Creche (Book II of Paranormal Fallen Angels/Vampires Series) by Karin Cox Page A

him, spinning me around in mid-air and dragging my exhausted body between them.
    I let my wings still—what would they do if I refused to fly?—but between them, they hefted my body up and hauled me back with them.
    “Let me remain unfettered. I will not leave again until you reveal the Sphinx’s riddle,” I promised. “You have my word.”
    The wind carried off the thin sound of Daneo’s laughter. “Your word. Just like your mother’s. No. You will come, and you will wear your bonds, and you will remain until we have decided what to do with you.”
    “Don’t fear,” I heard Skylar’s thoughts again. “They cannot kill you.”
    “It is not death I fear,” I answered her. My throat was too hoarse with anger to speak the words, Sabine’s words, that echoed in my brain: It is eternity in a cage.
    “Shhhh.” I felt a singular pain shoot through Skylar’s mind, no words or thoughts attached, or none I could discern—she hid everything so well. I took it as guilt. Was she sorry she had not helped me save Sabine, at least?
    “Bring me Kisana,” Daneo instructed another Cruxim as we descended among the rocky towers that concealed the Crèche. “She set him free. She must be punished.”
    “My sister did nothing.”
    “Exactly. She did nothing to stop you.”
    “Do not lay your hands upon her,” I growled, struggling in his grasp.
    He looked shocked at that, but I saw the anger in his eyes.
    “Why punish her for my presence here? If you do not want me here, let me leave.”
    “I do not want you alive,” he spat, releasing me. “If you were not Kisana’s kin, maybe you would not be. The cage this time, for both of them.” He nodded to the other Cruxim and strode off to find my sister.
    “Or if he were not the Cruor.” Skylar’s words followed him.

    “I am sorry,” Skylar said gently once her Crèche mates had dragged me into the stone hall and thrown me into a gilt cage for good measure. A second cage sat more than a wingspan away, awaiting my sister, I presumed.
    “I should not have brought you here, nor let them bind you. Now that you have displeased them so, who knows if they will even let me teach you Cruxim lore?” She put her hand through the bars to squeeze my forearm, but I pulled away and turned my back on her.
    “I want no part of this place, no part of your lore. I have survived hundreds of years without the company of another Cruxim. I will survive thousands more. Even if they determined I could remain, I would not.” I leaned against the bars. “If I do nothing else, I must find Beltran and send him to Hell for what he has done.”
    “They will all go there eventually, Amedeo.”
    I spun again to grasp the bars and shook them. “Why? Why should you care? All I see here are Cruxim with no passion, no purpose. You drink each other’s blood and sit in Council. Meanwhile the undead hordes are animating corpses. Daily the Black Death is serving them ever more corpses while you all sit here playing at politics and prophecies. Does this lore say for what purpose Cruxim are made, for it is surely not this? Tell me the riddle and let me leave, for I will not stay here and content myself with trivialities, not while Sabine still lives. Not while Vampires still exist.”
    “Very good, Cruxim. Very good.” A laugh trilled around me. It bounced off the marble flagstones of the council chamber and rang meanly in my head like Beltran’s.
    A woman, wearing a suit of supple, dark kid leather that fit her body like a skin, glided toward us, pushing my sister before her.
    Kisana’s hazel eyes were even sadder now and swollen with tears.
    “Do not touch her!” I rattled the bars of my cage.
    The woman ignored me, directing Kisana toward the other cage. My sister made no move to resist, just stepped inside and slumped in the corner.
    “Sister,” I called to her. “I am sorry.”
    Her head was braced on her arms, knees drawn up, but she nodded between sobs.
    “What did she do,” I raged