Angel Blood: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance Novel Read online

  Angel Blood: A Dystopian Paranormal Romance Novel

  Jae Vogel

  Contents

  1. Chapter 1

  2. Chapter 2

  3. Chapter 3

  4. Chapter 4

  5. Chapter 5

  6. Chapter 6

  7. Chapter 7

  8. Chapter 8

  9. Chapter 9

  10. Chapter 10

  11. Chapter 11

  12. Chapter 12

  13. Chapter 13

  14. Chapter 14

  15. Chapter 15

  16. Chapter 16

  17. Chapter 17

  18. Chapter 18

  19. Chapter 19

  20. Chapter 20

  21. Chapter 21

  22. Chapter 22

  23. Chapter 23

  Manipulator of Elements - A Young Adult Urban Fantasy

  Star-Reach - An Urban Fantasy

  BAD BOYS AFTER DARK - The Complete Boxed Set

  DEMON HERO: The Dark Fae Hollows

  FREEBIE: A New Dawn - An Urban Fantasy Novel

  Copyright

  Angel Blood © 2017 Jae Vogel

  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.

  Created with Vellum

  Description

  Junkie. Prostitute. Revolutionary.

  At some point, the pursuit of pleasure is no longer enough...

  Jayne Daux thought she had her life under control. The drugs were easy to find, and work at the Solis Entertainment Red Light District was tolerable enough. But when one simulation goes horribly wrong, something happened which would change her life forever.

  Enter the Blood Angel.

  A psychic link.

  A savior.

  A dangerous path forward, weaving a trail of danger and violence.

  What happens when the evidence stacks up, and you find yourself at the mercy of the most powerful corporate interest in the New World? What happens when your friends are taken from you, and you are villainized for standing firm in the face of injustice?

  Join Jayne as she confronts both the dystopian corporate state, and the darkness of her own mind.

  Created with Vellum

  Chapter 1

  "Well, you've got four minutes to prep before going on. Did you get lost?"

  "Good to see you too, Priscilla."

  "Fuck off. Are you stoned?"

  "Just tell the production tech I’m ready. I'll be there in a minute.’"

  “You can tell him yourself, because you’re going there right now.”

  I opened the door to my locker with a clang. In spite of the high tech equipment that the studio used for production, for some reason, they still decided to give us lockers that came out of the city dump. The locker itself was practically worthless, but it served as a place to stash my shit while I was on site.

  “Look,” I said, “I’m going to need an advance…”

  She turned explosively and stared me down into oppressive silence.

  "If you give me any more grief, Daux, you're going to need a new job. Maybe your friend at the Boba shop will help you out, but I'm done dealing with you. You're on in three minutes. Get your ass into the Tech Room."

  All I could do was stand there with a glazed look on my eyes, wishing I could just disappear.

  "Two joints in the morning really cuts the edge off, Prissy," I said, removing my sweater and unbuttoning my pants. "You should try it.”

  My pants fell to the ground, and I kicked off one shoe after the other. My feet were dirty because I couldn’t be bothered to wear socks. I also noticed that I had fresh track marks on my left arm from the night before.

  Priscilla looked like she was going to be sick. She grabbed her head like she was about to have an aneurism.

  "It's almost seven. You know what, never mind. You. Tech Room No. 13. Now."

  "I'm ready,” I said, staring straight into her eyes.

  She was unsettled for a minute, which I found briefly amusing. I had intended to be at least somewhat intimidating, but not in any directly confrontational sense. I just didn't care at that moment. What's more is that I knew she needed my performance to pay the bills.

  The wonderful thing about VR Simulation was that you didn't need to be a total sexpot to get a reputation. All you needed was to be good at what you did, and that was one thing Priscilla couldn't fault me for. I hadn't botched a performance yet during the entire time I had been employed by Solis Ent.

  She disengaged and stepped to the side, waiting for me to leave the locker room. I found it funny that she didn't even trust me to make it to the production room. Priss was totally a Type-A bitch — one of those women who love to be fucking dominated in bed because they can't get that kind of release anywhere else in their life.

  I stalked out, walking the dirty soles of my feet down the polished hallway toward Room 13. They didn't have any music in the place, just the oppressive silence of responsibilities waiting to be fulfilled. That and the whirring of enormous cooler fans and electronics I will never understand.

  The theatre itself doesn't require much explanation at all. On the base floor, the decor is nothing more than a pretentious general admission room like you might see at most theaters. There are, of course, a few modifications. They want the chairs and floors to be easy to spray down at the end of each seating. The result of the disinfectant means that instead of comfort, general admission patrons are at least offered sterility from the sexually transmitted fluids from the previous audience. And because of the house's ability to hose down the whole room, they are also able to be generous with alcohol, condoms, and lubricants. Additional items, such as one-time use sex toys are also available, but anyone who is serious about those sorts of products knows that the ones offered on the first floor don't amount to much. Still, it's a nice service, I guess, if you're feeling antisocial, and are in the mood for a bit of disposable relief.

  The upper floors are all balconies, sectioned off into various levels of privacy, depending on how much money you or your party are able to throw at the performance for the evening. I have only checked out the upper floor levels a couple of times, and it has always been after hours. Once, and probably the only time I ever stuck around late after my show, Hep and I went up there and made out for a while. I sucked him off for a bit, but he wasn't really into it. Both of us were really impressed with the setup on the top floor. One of the rooms in particular seemed large enough to live in, and had basically every form of accommodation that anyone with that kind of money could desire. Of course, Priss had caught us on the way down, and given us an awful glare.

  You have to be able to brush that kind of shit off; otherwise, I don't think you'll ever make it through life.

  Anyways, the screen is fucking huge. I can't actually sit through a performance of anyone of my co-workers; mostly because I want nothing to do with the place in my off-time, but also, because I get
a headache just thinking about staring at a screen of that size. The idea of being in one of those orgies isn't that exciting either. Just not my kind of crowd, I guess.

  All of that flash and pretense on the theatre section doesn't even hint at the level of technological sophistication that goes on behind the scenes. I don't even pretend to know about that kind of shit, and leave it entirely up to Mavis - my Operations Tech [OT].

  "Daux, just in time."

  "Yea, Mav. Priscilla here caught me sneaking into the building five minutes before my shift started."

  "Naughty girl."

  "Yea, I bet you'd probably spank me if you got a chance."

  "I have that chance, every single day you work, Daux. Don't fool yourself. Unlike Priscilla, I'm not into that kind of thing."

  I straddled the dark leather Actor's chair, while Mav turned on his equipment and handed me a bottle of lube.

  "You think she's more of a giver or a receiver, cause I pegged her for a sub, myself."

  This kind of talk always set Priscilla a shade of deep crimson. It didn't matter that she worked at the most respected sex theater in the whole Red Light District. She still blushed like a goddamn virgin.

  "Oh,” I said, “I’d wager she's a hell of a lot more familiar with pegging than you, or I, might care to guess."

  With a snort of disdain, Priscilla shook her head.

  "Daux, come see me in my office when you're finished. You're up for review."

  With attitude that even left Mavis still for a moment, Priscilla left the room and gave the two of us some privacy to prep for the show.

  "You think she means it?" Mavis asked.

  With cold, indifferent hands, I poured a glop of lube down the crack of my ass, and into my vagina. I was super sensitive, and uncomfortable, but I knew that the lube was going to make all the difference in the world.

  "Who knows with that one, and besides, I'm not sure it matters much anyways. You still have to do your best regardless, so you might as well ignore her."

  Mavis brought around a series of cables, clamps and wires, and immediately set about attaching suction hoses, lined with electrical sensors on each of my breasts. One of them latched greedily to my nipple before I had gotten a chance to lube up.

  "Ouch!”

  Mavis didn't give a fuck.

  "Sorry, I'd set up the base cables, but you know I'm not super fond of getting lube on my face."

  "Yeah, yeah…”

  I knew it was actually because I had been late, and we were nearly behind schedule. Already in the background, I could hear the announcer's voice, muffled through the walls of the production room. Mavis knew I was a fuck up, but for some reason, he didn't hold it against me.

  "More spider bites I see," he said with the detached attention of a clinician. He was looking at the inside of my arms, but only long enough for a cursory glance.

  We had been through this before, and he knew that I didn't need anything from him that remotely resembled a lecture. 'Spider bites' was his way of cutely reminding me that he didn't approve of my lifestyle choices, but that he wasn't going to be a super buzz kill about the whole thing. Again, on some level, I was consistently reminded that all of this was simply a formality.

  Just as I pulled my hands free and gripped onto the front bar, Mavis slid underneath me. With expertise that only Mavis possessed, he pulled my ass cheeks to either side, and pushed a dildo shaped sensor into my asshole. Once the anal plug was in, he inserted another sensor into my cunt and finally placed a smaller suction styled sensor on my clit.

  Once the base was set up, he moved along the front of my body and placed another sensor at key points along the underside of my torso, which he secured with surgical tape.

  All I could do at this point was breathe.

  It sounds a bit barbaric, but in reality, it's usually nothing compared to what happens on the other side. Some real class, fucking acts write the scripts for each show. They like to make the actors and actresses really work for it.

  "Remember,” he said, “it's your job to discover the path of the Heroine".

  They fucking tell me that every single time they see me. I guess it was decided once at some board meeting at Solis exactly what words would be used to try and brainwash their employees. No doubt they wanted to believe they were doing something positive for mankind.

  I held no such illusions about myself.

  I was a virtual whore with sensors attached all over my body. No need to dress that up any other way. The world that we lived in was strange, and the people had appetites for comfort much as any point in history. Perhaps it was just that in our world, their appetites also carried echoes of the systemic problems in which they found themselves — you know, like the bondage of the human spirit.

  "Ready?"

  Mavis appeared in front of my stoned lids, with a mouth sensor in one hand, and a half mask visor in the other.

  "I fuckin' hate the helmet."

  "I know, hun, but the Next Gen equipment isn't out yet, and you need to make do with what we have."

  I needed to complain at least once, but neither of us took it too seriously. Both of us knew that there was no reason for me to complain at all, and that this employment was considered At-Will. There was no reason I was here except that I had already discovered the Path of the Heroin, and needed some cash to get my next fix.

  Beyond that... I wasn't really thinking about much of anything.

  "Open up..."

  I opened my mouth and gripped ahold of the handles of my seat while the mouthpiece was inserted. My nose was a bit clogged up from the smoke, and it was hard to breathe for a minute, but once the half helmet went on, the ventilation system kicked in and I felt that clean rush of energy that comes from being more than adequately oxygenated.

  A rush of euphoria set in over my body.

  I’m still not sure if that is some kind of chemical they put in the oxygen dispersal system, or if it is only a combination effect from the wires, clamps and sensors placed throughout my entire body.

  I began to lose track of the room around me, and then felt the telltale sign of my chair lowering downward into the ground. The isolation chamber was coming, and I was about to be fully submerged.

  My heart picked up its pace and I forced myself to regulate my breath.

  It never got any easier.

  A yellow light went off on the top left corner of my visor, letting me know that we were about to launch. Right about now, the announcer would be building up my heroic story to the crowd.

  The way they did things was standard for each actress. I played a character consistently throughout each variation of the stories presented. ‘The Angel’ - that was the character that I was assigned. Each time, the characters would go through whatever scenario was written, and the objective was to pass through the scenario like a game. In retrospect, it felt like you had actually lived another life, but that was only a personal trip. To all of the audience members, my extra dimensional existence was nothing more than a passing form of erotic entertainment.

  The yellow light turned green, and I watched as the streams of bubbles from my oxygen mask flooded the helmet. The tiny bubbles massed in front of my eyes, and then flowed outward and up through the saline solution.

  I tried to remind myself that I wasn't even doing this as myself. I had given up my name long ago, and as a joke actually had my name changed to ‘Jayne Daux’. Every time I got hooked up, I was temporarily loaning my consciousness to the Angel. The joke was that I actually felt that way about the majority of my life. Dissociation was the easiest way I had found to get through the whole thing. I’m pretty sure the metaphor carries into the larger picture as well.

  Secretly, it was my only form of pleasure in this whole arrangement. The cold facts of the case were that I was whoring my body out to a massive corporate entity. That same entity was then making use of my sensory perception and decision-making skills to give vitality to some element of their Intellectual Property – a.k.a ‘T
he Angel’.

  The twist was that I imagined each time I went under that the Angel was real, and I was the one that was the commodity. It helped me out somehow, though I couldn't quite explain how. Maybe it just helped me not feel so alone.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  Lights out.

  The initial electrical pulse shot through the tank, initiating what Mav called, a ‘Safe Seizure’.

  The seizure was necessary to momentarily overload the nervous system and change the perception channels to the information that would then be fed to my body, as opposed to the information that came from my prior deductions, leading into the isolation tank. The medical details themselves were well beyond my comprehension, but if it was dangerous, it didn't feel very much like death. The feeling was hot, and bright, and totally overwhelming - but then, as soon as it had started, it was gone.

  When I opened my eyes, I was somewhere else entirely.

  Chapter 2

  I lay on silken sheets. My entire body felt clean. I was relaxed, and luxurious.

  With a yawn and a stretch, I pushed my lower back out and stretched my spine. I turned on the bed. The mattress was too soft for my liking, but as I turned, I felt the comforting presence of a man beside me. His arm was over my body, which came to me more like a peaceful surprise than any sort of shock. There was a sense of familiarity in the air, and I was put at ease.

  “Morning, sunshine."

  He was well tanned and had a closely shaved face. He reached his lips over toward mine and gave me the smoothest kiss. I smiled, and allowed myself to be drawn into the comfort of his embrace.

  "You really ought to get up," he laughed. "Isn't today your big day?"

  My head felt foggy and strange. I was straining for memories that were eluding me.

  "Your big interview downtown, right? Why don't you take a shower and I'll make you breakfast.”