Dark Wings (Never Dark Book 1) (2 page)

There was no way it was going to be that easy.

Tribulation

Lucas

I punched the brick wall of a Starbucks building. Below my fist, the wall cracked. I wasn’t stupid. I knew the Never Dark angels would freak out when they saw my brothers and I had come to Earth. I knew they’d send someone after me. What I didn’t know was that they’d send
her
. I couldn’t believe they sent her. How
fucking
heartless could they be? I could see it in her big, blue eyes, she was hurt by the new me, but that’s who I am now. I wasn’t Lucas anymore. I was no longer her mentor, her lover, or the angel protecting Earth and killing Demons. I was lost—gone forever.

I walked through the city, my shoes clickin
g against the concrete footpath. Nobody paid any attention to the blood that stained the skin around my nose or my shirt—they were too drunk to even realize. My nose had long since healed itself from her brutal kick. I smiled to myself.
God, she’s gotten so strong
. I recalled her standing before me. Her body looked so fit in her uniform. She was as beautiful and confident as I remembered. I was proud of her, ridiculously proud. It was a shame I couldn’t show it. I inhaled and my mind filled with the vision of her tightening her red ponytail. I’d developed a fetish for her hair ever since her first training session. The way it twirled around her as she practiced her defensive maneuvers was perfect. Along with the vision came a strawberry smell, it was her favorite scent of shampoo. I longed to run my hands through her waves again, to tug on it slightly as I often did when we made love. I sighed and punched a mailbox by the edge of an unknown road. The mailbox bent on its pole under my fist. Anger consumed me; thinking about her hurt, so I flipped the switch and turned my emotions off.

“I hate her!”
I shouted, making the drunken humans that drifted by jump.

I did hate her—or at least my demon side hated her. Sometimes, my brain spared me a few moments of normality and
all I could think about was her. Those few moments were the worst of my life. I hated my emotions. They were weak, especially when it came to Violet. I pictured myself staring into her bright blue eyes and squeezing her by the throat until every last breath was gone. Violet was my only weakness, a weakness other demons would try to exploit if they ever found out how much I loved her.

You have until sunrise to leave
Earth or I will come back and kill you.
My lips twitched as her words rang throughout my mind. I could leave, but I had things I needed to do. Yes, the world
was
scheduled to end in the year three thousand, but at the deteriorating rate of humanity’s lack of humanity, well, the date has been pushed forward. In six months, Conquest, Famine, War, and I will destroy Earth and there’s nothing anybody can do to stop it.

Recollection

Violet

“
Violet, are you there?” a sweet, girly voice calls, pulling me out of my dreamless state.

I open my eyes, my vision is blurred. I blink a few times and the sharp
corners of the world return. I’m in a white room and a face is hovering above my own.

“Violet? Can you see me?”

I focus on the face—such a pretty face. She has light purple irises, thinly shaped blonde eyebrows, a small pointy nose, and heart-shaped lips.

“Yes,” I reply.

She takes my elbow and eases me into a seated position. My muscles ache and I feel uneasy. I glance around. I’m in a hospital… I think.

“What happened?
Where am I?”

Sh
e sits next to me on the bed and tucks a lock of her platinum blonde hair behind her ear. Her pretty yellow sundress looks so bright against my white hospital gown. She takes my hands in hers.

“You died and Lucas
found you.” She gestures to the man that’s leaning against my wall, arms crossed in front of his chest. I suddenly feel embarrassed as I recall my death. Lucas is handsome and tall. His black hair is short and messy. His brown eyes watch me curiously and I flush, not realizing that my eyes linger on him longer than I want them to.

“
He brought you here to the Never Dark realm.” She inhales deeply. “You’re an angel now.”

I glance out the window
. In the distance I can see the bright moon hanging effortlessly in the night sky. I narrow my eyes. “Never Dark realm? It seems pretty dark outside…”

She laughs and places a soft, manicured hand on my shoulder. “It’s not called the Never Dark realm because it’s never dark. It’s more of a statement… There are no demons here, no darkness.”

I ran my fingers along my eyebrows, clearing the thin line of sweat that had somehow formed. Demons. Darkness. Angels… there is so much for me to understand.

“
I died and I’m no longer on Earth?” I mumble. She nods.

Surprisingly, I’m not upset.
I feel empowered. I glance around the room, it looks like Earth. All the objects are the same. Slowly, I slide off the bed and land on my feet. I feel no pain. My death was brutal and yet I feel no pain. The woman takes hold of my elbow and assists me over to the window. I pull back the sheer curtains and squint as the lights from the city shine in on me. The city is exactly like Earth, there are tall skyscrapers and shops and people. There’s no luminous glow to anything. There’s no blinding whiteness to the world… Even though this is nothing like the heaven I imagined, I still believe her. Every muscle, bone, and blood vessel in my body is telling me she is telling the truth.

My eyebrows furrow.
“I know I should be overwhelmed or sad, but I’m not…”

“
When you make the transition, your mind leaves all the painful feelings behind. You still remember them, but they don’t mean anything anymore,” Lucas says, joining us at the window. Strangely, I become self-conscious now that he is so close and I wrap my arms around myself. I think back to my previous life. It seems to be some kind of distant memory that doesn’t affect me—just like he said. In a million years I’d have never thought I’d be recruited to join some kind of angel army in a different realm. In my human life, I was always the victim, always the one who ended up hurt. I was naïve, determined to see the good in everyone and that came back to bite me in the ass the night of my death. I agreed to let a man that I’d met in a club walk me home. When we got out of sight, things escalated and before I knew it, he had three other friends that wanted to ‘walk me home.’ Nervous, but convinced nothing bad was going to happen, I let them, and sadly, I never made it home. I was left abused and dying in an alley two blocks from my house.

“Why me?” I
ask, my voice barely audible.

“Because
,” Lucas said, his eyes displaying an intensity I’d never seen in anyone before. “You’re a fighter…”

***

Suddenly, I’m in the gym and Lucas is crouched down in front of me, ready to attack. I’m crouched, too, preparing to evade his attack. His lips twitch into a smile and a bead of sweat rolls down his gorgeous face.

“Remember what I taught you, V. Here
’s your chance to make me proud.”

Like a rhino
that puts its head down and rushes full force towards its threat, Lucas sprints toward me, his shoulder down and angled to knock me on my ass as hard as he possibly can. I have to get into the right frame of mind. During this training session, Lucas is no longer my mentor, he’s my enemy. A few more steps and he’ll knock me off my feet, so I jump. Lucas is tall—so tall—he clocks in at six foot two and there’s no way my five foot nine frame can jump him entirely. I’m in the air, and as Lucas connects with my feet, I fall forward. To prevent myself from face planting, I use my hands to spring off his shoulders and I land with a slight stumble, but on both feet behind him. Before he can turn around, I kick him behind his knee and his legs buckle. I grab his shoulders and use all my strength to push him to the floor, only he’s better than me—stronger than me. That’s why I’m the student and he’s the mentor. He follows his knees and drops to the floor. With one backwards leg sweep, I’m lying flat on my back and Lucas is pinning me to the mat. Our breath is quick and deep, our sweat thick and slippery on our skin. Lucas and I have never been in this kind of predicament before. When we train, he usually shouts orders from the sideline with the occasional demonstration, but today we fought one on one, and although I didn’t win, I can still see the incredible amount of pride reflected in his perfect brown eyes.

“Well done
,” he pants.

I lick my lips
to moisten them and nod my head slightly. “Thanks.”

He doesn’t move
off me, instead, he runs the back of his index finger through my red hair. Lucas and I have been training together for eight months. We flirt a lot, mostly in practice, never outside of the gym. Lucas doesn’t want to be seen fraternizing with his student—it wasn’t illegal or forbidden—Lucas merely felt he had a reputation to uphold… and so did I, but my god he was alluring. He lowers his face until his lips graze mine. His warm breath hits my face and my heartbeat speeds up and my breathing deepens. I want him.

“Violet?” Lucas whispers.

“Yes?”

Lucas’s hands wrap around my throat and he squeezes—hard.
“I hate you.”

I wriggle under his grasp, but
can’t break free. His face begins to contort and change. Soon, I am no longer looking into the face of my mentor—I’m looking into the face of a hideous demon.

I
was jerked out of my memories turned horrible nightmare by the sound of my phone ringing. I ran a hand over my face, attempting to wake myself up. Early morning sunlight filtered through the crack in my curtain. Normally, I’d answer my phone at this ungodly hour, but I knew the person on the other end would be my boss and he’d want to know why I didn’t hand in my report last night. The phone rang again. And again. And again. I reached an arm onto the bedside table and groped around. It wasn’t until I knocked my gun
and
my alarm clock onto the floor that I found my phone.

“Yes?” I
answered with a wide yawn, leaving my eyes shut.

“Ashton. Why isn’t your report on my d
esk?” a gruff, baritone voice grumbled through my earpiece.

Uh-oh
. My boss, Mr. Cole Nark, only used last names when he is
really
pissed off and I guess I made it worse by ignoring his calls. Cole was the chubby human put in charge of our Earth headquarters. God knows why, he was useless mostly. Our human workers are given a serum that prevents them from talking about our business to other humans. I thought it’d be easier to hire an angel, but the Council thinks it’s important to associate with those we protect. Whoever came up with that should’ve been shot on the spot.

“I got in late
,” I replied, my voice slightly husky from lack of sleep.

“I don’t care if you got in five minutes ago. You know the protocol. Mission. Report. Rest. Not Mission,
rest and report whenever you feel like it.”

In my mind I could see him doing the hand gestures that he does with
every. Single. Word.

I rolled my eyes. “Sorry
, sir.”

“If you aren’t up to this mission
, maybe I should get into contact with your leaders in the Never Dark and have them put someone else on the job. Hmm?”

This got my attention. “No, sir. I will bring the report right away, sir.”

“Good.” He hung up.

I blew air out of my cheeks and fell back onto my pillow. I
had planned to go to the headquarters and fill out the report last night, but I couldn’t clear my head. The last thing I wanted was for higher authorities to pull me off the case. This was
my
case. Only I could deal with Lucas. I needed that closure.

I wrote the report when I got back to my apartment last night. I wanted to be alone when I wrote it—I wanted the right to throw things and punch things. I wanted to cry and yell at the top of my lungs
. Writing reports at headquarters didn’t give me that freedom. So, when I got home, I did all those things. My colleagues saw me as a loner, a moody bitch that didn’t want to socialize with anyone, and after a while they stopped bothering with me. To them I didn’t have emotions. I just kicked ass and did my job. They understood that I was here to protect Earth, not make friends.

***

I parked my black Jeep Range Rover in the private parking around the back of the headquarters. On the surface, the headquarters building claimed to house a computer repairs store. That was a front—obviously. Below the surface was a huge underground office filled with state of the art office equipment. Everything was white and silver. Anything that wasn’t white and silver was a shiny metal. I checked my reflection in the side door of my SUV. I was still flustered from seeing Lucas up close and personal last night. I straightened my white tank top and adjusted the leather belt that held up my denim jeans. I hated wearing normal clothes, it made me feel vulnerable. I preferred my catsuit—it made me feel safe and prepared for anything.

I entered in through a back door
, but not without scanning my handprint—the scanner was concealed behind a secret plank of wood. Once inside, I proceeded down a small hallway that led directly to an extremely narrow flight of stairs. I wondered how Cole managed to fit down here. I was naturally slim, so the slender spaces were easy for me.

Everything leading up to the door that opened into our lobby was concrete—the walls, floor, and ceiling. The dull
greyness of the walls absorbed the incandescent light that attempted to illuminate my way. And when I entered the lobby, I found the place just as dreary and cold as the staircase that led me here.

“Hi!” The receptionist called in
her annoyingly high pitched voice.

I stepped toward her, using all my strength not to roll my eyes.
She was new. The receptionist we had yesterday was old, bordering on ancient. The new receptionist reminded me of Barbie, yet somehow more fake than the famous plastic icon. She had fake, platinum blonde hair, fake tan, and it seemed someone had shoved a cake in her face, or maybe it was her makeup… the difference between the two was hard to tell these days.

”Violet Ashton
,” I said.

As I watched her, I tried
to come up with a logical reason why she had been hired in the first place. She was irritatingly upbeat. She even managed to make typing my name into her computer an exciting event.

“Ah, Janet, y
ou’re doing a wonderful job looking after all our angels here,” Cole Nark called as he strolled over and leaned on the counter. Well, that explains how she was hired. Cole was a perv, and luckily for me, he had a thing for blondes. Or Barbies. Or Oompa Loompas. To be honest, with him it could be any one of those three. Cole licked his hand and patted down a stray hair that’d popped out of his usual mess of brown hair. I cringed.
What is wrong with this guy?
Janet giggled and I almost dry retched. Perhaps Cole is the definition of a ‘panty dropper’ to Earth women… I shuddered at the thought.

“Report?”
he asked, extending his licked hand to me. Somehow I managed to hide my disgust and gave him the report.

“Is the color of your hair
natural?” Janet wondered aloud as Cole flicked eagerly through the folder.

“No. It isn’t.”

“That red is so beautiful, like a bright cherry. You know, you should wear it down. It’d look so much nicer if it framed your face. It’d make your crazy-pretty blue eyes pop, too.”

I didn’t respond. Mostly because no one in their right mind would take ‘beauty’ advice from this woman
, and even if I wanted to respond, what would I say to that? Instead I nodded. When I think about it, I hadn’t worn my hair down in a while. Lucas loved it when I did. He always encouraged me to wear it down, even during practice. He said he liked the way my untamed hair curled around my face and shoulders when I fought. ‘
Absolutely mesmerising’
were the words he used.