Crave (Tainted Angels Book 1) (15 page)

“Holy shit! How is that possible?”

Her smile was so full of pain and happiness that it was difficult to latch onto which one was the most intense. “Diablo loved me as his own. And he sold his soul to The Alpha to give me a chance of happiness with his granddaughter.” Pain overpowered the happiness and a tear rolled slowly down her face. “Because of the curse to my blood, you never survived,” she explained. “My own blood destroyed you many, many times.”

“Many times?”

“I was impregnated with you over four hundred times, Willa.”

I fell back into the softness of the bed, my shock numbing the marrow in my bones. “What? But how is that possible if my father is dead.”

“That is where your grandfather came in.” She smiled, her eyes softening with every mention of the devil, her love for a man we had all been taught was evil perfection so evident. “Diablo once again called on The Alpha. Declaring his eternal calling to do her bidding, she gave your soul to Diablo. For eons, I would hold you deep within my belly, and my soul. Yet time and time again we lost you to the toxin in my blood stream.”

“I’m guessing this is where my mother and father come in,” I whispered, not knowing how I knew this part of the story but recognising deep within me that it was the truth.

Delilah nodded. “The Alpha requested the presence of your grandfather. After decades of watching both Diablo’s and my own souls break every time we lost you, she offered her assistance. She gave wisdom to Diablo to give your soul to a couple, a very specific couple who could birth you without the curse that ravaged my body.”

“Mother and father.”

“Yes. I can tell you they were beyond shocked when The Alpha called for them. But they were only too happy to help. After all, it’s not often The Almighty asks for a favour.”

I laughed, nodding. “I bet.” I frowned, a part of this not making any sense. “So how come you live within me. If my parents were surrogates, then how come you didn’t raise me?”

She laughed, but it was bitter and full of anger. “My father, once again.”

I stilled, the power of Delilah’s hatred sucking the oxygen from the room.

“During my time in Gehenna, unknown to any of us, God was working on something. A week before you were born, he sent an army he had created after me, my blood a temptation too powerful to resist.”

“The dredgen!”

“Yep. My father had built a ‘thing’ specifically to slaughter his own child.”

“Oh, hell,” I breathed out in astonishment.

“I owe my soul to The Alpha,” she whispered as she stroked my hair away from my face. “I didn’t care of my death, but it was the fact that after all the years trying, getting so close, holding you in my arms had been snatched from me yet again. But unable to return me to my previous self, The Alpha allowed my soul to merge with yours. To protect you.” She smiled at me, folding her arm around my shoulders to pull me deep into her. “However,” she lowered her voice, “to shield you from him your identity must be hidden. My father knows of your existence and he knows
what
you are but he doesn’t know
who
you are.”

“What I am?”

She cupped my face, turning my face to hers as intensity lit her pretty blue eyes. “You are very special Willa.”

I didn’t like where this was heading and I braced myself for her next words.

“You are not only my daughter, you are Strauss’.”

I knew that but there was something else she was trying to tell me. “I don’t understand.”

“Strauss was Diablo’s son,” she whispered. “But he was also The Alpha’s son.”

Holy fucking shit sticks!

“You mean The Almighty is my …”

“Your Grandmother, yes.”

S
ergeant Grant Miller sighed with fury and sorrow, his eyes unable to move from the pretty yellow-haired siren, her long silky hair burnt a deep red with the amount of her blood that dyed it.

“Nothing of use around her, Sarg,” PC Hansmith mumbled, her anger at such a despicable murder evident in the croak of her throat.

“Do we have ID?”

Nodding, she lifted a driving license between her gloved fingers. “Marie Trent, twenty-four.”

Crouching before the body, or rather, half a body, Miller lifted the long hair from her face with his pen, his breath catching at the sight of this young girl’s beauty. “Vice?” he asked but already knew the answer.

“Nah, don’t think so,” Hansmith replied. “Gerry in Tors says she was in there between ten and two last night. She’s a regular. Never brought trouble. Apparently she was approached by several males, all of whom she sent packing. She left the club at around two, and the brewery delivery guy found her this morning.”

“Such a waste,” Miller said under his breath. Standing, he turned to Hansmith. “See you later?”

She smiled, her straight white teeth making him drop his gaze to them in awe. Hansmith was pretty, not stunning or what he’d call beautiful, but she had a big smile, a bigger heart, and even bigger tits.

“Sure,” she replied. “Usual place?”

He nodded then walked away, leaving Hansmith to deal with Valerie, the coroner Miller always used because she was the only one tough enough to give him the truth. Most of the court system was as bent as Miller’s right testicle, but he trusted Valerie. They’d worked together for over ten years now, and she was the only fucker stupid enough to stand for his bullshit.

“Miller!”

Miller groaned, rolling his eyes deep within his head at the sound of the voice that called him out. “Go home, Red!”

“Aww, come on, Sergeant! Just a snippet.” Francis Trevelli, or ‘Red’ to the local police force - owing to her flame red hair - pleaded, side skipping beside Miller with her annoying little dictaphone she insisted on using twenty years after they had gone out of fashion. “I’m even offering to blow your dick for something on this one!”

Miller paused, turning to her with his eyebrows high. “And what makes you think I want that pretty mouth on my dick, Red?”

“They all dream for my pretty mouth on their dick. Well, unless you’re gay.”

He shook his head, laughing. “Do I look like I take it in the ass?”

She shrugged. “Hey, I’ve known many tough fuckers take it in the ass. Sometimes my strap-on is shoving into said ass.”

Miller screwed his face up at that image. “Go home, Red. Statement will be released later.”

She was still trying to force something from him when he climbed into his car and pulled away from the scene.

The image of the girl pressing at the front of Miller’s mind curdled his gut. Didn’t make sense. Poor girl had been stabbed in the back, and directly between two vertebrae with a practiced expertise. It was obvious she had been walking away, and by the looks of it, hadn’t put up a fight. But she hadn’t been sexually assaulted or mugged; her bag still contained money and her ears and fingers still held expensive diamond jewellery.

Some sick fucker had stabbed her in the back, rolled her over and carved out her heart, said heart nowhere to be found. There was also the issue of the hole ripped into the base of her throat – as though something had feasted on her. Of course, they couldn’t rule out rats or dogs, but Miller didn’t think that was the case. The teeth marks didn’t fit to any animal he knew of. Autopsy would help more on that matter.

Something wasn’t right. But Miller wasn’t one to back down from a mystery. In fact they were what gave his heart a beat.

But strangely, Miller sensed that this case would be the one that forced his heart to beat for the last time.

“W
hat’s crawled up your arse?” Dexter quirked a brow at me from where he stood filling the doorframe.

The room was dark but Dex didn’t need light to know something vile was growing inside me. “Leave me.”

Dexter sighed, a deep long breath coming from him that appeared to heat the confines of the chilly room. “You need to eat, man.” He grimaced at the state of my room, the mess covering both the floor and the furniture troubling him. Usually I was a neat freak. Yet now, order and tidy had turned to chaos and disorder, rather like the confines of my head.

“I don’t need food!” I snapped. And I didn’t. My gut hurt, my hunger not for grub anyway. “I just need to be alone.”

I growled when the fucker ignored my request, leaving a slice of light illuminating the floor from where he left the door open as he came to sit beside me on the bed. “You gonna tell me what happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Like fuck. You have a temper like a bear with a twelve inch dildo up his ass. You haven’t eaten in two days. You haven’t even left your damn room, Rax!”

“Dexter …”

“You need to get laid, dude!”

His eyes shot wide when he flew across the room, his back hitting the wall with a ferocity that shocked me. “I don’t need to get fucking laid! I need …” He squinted at me when I clamped my mouth shut and closed my eyes. Rubbing my hands over my face, I shook my head, “Shit, I’m sorry, mate. I …”

“Talk to me, Rax,” he urged as he came to sit beside me again. “I’m your friend, your brother. Maybe I can help.”

“You can’t help. No one can.”

“But I can try.”

“You can’t!” I shouted, my patience finally snapping. “I’m withdrawing, Dex! I’m fucking addicted!”

He regarded me with a curious expression, his eyes narrowing. “Spirits can’t become addicted to anything, Rax.” I tensed when he finished his sentence in a slow precise tone. “Although I have heard of something that we can crave more than the air to fill our lungs.”

When I didn’t answer him but looked away, he groaned and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Shit, man.”

We were both quiet, him coming to terms with what he had just figured out and me trembling like an addict in the cold harsh depths of drug rehabilitation. I’d never expected this. And I knew I was fucked after what I had done to Willa. Fuck! I wanted to be fucked after what I’d done to her.

“But how can you still be breathing? You should be dead!”

“Yeah, I’m a bit shocked at that myself.”

Shaking my head, I dropped back onto the headboard and drew my knees up to my chest in an attempt to ease the painful spasms raging through my gut. “I drained her,” I revealed with a horrified whisper. “I killed her, Dex. How could I do that? I should be brought before Diablo for what I fucking did to her!”