Angel's Pain Read Free Page B

smiled, then laughed softly. “That’s funny. I didn’t know you could be funny.”
    â€œI wasn’t being funny.”
    â€œYou’re feeling her pain, aren’t you?” Reaper asked.
    Briar shrugged. “Either that or I’ve got a simple headache all my own. The easiest solution is usually the right one, Reaper.”
    â€œYou could let Roxy and Ilyana work on you next,” Seth suggested.
    â€œRight. I’m going to lie in a bed and let two mortal females put their hands on me. Not in this lifetime, pal.”
    â€œIt was just a thought.”
    â€œThanks. I prefer to suffer. A slight headache or untold agonies. Either way.”
    After she said it, she glanced toward the closed door beyond which the two women were working on Crisa. Then she noticed Reaper noticing her, and she averted her eyes.
    â€œYou’re worried about her,” he accused.
    â€œYeah, right. And I’m also taking up a collection to save the whales. You wanna contribute?” She rolled her eyes and left the room, heading into the empty bedroom where she’d spent the night.
    Sinking to the floor and drawing up her knees, she bent her head and rubbed her temples. She closed her eyes and tried to relax away the pain in her head. But she couldn’t relax it away or massage it away, or even will it away, because it wasn’t her pain.
    It was Crisa’s. So all she could do was wait.
    Fortunately for her, the two most irritating mortals on the planet were extremely gifted healers. That shit they did, they did very well, though she would die before she would acknowledge it to either of them. Roxy was already far too cocky, while Ilyana was petrified of her, and Briar preferred to keep it that way.
    Still, she thanked them silently when the pain in her head began to ease and finally faded to almost nothing.
    She rested only for a few moments, then got up when someone tapped on her door. She opened it to see Jack, with his dirty blond hair that was always a little too long and his slightly scruffy whiskers, making him seem like a rebel, wearing the satisfied smirk of a man who’d had far better sex than he deserved.
    â€œWe’re getting ready to move out, Bri. You got your stuff together?”
    â€œTwo minutes,” she told him.
    He nodded, his eyes doing a quick survey of her face.
    â€œYour headache better?”
    â€œGone,” she told him.
    â€œI figured. Crisa’s is, too.”
    She frowned at him.
    â€œReaper filled us in. I’ll help you keep an eye on her. Don’t worry.”
    â€œI wasn’t. And I don’t need your help ‘keeping an eye’ on Crisa, because it’s not my job to keep an eye on Crisa. Jeez, who appointed me the keeper of the nuthouse?”
    He shrugged. “Need help packing?”
    â€œGo jump your freaking princess again or something, and stop pestering me, will you?”
    â€œOkay.” He winked and left the room.
    Why the hell, she wondered, was everyone so determined to see things in her that didn’t exist? She wasn’t worried about Crisa. She didn’t give a shit about Crisa—or anyone else, for that matter. This pile of do-gooders just couldn’t seem to accept that about her. They didn’t understand it, sought to project their own moral bullshit onto her. But she didn’t believe in it. Never had.
    She was out only for herself, her own best interests and the fulfillment of her own needs. And right now those needs included only two things. The basic need to devour living blood in order to survive, and her sole purpose for wanting to.
    She had to kill Gregor for what he’d done to her.
    Revenge was the only reason she continued waking up each night. It was her life force. And once it was done, well, hell, she would probably be done, too, despite her tough talk to Roxy about being a true immortal.
    There really wasn’t, as far as she could see, much of a point to it,