A drop of blood falls on my lips, followed by a second that rouses me when it trails through the seam of my mouth and onto my tongue.
“Drink, baby.”
I blink my heavy eyes open to find Dariana smiling down at me softly while a human girl sits beside me on the edge of the couch with her wrist pressed firmly against my lips. I frown, trying to piece together what’s happened. I had a dream. I injured my leg.
Now the girl?
“Don’t think so hard. Just drink.”
Judging by the dazed look on the girl, she’s not fully here, realizing what’s happening. Maybe her mind is still in the human world. She’s definitely not an enslaved person in these lands. Her blood is too rich. Too potent.
“Good girl,” Dariana encourages, brushing my hair out of my eyes when I grip the wrist tighter and take deeper pulls. My body takes over, shutting away my innocent angel in a back room where she can bang her fists against the wall all she wants. We need to feed to regain our strength, my body says, retreating back to the here and now and the healing blood that’s slipping down my throat.
Daemon is pacing over by the mantelpiece like a caged, feral animal. The flames in the fire are high and flicker wildly. “Why isn’t she healing?”
“Relax,” Dariana says, watching me. “It takes time.”
My eyes roll toward the back of my head. I dig my teeth in even further, relishing the girl’s pained whimpers. No one says a thing; they wait while the human’s heartbeat slows before stopping altogether. The last weak thump is loud in the room. The ensuing silence is even louder. Daemon chews on his thumbnail as he continues pacing. Ronan sits on one of the armchairs with his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, and Alaric toys with a yo-yo of all things. Up and down it slides, again and again. It seems to be the one thing keeping me grounded. That yellow spinning circle—a splash of color in a dark world.
“Anything?” Daemon snaps.
Dariana slowly removes the girl’s wrist from my mouth, ignoring my snarling. “The human is dead. There’s no more blood to be had.”
The girl slumps over on the floor, empty eyes gazing upwards.
I shoot upright, snarling when Dariana touches my thigh.
“It’s okay,” she soothes my animal. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Soft fingers trail over the damaged skin, too gentle to hurt. I breathe harshly through my flaring nostrils. Pain is all I’ve known here in Hell. Pain in all its forms. Life outside of Eden hurts in more ways than one. I’m starting to see now that there’s a sharp thorn for every fragile petal of pleasure.
“It’s healing. Let her rest.”
“One of us needs to stay with her at all fucking times. If she got this injured today, fuck knows how bad it’ll be next time.”
“What did she say happened?” Ronan asks, looking up.
Daemon rubs his hands over his face. “She said she fell over a tree trunk.”
Dariana knits her brows together, glancing between the boys. “And this started with the meditation?”
“Yeah, she said she scratched her arms on the tree branches. After class, she had scratches all over.”
“And now it’s happening in her dreams?”
“What’s your point?” Daemon asks, exasperated. “How the fuck can she hurt herself in her dreams like that?”
“I don’t know,” Dariana says quietly, “but I think we need to accept the fact that she’s an angel, and we know nothing about ‘true’ angels.”
“She’s changing,” Alaric comments without looking up, and they all glance over at him. “Her wings stay white, but she’s growing fangs and thirsting for blood. I bet she’ll be able to master fire soon.”
“So she’s becoming a fallen angel?” Ronan asks, leaning back in his chair and placing his ankle on his knee.
Alaric lets the yo-yo spin out, leaving it dangling in the air. “Scrap what I just said. She’s not changing. She became a fallen angel the moment she snuck out of Eden because of her own curiosity. Curiosity, which, might I add, has no place in Eden.”
Daemon throws his arms out. “So?”
Pocketing his yo-yo and walking over to one of the spare armchairs, Alaric plops down, kicking his shoe up on the footrest. “What does it mean to be a fallen angel? You say she’s growing fangs? But besides the color of her wings, she’s not physically different from us, which must mean the fangs have always been there, unused. To be a fallen angel simply means a fall from grace. Take Adam and Eve, for example. They were blissfully unaware of each other’s nakedness until Eve took a bite out of the apple from the Tree of Knowledge. It wasn’t until we took her in that she opened her eyes. We are the apple she bit into.”
Ronan snorts with laughter but stifles it when Daemon shoots him a glare.
“Go on,” Daemon says to Alaric.
“I’m just saying, she’s not turning into a fallen angel; she already is one. She fell from grace. She took a bite out of the apple of knowledge—”
“I don’t give a shit about the fucking apple,” Daemon growls.
“Knowledge, Daemon! Think about it. She knows about sex now. There are no cravings in heaven. She now has desires and needs because of her newfound awareness. The promise of fulfillment is the driving factor behind a lot of her decisions. She’s had a taste of blood and death, so she now hungers. How can you ever feel hunger of any kind if you’ve never tasted sustenance?”
“That makes no sense. Surely they must have some fucking desires in Eden? What do they do all day?”
The others shrug.
“What has any of this got to do with her dreams?”
“It hasn’t,” Alaric shrugs. “My point is simply that we don’t know anything about true angels. I mean, look at us. We’ve evolved black wings to blend in with the dark environment. An angel with black wings in Eden would stand out like a sore thumb. But a safe assumption is that angels are born with the highest potential. Why would she suddenly grow fangs because she walks through a gate? She wouldn’t. The potential for hunger—to become a predator—was always there. She was born with a clit, right, so the potential to feel horny was always there. She just needed to see. Get it? Don’t ask me why they don’t fuck like rabbits in Eden, because I don’t fucking know. Maybe they’re all Eunuchs. But that’s beside the point. What’s happening to her now is not new. It’s not that she’s changing. Her knowledge is expanding, and her form is blossoming into its highest potential. Does that make sense?”
Daemon blinks. “No, it doesn’t. It makes no sense whatsoever. How is that supposed to help us? We are nowhere near figuring out how the fuck she can hurt herself when she’s meditating or sleeping? And blossoming? Really? Who the fuck talks like that?”
“Wait, wait, slow down,” Dariana says, cogs ticking over. “The part you mentioned about our feathers evolving to help us blend in with the environment. Centuries have passed since the fall, right?”
“So?”
“We’ve adjusted to our environment. Sure, we came to our full potential, as Alaric put it, but we have also evolved. Take hellfire, for example. Do you truly think a true angel can conjure fire? Think about it! Fire is unique to Hell. What, then, is unique to Eden?”
Ronan’s eyes widen and he straightens. “Light!”
“Exactly!” Dariana snaps her fingers. “Light! Somewhere inside her, she must have access to the light.”
Alaric stands up and starts pacing, dragging his thumb across his lips. “The Bible speaks of redemption. If Eden can let her out, there must be a way back in.”
“I’m so fucking lost,” Daemon says, throwing his arms up. “Who the fuck cares about the Bible?”
“I’m just saying, the God of the Bible is a God of love.”
Daemon snorts with disgust.
“She can turn away from the light, but she can’t be apart from the light,” Dariana murmurs.
“We don’t have time for philosophical bullshit! How do we keep her from getting impaled by a fucking tree branch in her sleep?”
“A tree branch?” laughs Ronan, and Daemon’s head snaps his way.
“What I want to know is what’s behind that door?” Dariana murmurs, looking back at me. I’m too exhausted to follow their back and forth. The pain in my thigh is slowly ebbing away.
“You said she can turn away from the light, but she can’t be apart from the light,” Alaric muses, leaning with his hands on the mantelpiece, watching the flames burn brighter. “What happens if she turns toward the Light?”
“And how would she do that, huh?” Daemon comments drily. “Eden refused her entrance when she was begging outside to be let back in.”
“She’s not of the dark. Do away with the dark, and only light remains. The light is who she is,” Dariana says.
“This philosophical shit is getting on my last nerve!” Daemon flops down in one of the armchairs, rests his head on the back, and stares up at the ceiling. “She’s not returning to Eden. She tried that, and it didn’t work. The meditation exercise was meant to teach us to tap into our power. That’s what her dreams are about: her accessing her power. And somehow, for some reason, she gets hurt. Maybe because she hasn’t learned how to harness it yet.”
“Who’s the deep one now?” Alaric teases, pushing off the mantelpiece.
“We’re screwed either way,” Ronan says, his eyes on the fire. “If her power is directly connected to the Light, we can’t help her. We have no experience with anything holy. Throwing fireballs is not in the same league as the Light.”
“And then there’s your fucking uncle,” Alaric comments. “We can’t catch a fucking break.”
Their voices drift into the background as exhaustion drags me into a dreamless sleep.
