Poison Kissed (6 page)

The boy laughs, and Kane smells heartbreak, obsession, cold liaisons with other, faceless girls that end in silence. Desperation. He nods slowly, teeth sharpening. “I imagine a man might trade his soul for a woman like that.”

“Heh. If only, mate. If only.”

Images of bloody shreds, gnashing teeth, the ripe deliciousness of soulflesh. Kane glides to his feet, uncomfortable heat swelling his veins, and leans over to whisper as he passes. “I shouldn’t give up, Joshua, if I were you. I believe it’s your lucky night.”

The boy stares. Kane glides onto the floor. Red-dress girl jumps as he approaches, and flinches when he trails his fingers over her hand.

She stares, curious and wary, but doesn’t pull away. “I know you, don’t I?”

He leans closer, her oriental scent lighting tiny flames along his skin. “You’ve always known me, Lucy.”

Blood rushes from her shoulders to her face, and she gasps, the same raw, throaty sound they give when he pleasures them. He inhales deeper, and her secrets flower, limp like weak-stemmed roses for him to taste.

Bruises in the bathroom mirror, concealer makeup cold and sticky on her fingers. A man’s harsh fists across her face, the sick punch in the guts that made her body bleed dark crimson lumps onto the shower floor, bigger than any clot had the right to be.

Kane’s muscles twitch. Taste that fertile blood, drink that wasted life from her body and make her shudder, lick her soft folds clean and lull her to peaceful sleep in his arms. Drag her and her lovesick auburn pet to hell.

He brushes his cheekbone against hers, just a tiny gesture of dominance, and she shivers. His throat stings raw. She’s already there, her own private hell of despair and emptiness. Such a small step into the abyss. He whispers warm in her ear, curling a demonic wisp of longing into her despair like sly smoke. “That boy’s dying for love. He’ll never hurt you like the other one did. Why don’t you go to him?”

“But he lied.” She stares, her lush lip trembling. “He slept with her.”

“Because you left him. Without you he’s lost.”

She swallows, her eyes glazing bright with desperate hope. “Really?”

“I believe there’s magic in the air tonight. He can give you that child you yearn for. Wouldn’t you trade everything for that?” He sears his lips across her cheek, like a mark.

She trembles beneath his kiss. Her gaze meets his, wide and raw with longing, and she’s lost.

Kane shudders, breathless. It’s like love, this luxuriant warmth in his blood, so rich and rare and intoxicating. Better, because no one ever says no, not in the end.

A tear slips down her face, unwilling. She blinks it away. “Thank you,” she whispers.

Maybe he’ll let her live long enough to enjoy it. “No, child. Thank
you
.”

And as she walks shyly across the floor to meet her lover, Kane smiles, content.

Behind the bar, below gleaming rows of colored bottles that prism strobe lights to shards, Rainbow mixes an angry vodka tonic without looking, his gaze fixed on Kane’s retreating back. The sight of the demon’s ash-strewn hair spikes phantom pain through Rainbow’s shoulder blades. He accepts the girl’s money and fumbles the change, not really paying attention, the cold longing for flight withering his composure.

A sharp-eyed troll with a shaven green skull orders a cocktail and a whiskey soda. Rainbow spills the ice, and his shaking fingers slip on the glass. It smashes at his feet, and angrily he scoops up another one and jams the ice in hard. After so many years, the memory of the demon’s cruel teeth slicing his flesh and ripping his precious wingjoints apart is fading. Some days, he even forgets completely.

A rotting pox on Kane for reminding him.

He pours the milk and chocolate sauce over berry liqueur, and this time he gets the change right.

He ducks, pretending to clean up the mess so no one can ask for anything else, and peeks out to see if Kane’s still there. After more than a hundred years, his balance without the counterweight of heavy feathered wings is perfect.

But the demon’s moved away, chatting up some tall blond girl with one elegant, persuasive hand laid casually on her arm. The worst breed of monster, the kind who looks exactly like everyone else.

Rainbow’s stomach folds, images of bloody soulflesh splashing his mind scarlet. Once, he’d have protected her, under Shadow’s orders. Pulled the hungry demon away from her, snarling and biting with righteous wrath flashing like lightning from snow white wings.

Now, he’s just another hellslave, helpless as a succubus or a revenant. Worse, because no demoncursed spells cramp his spirit. No magical compulsion sucks his will away.

No. Rainbow just knows when he’s beaten, and on his good days, he has the grace to feel ashamed of himself.

The rest of the time, he just works the bar, goes shopping, hangs out. And life is fine, an honest, simple, human life. Kane let him keep his body, and he looks good. No one cares about his fading scars. He’s not in pain, and he’s even learning to feel pleasure sometimes. He’s got money, a girlfriend who adores him, a nice apartment with a view. Who cares if the world’s going to hell? Most of these creeps fucking belong there.

He folds his cloth and sidles away, lifting the tiny hinge to let himself out into the pulsating crowd. Sugary sweatscent, adrenaline-soaked breath. Music tingles over him, raw and sultry. The cruel sensations still make him shiver.

He pushes through toward the back, and people smile at him, clap his shoulder. A sultry-eyed blue fairy slides inviting fingers over his thigh, and he presses a kiss to her shining lips with his fingertips and throws her a smile as he moves on. He’s got friends here. Where he comes from, they do masters, colleagues, minions. Not friends.

Beneath the mezzanine, his reflection slinks beside him in the mirrored wall, tall, graceful, muscles shining, straight blond hair pulled back in a metal clip. Against the glass, that pretty blue banshee crouches, warbling low and threatening. She of the double bloodfevers, scared ruby eyes stark in her pale face.

Rain’s sense of mischief sparkles. She’s a DiLuca minion, Kane’s enemy. Perhaps he should tell her what Kane unwittingly revealed—that Shadow’s plotting something—just to piss Kane off.

Maybe that’d wreak some pleasing havoc.

But she doesn’t look in the mood for confidences, and after an indecisive moment, Rainbow shrugs and walks on by unnoticed. Whatever.

Out the back, stars twinkle feebly through city smog and heat haze, and the black alley is quiet. Heat soaks through his jeans, into his skin. He wipes damp hands, pops out his phone, and speed-dials. Lets it ring, just once. Hangs up.

A minute of silence. Then another. Overhead, a crow calls. Rainbow kicks irritably at the dust, scattering ripped paper. He’s not a fucking voice mail service. Screw it. Maybe he’ll give work the flick, call Melanie—

His ringtone buzzes, a bouncy hip-hop tune.

Rainbow’s spine crawls. He swallows, and picks up. “Umm . . . yeah?”

“Keep it short.” Shadow’s voice is musical, eerie like echoing wind chimes.

It reminds Rainbow of snowflakes, and he wonders if he once sounded like that, too, instead of whiskey-roughened, tired, old. He grits his teeth. “Kane wants to see you. Here.”

A chuckle, like ice. “Of course he does. Tell him I’ll be by Saint Patrick’s tomorrow afternoon.”

And Shadow hangs up. Just like that.

Rainbow flicks the call screen away, confusion wrapping cotton wool around his thoughts. No argument. Shadow didn’t sound surprised. Or scared. Maybe he really is up to something. Plotting, scheming. Planning another war . . .

Whatever. Rainbow doesn’t want to know. Doesn’t want to answer the question festering in his soul, the horrid uncertainty about whose side he’d be on if it came to another fight.

Sweat trickles in his hair, the heat scorching his breath a dark reminder that he’s only one step away from hell. He lifts his face to the heavens, searching, but the demonblack sky offers no answer.

Frustration cracks his knuckles. He’s happy here—isn’t he?—and before, Shadow gave him nothing but crisp orders and an inferiority complex. But still, somehow, he longs for home.

He taps a quick text to Kane, not expecting a reply, and hits another speed-dial. “Mel, hi. Yeah, sorry it’s so late. . . . Well, thanks, I miss you, too. . . . No, I’ve got the night off. . . . Sure, I’ll come to yours. . . . Huh? No, everything’s fine. See ya soon. . . . Yeah. I like you, too, darlin’.”

Beneath an endless, mind-twistingly blue sky, Shadow kneels in warm sunlight on a broad green lawn, his frosted white wings stretched out behind him. Before him, a deep blue pond lies still, its grassy edges neatly trimmed. The water’s surface shows Rainbow, reflected perfectly as if he stood before a mirror, a blond strand falling in his eyes as he talks on his phone. His voice rings through clearly—
like you, too, darlin’
—and as he hangs up, Shadow sets off a ripple with the tip of his finger, and the image shimmers and pops away.

Shadow chuckles, and lights to his feet with a sweep of snowy feathers. “It worked.”

His breeze swirls Whisper’s simple white dress around her ankles. She stands back from the pool’s edge, wary, nervous hands folded in front of her. She smiles, and the radiance glints in her golden braid, wrapped thick and hanging over one shoulder. “Of course it worked, Seraph.”

Inwardly, Shadow rolls his eyes. The way she worships him is appropriate, but irritating. “Don’t flatter.”

Whisper’s face falls, and her oceanblue gaze slips away under modest golden lashes. “I only meant—”

“It’s all right.” He smiles coldly. No need to let minions get comfortable. He slips his hand into hers, and they walk together across the leafy garden, their wingfeathers almost but not quite touching. Pale flowers grow in neat rows, the gardens tended to a minute perfection that pleases his eyes. Bees buzz and dart, orderly. The sun is warm and bright, its very sameness a comfort. A child treads past with neatly folded wings and nods respectfully, a book open in clean white hands.

Whisper clears her throat nervously. “So what now?”

Shadow plucks a mauve daisy and hands it to her with a smile. “I’ll talk to Kane. Put him off the scent. He’s too arrogant to figure out it’s the dissent in his own ranks that’s breaking his barriers.”

She takes the flower, solemnly sniffing its perfume, and her shy gaze tilts upward. “You are . . . most courageous, Seraph.”

He stops beneath a weeping willow, examining the small pale female hand in his. It feels cool, smooth. Neither pleasant nor unpleasant. How it should be. Coldly, he imagines kissing it, touching her, taking her in his arms and pressing his lips to her skin. Not a hair of arousal in his blood. Nothing. No reaction.

Kane tried to tempt Shadow, last time they met on the field of battle. Lured him with pain and pleasure and secret desires, the way he tempts them all. It didn’t work. Shadow has no desires, except power and amusement.

But not all Shadow’s children are as strong as Shadow.

His grip tightens around Whisper’s fingers. “Courage is irrelevant. Kane is weak. I can feel it, Whisper, in my blood. Do you know what that means?”

Whisper’s eyes brighten, curious and empty blue. “No.”

“Never mind. We must strike while Kane is distracted. The cherubs are amusing, but they’re not enough. We need a spy. Someone who knows the place, who can watch Kane and discover his weaknesses.” A golden butterfly flutters onto her wrist, and he brushes it away with one finger, leaving an ocher dust trail.

Whisper blushes, endearing. “But . . . Seraph, we already have Rainbow.”

“Rainbow is lost.” Shadow’s tone whets harsh, and somewhere on earth, a gale blows. “Kane has poisoned him. We need new blood.”

“But Kane can smell us. How will we hide someone new?”

Shadow gazes into the shimmering water, abstracted, remembering Rainbow’s dirt-smeared reflection, the scars on his shoulders where his wings used to be. A real angel’s body, not the ugly human-suit Kane’s dominance usually forces on Shadow’s kind. A strong, useful body. A body Kane is used to, and never inspects too closely.

Pity there’s not someone else in it.

Someone eager and clever, who isn’t afraid to immerse himself in Kane’s sordid world.

Someone Shadow can control, and dispose of when he’s finished.

He smiles, and below in a desolate desert, flowers bloom. “Let me worry about that. I have just the man.”

Whisper smiles back, and dares to cover his hand with hers, and this time Shadow lets her.

5

I slouched against the mirrored wall deep beneath the mezzanine, shame still stinging my blood. Glass slicked cool on my bare shoulder, my hair sticking like wet paper. Flashing lights cast me in bloodstained colors, blue and green and crimson, and my mirror-banshee stared at me with reproachful garnet eyes. Fresh scarlet bruises already turned blue on her delicate cheek. She looked gaunt, pale, her blue hair frightful.

I turned away, sick. I didn’t want to see myself.

White dry ice drifted low and fragrant, hissing over metal and suede, mixing with tart pot smoke and the fleshy scent of sex. On the couch beside me a skinny vampire girl with white dreadlocks and angry scars laddering her forearms ravished a half-insensible bloodfae boy. Tiny holes bled freely in his dark-skinned throat, and she lapped at the plumrich blood. His wet caramel hair dripped sanguine sweat onto the suede, his half-lidded eyes rolling white. She had her hand stuffed down his bloodstained jeans, and his sprawled limbs twitched limp, his breath ragged.

He didn’t look fully conscious to me. I kicked at her starved ankles. “You paying for that, missy?”

She snarled at me, blood and spit dripping, and the kid groaned and clawed at her dreads to drag her back down.

I grunted, flushing. One girl’s disgusting is another boy’s wet dream. I didn’t get it. Any bloodsucker who tried that with me got a swift stiletto heel somewhere hard and painful. But that kid’s throaty need crawled under my skin like a worm, slithering over my muscles and carving my nerves to a jittery mess.

The singer’s raw-ripped voice slid drunkenly inside my head, that vampire blood I’d drunk still coating my guts with desire and velvet compliance. I could see Joey at the bar, coolly polishing off another scotch, and the humiliating temptation to creep back up to him and apologize tickled my skin like fairy flame. His lips still burned on my cheek, the tiny touch of his tongue a stab of sweet torture I couldn’t forget. What was he thinking? What the fuck was I thinking?

Frustration seared into my guts like a hot iron rod, and I banged angry fists back against the glass, the mirror’s cool slam only aggravating my unease. Lately I’d become obsessed with touching him, some dark empty place inside me longing for his presence. Every glance, every scrap of his regard, I played over and over in my mind, searching, wondering, cursing my cowardice.

Those few precious seconds a few weeks ago when he’d kissed me reverberated in my daydreams, and soaked my nights with feversweat. I was high when it happened, my nerves strung tight on fight and sparkle, my blood afire with stolen fae adrenaline. Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe I’d hallucinated the whole thing.

Maybe I just needed to get laid.

God, I was so pathetic. I couldn’t even wish myself back to the days before I’d noticed him like this. I’d noticed him that very first night in the spriggan gang’s squat, when he lifted me up by my shackle-scabbed hand. My knees had buckled, my feet slipping on the greasy floor, but he helped me stand, his hands cool and reassuring on my waist. He’d touched my bleeding lip with a single gentle fingertip, his eyes for once warm and compassionate, and said,
Are they hurting you, miss?

I’d never forgotten that shy, shivering melt in my heart when I realized he meant they shouldn’t.

He’d paid the spriggan off on the spot by smacking the bastard’s grinning head against the wall until it bled and stopped wriggling. Vicious justice, maybe, but it impressed the hell out of me, and from that day, it was Joey for me.

He cleaned me up, gave me a fresh start. It wasn’t easy, shivering and screaming and choking on nosebleeds, and a dozen times I wanted to give up. But I wanted Joey’s approval more. He found me a place to stay, a real house where they didn’t use my body or stuff drugs up my nose, and if sometimes I couldn’t pay the rent, no one ever came looking. He even found me jobs, off and on, basic stuff but clean, and sometimes he’d drop by to check on me unannounced.

I lived for those days, his quiet questions, the heart-stopping flash of his smile.

He wasn’t like anyone else I knew. He never lied, or apologized. Never patronized me. Never touched me. Like a dark knight from a fairy tale, cold and distant but ever-present, and people soon learned not to make my life difficult. Not unless they wanted trouble.

Gifts are suspicious when you’re alone and vulnerable, and for a long time I waited and hoped to see what he wanted in return. But he’d already gotten it: loyalty, blind and absolute. I’d have done anything for him, and though he asked little at first—some spying here, a little spine-tingling thieving there, the occasional con trick or streetfight mayhem—I wanted more. I learned to fight so I could impress him, and soon no one gave me shit anymore.

Safety, shelter, a decent living. He gave me all those things. But what he really gave me was a reason to live.

When he kept his distance, I told myself I was only sixteen, and he was too old for me. Besides, he was an up-and-coming friend of important friends, a cousin of Salvatore DiLuca himself, and me just a cheap sparkleblind whore.

I wasn’t sixteen anymore.

I banged my head and clawed the mirrors with screeching nails, but my body wouldn’t relax, my blood boiling with empty hunger. Even now that I finally had this job, and got to see him every night, he still pushed me away. Like he went out of his way to prove he didn’t trust me, when the very fact that I still worked for him proved that he did.

My hands shook, my magicspiced reflexes jerking to leap, strike, kill. Fuck it. I couldn’t function like this. It’d get me killed. I needed distance. I needed to get my mind back on the job. Where the fuck was Cobalt? He should’ve called by now.

Seven years had passed, and I was no closer to finding my mother’s murderer and the healing I craved, that I’d get only when the bastard lay dead at my hands. But recently I’d found something that might help. Something dangerous and edgy, painful like razor oblivion and as compelling.

I gritted my teeth, remembering last time, how the mindscrape had hurt me, how I’d woken weeping and covered in scratches from my own ripped nails. Digging through your own suppressed memories was a ragged road to insanity. But it might help. It had to help. I didn’t know what else to do. If I didn’t find my mother’s killer, all this death would be for nothing.

I yanked my phone from the slim pocket at my thigh and typed a terse text.
U holding?????
It took me three goes to get it right. I jerked through the address book for my trader’s number and jammed my thumb on
SEND
. I leaned my head back on the cool glass and clutched the phone in sweaty fingers, waiting for the comforting buzz that meant Cobalt was here, and had what I needed.

Music screeched in my ears, scraping like thorns, the distorted chorus bass vibrating my guts to nausea. Before me, dreadlock bitch was fucking her snack now, riding him with her torn black skirt rolled up on her thighs, peeling back his shirt to lick blood from his fangslashed nipple. Wet flesh slicked and tore. He whimpered, pain and longing gnashing sharp teeth in my ears. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t block out the sound of his violation, but I damn well didn’t have to watch.

“Looking for some light, pretty girl?”

I jerked, and the phone slipped from my fingers as I went for knives that weren’t there.

A lissome golden fairy smiled down at me, her wings frosted silver like a spider’s web in the rain.

My fingers shook, scarily empty. I scrabbled on the ground for my phone, begging it not to be broken, not now. The screen lit, and relief slashed my nerves. Still no reply. I clutched it tight, like a lifeline. “No, thanks.”

“Smell like you are. All broken glass and blood. Sure you’re not hungry?” The fairy gave a toothy white smile, her sweet musical voice like warm lotion on my tortured ears. A light scar caressed her gold-brushed cheek, like she’d been burned long ago, and she held her head selfconsciously askance, hiding the mark with her long silver hair like she didn’t want anyone to see.

But she was still beautiful, her forestgreen scent an enticement. She looked interesting, intriguing, experienced. Not just a disposable china doll like me. I swallowed. Hungry? I was ravenous. “Really, I’m fine. Thanks anyway.”

Silvery silk flowed as she reached out a long dusky arm. Her three-knuckled fingers unfolded, claws glinting silver. In her narrow palm sat a long glass vial. Inside, emerald liquid sparkled, twinkles of gold and silver winking at me like a demon’s tempting eyes, colored shadows dancing over her palm.

My gaze locked on that shimmering green prize, and a hot ache flowered deep in my belly.

My mouth stung dry. I had to wait for Cobalt. If I sparkled out now, I’d miss his message, and only Cobalt knew for sure how to help me. But . . . “I’m . . . I’ve got my score coming. I can’t—”

Her eyes glinted. She darted forward, her cool arm sliding around my neck, her smile hot and conspiratorial on my ear. “But mine’s special, snaky girl. So bright and angry. I made it just for you. Drop of agony, splash of bitterness, bloom of rosy revenge. Make you feel special. Send you dreams. Give you what you need.”

Her honey breath danced on my tongue, ripe with weird fairy insight. She slid long delicate fingers over my collarbone, trailing golden dust down to where my pale breast swelled. Goose bumps stung, and my nipple reacted, twisting tight.

Desperate chemical need crooned deep in my throat. I could have thrown her off me easily enough. I wanted to shove her off me, to slap her lovely face and stalk away. But I wanted what she was selling more.

She swept the vial up under my nose, where I could smell the cursed stuff as it dampened the cork, rich and citrusy like preserved lemon. I could hear it, the tempting effervescence tinkling like tiny demon bells, and my body ripped and tore inside with an addict’s helpless yearning. My breasts ached. Glands swelled to painful hardness between my legs, and poison throbbed full and threatening in the sacs under my tongue. I wanted it that bad.

The fairy’s long tongue curled along the top of my bodice to the soft crevice between my breasts, and dipped inside. Slick, warm, inviting, the maddening scent of oranges drifting from her hair. I slammed my palms into the glass so I wouldn’t rip her limbs off and snatch the vial from her bleeding hand. I was no better than that sorry bloodfae boy. If she wanted money, she could have it. A poignant memory or two? No problem. If she wanted to fuck, I’d do that, too. Just feed me.

“Whoa, easy on, lady.” Smoke-cracked voice, dark and familiar, the fleeting scent of bourbon and expensive men’s perfume. Strong hands grabbed the fairy’s soft silver hair and yanked her away from me.

The fairy snarled, golden spit flecking, and Vincent shouldered between us, though her height outstripped his and probably her strength, too. Pretty boy acted tough enough when it suited him. “Whatever you’re selling, she ain’t paying like that.”

“Want your own, candy child? Ask her yourself.” She ran that long brown tongue over her teeth in a lascivious wet grin and scampered away.

My body screamed, thwarted. I wanted to scream, too, chase her and make her give me what I wanted. I whirled and shoved Vincent in the chest, wrath sparking from my fingers and welling deep in my lungs. “What the fuck did you do that for?”

“Thought you needed help.” He turned his wounded hot-chocolate eyes on me, that wishful-yet-sultry
you might be out of my league, princess, but I can show you one helluva good time
gaze. No doubt that sexy let-me-make-you-moan glance wheedled him into more girls’ beds than he deserved.

But not this angry blue banshee. My fingers itched for a weapon, to gut the sneaky little fucker. I didn’t for a moment mistake his effort for gallantry. Whatever he’d secretly texted Joey about me, it wasn’t good. He was undermining me, yet he was supposed to be on my side. “Like you give a toss about helping me, Vinny. I don’t need help from a lying little weasel like you. What sick shit did you tell the boss about me, huh?”

“Calm down, Minwah, okay? I didn’t say nothing.” He sidled back up to me, scraping his elaborate hair even more elaborately messy and endearing. Had to give him points for guts. He stuffed his hands into his faded jeans pockets, and pulled them out again, nervous. “Look, are you, uh . . . are you needing?”

Like it wasn’t obvious. I resisted niggling sympathy. He was my friend, and he was just a human. It wasn’t his fault he had to lie and connive to get what he wanted. But he still had no right. I averted my face, my skin still running with sweat. “That’s none of your goddamn business.”

“I can help you.”

“I told you. I don’t want your help.” I jammed my still-silent phone away and walked off. If Cobalt wasn’t here, I’d have to go home and sweat it off. Terrific.

But Vincent grabbed my elbow, fingers warm and tight in the joint, and pulled me back against him. His warm whisper shivered my hair. “Ain’t you sick of following him?”

“What?” I tried to shake him off, but I didn’t try very hard, distracted by his body, hard and fragrant against my back, his pulse feeding my hungry ears. “Are you high or something? Get off me before I hurt you.”

“The boss. He’s never gonna make you his equal. Don’t that hurt?”

“Dunno what you’re talking about.” I tried to ignore his fingers, gliding dulcet on my wrist. A moment ago, he forced me still. Now he invited me to stay, and temptation prickled nerves deep inside me that hungered for stimulation, any sensation to make me feel alive.

“You and me, Mina.” His words slid deftly into my vampire-addled blood, caressing me to warm desire. He slipped his arm around my waist with uncanny seducer’s instinct. “We’re both strong, smart, tough. We’ve both got . . . talents. We’d make a good team. No rule says Joey’s gotta be the boss.” He caressed my bare midriff, lingering on the belt of my low-cut pants, his thumb teasing inside.

I turned to face him, letting his hand slip over my hip. His thighs felt strong and warm against mine, his arousal slow but definite in the way he pressed against me, slid his body slowly across mine. Hot body, for a human, strong and male, hard-muscled in all the right places. Not too gay to have a hard-on. They said he was careful and considerate in bed. I even liked him, sort of.