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.
Chapter Seven
“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 bo
dy, 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.”
“Most vampires do go dark. They can’t resist the call of the blood. They…they lose themselves in the dark hunger that burns within them. The hunger for blood. For power.”
Great news.
“I don’t want that to be you. It doesn’t have to be you.” Her fingers tightened around his. “That’s what this night is about. You’re getting a second chance. You can see the world differently. You can be different tonight.”
He didn’t feel different. His tongue slid over his fangs. “I want your blood again.”
Her breath caught.
“I can hear your heart pounding,” Ben continued. Because he did hear it. Calling to him. Tempting him. “I want to put my mouth on your throat, and I want to damn well devour you.”
She should have backed away from him. Simone didn’t. She inched closer. “Then why aren’t you? Why aren’t you biting me right now?”
“Because I don’t want to hurt you.” Not ever. His hand turned so that he was the one holding her. “If you stay with me, I can change.” Hell, did that sound like begging?
“I-I can’t stay…”
No. Fear clawed him from the inside. “You came back to me. You want me—dammit, I proved how much we both need each other back at that cabin.”
“I’ve always wanted you,” she said as her gaze held his. “Vampire or man, I want you.”
“Then stay.” He would make her stay. “You want me to be some kind of better vamp? Some fucking good guy? Then you stay with me, and I’ll change.”
“It’s not that easy.”
Bull. “It’s as easy as we want it to be.”
She looked away from him. Gazed into the darkness.
A strange awareness rose over his skin. He almost felt as if…as if Simone were staring at someone. But when he followed her gaze and peered into the darkness, Ben couldn’t see anyone.
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her closer to him.
“My hour is almost up.” Her voice sounded so sad.
An hour? “Screw that. Stay. We can have forever.”
“Ben…”
“I’ll get you a Christmas tree.” Those stupid words just burst from him. But he would. If the tree made her happy, he’d get one. He’d get her a thousand Christmas trees, and he’d string lights on every single one. “We can decorate the tree like we did before. Everything can be like it was before. You’ll be with me, and I’ll be—”
“I love you.”
His throat seemed to close up on him.
“I do.” She smiled, and the sight twisted his heart. “I wasn’t away from you because my feelings changed. I was away because my feelings stayed the same.”
That made zero sense to him.
“I love you,” Simone whispered, “and I would do anything for you.”
The snow started to fall again.
“You have worth to me,” she said, gazing up at him with eyes that swam with tears. He hated the sight of her tears. They broke him.
Her hand stroked his cheek. “You always will have worth to me, and for you, I’d even go into the darkness.”
She rose onto her toes then. Simone pressed her lips to his. He kissed her back. Desperate, greedy. Ben had never thought he’d get to hold her again. To have her in his arms once more was better than heaven, it was—
She vanished.
The snow fell harder, and Simone, she was just—gone.
“Simone?” He spun around in the snow. There were no sign of her footprints. Had she flown away? Moving at that angel speed of hers? He looked up, gazing frantically into the sky that no longer shone with stars. Snow fell down onto him. “Simone!”
But she didn’t answer him. The cold crept into his bones. Rage bled through his pores. She had left…again? After such a short time? She’d come back, she’d screwed with his head, and she’d just flown away?
“No, angel,” he vowed as he stared up at that dark sky. “You don’t escape.” Even if he had to fight his way up to heaven, he wasn’t letting her go.
Simone had made a fatal mistake. She’d come back. She’d reminded him of everything that he’d lost on that New York street. He wouldn’t lose her again.
I can’t.
He also wasn’t going to just stand there on that long, snow-filled road all night. He glanced to the left once more. Then to the right.
Just as he took one step, a growl rose in the darkness. Ben tensed even as his fangs automatically lengthened in his mouth. The fang extension was a vamp’s fight-and-kill instinct, a natural reaction to danger.
A dark form emerged from the falling snow. Black, sleek, the animal came toward Ben with its head positioned low to the ground. But as the beast drew closer, that head lifted, revealing a mouth packed with long, sharp teeth.
That’s not a damn dog. The beast leaned back on its hind legs as it prepared to launch toward Ben.
It’s a panther. A black panther on a snow-filled night. A black panther who was hurtling toward him right then in a blur of speed. Ben lifted his hands, more than ready to fight the beast but—
But he wasn’t staring at a beast any longer.
Mid-attack, the panther shifted. Its body stretched. The fur vanished and skin appeared. Bones popped and snapped and Ben soon found himself staring at a man.
The man’s bright green eyes assessed
him. “Hi, asshole,” the guy said, his voice rumbling and sounding like a growl. “Remember me?”
Ben’s gaze locked on the guy’s face. He studied that face and let his brows rise. The panther from the cemetery. “The last time I saw a panther shifter, the cat ran away from me.”
The man smiled and waved his hand. The snow stopped falling. “I wasn’t running from you. I was so happy you’d killed those bastards…I was starting my life. I was running toward my future, not from you.”
Ben didn’t relax his guard. Not for a moment. “I’m supposed to believe that crap? You and your shifter buddies were a pack.” At least, he’d thought they were. They’d sure all attacked together. “You were fighting with them.”
“It’s not easy to kill an alpha shifter. Even if the prick is crazy as all hell.” The man smiled. He had thick, dark hair and eerily bright green eyes. Ben had never seen eyes shine quite the way this shifter’s did.
The guy was also stark naked.
“You freed me from him,” the shifter said. “So now, I owe you.”
“Great,” Ben snapped. Cause that was what he wanted. A cat saying he was grateful. “How about you put on some clothes and we’ll call it even?”
The man waved his hand again, and clothes just—appeared. Jeans. A t-shirt. A t-shirt? In the winter?
“I don’t get cold,” the guy told him. “Shifters usually run hot.”
Wonderful for them. Ben shouldered past the guy.
“Ah, at least you’re going in the right direction…”
The cat was following him. No, not following him. The cat shifter was right beside Ben now. The guy moved fast.
“I’m Jamison,” the fellow said.
Ben whirled toward him. “Fuck off, Jamison.”
Jamison’s green eyes narrowed. “I’m your last visitor for the night.”
This was so screwed. “I don’t want you.” Ben grabbed the shifter by the t-shirt. “I want Simone back. Bring her back.” She was the only visitor he cared about.
“Ah, enjoyed that little meet-and-greet, did you?” Humor flashed in the shifter’s eyes. “But that angel is smokin’, so I don’t blame you a single bit for wanting to tap that ass.”