Craved: A Chosen Ones Novel (3 page)

He banged his shoulder
hard
against mine as he passed me. If I’d been only human, he might have shattered it. I didn’t need to check for dilated pupils the color of only to confirm what he was. No scrawny teenage boy would possess that amount of strength.

“So…so…sorry,” I sputtered wide-eyed while biting my bottom lip. My heartbeat kicked into overdrive and I knew he could hear it. Good. Let him think it was because of fear and not the rush of adrenaline flooding my system. Epinephrine was definitely pumping through my bloodstream, but it was my fight not my flight response that had kicked in.
 

I quickened my footsteps, hurrying away from him and turning down a side street bathed in nothing but shadows. The two light posts that lined the street had bulbs that had blown out.
 

The daemon turned to follow me. He’d taken the bait, hook, line and sinker. I walked a couple of feet into the darkness then turned with lighting speed, withdrawing a silver knife and launching it at the heart of the thing posing as a human teenager. It soared through the air and hit home. His pupils swelled to cover the whites of his eyes then he dropped to his knees. A cloud of black smoke poured forth from him. It wavered in the air then dissipated. The daemon’s corporeal form winked out of existence soon afterward.

“Now that wasn’t very nice.” The voice was deep, baritone, and devoid of emotion.

Cold shivers I couldn’t explain ran the length of my spine. No sooner than the perplexing reaction occurred an impossibly beautiful blonde-haired man dressed in fitted denim without a shirt landed in front of me on the balls of his feet. Large black wings extended from behind him, flaring out on both sides of his muscular body. My mouth gaped open as my heart kicked into overdrive again. Only this time it was definitely the flight response that flooded my system.
 

I knew from a theoretical, their-existence-is-written-about-in-nephilim-history-books standpoint that the being in front of me existed. There were supposedly hundreds like him that did. But no Brethren had walked the Earth since the time when the Archangels had.
 

Then why is a real, live fucking Brethren standing in front of you on a side street in Five Points,
 
I screeched at myself.
 

The massive black wings, eyes ringed in silver, and elongated incisors left no doubt as to what he was.

Run! Now!
The deep, instinctual part of me that was keyed toward survival yelled. I looked around wildly for an escape, but there was nothing but solid brick behind me and the Brethren was standing directly in front of me and the only was out of the alley.

Before the panic could fully settle in the Brethren was on me, moving faster than my eyes could track, gripping my chin and pressing his body violatingly into mine.
 

“I know it’s bad form to play with your prey, but you’re too deliciously tempting to mind my manners.” The blinding smile that spread across his face said I really, really did not want to experience what was coming next. “I’ll make it slow and excruciating. I promise.”

His incisors lengthened about two inches past their already lethal six inches and pain sliced into the side of my neck along with a burning sensation that felt like gasoline had been poured on the spot in the presence of a lit match.
 

I swallowed the scream bubbling up in my throat. It would do me no good. No one would answer it, given where I was and the time. Hell, even if someone did, I’d still be up shit creek without a paddle. The Brethren would kill them too.

I felt my heartbeat begin to slow as the life was tugged from my veins. My weight started to feel too heavy for my legs to support.
This is it,
I thought.
This is how I die. Not exactly like my parents, but at the mercy of a monster all the same.
At least my body wouldn’t be strewn across the pavement in pieces.
 

The memory of my parents made me burn with something other than what the Brethren feeding from my neck made me feel. Rage and a gut-wrenching pain that kickstarted my will to live. I remembered I had a gun with a fully loaded clip of silver bullets at my back.

As the Brethren distractedly, intentionally slowly, fed from my neck, he was so lost in consuming my blood that he was oblivious to my hand reaching behind my back then circling his. I unloaded the entire clip into him, praying to heaven none of the bullets exited through his front and tore into me. He staggered to the side and I didn’t think twice before shouldering past him and breaking into a sprint as if the devil himself was on my ass.
 

I stumbled onto the well lit Peachtree Street. Car after car zoomed passed me. Not one of them stopped. I took all of maybe four additional steps before the world tilted on its axis and my legs refused to support my weight any longer. I felt myself crumbling to the ground, but I didn’t feel my head connecting with the pavement. Darkness claimed me before the impact.

I opened my eyes to sapphires. Flawless, brilliant, and a shade of deep blue that I didn’t think existed anywhere else on Earth. I puzzled why I looked at gemstones until the face they were set in came into focus.

 
I must be dreaming. No, scratch that. I must have died and gone to heaven.
 

Human men who were supermodels and movie stars didn’t look like that good. The unnaturally blue eyes were home to a face even more ethereal in its beauty. Sharp bone structure and a strong jawline made the face before me beautiful in a strikingly masculine kind of way while golden brown curls that fell softly into it, stopping just short of the eyes tempered its inherent roughness, adding a certain boyish softness to the face’s features.
 

Yup, I’ve definitely died and gone to heaven. No man on Earth possesses a face like that
.
 

 
I raised a hand to my neck where there would have been puncture wounds if I were still alive. I frowned when my fingers grazed a textured cottony material that felt like gauze.
 

If I am in heaven, why do I need gauze?
 

 
Strong fingers closed over mine, stilling them, when I tried to tear the square patch of material away from my neck.

“I wouldn’t if I were you. The Brethren tore straight into your external jugular vein, left a pretty vicious hole in your neck. I’d suggest keeping it covered until it fully heals or you’ll run the risk of an infection. It won’t kill you, of course, but you’ll end up with a pretty nasty fever and a bad case of chills for a few days.”

It was then that I realized the face crowding my vision actually had a body to go along with it. A damn nice looking one if the defined biceps and corded muscle that the under armour shirt so nicely showed off were anything to go by.
 

“If someone told me dying and going to heaven meant waking up to hot guys with killer biceps, I would have made it a point to get myself killed a lot sooner,” I mumbled in a groggy haze.
 

The hot guy grinned at me and a pair of dimples so deep you could go for a swim in them graced his face making it even more aesthetically pleasing to look at.

“You’re not in heaven baby but you’re right about the hot part and the killer biceps.”

I swear said biceps purposely flexed a little as the words were spoken. Then I looked past them and noticed the backdrop of Atlanta’s skyline sprawling out behind a wall made entirely of glass panes.

 
I shot to a sitting position in what I know realized was a bed. I looked, actually looked, at my surroundings instead of dreamily staring at the too perfect to be real face I’d woken up to. Its cement walls and ceiling with exposed beams gave it a look of modernity that helped me narrow down my location. I was in one of the luxury high-rises that had started springing up all over downtown.
 

My cheeks immediately enflamed at the embarrassment of uttering the words I’d said to an actual person.
 

I was supposed to be talking to an angel in heaven. Not a living, breathing, stranger…Wait, have I been kidnapped?!

Survival instincts kicked in, I threw the heavy blankets off of me and jumped to my feet. At least I tried to jump to my feet. I more realistically swayed on them before my knees buckled. The strange hot guy jumped out of the chair he’d been straddling and caught me by my elbow before I hit the floor.
 

I snatched my arm out of his grip. The momentum from the force with which I did sent me stumbling a couple of steps backward and swaying on my feet again. I gritted my teeth against my legs’ protest to support my weight. It took considerable effort to remain upright, but I dug my heels in and forced my body to cooperate.
 

“Who are you?” I eyed the stranger standing in front of me.

“The person who saved your life.” His tone was haughty and arrogant. He crossed his arms over his broad chest, arching an eyebrow at me expectantly. He appeared to be waiting for me to gravel.
 

Yeah, he’d keep on waiting for that one.

I crossed my arms over my chest and arched an eyebrow of my own, mirroring his position. “That’s not an actual answer to my question.”

His lips twitched at the corners. “No, I guess it’s not.”

And yet, he still didn’t offer any additional information.
 

“Um, okaaay.”
 
Who the hell was he and how did he save me with a Brethren on my ass? Both of those unanswered questions
 
automatically made me suspicious. Furthermore, when I’d first woken up, he’d advised me not to remove the gauze because of the damage the Brethren had done when he bit me. I was shocked as shit to encounter one and he’d casually tossed the word
Brethren
around like he encountered them everyday.
 

“When I first woke up you said Brethren like their presence on Earth is commonplace.”

“They’re not commonplace but there are still a handful of them around. Most Nephilim aren’t aware of that because they purposely make sure you don’t know about them.”

“But you obviously do.”

“It’s my job to know.” His vague response told me nothing.
 

“
What job is that
?”

“The same as yours. I’m a Nephilim.”

“Obviously not one from Atlanta.” His clipped answers were beginning to annoy me. And raise my suspicions.

If he was a member of the Atlanta Sect we wouldn’t be strangers to each other. The Society’s sects sort of operated like close-knit family units. Everybody knew everybody.
 

“No. I am from the Orlando sect,” he said finally giving up some information about himself.

“So you’re a new transfer?”

“Kind of.”

“Have you met Bennett yet?”

“Yes.”

“Does everyone in Orlando know about Brethren?”

“No.”

“Then how do you?”

“I’m special.”

Maybe. But not the good kind of special.
God, I was about ready to bang my head on a wall.

 
I rubbed my forehead between my eyes. I was tired, hurting, and didn’t possess the mental fortitude at the moment to do this. If he’d met Bennett then that was good enough for me at the moment. I knew Bennett well enough to know that he had double, triple, and quadruple checked him out before he ever set foot in the city.
 

I pulled my phone out of my back pocket and saw that there was an available Uber a block away. Good. It was too late for the train to be running still and I really didn’t want to have to wait for a car.
 

“Well, I will see you around. Thanks for saving my ass tonight. I guess I owe you one.” I shouldered past him toward the front door. As I did so I caught him grinning out of the corner of my eye, flashing those deep dimples embedded in a smile I bet had charmed the panties off of many a females.
 

“No problem. It’s a rather sweet ass, so really, it was no sweat off my back.”

I paused, momentarily stunned, then kept walking towards the door. Deliberately choosing not to acknowledge that particular statement. I didn’t turn around to see so I couldn’t know for sure, but I got the distinct impression that his undiluted blue eyes were checking out my ass as I left.
 

The Society’s headquarters stood as a renovated house in the Atlanta neighborhood of East Lake about three-fourths of a mile from the exclusive East Lake Golf Club. It sat nestled between Downtown and Decatur and was a paradoxical mix of old and new, rich and poor, urban and suburban, black and white, dangerous and safe.
 

East Lake was historically an affluent African-American neighborhood, but devastation claimed it when the drug epidemic of the 70s and 80s swept across the nation. The gang epidemic that followed on the tail end of it in the 90s all but dismantled it. East Lake began to rebuild itself to the standards of its former glory a decade and a half later when gentrification of neighborhoods close to the downtown city limits became all the rage in Atlanta. Wealthy individuals, Black and White alike, had flocked and were still flocking to the previously dismantled, but now new, posh and hip place to live.
 

Gentrification was how my mother’s side of the family, the Sinclairs, had doubled their already vastly accumulated wealth since the early 2000s.
 

Before climbing the steps to the headquarters of the Atlanta sect of The Society I paused, as I always did, to admire the exterior architecture of the house. It towered over me as a massively beautiful structure that had been built to look like the antebellum homes that made southern cities like Savannah and Baton Rouge breathtaking. The genteel coat of powder blue paint covering the outside of the house along with its elegant wraparound porch and the wide steps leading up to it, always made me think of
Gone with the Wind
. The classic movie was one of my favorite period pieces from the Civil War era.