Avenging Angel (The Fallen #4)(33)

What? Where were the flames?

Riley sliced out with his blade. Tanner kicked it aside. “That the best you got?” Tanner wanted to know.

Marna’s head jerked back toward them. They were in an apartment, of sorts. Big bed. Heavy oak desk. No other vamps that she saw, but wasn’t Riley enough of a threat?

The blond’s brows rose. “I was wondering when you’d get here.”

“Yeah.” Tanner’s claws tore from his fingers. “And I bet you were hoping we’d be dumb enough to arrive before dawn.”

The vamp’s mouth kicked up on the right. “I was.”

Tanner inhaled. “You’ve got no backup in this place. No other vamps for you to throw in my way this time.”

Marna dropped her hands and stepped forward. “You’ll tell us what we want to know—”

Tanner lifted his claws. “Or you’ll be losing that head of yours.”

The vamp’s half-smile didn’t fade. “You think death is going to scare me?” He laughed then. “I watched my whole family get slaughtered by vampires. My father, mother, my wife. Everyone died, and guess what? I got to turn into one of the murdering bastards. For two hundred years, they led me around on a puppet string, had me killing . . . torturing.”

He grabbed his head between his hands and closed his eyes. “I got as f*cking far away from the Born as I could, but I can still hear him in my head!”

Marna’s breath caught. Born. She knew the term. Most vampires were humans who became infected with the vampire virus. That’s all it was, too—a virus. One that had been transmitted through a very, very bad mistake millennia ago.

Those humans who were transformed, they were called the Taken. But every Taken was linked to the vampire who’d made him or her. All Taken could be traced back to the Born.

A rare few were actually born as vampires. They aged like any other human, until about their twenty-fifth year. Then the change came. The virus in their bodies activated, and they became immortal.

“They were supposed to be guardians.” She’d heard this whispered story once, from Bastion. Stronger than most of the other paranormals, the Borns should have kept the others in check. They hadn’t.

Power and bloodlust had driven most of them insane.

Now those unlucky enough to be Taken were bound to their Borns. Linked through the blood. They had to follow every command given by their Born. Do every task, no matter how dark.

The only way to break that bond? Kill the Born.

Not so easy.

That had been where everything went wrong.

“I’m tired of killing,” Riley muttered. “I’m ready to just . . . stop.” His head had sagged forward, and she couldn’t see his face. His shoulders hunched. “But he won’t let me.” Then he lunged forward, fangs bared, and tried to sink his teeth into Tanner’s throat.

Tanner sighed. “Sad f*cking story.” He punched Riley in the face.

The vampire staggered back.

“Now let’s hear another story. One that involves two dead shifters in an alley.”

Riley swiped the blood off his chin. “Make me a deal first.”

He watched his family die. A whisper of memory teased at Marna. Two hundred years ago? And the vampire . . . with his slanting cheekbones and that sharp nose. He’d seemed so familiar to her.

Two hundred years. A bloody night. A man’s screams.

And she remembered.

A man on the ground. Begging. Screaming. Shaking the bloody body of a woman. That woman, with her blond hair stained red, had been so still.

Victoria! Don’t leave me.

But Marna had already taken her away. She’d taken her as quickly as she could, so the woman wouldn’t suffer any more.

Victoria had suffered too much during those last moments of life. She hadn’t needed the agony to continue in death.

“There’s no deal. You talk or die.” Tanner’s brutal words pulled her from the past.

Riley nodded. “That’s what I want.” A rough sigh expelled from him. “Kill me, so I can finally be free.”

She’d taken Victoria and left the shattered man behind. There’d been nothing that Marna could do for him.

She’d wanted to help him, but that had been forbidden. A different fate waited for the man who’d mourned so brokenly on the bloody field.

This? This is what waited?

Riley lowered himself to the edge of the bed. “Cadence was in the alley that night when the two shifters were killed. She told me that she saw a blond, just like you”—he motioned to Marna—“heading after those shifters.”

It wasn’t me.

“Cadence said she’d never seen an angel, not until that day. But when the blond touched and killed, she knew just what she had to be seeing.”

How many times would she have to say it? “I didn’t kill them.”

“Cadence just wondered . . .” He kept talking as if she hadn’t spoken. “. . . why the angel didn’t have any wings. She’d heard that even if angels fall, demons can still see the shadow of their wings behind them.”

Marna frowned and glanced over her shoulder. When she’d met Cadence in Hell, the demon had said she’d seen her wings.

“Whoever that was killing those shifters, she didn’t have wings.” Riley rubbed his chin. “If you don’t have wings, then I guess you aren’t really an angel.”