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Vlad laughs and claps his hands. “That’s what makes all this so delightful. And to think, if you’d just done as I said and produced the offspring I asked for, none of this might have been necessary. But look, now we’re here, and I love to be present for a family reunion.”
What the fuck?
I look around, only realizing now that it’s not just Phoenix, Ammit, and I who are caught in this circle.
John Paul holds out his arms and smiles a familiarly sinister smile at me.
Then his body and features morph until the creature from my nightmares is standing in front of me, handsome, black wings flaring out ten feet wide on both sides of his back.
“Son,” he says. “It’s been too long.”
What in the ACTUAL FUCK?
Phoenix’s professor has been my father all along?
Chapter Twenty-Two
PHEONIX
10 Years Ago
I shove through the bathroom door, the image of the politician bursting through the glass to his death still on repeat in my head.
“Hey, are you okay?” Layden asks, puppy dog eyes concerned.
I glare at him. “Why are you still here?”
He looks at me, confused. “What do you mean?”
“Cut the shit. You’re free.” I fling out a hand. “So go be free. You can go anywhere. Be anyone you want.”
“I like who I am,” he says. “And I don’t want to be anywhere but here.”
He steps forward, and I step back. He stops, frowning, but doesn’t stop talking. “Phoenix, I feel like I really have gotten to know you over these past few months. You’ve become closer to me than any other person I’ve ever known in my life. I don’t want to go anywhere else because I—”
I throw up a hand to try to stop him from saying it, but it doesn’t work.
“—I love you.”
I cringe and back away even further. “Don’t! Don’t say that.”
“Why not? I do. I love you.”
Every word out of his mouth feels like it’s flaying me. All of them saying that they love me. Men. Women. Obsessed, following me, endless confessions of I love you, I love you. I hate those words. That guy earlier tonight loved me enough to throw himself out a window! No, I didn’t care about him. I’m a monster, after all. But I do care about— I mean, if Layden got hurt because of some stupid obsession—
I back up. “I never wanted that!” I yell.
He blinks at me, too naïve to hide his hurt. “But I thought we…”
“You thought we, what?” I’m driving him even further away. But it’s what I have to do. For him. For me. It hurts but feels good at the same time. I deserve to hurt.
“You thought we were falling in love?” I make my tone as scathing as possible, and he’s the one taking a step back now.
“Why would I ever fall in love with someone like you? You see how I live.” I wave my arms around me. “I’m used to power. I took pity on you.”
I barely know what I’m saying; I just know I see the growing devastation in his eyes, and it’s good. It’s far better to wound him now than whatever might happen to him later from being around me. He’ll get hurt by me or by Vlad. I’m poison. So, like the viper I am, I keep striking out at him.
“What good is an angel without wings? You’re ugly. You’re weak.”
