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Angel's Pain
Maggie Shayne
Blood and vengeance… Briar needs just two things: blood and vengeance. The first sustains her immortal life; the second gives it meaning. First on her hit list is Gregor, the renegade vampire who schooled her in brutality, then betrayed and tortured her.To achieve her deadly ends, Briar joins the inscrutable Reaper and his misfit gang of vampires who are also hunting her old mentor. But once she’s destroyed Gregor, she’ll be gone. The group means nothing to her.Not even Reaper, despite their shared moment of pure passion. Because Briar needs only to satisfy her twin hungers – ones that may ultimately consume her.A MUST-READ for fans of SHERRILYN KENYON and CHARLAINE HARRIS
Multiple New York Times bestseller Maggie Shayne is one of the hottest authors currently writing paranormal romance.
Her works are fresh and sexy, carrying the reader into a darkly compelling and fully realised world where vampires are creatures of the heart, not just the night.
Also by MAGGIE SHAYNE
DEMON’S KISS
LOVER’S BITE
ANGEL’S PAIN
NIGHT’S EDGE
(with Charlaine Harris and Barbara Hambly)
Angel’s Pain
Maggie Shayne
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
Prologue
Gregor didn’t need to get very close to watch his target. He was a vampire, after all, thanks to the efforts of his employers in the CIA.
They had created him, set him up in style, taught him secrets unknown even to other vamps, all to serve their own purposes. His mission, they had told him, was to become the most notorious rogue vampire imaginable. A rogue, a vampire who killed humans at will without remorse or caution, would not be long tolerated by the rest of vampire society. They would send someone after him, and Reaper would be their most likely choice. All part of the plan.
When Reaper came for him, Gregor was supposed to capture the former CIA assassin turned vampire turned vampiric hit man, and return him into the agency’s tender care.
The problem was, Gregor had changed his mind, and he was pretty sure his supervisor knew it. He’d decided he liked being a rogue vampire. He liked taking whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it, without apology. He liked the wealth he was accumulating by taking everything his victims had to give. And he especially liked the power he gained when he murdered one of his own kind.
Reaper’s blood would be some of the most powerful he could imagine. He had been made by Rhiannon, who had been made by Dracula himself. Powerful.
And now he had other reasons to want to take vengeance on the arrogant undead prick. Reaper had stolen his woman from him. He’d had no right to do that. Gregor had plucked the ungrateful little bitch from the gutters, transformed her, taken her in. And Briar had repaid him by sleeping with the enemy.
Oh, yes, the two of them had some serious pain coming.
But first things first.
If the CIA had guessed that Gregor was no longer their obedient lapdog but was, instead, working for his own gain, they would try to have him eliminated. And since the agent who’d been in charge of him, Magnarelli, had been killed during a recent scuffle with Reaper and his gang, the entire case had reverted to Derrick Dwyer, the special agent who had been Reaper’s direct supervisor and who’d been running the whole operation from behind the scenes all along.
Gregor didn’t trust Dwyer. But he needed to know what the bastard had in store for him. And besides, Dwyer might have a line on Reaper and Briar.
So now Gregor was lurking outside Dwyer’s home in rural Connecticut. He was five hundred yards away from the small Cape Cod, concealed by shrubbery and a youngish pinon pine. From his position, he could see Dwyer clearly as the man moved around beyond the windows. Tall, awkwardly thin, with an Ichabod Crane profile from nose to Adam’s apple, Dwyer was six months from retirement. Getting Reaper back into custody and completing his work with Gregor—possibly by putting Gregor into the grave—would be his final assignment.
Gregor relaxed, surrounded by the fragrance of the pine tree’s lower branches, watching by the light of a nearly full moon. He had all night, after all. Dwyer flipped on a computer, then moved out of sight. When he returned, he was carrying a coffee mug in one hand, steam spiraling from its mouth. He set it on the desk, put on a minuscule headset, and then paused, turned and stared straight at the window behind him.
Gregor ducked, even though he knew the mortal couldn’t see him, much less sense him there. It was a knee-jerk reaction, and a ludicrous one. Or was it? As he watched, Dwyer got up, moved to the window and lowered the blinds.
Damn.
Rising from his position underneath the pine, Gregor lunged into rapid motion. He sped across the short distance between his vantage point and the house, stopping right beside the window. And then he peered through the slits in the blinds, and was able to see and hear everything as if he were inside looking over Dwyer’s shoulder.
“Everythin’s fine,” Dwyer was saying softly, in his very slight Irish brogue. There was very little of it remaining, but it was clear to the perceptions of a vampire. “Nothin’s goin’ to hurt you. This is perfectly natural. There’s nothin’ to be afraid of.”
Frowning, Gregor stared at the computer screen. It was dark. He could hear what sounded like rapid breaths coming through Dwyer’s earpiece. Like a child getting ready to cut loose and cry its heart out.
“Open yer eyes for me. Go on. I want you to look around, see everythin’ around you.”
The way Dwyer spoke also suggested he was speaking to a child. Odd, Gregor thought. He’d expected Dwyer to be solely focused on one case and one case only—Reaper’s. But apparently he had something entirely unrelated going on.
Or was it?
As Gregor watched, the black screen changed, as if a shade had been lifted, and he couldn’t make out what it was showing at first. And then he realized what it was. It was a camera’s eye view. As if the camera on the other end were walking through a long hallway, turning left and right, moving slightly up and down with the cadence of the foot-steps.
“Could you go on outside, hon? Just step or two outside?”
“I’m not supposed to go out alone,” a voice said, clearly and suddenly, making Gregor snap to sharper attention. It was a female voice. Adult, and yet childlike at the same time.
“You’re not really goin’ anywhere. Just step outside the door. It’ll only take a minute, I promise. Then you can go right back in.”
There was a bobbing motion on the screen, as if the camera were nodding. And then there was a door looming before the lens, and a slender, pale hand gripping the knob and pushing it open. The screen showed what she saw as she looked outside—a wet street, with cars rushing past now and then. Streetlights and headlights cast their glowing reflections on the slick black pavement, and no moon shone in the sky. It was not a clear warm evening, as it was here.
Dwyer watched the cars and muttered, “New York plates. Jersey. Florida. Indiana.” He sighed. “Do me a favor, lass, and just turn to your left. What can you see in that direction?”
The camera’s point of view changed. Something fell over the screen, and as Gregor frowned, trying to see what it was, a hand rose and brushed it away. It was a lock of hair. It had fallen over the girl’s eyes, and she had moved it away. As if…as if…Gregor swore under his breath as he realized that this woman on the other end of the computer connection wasn’t just holding the camera. Somehow, she was the camera.
His mind whirled with questions, possibilities, theories, but he had to bring his focus back to the matter at hand. He refocused on that computer screen and saw brick buildings, more wet roads, more streetlamps. Not a sign or a business in sight.
“Now turn the other way,” Dwyer ordered.
“I don’t want to,” the girl said, but she turned. A gas station came into view. Its sign read SUNOCO. Its prices were listed. There was nothing else to help identify where it might be.
“I need to go in now.”
“No, no, not yet, sweetheart. You need to walk a little ways. Just to the corner, where there’s a street sign or—”
“My head hurts,” she whined. And then there was soft sobbing.
“It’s goin’ to hurt like that when you refuse to do what you’re told, I’m afraid. It’s just the way this works.”
The girl sniffled. “What about the little boy?”
“What little boy?” Dwyer asked.
“He comes into my head, just like you do. Only I can see him. I can’t see you, I can only hear you, but I can see him. And he needs me, and I want to help him, but I don’t know who he is or where he is or how to help him. Is he with you?”
“No,” Dwyer said. “Listen, as far as I know, that other vision, that boy, it’s not real, love. It’s likely comin’ from a different part of your mind—your imagination, maybe. I’m thinkin’ that’s all it is. It’s not real, not like me.”
“He seems as real as you. He seems—he seems more real than you.”
“Go up to the corner, Crisa, or your head’s goin’ to start to hurt again.”
“Sometimes it hurts even when I do what you tell me.”
“That can’t be helped, Crisa. It’s a malfunction, and one I’ll fix just as soon as I see you. I promise. Go to the corner now, lass.”
The camera went dark, and Gregor thought the woman had closed her eyes. She moaned softly, and there was static and snow on the monitor, and then a shape. A human shape. A small one. It grew clearer as Gregor watched, until it took the form of a boy.
A boy he knew very, very well.
It was Matthias.
“I can’t help you anymore,” the girl moaned. “Briar’s looking for me. Good night.”
Briar!
Gregor backed away, stunned. Who the hell was this Crisa, and what kind of connection could she possibly have to Matthias? One thing was certain. She was a CIA plant. Somehow she’d been fitted with a camera and some sort of communications equipment, and inserted into Reaper’s gang of do-gooders—because that was, as far as he knew, where Briar remained.
And somehow, he couldn’t imagine how, she knew Matthias. She knew his son.
1
“There you are,” Briar said, her tone flat and uninterested as she leaned against the doorjamb. The little snowflake was standing on the sidewalk, blinking in the darkness like a doe caught in a spotlight. The perpetually confused look on her face was just as irritating as it always was. “What the hell are you doing outside, Crisa?”
The girl seemed to draw her focus away from wherever the hell it had been—Neverland, probably—and pin it on Briar at long last. Her hair was in its usual style. Briar’s initial opinion was that it had been combed with an eggbeater, and that was still the most accurate description. It was pale brown with blue highlights, short and unevenly cut. Her hair-care regimen seemed to be “fold in the mousse and beat until stiff peaks form.” She was heavily made up tonight, which was rare. Too much eyeliner, thicker on one eye than the other, bright green eye shadow, lashes like a spider’s hairy legs, straight lines of blush from her chin to her ear on each side of her face, and plum-colored lipstick. She wore a long-sleeved maroon shirt, made of the same material they made long johns from, with a lacy cream-colored camisole over the top of it—a combination that made no sense whatsoever. From the waist down, she sported a blazing orange broomstick skirt and a pair of red Converse high-tops.
As she took Crisa in, Briar came damn close to laughing, and that was something she never did. Besides, even she wasn’t heartless enough to want to kick a puppy. Okay, maybe an ordinary puppy, but not a brain-fried vampire-woman-child like Crisa.
The girl still hadn’t answered her question. She was just staring, blinking those great big brown eyes as if she didn’t understand Briar’s language.
“Hey.” Briar trotted down the three steps to the sidewalk and snapped her fingers in front of Crisa’s purple lips. “Ground Control to Major Tom. You reading me?”
“Huh?”
“How come you’re outside?”
“Oh. I don’t know, he told me to.”
Briar frowned a little harder. “Who told you to?”
“I don’t know.”
Suddenly alarmed, Briar clasped Crisa’s shoulder in a grip that was as tender as it was protective, and she didn’t bother to ask herself about that, or about the way her gut and fists clenched simulta-neously as she sought to drop-kick whatever asshole had been messing with her Crisa. She sent a quick glance up and down the sidewalk, along with her senses, in search of enemies. Mortal or vampire, it could be either type. God knew their little band of white-hats had made enough of both kinds. She didn’t see or sense anything, though.
“Crisa,” she said, focusing again on the girl. “It’s important that you tell me who told you to come outside.”
“But I don’t know.” The girl’s eyes began to dampen, and she pressed a hand to her forehead. “Please don’t be mad at me, Briar.”
“I’m not—” Briar bit her lip, realizing she’d barked the words at the girl. She softened her tone and tried to bank her frustration. “I’m not mad. Listen, you said someone told you to go outside. Was it someone in the house?”
“I don’t think so. More…in here.” As she said it, Crisa pressed her other hand to her head, cupping it between them. “God, it hurts.”
“Your head hurts?”
Crisa nodded, eyes closed.
“So it was a voice in your head that told you to come outside?”
“Yes. A man’s voice.”
Someone communicating with her, mentally, Briar thought. It had to be a vampire. Few mortals could manage telepathy with any real effective-ness.
“Did he say anything else to you, Crisa? Did he ask you to do anything else?”
Crisa nodded, lowering her hands to her sides, opening her eyes. “He wanted me to walk to the corner and look around. But then the boy came, and I got…distracted.”
“A boy came?”
Her nod was slow, her gaze turning inward. “He comes all the time,” she whispered, almost to herself.
“In the real world, Crisa, or is he in your head, too?”
“In my head. But not like the man. I can see the boy. I can feel him. He’s more like a dream.” She squeezed her eyes tighter. “It hurts, Briar!”
“Okay. Okay, come on, let’s get you inside.”
“You’re not mad?”
“No, you nutcase. Why would I be mad? It’s not your fault you’ve got a party going on in that head of yours, is it?”
“N-no.”
“I’ll bet Roxy can help you out with that headache, if you want. She and Ilyana are all into all that hocus-pocus shit. Healing with their hands. I imagine it makes ‘em feel like a little bit more than plain old mortals.”
“They’re not plain. They’re Chosen.”
“Still, a mortal’s a mortal’s a mortal, right?”
Crisa nodded, the movement choppy as they moved down the hall. “Will Reaper be mad?”
“No one’s mad, okay?” Briar sought to reassure her, and then decided to add a little enlightenment to boot. Hell, it couldn’t hurt. “Besides,” she said, “what do you care if anyone is mad at you? Toughen up, Crisa. If someone gives you crap, you give it right back and then some. Understand?”
Crisa looked at her and smiled just a little. “Yeah. I’ll give it right back.”
