Page 2 of Love Bites (Timber Creek #2)
CHAPTER 2
MAX
I loved strolling through PRIC Headquarters. The gleaming white floors and walls. The utter lack of character or personality anywhere with its austere modern architecture. The constant sneers of disdain from every uptight angel in the place as they caught sight of me and hurried away, all too aware of my less-than-savory reputation.
My all-black attire, hair, and wings had always set me apart from other angels, but the muddy boot prints and flecks of dried blood I left behind me with every step? Those were special to tonight, and I loved leaving my mark.
“Ah, Gabriella, pleasure as always.” I smirked at the angel sitting behind a white marble desk beneath an aptly labeled but unironic sign reading LOBBY. She stood and circled the desk, her white wings gleaming as she frowned at the three of us. Like most angels, Gabriella’s silver hair and eyes matched that of her formal business attire, a boring grey wrap dress and matching heels that added to Headquarters’ clinical feel. Her gaze flicked to the girl at my side, then to the man bound by shadows at my feet, before looking down at the tablet in her hand.
“Massimo,” she said, nails tapping on the screen as her frown deepened. “There are no pending assignments here for you showing acquisitions. Have you followed the protocol?”
“Ah.” I reached forward, swiping aggressively across her tablet as electricity buzzed along my hand, zapping the device until the screen went black. “So weird how that always seems to happen for me, isn’t it? Must be a glitch in your protocol .”
She sighed, bringing the now useless tablet to her chest.
“And these are —?” She raised a silvery brow at the girl, then the fucker at my feet, seeming to spot the dirt I tracked in and wrinkling her nose.
“Human garbage for interrogation.” I kicked Joe with the steel toe of my boots, having replaced my dark shadow magic with my angel powers to hold his arms behind his back. He groaned at the kick, the sound muffled by his gagged mouth. “And —” I quirked a brow at the girl, realizing I hadn’t stopped to ask her name.
“Hailey,” she offered quietly. “I’m a wolf shifter.”
I nodded in thanks. “— here to make a statement against her kidnapper here.”
Gabriella pursed her lips, then walked back to her desk and typed in a code on a keypad there. A moment later, another angel in a full grey suit emerged and dragged Joe away unceremoniously.
I turned to go when I felt a tug on the sleeve of my jacket.
“You’re leaving me?”
My brows furrowed as I glanced down to Hailey’s small hand on me, then back up at her. Her wide eyes met mine, and unless I was mistaken, she seemed to be pleading with me to stay.
As gently as I could, I plucked her hand off my arm. Wolves were so damn touchy.
“You’re safe now, Hailey. Gabriella will take good care of you, and we’ll get you to Timber Creek shortly.” I shot the angel a warning look, but like the professional she was, Gabriella merely gave a curt nod in return.
But Hailey was still biting her lip. And it made me feel… something.
I grimaced.
“I can… check on you later?” I offered, at a loss for what to do.
Gabriella barely stifled a snort.
Taking a steadying breath, Hailey gave a brave-faced nod. My hand moved on its own, patting her awkwardly on the head.
What the fuck?
Clearing my throat, I gave Gabriella one last nod, then got the hell out of there.
Unlike most angels, I hadn’t grown up in Headquarters — a combined residence and office space for angels in a realm all its own. White hallways as empty and boring as the Lobby circled an atrium, revealing what I liked to think of as a fancy birdcage in the center. The only difference between areas were the labeled floors and hallways, but even those were white on white, embedded in the walls in a maze of bland . This wasn’t home, but I knew my way around well enough to find my father’s office.
Wings flapped in the distance as angels flew from floor to floor, going about business as usual as I approached the atrium. I stopped on the edge of a platform jutting out into thin air, a hundred-foot drop below me, letting my black wings spread wide. With a deep breath, I launched into the air, only needing a few beats of my wings to lift the few stories to the top floor, entirely dedicated to the Premier, the leader of our supernatural society and my father. Dark wings fully extended, I felt the weight of every pair of eyes here, the same way I always did. The Dark Angel, both literally and figuratively.
I relished in every wince at the sight of me.
My secret heritage wasn’t widely known, but with vampires joining the fold of supernatural society, more and more questioning gazes lingered on my dark features, so different from my father.
So different from every full-blooded angel. Because I wasn’t one.
Daddy’s dirty secret.
Malachi Russo, Premier, the shining silver plaque next to his door read as I reached his office, and I rolled my eyes. All it needed was a magical ticker of the number of days since he’d last set a drink down without a coaster to display how practically perfect he was.
Striding into his office without knocking — he’d demanded me here immediately, after all — I smirked when his gaze hardened at my attire, polar opposite to his crisp charcoal pinstripe suit and white button-down.
I held my arms out wide. “Present, as ordered, Father dearest.”
He sighed, closing a manila folder on his desk. “Close the door.”
It slammed with an effortless twist of my magic, and I threw myself into one of the armchairs — white, now to be stained with human blood — across from his desk.
To my dismay, he hardly seemed to notice. His grey hair seemed whiter, his olive skin paler, the faint wrinkles bracketing his mouth deeper. Angels didn’t age the way humans did, a fact my several hundred-year-old father could attest to, but today he looked… older.
“We have a situation.”
I didn’t bother righting myself in the chair, not feeling the need to pay attention yet. With my father, a “situation” could have been anything from another species was outed to the human world, to his pristine white rug had a stain he couldn’t get out.
Suddenly, he frowned, sniffing the air, and gave me a once-over before glaring at me. “You killed them? Again?”
I put my hands up. “Oops.”
“We need them alive to get more information.”
“I kept one alive this time. He’s on his way to Interrogation now, and he even mentioned Delta. Aren’t you so proud?”
With a deep sigh, he spun in his chair as a screen built into the wall behind his desk turned on, playing a news clip from earlier today.
“Police are still searching the Boston area for the attacker. Residents have been advised to walk in pairs at night and be on the lookout for a man described as at least six feet tall, last seen wearing a dark hoodie. The autopsy revealed puncture marks in the neck which the Medical Examiner believes to have been caused by — and this is not fantasy — fangs . Whether this was a cosplayer gone overboard, the work of a werewolf, or something else, only time will tell. For Nightly News, this is —”
Malachi muted the video. I raised my eyebrows.
“Next snack? I mean” — I held up my hands — “my apologies, is that victim’s attacker my next mission ?”
He shook his head. “The victim was drained of blood.”
Hm. A rogue wolf shifter could , theoretically, do that. It would make a hell of a mess, and there would be far more damage to the body than neat fang pricks like the newscaster described, but it wasn’t impossible. Not likely, but neither was the idea that —
“This was a vampire, Massimo,” he interrupted my thoughts. His steely grey eyes met mine pointedly. “And it was no accident that they got carried away, or left the body. They’re sending a message.”
I righted my legs, resting my elbows on my knees as I leaned forward, not quite believing the most secretive species of supernaturals would be so blatant. “What message is that?”
Malachi pulled a photograph from the manila folder on his desk, tossing it over to me. It showed a female body face down on a dark street — presumably the one from the news report — sickly white from blood loss, with the words back off written in blood across her bare shoulders uncovered by her halter top.
I held the photo closer, examining it for any minute detail. A dark figure stood with their back to the camera, but in view, nonetheless. If it was a vampire, they made no efforts to use shadows to hide themselves from the street cameras that had captured the news footage, nor any attempt to cover their kill. Both were unusual for a vampire used to hiding and operating in the shadows, gifted with the ability to hide themselves and erase memories of their presence with magic.
They were gloating.
“My best guess? The Conclave heard about us trying to track them down as part of the census, and they want us to stand down or else —” He gestured to the photo. “They’re saying they can make this sort of thing start happening all the time if we don’t do as they demand.”
I scratched along my jaw, still not seeing how this related to me.
For the past few months, I’d been helping my father track down supernaturals living on the fringes of society. All too often, I ended up discovering they were missing, which led me to their kidnappers. Our main goal was to prevent situations like Hailey found herself in tonight, especially for these at-risk kids with no one to notice they were gone. Malachi had a hunch it was all connected somehow, but until we had a complete census of who and where supernaturals resided, it was hard to see the full picture.
Shockingly, not all supes were on board with the idea of a census. The main holdouts being the vampires, via the Conclave — the organization that lorded over all vampires, headed by the oldest, most lethal of the species.
“That’s where you come in,” Malachi continued, seeming to read my mind.
But mind-reading wasn’t a skill angels had, and dear old Dad was as Angel as they came.
I snapped my fingers. “Let me guess. You want me out there spreading the good word to the community about the joys of togetherness. All for one and one for all, right? Should I coordinate some photo-ops kissing babies and visiting donut shops —”
“Community outreach, Massimo? Honestly.” He shook his head.
We shared a glance that was almost conspiratorial. For all my father’s good intentions, interacting with the public was probably the last thing he ever wanted to do. Wasn’t high on my list either. “Do tell, then.”
“I know you don’t know much about vampire society but?—”
“Whose fault is that again?”
“—the Conclave is only a small minority of their people, and even less of a representation than our angel Council used to be. The Conclave members might not want this, but individual dens might be willing to cooperate. With one of their own.” He leveled a meaningful look at me.
I glanced around the room behind me, then pointed at my chest in question. His jaw twitched.
“Look.” He sighed, and suddenly, there was something unfamiliar in my father’s eyes. Something like… concern? “I’ve kept you away from as many of your kind as I could for a reason, only asking you to step into the role of Dante when absolutely necessary.”
I frowned at the use of my alternate identity I used when interacting with vampire society, at my father’s insistence I keep my heritage and ties to him hidden. “And let me guess. This is now absolutely necessary.”
“You’ve gotten the smallest taste of how dangerous vampire dens can be,” he said, reminding me of the one and only assignment he’d given me to meet with some vampires on the East Coast. I’d almost died, and we’d never spoken of it again. “They’re not an accepting species. They like to act first and ask questions never. Their rules are archaic and barbaric, making the Mafia look tame. But we can’t just let them attack humans, or other supernaturals, like this without consequences.”
I sat back in my chair with a dark laugh, because wasn’t this an ironic twist? Malachi had kept my heritage as the darkest secret, explaining my unusual features as the angel’s version of a genetic mutation — appalling enough to the perfectionist angel society to make them all react like I was a leper. He’d held whatever knowledge he had about vampires so close to his chest, even I knew next to nothing about my mother’s people.
Obviously he knew enough about vampires to sire a half vamp son, and yet, in the last minute, had shared more insider information into vampire society than he had in my whole life. I knew better than to ask questions about his past, but this all felt a bit too convenient.
“They’ve been attacking humans and supes and whoever the fuck they want for centuries, unbeknownst to almost everyone. Why ride their asses about this now? We can deal with getting the other supes in order first. Find this damn Delta and bury the whole organization six feet under.”
“ Now they’re making the news,” Malachi said, handing over the rest of the folder. Half a dozen other reports already filled it from around the world. “Boston. New York. Paris. London. Rome. Tokyo. They’re hitting major cities around the world and shoving it in our faces. Testing us, to see what we’ll do. There’s already too much attention on the shifters the public does know about now, and discussions have begun on how we protect the other supernatural species — whether we reveal them on our own terms, or continue to hide them as we’ve tried to do for centuries. There was a Council meeting last month to discuss our plan moving forward?—”
I hummed, resting my elbow on the chair’s arm, and pressing a finger into my temple. “Let me guess, the vamps didn’t agree with your ideas.”
“The only way we control the narrative is if we are the ones to tell the world about ourselves.” He held up the folder of evidence the vampires were leaving around the world. “This isn’t it.”
“So, what did the Council decide?”
Malachi sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers. “Nothing, as of yet. My idea to slowly introduce the world to the idea of more supernaturals wasn’t one the Council was fond of.”
“What did the vamps want?”
His stare turned deadpan. “To disappear and let the Conclave self-govern once more, but we can’t let that happen again. We all need to band together.”
“What do you mean, again ?” I leaned forward. “You know how vampires have gone under the radar all these centuries, don’t you?”
“A thousand years ago, vampires were exterminated. Or so it was thought,” Malachi began, and I nearly held my breath in disbelief that he was finally revealing this to me. “As I’ve said, vampires are dangerous, their powers equal to, and in some cases greater than, even angels’. They are supernaturals’ greatest predators, almost impossible to kill, and the greatest threat to our secret existence as they prey on humans. The other species came together, and hunted them to extinction, letting their lore pass into myth and legend and stories. Clearly, they weren’t all killed.”
“And clearly, not all supernaturals believed they were gone,” I added pointedly.
“Everyone was told they were gone completely,” Malachi continued. “To the best of our knowledge, they had been eradicated. Only a few angels remained vigilant, and passed down to their successors the truth — that vampires were very real once, and that if there had been any left, they might return.”
“Conspiracy theorists will love this one,” I muttered under my breath, and Malachi cut me a glare. “So, what, you went looking for them one day? Tripped and your dick slid home?”
The lamp crackled on his desk. “That is a story for another time.”
I rolled my eyes. “As always.”
“Massimo.”
“So, you go looking for them a little over a hundred years ago, you obviously find them” — I gesture to myself — “then what? Did you single handedly decide not to tell anyone else they were still around?”
“The Council met to decide what to do. But the fact was, vampires had been quiet. They weren’t causing problems, they didn’t interfere with the other species. Their terms were simple: live and let live. We don’t bother them, they don’t bother us.” Letting out a sigh, Malachi rubbed a hand down his face. “At the time, our options were limited. We couldn’t be sure of their numbers compared to ours, and we had other preoccupations.”
“And you agreed. With vampires. To just leave them alone, unchecked, and trust they would keep their word.”
“If your tone is suggesting that was a foolish decision, I’ll remind you hindsight is 20-20.”
“So this is retaliation?” I raised an eyebrow, looking down at the folder. “For going back on your word to let them live separately?”
“Yes. But we can’t let this stand, not when the Conclave is letting vampires be so blatant.”
“So your proposal is…”
“The Conclave is corrupt. That much was evident even a century ago. I refuse to believe they represent the will of their people. Despite vampires’ violent nature, I have reason to believe most of them don’t want to be secluded anymore. Wouldn’t want to essentially declare war on the rest of the supernatural world like this.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Reason?”
“The first step,” he continued, ignoring me, “is talking to them — to the people , not the Conclave. We need to know what the general vampire population actually thinks. If we can get them to work with us, instead of against us, we could save a lot of lives.”
I shuffled through the reports in the folder. Bloodless bodies and bite marks left in places meant for humans to find. They knew the media would pin this on the shifters, not having a better explanation, and it would ruin any efforts the Council made to present the rest of the supe world as non-violent.
“ If. ”
Malachi nodded as I set the folder on his desk. “Yes. If.”
“And if not ?”
I met his gaze, but he didn’t answer. We both knew the answer anyway. Like he said, vampires were violent. Snack first, questions never.
When he spoke next, his voice had dropped from his Premier tone to the one I almost never heard anymore. The fatherly one. The one that, every once in a while, revealed he did in fact have emotions somewhere deep, deep down.
“If there were anyone else I could send in, Max.”
I blinked. He almost never called me that, despite it being my preferred name.
This was getting ridiculous.
“Why send anyone else when I’m clearly the best for the job?” I rapped my knuckles on the chair, looking around vaguely for a drink, but of course angels were too uptight to keep alcohol at work. Freaking PRICs. “Where do I start?”
Malachi grimaced. “Well, that’s the other thing. Your last meeting was arranged ahead of time, but that won’t work if we’re trying to avoid the Conclave. Dens are almost impossible to find.”
My eye twitched. “Great. I’m so glad we had this whole conversation then. I love giving up my hard-earned interrogation to some junior angel enforcer for nothing.”
His tone went right back to Premier mode as he continued, “Are there any wolves you trust?”
I frowned, wondering where he was going with this. “Why?”
“You need one.” I zoned out as he explained everything he knew about locating dens and how a wolf’s keen senses might be the key, but I was stuck on the whole someone you trust thing. “But when I say dens are dangerous, I mean it. Find someone you can take with you, someone who will protect your back.”
And there was the crux of the matter.
I trusted no one.
I stood to go, more than ready to go find myself a whiskey, a hot shower, and possibly an outlet for all of this pent-up frustration. Not necessarily in that order.
“Before you go.” Malachi stood also, the two of us almost the same height, and hesitated a moment before opening his desk drawer and pulling out an envelope. His fingers tightened around it. “I — I debated whether or not to give this to you.”
Always the dramatics. “Hand it over or not, then.”
“It’s from your mother.”
My heart stopped.
There had been a time in my youth when I’d been desperate to know my mother. To know anything about her, or her people. I’d grown up without a single other vampire in my life, and the one time I’d gone looking had not gone well.
“I don’t want it,” I snapped, years of anger, of resentment, heating my blood.
“It was left behind in the Council chambers after the Conclave was here last week, but it’s addressed to you?—”
“Oh, now she wants to reach out?”
“— And it might help with what comes next.”
I stared at him. “Hunting vampires, you mean.” Tilting my head, I studied his face. “Have you read it?”
He shook his head. “Of course not.”
I hummed. As if such a breach of privacy were beyond him. Hilarious.
“Just take it, Massimo. Read it or not. It’s yours, and it was my duty to deliver it.”
“Such a diligent messenger pigeon.”
The lamp on the desk flickered, then sparked as Malachi’s irritation got the better of him. My job here was done.
“Fine.” I snatched it out of his hand, crumpling it as I stuffed it into my pocket, striding for the door.
“Be careful out there, son. Don’t get into any fights you can’t win. We still have a lot of things to get done together to make this world safe for our kind, and I’ll need you back in one piece to do them.”
Of course, his main concern was my skill set, the greatest tool in his arsenal. The worst part was I could hardly fault him — his motives were pure, making the world safe for all supernaturals. So what if the casualty was our relationship? Sometimes I wondered if that was why he’d fathered me at all, assuming it was intentional. To create his ultimate hybrid weapon.
But this wasn’t the Oprah Winfrey show. Our feelings didn’t matter.
I flexed my wings, shooting him a look over my shoulder as I readied my shadows to get the fuck out of here.
“Don’t you know, Pops? There is no fight I can’t win.”