Vampire Princess Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Description

  Books in the Rebel Verse

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  About the Author

  VAMPIRE PRINCESS

  REBEL ANGELS BOOK TWO

  Rosemary A Johns

  VAMPIRE PRINCESS: REBEL ANGELS BOOK TWO © copyright 2018 Rosemary A Johns

  www.rosemaryajohns.com

  First Edition 2018

  Copyright notice: All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Book Cover Designer: Rebecca Frank

  Fantasy Rebel Limited

  VAMPIRE PRINCESS

  REBEL ANGELS BOOK TWO

  Angel World is no heaven…

  Held prisoner, Violet never anticipated her long-lost mother would be the poisonous Queen of Angel World. Or that she’d be forced to rule as a corrupted princess or risk a perilous escape.

  When a harem boy angel draws Violet into the dark court’s twisted sports, she’s thrown into deadly trials that even her monstrous powers may not be able to overcome. If she refuses, both the snarky angel and geek vampire she loves will be enslaved to a powerful cult.

  No matter what she chooses, she’ll be facing the dangers of Angel World on the eve of war…

  BOOKS IN THE REBEL VERSE

  REBEL ANGELS

  VAMPIRE HUNTRESS

  VAMPIRE PRINCESS

  VAMPIRE DEVIL

  THE SHADOW FILES - STANDALONE

  REBEL VAMPIRES

  BLOOD DRAGONS

  BLOOD SHACKLES

  BLOOD RENEGADES

  1

  Vampires? Angels?

  I hunt the bastards because they hunt me.

  But it turns out, I’m their princess.

  So, who’s the bastard now?

  Until I’d turned twenty-one, only months and a candy-bloodied world away, I’d been a regular geek gamer, designing the supernatural because it stole me away from the truth of Hackney life: shanks, sex, and pain.

  Until a rebel angel fell, my sister disappeared, and I let out the monster.

  Dark.

  My eyes ached with the blackness, as I stumbled, wrinkling my nose against the dank.

  I pushed my ash-blonde hair behind my ears, before running my hand across the wall; I shuddered at the squelch as my fingers squashed something soft and wriggling…

  I staggered back, slipping on the cavern’s floor and landing on my arse.

  A low laugh in the gloom.

  I growled.

  Princess? This bitch could get with that.

  Captive princess? No way in a kinky angel’s dream.

  Hell, I’d known Angel World wouldn’t be a land of unicorns when I’d been forced here by Commander Drake. As a half vampire, half angel with one black eye and one violet, whose long-lost mother just happened to be the angelic queen, I was lucky not to be in a circus for devils…

  And when vampires were in fact Fallen Angels, who knew if that could be a thing.

  But why had my mum — the Matriarch — imprisoned me with the harem boy who’d hunted my arse across London?

  Why had she imprisoned me at all?

  ‘Do you like pretending to be the Big Bad?’ I snarled, pushing my cats-eye mirror sunglasses more firmly onto my nose. ‘When we both know you’re the genie with a Mistress wish-lashing you.’

  Pale violet blazed from Drake’s wings, flooding the chamber in fae light.

  Drake hovered above the ground, curling his feet away from the wet; he clutched his arms across his bare chest. His golden curls fell over his eyes, as he scrutinized me.

  The scent of ancient churches — frankincense – wrapped around me, intoxicating.

  ‘Hush, now.’ Drake hitched up his indigo harem boy trousers, stroking the tip of his wing along my cheek. ‘Still words are your blade? Yet you requested a hunt, did you not? The prey is through these caverns.’ He ran a feather under my chin this time. No way in hell you can scowl when you’re being tickled: sneaky-arsed angel. ‘Hunt.’

  Crack.

  I shoved myself up to a crouch, smacking Drake’s wing away; Drake hissed. I wiped my grimy hands down my lilac dress. Every day a different shade of silk was laid out for me, depending on my Level of Perfection (and who needed that psycho freakery?).

  Hunt: violet and black entwined, ancient and alive inside me.

  Threatening to break out.

  ‘My hunt,’ I stalked towards the break through into the next chamber, my knee-high leather boots clacking on the rock. ‘You’re the clown who got stuck with putting on a show, so your prisoner doesn’t burn off her own head with boredom: no PlayStation, iPod, or Game of Thrones...’

  ‘Our hunt.’ Drake swooped over my head, his wings like a slow beating moth. ‘If I’m a clown, it’s you have reduced me to one.’ I flushed: the bastard was right about that, at least. He flew past me into the cavern. ‘I propose stakes. Whoever wins the hunt, wins the prey as their prize for the night.’

  My pulse pounded, and I stiffened. ‘No way, bro.’

  ‘Who’s the clown now?’ He raised his eyebrow and then dived for the tunnel.

  Gaping out of rock, the tunnel was so low he had to land, barrelling onto his stomach and squirming like a feathery worm into its dark mouth, baby bird swallowed.

  No bastard way…

  I was the Bitch of Utopia. Princess of Angel World. No gaoler, playmate, pretty boy angel would win in a hunt.

  Back in Hackney, before I’d even been trained as a huntress of vampires, I’d learnt how to scatter, either before the feds, or other gangs.

  In Jerusalem Children’s Home, where I’d been raised after being abandoned as a baby amongst the humans, if you didn’t bolt fast enough, you were the loser who took the beating.

  I learnt not to be that loser. And to stick in the shank first.

  I snatched Drake’s ankles, hauling him out with one yank: he was lighter than I’d expected.

  He squawked, scrabbling at the wet rock. His wings beat and pulsed furiously. He clutched at the edges of the tunnel; the rock sliced his palms.

  One more tug, and Drake’s silk trousers slipped down his slight hips; he gave up his hold on the tunnel to pull them over the milk-white of his arse and maintain
his modesty.

  Not like I hadn’t seen it all before.

  He twisted round, his ice-cold eyes suddenly predatory, as I allowed him to back against the wall.

  Only a crazy bitch forgot how dangerous Drake was beneath the beauty.

  ‘Don’t freak out. What’s with the Mr Competitive?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Is it from the loss of balls when you were busted from Commander to guard duty?’

  ‘If you were not so difficult, princess, I wouldn’t have to suffer being your…guard… But then, is not everything about you?’

  Crack.

  My punch pinned Drake’s left wing to the wall; something tore. Violet flared, rising in halleluiahs, even as I shrank back from his panted pain.

  Drake couldn’t fight back; he could only hurt lesser angels, and I was a princess.

  Even if he did hunt, torture, and gaol other angels.

  Yet I couldn’t think about that because Drake held the one angel who was fam but who’d betrayed me, and who I’d betrayed to the dark.

  Rebel: my Irish punk — Zachriel, to the angels.

  Rebel had fallen into my lap, transforming my world to the supernatural and training me to hunt vampires to save humans.

  Was I the type of person who hurt those who wouldn’t fight back?

  Hell, yeah.

  Crack.

  There went Drake’s other wing.

  Since the long weeks at the Matriarch’s pleasure, with only Drake and the toy she’d gifted, my angelic side had blazed, burning away the skin of my humanity.

  I shrank, terrified at the cruelty of the bitch left behind.

  Who the hell was now in control?

  ‘I have a game of my own,’ I whispered, close to Drake’s ear. ‘Truth or dare.’

  ‘Is it a game for warriors?’ Drake stared at me through wild, agonised eyes.

  ‘Pissed warriors at parties, or in your case, brat genies who’ve been put back in their lamp.’

  ‘At least I have a lamp. You’re alone in Angel World. Perhaps you should not be acting the wolf, when you’re the lamb.’

  Crunch.

  I bit, with my blunt teeth, just where Drake’s shoulder met his collarbone.

  I didn’t know who was more startled, him or me.

  Drake whimpered, leaning into the bite.

  Brilliant, white candyfloss blood: it tripped through me like frankincense infused stars dripping from the heavens.

  Magic, sex, power.

  I gasped, staggering back a step, even though I still pinned him by a hand against the rock. If I hadn’t, he’d have tumbled to his knees. His eyes were glassy and unfocused.

  The taste zinged through me, just as Drake buzzed and spider-webbed inside.

  I licked my tongue along the crimson still staining my lips and canines. ‘I look like a lamb, bitch?’

  He blinked, before his gaze cleared. ‘I apologise for the mistake. I’d hoped you wouldn’t become a greater monster, but here with us I fear you will.’

  I flinched, snatching my hand away from him.

  Buried in Angel World — this mountain caught in its own reality away from the humans — primal forces had sung to the newly woken bitches inside me. I shivered at the thought of what stirred.

  Drake furled away his wings, before forcing himself to stand straight as if on parade. ‘Now, I’m to play Truth or Dare, am I not?’

  I shook my head to clear it, feathers rustling and settling inside, dissatisfied.

  I wasn’t bonded to Drake; I was bonded to Rebel, my Irish punk angel.

  And Drake was Rebel’s gaoler.

  ‘Right, newbie, so the player chooses and no backing out.’ My grin was tight. ‘And I choose Truth.’

  His piercing gaze made me shrink back. ‘This is a dangerous game.’

  ‘Truth: why won’t my mum see me? Why has she stuck me with you as a lame-arsed guard, playing in these dungeon labyrinths?’

  ‘That’s two questions.’

  ‘Stick it, bro. Answer.’

  ‘Your mother: The Matriarch… Queen Miniel …’ He edged away from me, his feet splashing in the puddles, as he sidled towards the tunnel. His fingers fluttered in the air, like he could create the answers there. ‘I belong to her: I’m her Wing. But she doesn’t tell her thinking, why she’s given me — and your toy, of course — to your use. I shall ask her again to see you.’

  I didn’t understand the flash of fear but I also didn’t miss the again.

  Then Drake had dived into the tunnel, and there was nothing but the soft pink of the soles of his feet.

  I snarled, squirming after him and elbowing through the grime.

  My dress snagged on the rock — rip — there went the shoulder. The flaps, like mouths, gaped and flapped.

  I gasped against the rotten egg stink, hauling myself through the murk, after the scitter scatter of Drake and the flame of his wings ahead.

  Silence.

  Nothing in the dark, only my own panted breath.

  I struggled across the rock that grazed my arms, kicking with my legs like I was swimming.

  Until suddenly, I was falling.

  Hell, hell, hell…

  What a way to be wiped out, wiggling out of a tunnel, only to fall to my death in an angel’s dungeon…

  Small but surprisingly strong arms around my waist, curls brushing across my cheek, and a blinding blast of violet.

  Drake caught me from my tumble into the deep stalagmite cavern, even though his damaged wings trembled with the effort — and no, I wasn’t icy-balled with guilt, just frost tingled.

  His wings sparked, before like the turning on of Christmas lights, fireflies across the chamber lit in flickering waves. I shuddered at the cold beauty. Then I caught my first glimpse of our prey: the point of the hunt.

  Our prize.

  A snow-white wave of hair, elfin face, and deep violet eyes.

  My toy, gifted by the Matriarch, peeked out at us from the other side of the frothing mouth of a waterfall, which foamed down the cavern.

  At that moment, I craved the flash of a long red army coat, scent of clove studded orange, and tumble of sable hair.

  My Geek Fang: Ash.

  But Ash, the vampire who’d had my back the same as Rebel, had been caught by Albino, the vampire bastard who owned Ash’s Seducer arse, after Ash had fought alongside Rebel to save me.

  Ash had taken a hell of a beating in the battle. And treason must’ve earnt him more than a spanking.

  How could any of Drake’s…distractions…force me to forget my lost fam? Or that I was a prisoner?

  Yet hunt…

  Both powers inside coiled because this is what I was, free and unleashed.

  A monster.

  Even if this was nothing but sport.

  ‘Let me go,’ I hissed, before glancing at the peaks of rock far below and correcting hurriedly, ‘and that doesn’t mean drop me, chuckles.’

  Drake peered at the waterfall. ‘Patience, your little toy will wait.’

  ‘Gwyn,’ I gritted out, ‘his bastard name is Gwyn.’

  Drake’s eyes narrowed. ‘Higher Levels do not address the Broken by names.’

  ‘Pricks do not piss off princesses without a boot to the balls. Now put me down.’

  ‘Dare,’ his arms tightened enough that I struggled for breath. ‘My turn.’

  ‘The other player,’ I gasped, ‘doesn’t get to choose.’

  ‘Lie.’ He loosened his grip, but repeated, ‘Dare.’

  ‘What do you want? Me to run around my mum’s throne room bare arsed?’

  He smiled, before smothering it. ‘Ask the Queen who your father is.’ I jolted, my hands clenching to fists. Some bastard vampire who’d abandoned me as a kid, just like my mum? Hell, did I want to discover who he was? It wasn’t as if my reunion with my mum had been the hugs and tears sort. ‘No one’s ever dared to…’

  Now, doesn’t that fill you with expectations of happy father’s days?

  ‘Not even
you?’

  Drake looked away. ‘Especially not me. But she’ll never admit it. Even if we all guess.’

  ‘And what do you deduce, Sherlock?’

  His lips quirked. ‘That would spoil our game, would it not?’

  I squealed, as we dropped in a sudden plummet to the cavern floor.

  When Drake hurled me, tumbling arse over tit, I caught my knee and shoulder in a lightning hot jolt. I dragged myself up to see him flying through the fields of fireflies: they danced around him, caught in his whirlwind.

  Then he swooped on Gwyn.

  I was up and running, even as I heard Gwyn’s wail.

  Gwyn was my toy: a slave by any other name is still a bitching slave. Like my pretty dresses (and even prettier cell), my mum had presented me with Gwyn like owning an angel — using an angel — was part of my new princess duties. Just another distraction, the same as the hunt.

  Why did Drake want him?

  I’d promised Gwyn I’d find him first. That it was only a game. Because I was a huntress, no way I’d lose.

  I grabbed Drake by the neck, jerking him away from Gwyn, who was cowering behind the fizzing spray of the waterfall. I shivered, as my dress stuck to my back.

  Gwyn stared up at me with large eyes. He smiled, tugging at his crimson trousers. ‘Princess,’ he breathed, ducking his head, ‘I’m yours.’

  ‘He’s mine,’ Drake’s voice shook, as he wiped his damp curls from his eyes. ‘I won the hunt.’

  I held my hand out to Gwyn, lifting him to his feet. ‘But I’m the princess, bro, so it looks like I won.’

  Drake’s gaze darkened.

  I’d stolen his prize and humiliated him. And he was right: I was alone in Angel World, apart from him and Gwyn.

  I was screwed.

  Plus, there was still the dare…

  If Drake set up a meeting with the Matriarch, I’d be forced to do the one thing certain to piss off an angel queen: ask about my vampire dad.