw that the sky above glinted with a thousand stars.
Simone’s fingers caught his. “I don’t want you to return to hunting and killing in alleys. You deserve more than just the darkness.”
But that was all he knew. He hadn’t known light since she left him. “He welcomed me to the darkness. That bastard who changed me. He turned me into…
this.
”