Zane's Tale (2 page)

A half smile of self loathing curved
his mouth, and Zane leaned in.

She eagerly followed close, licking her
lips.

His mouth brushed her ear, a gentle
motion that belied his harsh, unforgiving words. “I want nothing to
do with you. Step away if you value your life.”

Startled, she jerked away and blinked
at him, but he got up and left before she could protest. He didn’t
want her – he didn’t want any of the women in the room. His
thoughts were entirely of a redhead with a wry smile that liked
jeans and t-shirts.

Drinking from another woman didn’t ease
the ache he had for Jackie. Not in the slightest. It was a means to
exist - no more, no less. He’d endure it until they found a way to
be together. Until then…he was stuck here. His bleak gaze scanned
the club, the figures of the vampires lounging as human women threw
themselves upon any guy with red eyes and a jacket. Another woman
saw the blonde’s failure to capture his interest and she stepped
forward. He turned his angry gaze on her and she froze in place,
lost in the power of vampire charm. She remained there, frozen,
until one of her friends pulled her away, breaking the
spell.

A vampire in the back raised a finger
in a gesture, calling Zane’s attention there. Caleb sat with
Barnabas at a booth at the edge of the dance floor, away from the
crowd of women near the bar.

If vampires had friends, they might
have been his once. In better times, he’d ran with Caleb and
Barnabas, and together they’d wreaked havoc and laughed while doing
so. But he’d been distracted lately, and a vampire’s friends were
fickle, their allegiance shallow. No one owed anything to
anyone…except the queen. And she preferred it that way.

Still, a night of nothing but endless,
torturous hours awaited him before he could collapse into daysleep,
passing another evening without her. Hanging around the club wasn’t
for him tonight. Maybe Caleb and Barnabas had a better idea. So he
approached the booth and slid in, nodding to his brothers in
greeting.

Caleb grinned wickedly – even after
four thousand years of being fallen, he hadn’t lost his taste for
mayhem. Once he’d had a youthful face with boyish features and a
cap of short blonde hair. But his face had been twisted by years of
disappointment and mischief, and the tattoo etched around his eye
just made him look slightly evil. No one would mistake him for
angelic now. Barnabas was his opposite – plain and unassuming, with
a messy fall of brown hair that was a bit too straight and a bit
too long. His features were sharper, and he looked older, his eyes
narrow.

“
Another exciting night,
eh?” Caleb said, the boyish smile stretching across his
face.

“
If you say so,” Zane
replied, his tone carefully bland.

Barnabas nodded at him. “We have a
little excursion planned tonight. You in?”

Something stirred inside Zane, the
surging need to serve and obey. It had been ingrained in them back
in the early days of Heaven, when tasks were passed down from the
archangels. It was still a difficult habit to shake. The urge to
serve was almost as great as the urge for blood, but far easier to
ignore. Zane’s mouth curved into a sneer. “From the queen? I’m not
very good at serving, lately.”

“
So I hear,” said Caleb, the
cocky smile not leaving his face. “But we all need distractions,
yeah? And this isn’t from the queen. It’s just a little bit
of…fun.”

Fun from a vampire’s point of view
usually meant revenge on someone that had pissed them off. He
clenched his fist and tried not to seem too eager. “Who’s the lucky
target?”

“
Some Serim dickhead,” said
Barnabas, patting his pocket and looking for a cigarette. “We’re
going to off him.”

That sounded right up his alley. Zane
cracked his knuckles, trying not to seem too eager. All he could
see was Jackie’s face before him, and the smug look of that fucking
bastard Noah when he realized that Jackie was totally his now, and
Zane was out of the picture.

Destroying one of the dickhead fallen
seemed like a very good idea. “In,” said Zane.

*~*~*~*~*

Luckily for them, this job would be a
quick one. The Serim that was their target was in New City. It
didn’t surprise him – no matter where there were vampires, the
Serim followed behind, thinking of themselves as somehow
responsible for curtailing the actions of their brothers. Stupid
bastards.

Barnabas carried a bag with him as the
three of them flew through the night sky. Zane knew what it
contained – vials of unholy water, molotovs, a bottle that would
serve as a phylactery, and silver weapons carved with unholy runes.
Both Serim and vampire were near impossible to kill, but where
there was determination, there was a way. In the past, when sent on
an assassination mission, they’d used the unholy water and weapons
to paralyze the Serim, then torched them when they were helpless.
An immortal could heal from any wound as long as there was a body
left to heal, so they burned their enemies. When the body was
nothing but ash, the essence – or halo – of the angel would be
pulled into the phylactery and bottled for the queen to drink and
absorb as her own.

It was an ugly, messy business. The
Serim had caught on quickly and used similar methods to dispose of
the vampires, but someone always got sloppy and careless,
especially in the modern world. Sometimes Zane wondered if the
Serim were all just trying to forget the ongoing war here on earth
between the two parties.

The queen would never let the vampires
forget. And so they usually got the drop on their fallen
comrades.

Barnabas headed toward the tallest
building on the skyline, circled around it once, and then began to
beat his wings in strong, rising motions, lifting him upward. Zane
and Caleb followed behind, rising into the sky as well.

The three vampires landed on a ledge
high up, near the top of the building. The design of the skyscraper
was a fairly modern one that boasted trendy gothic decor, right
down to ornate lintels and showy recesses that no one would see but
the pigeons and the rich people who had balconies up this high. It
was obvious that the occupants of this building had money. The
building rose taller than all the other buildings around it for
several stories. Zane calculated there was about fifty floors, and
the vampires had landed on the ledge of forty-eight or so, unless
he missed his guess. His wings twitched in the night air, feeling
the cool ruffling breeze against them. The upper floors boasted a
long balcony for the penthouses, and it was here that the vampires
landed, amidst several elegantly potted plants.

“
Nice digs. Serim bastards
always have money, don’t they.” Zane pulled a cigarette out of his
pocket and lit up, scanning the building. “So what’s the plan
here?”

Barnabas nodded at the window, peering
through the mini-blinds. At his side, Caleb grinned, enjoying the
anticipation of the kill. “I see someone laying down in there,”
Barnabas said, then turned to Zane. “Go to the next window over and
see if there’s someone in the other room. This could be easier than
we thought.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell
Barnabas to fuck off. But he couldn’t muster enough of a give a
damn to do so. It didn’t matter anyhow – this wasn’t his party. So
he shrugged, took a long drag on his cigarette, and then tossed it
to the brick, watching it roll off the balcony and onto the streets
far, far below. Then, he leapt atop the railing and extended his
wings, using them to catch an updraft as he jumped to the next
balcony over.

The next room over was lit, a radio
blasting. Boxes littered the otherwise swanky apartment, and one
box on the couch appeared to be half-packed, clothing strewn on the
leather sofa. The room had a masculine decor to it, spare and
barren. A man’s apartment – a rich man’s. No surprise given that
they were here to off a Serim.

A woman wandered into the room…and Zane
staggered.

His succubus.

Jackie was beautiful – every time he
looked at her, he was struck anew at how perfect she was. Of
course, it was the curse that transformed her into being so very
perfect, but he liked to think that she was a mixture of everything
he personally loved in a woman. Her long red curls were pulled into
a messy ponytail and she wore no makeup. Her skin glowed with good
health, a sheen of sweat glistening on her brow, and a few tendrils
of damp hair sticking to her forehead. Her eyes were a pale, sated
silver. The clothes she wore were messy – an old, paint-splattered
t-shirt and yoga pants. She looked amazingly beautiful despite her
sloppy clothing. And as she moved through the room, she gave an
off-beat little dance to the music, swinging her hips and tossing
clothes into the box as she moved.

Hunger swept through him,
echoed by a fierce, longing need. She was
his
. She belonged to him…she
was…

She was in Noah’s apartment.

Her eyes were pale because
her Itch had been fixed by her
Serim
lover. Not him. Not the one that should be with
her. Hate gnawed at his insides, burned in his core. Zane’s hands
clenched. The Serim bastard had won her simply because Zane had to
step off the playing field.

For
now.

Fighting the overwhelming urge to break
through the window and carry her away into the night, Zane pressed
a hand to the glass. He needed to hear her voice. Just a small bit
to carry him forward into the endless years of servitude that
loomed ahead. Years – without her.

She tossed clothes into a box,
haphazardly folding them as she bounced around to the music. His
fingertips brushed against the thick glass reflexively when her
ponytail bounced – he longed to touch her hair, to bury his face in
the curling, slightly sweaty mass of it.

A phone rang and as he watched, she
crossed the room, slapped off the radio, and picked up the phone,
cradling it between her ear and shoulder. “Hello?” As she spoke,
she grabbed another shirt and began to fold it. “Oh, hey Remy.
What’s up?”

The sound of her voice made his entire
body strain with need. He could feel his fangs pressing downward,
an instinctive reaction to the woman on the other side of the
glass. Her voice – soft and casual – only fueled the flames of his
desire. God, he missed her. He’d thought that seeing her again
might help quench the ache he carried in his heart for her. He was
wrong; this was hell. And seeing her here, happy as she packed
clothes in Noah Gideon’s penthouse…it stirred all kinds of emotions
– anger, jealousy, longing, love, need, frustration – to the
forefront.

And fucking Noah Gideon got to touch
her every day. Got to kiss her and run his hand through that messy
hair. Got to push her down to the bed and fuck her until she
wrapped her legs around him and called out his name.

Zane’s hands clenched. He wanted Noah
to die, all for simply being the one that got to touch her while
Zane could not.

Her low chuckle made his cock harden,
and Zane willed his body to calm, the need raging inside him making
him irrational. His body tensed as his ears strained, desperate to
focus on her soft voice.

“
We leave tomorrow,” Jackie
said to the phone. “Yep. Eight months in the wilds of Mexico. I’m
so excited! Noah says that it’ll be totally primitive but I don’t
care. My first real archaeological dig. I can hardly wait.” A
pause. “I know! It won’t be so very long, though. You’re welcome to
come with us.” Another pause, then another throaty laugh. “I
figured you’d say no, but it never hurts to ask. Noah’s paying for
everything, you know.”

Ask about
me
, he wanted to say.
Think about me
. His fingertips pressed
on the glass, hard. He wanted it to crack under his fingers, to
shatter into a thousand pieces so he could swoop into the room and
carry her away. It didn’t, though. Bulletproof and reinforced, it
saved him from making a mistake.

He couldn’t have her. He’d given her up
to save her, and he couldn’t go back on it now.

He removed his hand from the glass,
making a mental note to warn Barnabas about the bulletproof glass.
Or maybe he wouldn’t. His brothers needed to be taken down a notch
in their arrogance, especially Caleb.

Jackie didn’t notice him on the
balcony. Her back was to him and she laughed into the phone, still
chatting with her fellow succubus. “That’s not funny,” she said
after a moment, her laughter dying. Phone cradled against her
shoulder, she crossed the room and pulled something out of a
dresser drawer.

The conversation paused, and then
Jackie spoke again. “I’m not going to answer that.” Annoyance
clouded her voice. “You don’t want to hear if I miss him or not,
right? So don’t ask me, Remy. I can’t talk about him.”

His entire body stiffened, and he
strained to hear what she would say next.

“
No, it’s not that. Noah’s
great. It’s just…let’s drop it, okay? I don’t want to talk about
this anymore.”

She turned and Zane saw her
holding a shirt. One of
his
shirts – a Spinal Tap black tee. He hadn’t
realized she’d had it. As he watched, she cradled it to her face,
inhaling the scent of it. Her eyes closed and a look of pain
crossed her face.