“Mijo.” I felt his hand in my hair, the gentlest of touches. I was five years old again, drifting off to sleep and safe in his arms. I wanted to embrace him, but I only turned my head, so that he could touch my cheek.
“I love you so much, and I don’t want to hurt you.” I bit into my cheek to staunch my hunger. I’d bleed myself before I laid a finger on him. Papa screamed then, tearing at my hair, and collapsed on the ground next to me in a fit of spasms, his muscles twitching from the high voltage delivered to his body. That sadistic, one-eyed fuck had electrocuted him.
“Son of a bitch,” Dad yelled at Cyclops while dropping down to make sure Papa had survived the shock.
“You have ten seconds to choose, Vincere,” said Azrael with the calm of a sociopath. “And then I kill them both.”
I raised myself to my knees and clasped my hands together. “Please don’t make me do this. Please, please, please…” I had no pride or dignity left. I would doanythingto avoid harming them.
Dad knelt in front of me, took my head in both his hands, and made me look him in the eyes. “Listen to me now, Vincent,” he said in that hard tone that I used to resent but loved in that moment, because I realized all of his efforts at disciplining me had been to instill in me some kind of self-control, even though now I was failing him.
“You are my son, and I love you more than I thought I could possibly love a Nephilim. For as long as you are in this place, you must obey Azrael. You are not your own being, but a vessel for the gods. Anything you do while you’re in here is not by your own will. Do you understand?”
I nodded, hardly able to see him through my hot, angry tears.
“I’m an angel, and I will survive this, so I want you to do as your master says and make me your bloodmeal.” He forced our foreheads together. “I forgive you.”
He’d barely gotten out those last words before I lunged at him and sunk my teeth into his neck, snapping his carotid artery like a rubber band and drinking in deep. Papa screamed, but for me, there was only blood. Savory, slick blood. Gushing down my throat, quenching my thirst, soothing my raging fever... I couldn’t stop. Didn’t even try. I hugged my dad’s warm body to me with the last of my strength, relishing the sluggish pulse of his blood, and drank of him until I couldn’t anymore. Only when my thirst was quenched and my stomach bloated as a tick, did I finally loosen my grip. His body slumped in my lap, lifeless and drained. Dead weight.
I was a monster. Amurderer. My own father.
My head swam as memories of us together mingled with the scent of his blood and fury at what I’d been forced to do. Having served his purpose, they’d taken Papa away, but Cyclops remained, waiting for Azrael’s next order. I couldn’t look away from my dad’s empty eyes, sightlessly staring as I gripped him to me. The mouth that had always been so stern and uncompromising now lay slack, though I could hear his voice still. I’d become his worst nightmare; all of his fears about me had come true. And for as long as Azrael kept me captive, this would be my reality. I had no way to bargain while Azrael had infinite ways to coerce me. There were no limits to his cruelty. Nothing was sacred, not even my Papa, the sweetest, gentlest, most loving man on earth. Azrael would never let me go so long as there was dissent in his ranks and prisoners to interrogate.
Cyclops barked at me to get up and get going, and I glared with hatred at his single, merciless eye.
Alone in my cell with only my grief to torment me, I stared at my bloody hands, which had wrought so much death in this hellish place, my teeth which had brutalized so many beings, and my eyes, which had forced their confessions. Azrael had turned me into a weapon, had made me do vile, unforgivable things, and there was no escaping him, not even in death. He’d found a way touseme, just as he’d used you and Mater as well, as he used us all. But what if he couldn’t?
An eye for an eye, the pale-faced shadowborn had said. I closed my hands into fists and resolved to do the unthinkable.
