Blood and Snow 6: Masquerade's Moon by Rashelle Workman

Chapter 1
     
    “So you’re half angel? A—” I paused, waiting for him to say the word. Grabbing a pillow with the Disney-inspired Aurora on it, I tossed it at him.
    “A chayot?” Gabe caught the pillow and smirked. He knew I liked the way he said it. Pronounced like coyote, but with the ch sound at the beginning, I thought it sounded incredibly sexy coming from Gabe’s succulent mouth.
    I’d searched the Internet to find out more about the chayot. After him, Professor Pops, and the other brothers left my house on the night I came back—the night Gabe told me why he still lived.
    There were different definitions according to different religions about what chayot meant, but all websites came around to the same thing: angels. The highest-ranking angels.
    Then I clicked on Images in the Internet search and discovered a green fruit called a chayot. Mainly though, the screen was filled with pictures of beasts with four wings, males and females with wings—sometimes black, sometimes white, and some with tails, and horns.
    One website said the chayot were holy beings that dwelled on Earth. The site contained diagrams explaining why, and listed names of biblical prophets, and teachers they believed were chayot. The pictures portrayed figures without wings (or horns and a tail). They looked like any normal human. I wanted to believe that was Gabe—at least half of him. But I didn’t know for sure. Needless to say the information on the World Wide Web freaked me out.
    Gabe snorted, bringing me out of my thoughts. He tucked the pillow into the large overstuffed chair he sat in. We were in my living room, the TV turned on low, and Gatsby was curled in my lap. My cat gave me an evil glare, one eye still closed, when I threw the pillow. I ignored him.
    “Not exactly an angel.” Gabe brushed his hands through his hair.
    “What, no wings?” I grabbed another pillow, this one with a cross-stitched Ursula hovering over a wide-eyed Ariel on the front, and chucked it.
    I was trying to be funny, but he seemed preoccupied. A strange shadow passed over his face, but immediately disappeared. He caught the pillow and stuffed it in the groove next to the one with Aurora on it. “No wings. No halo. No trumpet. Just a deeply embedded passion to rid the world of evil.”
    An insistent dread filled my heart.
    He means you, my inner voice grumbled.
    I pushed down the feelings, my insecurities. “And you can’t die?” The memory of his body twisted at an odd angle sprang to mind, and my stomach turned.
    “Of course I can die. All creatures can. But it isn’t easy.” He smirked; cool cockiness oozing from his pores.
    “How?” I asked, and immediately regretted it. I didn’t want to know how to kill him , my sexy Gabe. I was just curious, kind of like how I studied ways to kill other mystic creatures in Professor Pops’ Museum of the Supernatural. I got the feeling Gabe didn’t understand that though, and another shadow passed over his features. “Never mind,” I added quickly.
    He got out of the chair, and knelt in front of me. I shooed Gatsby off my lap, and scooted closer, putting my knees on either side of him, brushing my fingers along his worried brow. His green eyes tore into me with hunger, desire, and something else… guilt?
    Did he regret the way he felt about me?
    Of course he does. He was supposed to kill you, my inner voice chided.
    I wouldn’t accept that. I was still me. Still the Snow White he flirted with at Warehouse Video. The same girl he wrapped in his arms and promised to never leave. Wasn’t I? A lot happened since the night we slept in the same bed.
    I’d been bitten, changed into a revenant, and finally a vampire. But I hadn’t killed anyone. I still went to school, fed my cat, and did normal stuff. 
    Drinking the blood of a human is not normal , my inner voice huffed.
    Gabe seemed to sense my internal conversation. “Kiss me,” he said, his voice low and husky. Gabe tugged me onto his lap, our