Angel's Pain by Maggie Shayne

Briar is a young woman who is also a vampire. She never asked to be made a vampire. It only came after a life of being used and degraded by every man she knew. To her, life is a series of transactions. No one does something out of the goodness of their hearts- they always want something from you in return.

So how, she wonders, has she been roped into life with the other young vampires with Reaper as their leader? She doesn't really like any of them, not even Crisa, the young, crazy-headed vampire whom she reluctantly donated blood to to keep her alive. Now, she's subject to the same headaches Crisa gets through the link that was made when they shared blood. Even the best efforts of Ilyana and Roxy, the two humans who can help Crisa with her headaches through their use of Reiki, can't do more than dim the pain.

But when Crisa has a vision along with her headache, she sees a young boy who she knows she must protect. Even the voice in her head wants her to help the boy.

That's because the voice belongs to Derrick Dwyer, member of the CIA and controller of the chip that was implanted in Crisa's brain. The Chip is slowly deteriorating, releasing toxins that cause Crisa's headaches, but while it exists, he can see through her eyes and even control her, to some extent, with pain. But when he is ambushed and kidnapped by the vampire Gregor, the means for controlling Crisa falls into his hands. And while Derrick planned to remove the chip before the toxins could kill Crisa, Gregor has no such plans. Instead, he plans to use Crisa to eliminate Reaper and the thorn in his side: the band of vampires he heads. But first he plans to eliminate the other vampires by drawing them out to investigate attacks made by the drones- physically powerful humans with the Belladonna Antigen that were put on Steroids and lobotomized before being turned and cloned.

Crisa, meanwhile, has taken off on her own to reach the boy, and Briar and Reaper go in pursuit. Along the way, Reaper must deal with his incredible attraction to Briar and his guilt over the death of his wife, dead at his hands through her accidental use of his trigger word- something that enables him to go berserk and be a killer if he hears it. He doesn't know the word that can bring him out of his rage, but he knows it exists, and he wants Derry Dwyer on his own for that reason.

On their way north to get Crisa, Reaper and Briar argue and fight, and she nearly drains him to shut him up. But she forgot that drinking that much of his blood will link them together- even deeper than how she and Crisa are linked. And though Reaper loves Briar and his one sexual experience with her was the best he ever had, he wants something more than just sex. He wants an actual relationship.

But can Briar, emotionally damaged by all the abusive men in her life, give that sort of commitment to Reaper? When he touches her, she feels something, but when he refuses to have the "zipless fuck" that she's comfortable giving, she realizes that Reaper isn't like any other man she's known. Can she get past the emotional baggage she's been carrying all her life and simply allow herself to love and care for Reaper? It will take a confrontation with her sire, Gregor, who Briar both hates and fears, and Matthias, Ilyana's son and the boy Crisa is looking for, before they can have anything resembling a normal relationship.

This was a hard book for me to like, since at the start both characters share a very hard edge that's so sharp it can turn and cut you with no warning. Briar comes off as unlikeable and as a hard-edged bitch who cares only for herself and no one else. But it isn't long before we see that she's deluding herself if that is who she thinks she is. She puts up a good facade of not caring, even to herself, but she can't just abandon Crisa when she takes off in search of the boy the other woman is looking for.

Reaper is a bit more of an enigma at first. He's understandably exasperated at Briar's attitude, but as he starts to open up, we can see he's not without emotional wounds of his own. An agent for the CIA, he was trained to kill and programmed to go Berserk upon hearing a certain word. Somehow, his wife used it on him, and he killed her in a berserk frenzy... or so he thinks. When Briar doubts that his wife actually died, that he was used by her and the CIA to put him on a string of guilt so that he would keep working for them forever, readers are expected to find that off-putting about Briar. Of course, she turns out to be right, making Reaper, for all his CIA training, seem incredibly naive.

Regardless of all the building of a relationship between Reaper and Briar, it doesn't actually come until almost the very ending of the book, when Briar realizes how much she cares for Reaper and the others by staying behind and trying to distract Gregor so that the others can get away and save Crisa. But by this time, it becomes very hard to believe that Briar turns around so suddenly from a tortured figure of her past to become someone who can love and laugh so easily, I was not convinced. I think that by leaving Briar's transformation until so late in the story, the ending seemed a lot less convincing. It seemed more that it occurred by Author fiat rather than being integral to the character.

So, while not being my favorite Maggie Shayne Vampire novel, I would still continue to read her books. I just hope she can do better in the future.