Redeeming Angel (3 page)

Silence.

“
That’s what I
thought.”

“
Are you sure?” She tucked
her hair back. “Because your body definitely wants
more.”

I took a step forward, a storm
swirling inside me. “Maybe. But I’ve spent my life battling my
demon. I think I can handle other parts of my body.”

She choked out a laugh. “The notorious
Chase Winters. Heartbroken. She’s never coming back, you
know.”

Folding my arms, I showed no emotion.
Perhaps I’d grown used to her intimidations over the last week.
“Guess what? I won’t give up. And you know when I want something, I
don’t stop.”

Frustration rolled off her. “God,
you’re such a sucker. I twitch my ass and bat my eyes, and you’re
drooling all over me. Typical male.”

I exhaled roughly, sparing her a brief
glance. “You and I both know there is nothing typical about
me.”

She lowered her head. “I’ve accepted
that, accepted you for who you are”—emotion clogged her vocal
cords—“but why is it so hard for you to accept me? That I’ve
changed?” Her long lashes blinked back tears.

A muscle popped along my jawline. Her
high and low tactics wreaked havoc on my sanity. My body went
rigid.

Her lower lip quivered. “Why are you
treating me like this? How can you claim to love me? This isn’t
love.” Her eyes were shining with dampness.

Like a hamster wheel, this topic of
conversation was going nowhere and was a waste. The fact she could
doubt my love only reinforced how much of a hold the darkness had
on Angel. Our bond made it impossible to question the depth of my
feelings. “Here.” I tossed one of her favorite gamer shirts and a
pair of lounge pants through the bars. “I brought you some clean
clothes.”

She caught them midair, causing her
rumpled shirt to inch up. My eyes were drawn to the exposed skin.
It was still a rush, seeing my marks on her. They trailed up her
side, identical to mine, a reminder of our connection. Soul. Heart.
Body.

Every second. Every minute.
Every goddamn hour that ticked by with her sealed away drove my
insane, because I was no closer to finding a way to cure
her.
If
she could
be cured.

It wasn’t like she was ill. This
wasn’t a cold or the flu. I couldn’t give her a pill or a dose of
medicine and expect her to be fine in twenty-four hours.

“
I’ve got to go,” I said.
If my calculations were correct, she was about to activate her rage
tactic. I’d rather avoid that today. She’d already gotten to
me.

{Angel
}

I felt sorry for the lab rats. Being
caged sucked. Being tormented by Chase’s forlorn eyes and grim
scowls was downright depressing.

I was a menace. Dangerous. The
darkness Hell trapped inside me was pissed, and it was time Chase
saw me for who I was. If I had accepted his demon, then why
couldn’t he accept mine? “You’re a hypocrite, you know that?” I
yelled at his back. “When I get out of here, I’m going to rip the
flesh from your bones.”

He halted, placing a palm on the
wall.

“
They’re coming for me,” I
informed. I was stalling, because even though his smirks and frowns
were irritating, it beat being alone. There was something almost
fun about mincing words with him and making him suffer.

“
They’ll never find you.”
His voice was low.

It was cocky conviction in his tone
that pushed me to my boiling point. “Shut up,” I spat.

He finally spun around and
faced me. “But
I’ll
find them. In fact, I met one of your groupies on the way
here.”

The knowledge of what he said sparked,
caught fire, and spread through my veins. “Shut up!”

His nostrils flared, sexy
if you were into that kind of thing and apparently I was. “He sends
his regards. I think his last words were
I’ll be back
. Cheesy, if you ask me,
embodying Arnold
Schwarzenegger.
”

“
Shut.
Shut
. Shut!”
Kill him
. The words whispered through
my mind. I couldn’t have cared less where the voice came
from.
Off with his head
.

Caution crept into his eyes. “Whoa. I
think someone needs a tranq or some happy pills.”

Anger gnawed at me. Red flames moved
through my blood, and it felt as if I would spontaneously combust
if I didn’t hurl the fire building inside me.

It gave me a high, and I wanted more.
I wanted to hurt him. But mostly, I wanted out of this prison.
There was this deep yearning in the pit of my stomach, a calling
from Hell. It was time for drastic measures.

I clenched the titanium bars, and even
as my skin sizzled, the pain making my eyes water, I hung on. The
metal might neutralize my newly discovered abilities, but it didn’t
stop me from harming myself. One way or another, I was getting out
of this hellhole.

“
No!” he shouted, moving so
fast he startled me. His hands shot through the bars, clasping my
wrists and physically removing them from the bars.

I wasn’t a match for his strength,
especially after the amount of agony radiating down my arms. I went
still, suddenly feeling weird, and backed away from Chase. My back
hit the wall.

“
Angel,” he called,
frantic.

Time seemed to slow, and
the world around me began to darken until a sheet of blackness
engulfed me. Sound faded from my ears.
Well, that might have been a bad idea.

Chapter 3

{Angel
}

I blinked my eyes open and realized I
couldn’t breathe. Why couldn’t I catch my breath? There was air. My
lungs were working, yet I felt like I was suffocating.
Unfortunately, this was a feeling I was quite familiar with. As
ridiculous as it sounded, I’d thought these new abilities that had
awakened inside me would make me…I don’t know…invincible to such
fears.

Rising to my feet, I swayed
unnaturally to the left and my hand flew out to steady myself on
the wall. It was then I noticed my pitiful attire. My clothes were
torn and I had dark black spots on the front of my shirt that
looked eerily like blood.

Oh God.

I was betting it was
my
blood…or so I hoped,
because the alternative meant I’d hurt someone. In shock, my entire
body was trembling as if I’d run a marathon—uphill.

I bit my lip and—

Sweet baby Jesus.

My lips were swollen, but that wasn’t
what made my knees buckle. I could taste Chase. His brand of flavor
was one I’d never forget. It was permanently etched into my taste
buds.

He’d been here.

And he’d left me.

In a cage!

Why?

Dust bunnies lingered, floating in the
stale and musky air. Snapshots of images flashed behind my eyes,
making my brain hurt. Everything was so foggy. I winced, fingers
pressing into my temples. It felt like my head was splitting in
two, and there was a golf ball-sized lump on the back of my
scalp.

Eyes cast downward, a pop of blue
caught my gaze. A pair of yoga pants and one of my favorite
T-shirts lay on the cold, concrete floor. At the sight of clean
clothes, I forgot about my fuzzy head and quickly stripped,
slipping on the soft fabric. Burrowing my nose into the material at
my shoulder, I inhaled.

It smelled of laundry detergent and
faintly of a woodsy scent. It smelled of home.

Pangs twanged around my
heart.

I wanted to go home. I wanted to see
my mom. I desperately wanted to see Chase.

My hands dropped to my sides, horror
rolling through me as I realized I might never leave this place.
This might be it. These titanium bars and the windowless room might
be the last things I see before I leave this earth. Depressing and
utterly messed up.

As my lower lip started to tremble, I
tipped my chin up, refusing to let Hell break me. I wouldn’t give
them the satisfaction. It was bad enough there were gapping black
spots in my memory, but to travel down the lonely road of self-pity
wasn’t going to help me survive. And I was damn determined to
live.

Mom needed me. But Chase
needed me more. Our lives were intertwined. If anything happened to
me, he would be doomed. My last breath would be his last breath.
That thought alone was enough to make my spine a little straighter.
Hell was not going to use me. Whatever mutations were going on
inside me, I needed to find a way to stay
me
, a way to stop the darkness. I
wasn’t utterly clueless. I knew something was very wrong with me.
The blackouts, they weren’t normal, not even by Divisa standards. I
was close to freaking out.

This wasn’t the first time I’d been
held captive. How many eighteen-year-olds could say that? Not that
I was bragging, just the opposite. It was completely messed up,
just like my life.

So I made myself concentrate on the
small things, like clean clothes. It was little, but when you’d
been wearing the same clothes for a week, it was an indulgence
taken for granted. The only thing that would top clean clothes
would be a foaming bubble bath. All I had was a lukewarm shower in
a refrigerator-sized box.

Dear God, I would give my
left boob for a hot bath and a bubble bar from
Lush
.

I sighed.

Chase forbad me even the simplest
luxury. It was a flitting thought, but like a twig, something
inside me snapped. Gone was the confusion and murkiness, and in its
place was a fire that crackled and popped. Everything became clear
again, my purpose, who my real enemies were. Chase Winters was
going to regret ever sticking me behind bars.

{Chase
}

I woke up alone and drenched in sweat
and ready to kick some serious ass. My body was tight, prepared for
a fight, but unless I was going to be duking it out with my shadow,
there was no need for my demon to be on edge. Yet he
was.

Sitting up, I ran a hand through a
very bad case of bedhead and looked toward the window. I blinked. I
didn’t have a normal sleep schedule, not like the rest of the
world. Nowadays, it was hard for me to tell whether it was night or
day without peering outside or at my phone.

My vision didn’t need to adjust to the
dark room, a demon perk. There were many perks—treacherous demon
DNA—but none of my abilities could help Angel. As unearthly as my
skills were, I didn’t have the power to sever the cursed connection
Hell had over her.

So, of course, I acted like a class
act jerk and taunted her, because God knows that was totally going
to cure her. In my self-defense, that dirty and sensual stunt she
pulled scrambled my logic and control.

If I was being real, Angel and I
thrived on riling each other in what was a twisted form of
foreplay. It was how we met, how we fell in love, how we ended up
here.

Control.

I was beginning to hate the
word.

Gazing up at the ceiling, I secured my
arm behind my head and stared at the water spot that stood out
against the stark white paint. My thoughts turned, mulling over an
absurd plan I’d formulated during my run back to campus. The
ludicrousness of it was what I liked. In my head, the less likely
my survival rate, the greater my chances of success.

An inside look at just how warped my
mind really was.

I listened to the wind whistling
outside the slightly cracked window, to the crickets rubbing their
wings together, and to all the other little critters that prowled
at night. The breeze that blew through the room was neither too hot
nor too cold. I imagined this would be my last moment of calmness
for some time.

Leave it to Lexi to ruin my last five
minutes of peace and solitude.

“
I need to see her!” she
demanded for the millionth time as she burst through my door. Her
ivory skin was flushed, and unless I was mistaken, she was trying
to kill me with a dirty look.

Shaking my head, I scrubbed my hands
over my eyes. “Privacy? Is that too much to ask for?”

Lexi drifted right into the center of
the room, not giving a second thought to my state of attire or
possible lack of. “This is college. There is no such
thing.”

I groaned, closing my eyes and hoping
she would disappear.

“
Did you hear me?” she
added coolly.

I opened one eye, gazing up. Ugh. She
was still here, hovering over my bed and glaring down at me with
impatient, bright aqua eyes. Her wheat-colored hair was pulled back
into a ponytail, emphasizing the dark shadows under her eyes and
the gauntness of her cheeks. She was worrying herself sick.
Pressing my lips together, I asked, “Shouldn’t you be at class or
studying something? Don’t you have a boyfriend?”

“
It’s almost ten
o’clock.
At night
,” she added helpfully, in case I was confused what time of
day she was referring to. “And Colin is studying if you must know.”
Feet planted, she crossed her arms over the pink sweatshirt that
hung off one shoulder. “I’m not leaving until you take me to see
her.”