A Caress of Wings (Renegade Angels #1.5) 1 страница

A Caress of Wings (Renegade Angels #1.5)

by Sylvia Day

Annotation:

Enter a shadowy underworld, where a powerful angel breaks all the rules by falling for the mortal whose life she's saved...

Chained in the dark, Trevor Descansos endures pain and terror as vampires slowly drain the life from him. He finds mercy in Sentinel Siobhán, a beautiful avenging angel with lethal wings. She draws Trevor from the depths of hell, wrapping him in the softness of the same feathers that she wielded like blades to cut down his tormentors.

Ageless and eternal, Siobhán has seen too much to be surprised by anything, but the mortal she finds in the pit of a vampire den shakes her to the core. Broken and near death, his ravaged masculine beauty stirs the heart she hadn't realized she possessed. Though she's tasked with eradicating the vampire disease sweeping across her world, she nurses Trevor back to health, healing him even as he awakens a forbidden longing.

But the true test has yet to come. Siobhán faces an even darker fate than Trevor's, as she falls from grace into mortal love...

Prologue

In his head, Trevor Descansos was screaming, but no sound escaped from his raw, parched throat. He’d lost his voice sometime in the early days of his captivity and now he had no outlet for the agony that tore at the anchors of his sanity.

Distantly, he heard the voracious suckling of the vampires feeding on him. They chewed on his veins, piercing and gnawing. The pain was like nothing he could ever have imagined. all the times he’d asked a patient to rate their pain on a scale of one to ten seemed so cruel now, and lifetimes away.

Had he once been a hotshot paramedic working toward his medical degree? He remembered that guy like something he’d seen in a movie once, but then, even movies felt like something he had conjured in his maddened mind. His reality had dwindled to a room so dark he couldn’t make out shapes or shadows. Only eyes. Dozens of glowing amber irises, flitting around his body like fireflies as they drank from him.

He’d been in a void for weeks. Or was it months? Dear God... Perhaps it’d been years. His wrists were shackled and the iron links securing him to the cement block wal were impossibly heavy.

When he’d first been restrained, he could drag the length of chain around, but he hadn’t the strength any longer. An IV line in his arm—steadily pumping fluids and an occasional shot of something that burned like acid in his veins—kept him alive, but it wasn’t enough to keep him strong.

The former Army Ranger medic from the movie in his head was a strapping guy, 6’2” and a solid two hundred and twenty pounds, capable of carrying clinical y obese bodies down endless flights of stairs and performing chest compressions for hours. He had a lot of friends and was popular with women. He had an older sister who was happily married with three gorgeous kids and one more on the way—Fangs sunk into his femoral artery, making him writhe in torment. He didn’t know what was worse: the creatures who got off on his pain or the ones who got off on his humiliation.

The bites didn’t have to hurt. They could, in fact, deliver unspeakable pleasure.

Some of the creatures weren’t satisfied with simply feeding on him. It wasn’t enough of a kick to smel his fear and hear the panicked beat of his heart. No, they wanted him to suffer in other ways.

Their hands and mouths stroked over his body in a sick semblance of a lover’s caresses, tormenting him mercilessly. Their fangs injected a fast-acting aphrodisiac in his bloodstream, hardening his cock until it throbbed like an open wound and he begged for relief, too mindless in his unnatural need to feel any shame. Females mounted him... raped him... laughing...

A low sound escaped him as the memories violated him all over again. It was a mournful, animalistic sound of utter anguish and it incited the creatures feeding on him into an even greater frenzy. His head tilted back, his face uplifted toward the heavens. He prayed for death. Then he prayed for oblivion in case he was already dead in the bowels of hel and just didn’t know it.

But time passed and his prayers went unanswered.

If there was a God, he or she had long since forgotten about Trevor Descansos.

Chapter 1

From her vantage in the night sky, Siobhán studied the ramshackle two-story Victorian home in the clearing below her. The wind whipped through the short strands of her hair as she stretched her wings and circled in wide arcs, neatly avoiding the half dozen other Sentinel angels surveil ing the property.

Individual y, they honed the attack strategy she’d laid out for them earlier, tailoring it to the terrain around the vampire nest they’d found on the outskirts of Seattle. Not so long ago, they would’ve had lycans on the ground to snatch the vamps that would pour out like sewage from the doors and windows. Now they were reduced to doing it all themselves.

Luckily, they’d worked together for mil ennia and functioned like a well -oiled machine. When they surged into battle, it was as a unit, without a single sign or word of command needed. Tucking her wings close to her back, Siobhán dove toward the house, spearing through a boarded top floor window in a shower of glass and plywood.

She was immediately set upon by a roomful of hissing, spitting vamps. Spinning, she wielded her wings like blades, slicing through those too stupid to climb the wal s and ceiling. Blood sprayed, coating her and the plaster, the stench spurring her to clear the room in seconds.

Moving into the hal way, she blocked out the panicked screams that fil ed the air and deflected bul ets with her wings, whipping them with the fluidity of a cape. She sought out those vamps that were infected with the disease she’d been tasked with eradicating. Those who’d been il for a while were easy to pick out with their gray eyes, skin, and hair. They looked like specters and acted like zombies, mindlessly attacking any convenient nonvampiric blood source.

The ones she’d captured during previous raids were already dead. She needed more of them if she had any hope of finding a cure—a cure other than the blood in her veins.

Kicking in the door to a room, she found several infected mingling with those who were not. Siobhán grabbed one and chucked him out the window for the Sentinels on the ground to catch and restrain.

She worked her way through the room, picking out the others, maintaining her grimly focused determination so that she didn’t accidentally eviscerate an infected while cleaning house.

And so it went—room by room, floor by floor, until she regrouped with the other Sentinels in the gore-stained kitchen. Her wings dissipated like fog blown by the wind, leaving her unencumbered and able to maneuver in the tight, cramped space.

Malachai came in through the shattered sliding glass door, his blond hair turned silver by the moonlight. “Twelve,” he said, giving her the number of infected they’d rounded up. “We’ve got them sedated, but we have to get going. We didn’t bring enough blood for seconds.”

She nodded. The metabolisms of the infected were so accelerated they required near constant feeding. Without it, they simply digested themselves, turning into sludge-like piles of putrid blackened waste. “Head outside. I’l take care of the house.”

“Siobhán.”

Turning, she faced the Sentinel who ascended from the basement and asked him, “Get started on the fire without me?”

“That was the plan.” Carriden’s flame blue eyes met hers and something in them, a rare flash of pity, snared her attention. “No one should see this,” he said gruffly, “but you’l want to.”

She walked past the tal blond angel and descended into a rank pit. It was pitch black in the depths of the house, but her preternatural sight didn’t require light to see the piles of human bones in the corners or the blood and excrement that fouled everything in the subterranean abyss.

Her boots stuck to the cement floor, making a sickening squelching noise as she turned around, taking in everything. The rattle of chains arrested her, her wings snapping open to shield her from any threat.

An animalistic growl drew her gaze to the far corner. She heard a weakened but too-rapid heartbeat and the quick, shal ow breathing of a terrorized mortal.

“Dear God,” she breathed, horrified to realize a man was alive and trapped in this nightmare place.

Her eyes closed for a moment. It seemed unlikely anyone could long retain their sanity in such conditions, but she would have to put her hands on him to determine absolutely whether his mind could be salvaged.

Taking a deep breath, Siobhán said, “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.”

The unique, compel ing resonance of her voice—one of her many angelic gifts—was irresistible to mortals. She heard the panicked beat of his heart slow and the raggedness of his breathing even out.

“What’s your name?” She approached him cautiously, as she would a feral beast. He couldn’t harm her, but she could hurt him if she was startled into defending herself against a perceived attack.

When he didn’t reply, she wondered if the ability to speak had been taken from him, either physical y or mentally.

“I’m going to touch you,” she warned, crouching beside him. She couldn’t see his face beneath a matted beard and dark hair that hung in a dirty curtain to his pectorals. His limbs were gaunt, his bones standing out in harsh relief beneath his paper-thin skin.

“Don’t be afraid,” she repeated.

Stil, despite the powerful compulsion embedded in her voice, he flinched at the barest touch of her fingers.

His memories slammed into her in a violent, churning deluge of impressions and emotions that rocked her back on her heels. She yanked her hand away and he caught her wrist so quickly she was shaken. She moved faster than mortals could track with their inferior eyes, but the connection to his recol ections had hit her so hard he’d taken her off guard.

His name was Trevor Descansos, and he’d once had the face and eyes of an angel.

“Please,” he rasped, in a voice that struck a chord deep inside her. “Kil me.”

That had been her intention. To be merciful and put him out of his misery. While his mind wasn’t broken, his soul was shattered. He was likely damaged beyond repair.

Even if she healed his body and wiped his memory, the devastation to his soul could be a lethal blow. He may never be the man he’d once been, a man who’d dedicated his life to saving the lives of others, both as a warrior and a healer. He might never again flash the dazzling smile she’d seen in his memories, never laugh his carefree laugh with his sister’s family, never charm another woman into experiencing the delights of his once beautiful body...

“Don’t leave me like this,” he said hoarsely. “Please... not like this.”

Abruptly, she knew she had to try to save him. She couldn’t give up on him without a fight. He’d already been thrown away and forgotten once. She couldn’t do it again.

“I won’t,” she promised. Moving careful y so as not to spook him, Siobhán gripped the shackle that chained his wrist and snapped it open with a tug—child’s play for a being of her strength. She did the same to the others: the one on his other wrist and the two on his ankles. “I’m going to pick you up, Trevor, and carry you out of here.”

His chest rose and fel in an elevated rhythm—the sound of hope too fragile to survive even the slightest blow.

“Can you lean into me, Trevor?” She deliberately used his name repeatedly to remind him of the man he’d once been, a man who would’ve done whatever it took to get out of this dank cel. “I don’t want to move too quickly and frighten you.”

It was a wise precaution. It took him several long minutes to gain the courage to lean toward her and rest his head weakly against her shoulder.

She summoned a blanket with a thought—another handy angelic gift—and wrapped him up with it. Then she lifted and carried him across the basement of horrors, up the stairs, through the house, and final y to the outside where the others waited.

“Burn it down,” she told Daniela, who stared at the pitiful figure she cradled close.

She stood on the lawn with Trevor’s arms draped around her neck, watching the house until the faint licking of flames visible through the broken windows expanded to engulf the entire façade. He whimpered and she realized the bright light after living a year in the darkness was excruciating to his eyes. Arching her wings over them, she shaded him, cocooning him from further harm.

His head lifted, pul ing away from her. Through a scraggly, greasy part in the curtain of his hair, she saw one bloodshot blue eye focused on her wings. Then his gaze rose to settle on her face.

“Angel,” he choked out, tears streaming down his face. “What took you so long?

Chapter 2

“Do you know what you’re doing, Siobhán?” Malachai asked as their plane taxied down the runway in preparation for takeoff.

“No,” she said honestly, because Sentinels never lied. They evaded and were selective with the truth, but they never lied outright. There were less than two hundred of them on earth, with orders to contain tens of thousands of vampires from spreading too far and wide. The Sentinels couldn’t afford to be anything less than completely honest with each other or they’d never survive their endless mission.

“I think he’s beyond saving.”

“Maybe I’l end up kil ing him,” she acknowledged, although she couldn’t bear the thought, “but I have to try to help him. He’s had Army Ranger training and he remained a reservist while prepping for med school. There’s a chance he’s strong enough to make it through this.”

The blond Sentinel nodded, but he looked wary and unconvinced. She didn’t blame him. Looking at what was left of Trevor Descansos, it was difficult to imagine any meaningful recovery was possible.

Siobhán went over to the huddled form in the back of the plane and studied the evenness of his breathing. She’d put him in a coma for his own safety. He was too fragile, both mental y and physical y, to take any sort of shock to his system.

Once she got him back to her laboratory in Ontario, California, she’d get his body strong first. Then she’d work on healing his mind. His old life was forever lost to him, but perhaps he could heal enough to work for Raguel Gadara, one of the seven earthbound archangels and a mogul whose secular businesses funded his celestial operations in North America. Then Trevor could live a mortal life, while unknowingly being under the protection of a powerful angel. It was no less than he deserved after all he’d suffered.

When they landed in Ontario, Siobhán carried Trevor into Mitchel Aeronautics’ private hangar at the airport, beneath which were the subterranean facilities where she housed her lab. For the last month, she’d lived underground, which was miserable for an angel. It was a blessing she was so engrossed in her work or she would’ve gone mad. She told herself that was one of the primary reasons why she was taking on the task of rehabilitating Trevor Descansos—she needed more distractions and chal enges.

She tried not to think about how he’d sobbed at his first sight of her or how many times he must’ve begged for deliverance before he’d been found. As an angelic being, the vagaries and extremes of human emotions were beyond her. She hadn’t been created with the heart that mortals had. She hadn’t been created to love or fear or mourn.

She was a Sentinel, the elite warrior caste of the seraphim, the most powerful of all the angels. Everything about her physical form was weaponized and her emotionless state was designed to reinforce that purpose. To feel such a depth of compassion was novel for her, a surprise for one who’d existed for so long that nothing was new or unknown to her.

Making a beeline for her private room, Siobhán took Trevor directly into the bathroom and placed him in the narrow but deep aluminum bathtub. She careful y removed the blanket from around his painful y thin body and something twisted in her chest at the sight of the hundreds of fang punctures and tears marring every inch of his skin. His memories of what he’d suffered would haunt her for many years to come.

She plugged the drain and turned the water on, then summoned a pair of scissors into her hand with a thought, using them to cut his long black hair and scraggly beard as short as possible.

When she graduated to using a straight razor on his face, she found herself riveted by the features she revealed with each careful swipe of the blade. Even haggard and drawn, the perfection of his bone structure was unmistakable. She found herself looking forward to seeing him at a normal weight, seeing his face fil ed out and restored to its former beauty.

Finished with shaving, she set to work on scrubbing his body. She emptied and refil ed the tub three times before she felt certain he was as clean as the mortal bathing process all owed. Then she wrapped him in a towel and carried him out to her sofa.

Since she didn’t require sleep as mortals did, she had no bed, so she made him as comfortable as possible with what she had, bundling him in as many blankets as she could find. Then she pul ed a chair next to him, set up an IV line, and transfused a pint of her powerful angelic blood into him.

Trevor began healing before her eyes. A healthy flush spread across his alabaster skin, erasing his scars in the process. His flesh began to pump, his breathing becoming deeper and more even, his heartbeat becoming stronger and steadier.

She surprised herself by reaching out to touch his jaw. “I’m very sorry it took us so long to find you.”

His head turned as if he was responding to her, pressing his cheek into her palm. She reached gently into his mind, dul ing the recol ections of his ordeal. She sealed them behind a haze, like a song you know you’ve heard but can’t remember where. Later, she would take the memories from him completely, but for now it was best not to. It was bad enough to be emotional y empty; it would only make it worse if he felt mental y empty as well.

Satisfied that he was on his way to a ful physical recovery, Siobhán started a saline drip to provide him with necessary fluids. Then she stripped out of her blood-soiled clothes and showered. By the time she left to begin cataloging the new infected intakes, Trevor was looking almost healthy and she felt the strangest sense of deep-seated relief.

Chapter 3

With one last look at the rows of occupied hospital beds and endless stretches of hanging intravenous lines, Siobhán left the infirmary and headed to the lab to cal Adrian Mitchel, captain of the Sentinels.

She sat at her desk and hit the speed dial for Adrian’s home office, her mind turning to thoughts of her leader and the trials he was presently facing, many of which came because of his forbidden love for a once-mortal woman named Lindsay. It was an affection that Siobhán—and every other Sentinel—couldn’t relate to; they all remained as emotionless as they’d been created to be. Only Adrian had been changed enough by his time on earth to grow a heart.

“Mitchel,” Adrian greeted her on the fourth ring.

“Captain. Siobhán here.” Adrian had tasked her with studying the disease ravaging the vampire ranks and she’d been working ceaselessly on that assignment for weeks.

She was the one who’d inadvertently discovered that Sentinel blood cured the il ness. Considering the tens of thousands of vampires in North America alone and the less than two hundred Sentinels left in existence, it was information they couldn’t afford to have the vampires discover before an alternate cure was found. When panic about the disease spread faster than the disease itself—which would definitely happen, it was only a matter of time—Sentinels could be hunted to extinction for their healing blood.

“How are you progressing?” he asked.

“Slowly but surely. I’ve got a dozen infected in stasis now. We can keep them alive with steady blood transfusions, but they have to stay anesthetized or they’re impossible to control.” She didn’t have to elaborate; Adrian knew how mindlessly violent they were. When he’d come to visit her here in the lab, he had seen them in action firsthand.

“How quickly do they lose higher brain function?”

She was intrigued by the question. “How far do you want me to go to find out? They’re already infected by the time I get them. If you want a play-by-play of what happens from exposure to il ness, I’l need to deliberately infect healthy subjects.”

“Do it. Our blood is a cure, so we can reverse the damage.”

It was a brutal order, but Adrian had the strength of conviction to see it carried out. It was one of the many reasons why he was the Sentinel leader and why the Sentinels still respected that leadership, despite the fact that his love for Lindsay—who was now a fledgling vampire—broke the very law they’d been sent to earth to enforce. That law barring fraternization with mortals had been on Siobhán’s mind a lot over the last couple days since she’d found Trevor.

It had all begun with the Watcher angels. The Watchers had been sent to earth to observe and report on the advancement of Man without interference, but they’d disobeyed and began mating with the mortals instead. This development displeased the Creator greatly and the Sentinels had been sent to punish the Watchers.

The Watchers were stripped of their wings and became known as the Fal en—the first vampires from which all other vampires came into being. The Fal en were more powerful than the minion vampires they created. They were stronger, faster, and able to walk in sunlight—they also had nothing left to lose.

“Have you been able to spot any patterns in the rapidity of progression?” Adrian asked.

Some minions were dead within a few days, others lasted a few weeks, and still others appeared to be immune. Why?

“I think I’m on to something in that regard.” Her excitement came through in her voice. “I’m not entirely positive yet, but it seems as if the advancement varies depending on how far removed the minion is from the Fal en heading their vampiric hierarchy.”

“You need to test Fal en blood,” he surmised.

“It would be helpful, yes,” she conceded, knowing how difficult it would be to attain. “Then I could see if it at least slows the development of the disease.”

They discussed the logistics for a few more minutes. Then Adrian signed off with the order to keep him posted.

“Yes, Captain,” she said. “Of course.”

Hanging up, Siobhán found herself eager to return to one of her patients—a handsome mortal with the eyes of an angel. She’d spent more time in her room over the last forty-eight hours than she ever had, unable to resist watching the health return to Trevor’s body.

She told herself she had a valid reason for being so focused on him; it was about time someone looked after him. He’d been through so much and since she was the one who’d claimed him, it was her responsibility.

It was irrelevant that the duty just happened to give her a great deal of pleasure.

* * *

She was the most gorgeous creature he’d ever seen. Trevor watched her as if from a distance, his warrioress angel. She was a smal thing but fierce, her body clothed in urban camouflage and Army-issued jungle boots. Her hair was as black as his and her eyes just as blue, although her irises glimmered, as if fil ed with cerulean flames. She was such a contradiction—part otherworldly beauty, part contemporary woman.

Her hair was styled in a sleek bob around her piquant face, and her trim, curvy body was stunningly framed by those awesome wings. They were massive and certainly heavy, but she moved them with ease. They weren’t white like the pictures and drawings of angels he’d seen all his life.

They were multihued and reminded him of the dawn—pale pink feathers darkening to blues and purples with a touch of gold filaments. They were such feminine wings, both playful and seductive.

With a sigh, Trevor settled deeper into the miasma he floated in, feeling warm and at peace. He’d gone from hel to heaven... because of her.

She’d saved him. She’d kil ed the things that had tortured him for so long, taking their repulsive lives with gruesome deaths. He’d listened to their screams with a near maniacal joy, and when he had seen the copious amounts of blood splattered on his guardian angel’s clothes and her beautiful face, he’d loved her all the more.

Then she’d ordered that hel hole burned to the ground. She had stood there with him and watched it go up in flames, making certain he knew that his ordeal was well and truly over. He’d been avenged.

His gratitude and adoration for her was so intense it swamped him. It crashed over him like the gentle waves he laid upon, overflowing his eyes with tears.

“Trevor. ”

He sighed at the sound of his name spoken in her melodious voice. There was a rhythm to her words that moved him, lured him. He thought he might fol ow that voice anywhere. Even out of blessed, comfortable unconsciousness.

“Trevor, wake up now.”

Opening his eyes, he looked up to find his angel leaning over him, and his breath caught at her incandescent beauty. She had such pale, creamy skin and it was beautiful y framed by her inky hair. Her lips were plush and berry ripe, so soft-looking he wished he could touch them with his fingertips. She was the first and only thing he’d yet seen after endless days in pitch dark. If she was also the last thing he saw, he’d die a happy man.

“Thank you.” He was startled by the strength and ful ness of his voice. She seemed startled by it, too, blinking a moment before the faintest hint of a frown marred the space between her brows.

Swal owing, he realized his throat was no longer parched and aching. And then he understood. She hadn’t saved his life; she’d come to col ect him after his death.

“Damn it,” he growled. “I died in that hel pit.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m dead, right?” He looked around, finding heaven to be... not what he’d expected. They were in a smal, windowless room. He lay on a couch. There was a coffee table and an entertainment center with the standard equipment. A door set off to the side appeared to lead into a bathroom, while another led... somewhere else.

“No, you’re not.” Her mouth curved into something like a smile, and his heart skipped a beat at the sight of it. “How are you feeling?”

Trevor did a quick mental inventory, amazed to find that he felt pretty good. Awesome, actual y. “I feel great.”

“I did a hack job on your hair,” she said with a regretful wince. “Sorry about that, but it was in bad shape.”

He sat up, all owing the blankets tucked around his shoulders to fal into his lap. He shoved his hands through his hair, assessing its length. Lowering his arms, he looked for evidence of the bites he’d endured and found none. Then he stared at her, wondering if he’d final y gone insane and this encounter was merely a figment of his warped imagination.

“Where are your wings?”

“Tucked away.”

“I can’t see them.” Shit. What did it mean that he couldn’t see them?

“Would you like to?”

“Yes. Yes, I would. Please.”

She stood and backed up to an open space.

He watched, riveted, as sinuous tendrils of smoke appeared above her shoulders and gradual y took on the shape and substance of wings.

The same gorgeous-as-the-dawn wings he remembered. Unable to help himself, he pushed off the blankets and stood. He moved toward her with his hand outstretched, wanting to touch.

“Trevor.”

God, he loved her voice. Even now, when it sounded choked. “Yeah?”

Her wings disappeared an instant before he touched them. “You’re naked.”

“I am, yes.” He glanced down the length of his body and cringed inwardly. He was way, way too thin. And pale as a ghost.

“I brought you some clothes.” She gestured to the neatly folded pile of clothes on the coffee table. “They’re probably going to be a little big, but you’l grow into them. You should put them on.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “Is nudity a bad thing around here?”

Her lips twitched; then an actual smile broke free, dazzling him. “You’re really, truly not dead. We’re presently in Ontario, California. And, yes, in Southern California nudity can still get you arrested.”

“I’m alive.” He tried to let that information sink in, but it continued to hover in the realm of implausibility.

“You are. You should sit down. You’ve suddenly grown very pale.”

Taking her advice, he sat. “I’m still alive, and you’re an angel.”

“That’s right.” She resumed her seat by the couch, looking like a wicked pixie with her diminutive size, black T-shirt and boots, and urban camouflage pants. “Two nights ago, my crew and I raided a vampire nest just outside of Seattle. We found you there, in the basement. You were kept captive for almost a year.”

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04