Crave (Tainted Angels Book 1) (16 page)

“Holy shit!” He gasped, staring at me with huge eyes. “You’re still breathing!”

“Did you not hear a word I fucking said?”

“I heard you,” he whispered.

When I shook my head and stared at him in bewilderment, he narrowed his own eyes and grabbed hold of the tops of my arms. “You have no idea what this means do you?”

“It means …” I didn’t finish my sentence. I couldn’t. A pain so unreal tore through my chest, my heart exploding in grief as an intense fury scorched the blood in my veins. Tears blurred my vision as my body shook in misery. A misery that wasn’t my own.

“Willa!”

S
andy, Marie’s mother, pulled me against her chest, her sobs merging with mine as we both fought to breathe through our despair.

“No!” I screamed as Harry, Sandy’s mate, guided us both to the sofa. The cop lowered his eyes, respectful of our pain. “No, not Marie. Not Marie!”

I’d come to pick Marie up for training practice when the cop, Sergeant Grant Miller, had knocked on their door. It wasn’t unusual for Marie not to come home at night; she’d often spend nights with friends, or in her old room she’d shared with Frank in Empyrea.

Marie’s parents had retired as soul takers around ninety years ago and had chosen to spend the rest of their existence within the human settlements. A lot of Empyreans and Gehenna chose this. For many, they had lost loved ones, spirit siblings, or even children to the cause and living within the place that caused their pain was often too much to bear. Losing Frank and then Veronica, Marie’s spirit sibling, had taken its toll on Sandy and Harry and they had chosen to break away from the spirit world.

“I’m so sorry,” Sgt Miller said softly as he slowly lowered himself into the armchair usually occupied by Marie. I stared at the book that sat on the small table beside the chair. A box of tissues was ready for when Marie would cry at the soppy novels she always engrossed herself in. The bookmark I had bought her many birthdays ago was placed on top of the book, and all I could think was,
‘Well, at least she finished her book.’

“I’m afraid I need to ask some very difficult questions.”

We all shot upright when the front door burst open. Rax stood, blocking out the light and filling the space with his wide frame. The most tortured expression dominated his face, his usual calm brown eyes blazing with hunger and determination. My mouth dried at the beautiful specimen of his inner monster. His face had a granite firmness as his need to comfort me brought forward a side of him I had never witnessed. His eyes briskly swept the room until they landed on me. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that if someone were to put themselves between him and me then that person would stop breathing in around three seconds flat. I prayed that the cop didn’t react like a cop and block his way when in two large steps Rax framed me in his arms and kissed the top of my head. “I’m here, Seraph. I’m here.”

I should have punched him. I should have pushed him away, but the core of my soul wept in relief when his spirit captured mine and they danced furiously together inside my heart.

“Rax.” It was all I could manage when he pulled me against his hard body, his strong arms offering comfort to the pain inside me.

“I’m here,” he whispered.

The grief that had threatened to tear me apart eased a little and I shivered in need when he held my head in the crook of his neck. My teeth tingled with the scent of his blood, his pulse throbbing tauntingly against my cheek. My blood pumped furiously around my body with a raging hunger. I’d never experienced anything like it before. Never once had I needed to feed like I did right then.

Rax’s throat bobbed up and down, his own hunger obvious and when he clamped his lips together, I pulled away. He stared at me with so much shame in his eyes.

“It’s okay,” I whispered. “I know.” And I did. I felt his guilt as if it were my own, his shame at what he had done a ceaseless sorrow in my belly.

“You have no idea how fucking sorry I am, Seraph. I deserve to be punished.”

Shaking my head to silence him, I flicked my eyes to Sgt Miller, warning Rax to the human in the room. “We’ll talk later. There are things you need to know.”

Cupping my face gently with his hand, he gazed at me as if I was too painful to look at, but eventually he gave me a short nod. “Thank you.”

“Are you okay to continue?” the cop asked me, watching Rax with an intensity I didn’t like.

“Yes.”

Rax sat beside me on the sofa, his fingers linked through my own.
“Who is this turnip?”
he asked in my head.

“Sergeant Miller. He’s the officer in charge of investigating Marie’s murder.”

His head snapped to the side, his eyes wide and unblinking as his whole body vibrated with shock and fury. “Marie is dead?”

Everyone stilled, and as if only just figuring out who Rax was, Harry suddenly launched himself across the room at Rax. Sandy gasped, her hand flying to her mouth as her nose twitched with Rax’s scent.

Shit!

“Whoa!” Miller barked as he pulled Harry from Rax.

Harry struggled in Miller’s hold, his eyes spitting raw hatred. “Get out of my house, you filthy fuck!”

“Harry, please,” I tried as I pressed my hands to his chest, attempting to push him back. “It isn’t like that. There’s stuff you don’t understand.”

“Understand?” he hissed at me, his green eyes boring through my skull. “How can you stand there and defend a halam, Willa? You of all people should …”

He snapped his mouth shut when Miller clamped his arms harder around Harry. “Is there something I need to know here?”

I shook my head quickly. “Nothing relating to Marie’s death.” Harry scoffed and I glared at him. “Rax has nothing to do with what happened to Marie, Harry. That I can promise.”

“How can you defend him?” Sandy asked quietly. The hurt on her face hurt me also. I could see that she thought I was hiding her daughter’s murderer.

“Sandy, listen to me …”

“You should leave, Willa.”

I froze, my eyes filling with tears at her dismissal. “But we’re family, Sandy. We’ve always been family, you can’t …”

She shook her head slowly. “Not anymore. How can you put a halam before your best friend?”

“Because it has nothing to do with Rax!”

“Are you saying you were with him when Marie …?” She couldn’t voice the words but when I was unable to answer her question, she looked away from me, snubbing me. “Just go, Willa.”

“Come on, Willa,” Rax said quietly, his hand tightening in my own. “Mr and Mrs Trent,” he said respectfully as he turned to them both. “I’m so sorry about Marie, she was a lovely …”

“Don’t you ever say her name!” Harry hissed, once again flying for Rax.

Holding my hands up, I backed away. “We’re going.”

“Can you leave your address with my officer, Miss Eden?” Sgt Miller asked before his eyes shifted to Rax. “And you, sir.”

Rax scoffed, his lips curling into a smirk. “Sure,” he answered as he pulled the door closed behind us. “You okay?” he asked softly as he led me around the back of Sandy and Harry’s house.

I noticed the warp of air before we stepped through it and I backed away. “I can’t go home with you, Rax.”

He froze, narrowing his eyes. “But I thought we were good?”

“Good?” I whispered, feeling the word on my tongue. “Good? How can things ever be good again?”

Stepping closer to me, he sighed and trailed the back of his fingers across my cheek. “I will never hurt you again, I promise.” He spoke with sincerity and I didn’t doubt him for a second.

“I know that. But it’s not me I’m frightened for, Rax. Not anymore. There are … things that, shit I dunno, but they change everything.”

“Have your feelings towards me changed, Seraph? Because believe me, if they have then I’ll walk right out of here and never bother you again. But I don’t think so. I can feel how you feel about me, how your soul pines for mine, how your heart syncs instantly with the beat of my own whenever we’re together. How your blood rushes through your veins, begging for my own to unite with. I feel that Willa, and so do you.”

I couldn’t help but smile, but it was a sad smile, a smile that made no difference to the future because that was set in stone, and learning who I was had changed everything.

“It doesn’t matter how much I want you, Rax. What matters is your safety, and that’s something I’m not willing to put on offer to them.”

“Them?” He reared back, his eyes narrow with confusion. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I …” I shook my head, dropping my hand from his. “It’s best you don’t know.”

I looked around the area, wondering how the hell I was going to get away without passing the huge police officer on the front yard, the officer that had been ordered to get my address. Yeah, that would be a surprise for the closed minds of the police force.

“You’re half Gehenna, Willa,”
Delilah whispered in my head.

“Willa, if you think I can’t look after myself …”

I laughed, a long bitter one. “And you’re capable of going after God himself are you?”

His body tensed as his lips parted to accommodate the deep draw of breath my words brought. “What?”

I needed to leave, quickly. I couldn’t tell Rax, he wouldn’t back off if he knew how much trouble I was in. He was the type to step up to the front line and tackle our holy master head on if he thought he would hurt me.

And who was capable of going against such a powerful entity?

Oh yeah, I forgot … I was.

“Willa, please. Let me help you. Whatever trouble you’re in we can sort it together.”

“Delilah!”
I urged. If I didn’t go I knew I would give in to him. I craved for him, his blood, his touch, his words, his soul and it was proving more and more difficult to distance myself when he stood in front of me, his eyes begging me to reconsider.

“Pick a molecule, Willa. Pick one and give it order.”

“What?”

“Trust me,”
Delilah urged.
“Just concentrate on a section of air, then I’ll do the rest. But I need your eyes, my darling.”

Blowing out a breath, trying to shut out Rax as he begged me not to leave, I allowed my mind to open itself. Nothing happened. Growing angry, I narrowed my eyes on the air before me, imagining it was a whole being, that its matter was a formed body in front of me.

The air rippled, as though an invisible person was dancing before me. My heartbeat increased with every flicker of the atmosphere. I was doing it!
“And now force a picture of home, as if you are showing someone a photo of your room,”
Delilah encouraged.

Doing as she articulated, feeling stupid when I mentally showed a picture of my room to the blur of air, Delilah said,
“Now step forward.”

Figuring out what I was doing when he saw the warped air, Rax tried to grab hold of me but I was quicker. Before he had a chance to touch me I was standing in the middle of my bedroom.

I stared around me, taking in the familiar features of my bedroom. “Holy shit!” I giggled. “It worked!”

“Of course it worked. I’m the fucking queen of brilliance!”
Delilah laughed with me.
“What did you expect?”

“Well, you know,” I mumbled as I looked down at my body. “I didn’t expect to arrive whole at any rate.”

“You should have more faith in yourself, Willa!” Rax said from behind me.

“What the hell, Rax?”

His brown eyes blazed, the tiny section of blue glinting wildly in his glare. I stepped back when he stepped forward. “I don’t appreciate you running, Seraph.”

“I didn’t run. I stepped,” I answered cockily. Moving my eyes quickly to the right, I found a piece of air and forced a mental picture at it, then before Rax could grab hold of me, I stepped into it.

An ocean spread before me, a summer breeze lifting my hair around me as my toes sank into the softest black sand. Black Heath. My parents, Lincoln and I would often come here for day trips; me in my bikini, Lincoln looking good in his swim shorts. It was Lincoln’s body the first time we had visited the Heath that had made me understand the difference between men and women. My cheeks had heated when my eyes had dropped to consider the bulge in his shorts. We must have been about eleven at the time. I’d snapped my eyes up to his chest then looked at my own forming breasts. Lincoln had laughed at me, his arm curling around my shoulder. “You’re too young to understand, Bean. And please don’t make me kill some boy just yet.”