Poisoned Kisses (14 page)

T
he nymph was unusually quiet beside him in the crowded plane. A light sheen of perspiration made her bare shoulders shine in a way that reminded him of how heatedly they’d danced together on the hotel rooftop. He’d enjoyed having such a powerful creature give herself over to him. She wanted, she needed, she
connected,
in the most beautifully raw and primal way. But now, she was wound tight.

“Are you all right?” Marco asked her as her hands tightened on the armrests.

“I’m fine,” she snapped.

She was not fine. “You’re knuckles are turning white.”

She mumbled in reply, her cheeks coloring. “I don’t like to fly.”

Marco loved to fly. The sky was the one bloodless, untainted place left in the world. He couldn’t imagine why someone like Kyra wouldn’t love it, too. “What’s wrong with flying?”

“I’m a
lampade,
” she whispered. “I wasn’t made to look
down on people. I was made to walk with them on the earth…or under it.”

So, Kyra wasn’t entirely fearless, after all. There were cracks. Vulnerabilities. And if what she said was true, the poison of his blood had caused some of them. If he’d never touched her, if he’d never come near her, maybe she would have lived forever. But he’d infected her. He was nothing but poison to Kyra and every other woman in his life. Look what he’d done to Ashlynn.

Marco sighed. What had Ashlynn ever done to deserve being kidnapped and caught up in this mess? Whatever happened, Marco had to get her released. He just hoped he could get the weapons shipment to Ogun in time. Luckily, Rwanda was just over the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and it’d be a relatively short flight. It was time to wear his own face again.

Marco seemed to have no fear of being arrested here in the warm night air of Rwanda. He made his way through the crowded tarmac with self-assurance. He’d obviously been here many times before. He knew the country, he knew the people. Within a matter of moments, they were ushered past customs officials and let through.

Kyra was oddly reassured by Marco’s competence. She stayed close to his elbow as he made a few calls. Shortly afterward, a government official picked them up in the dead of night. It was only once they’d arrived at some sort of military compound—some set of buildings that looked like barracks—that Kyra whispered, “How much did you have to pay him?”

“Nothing,” Marco said, helping her out of the car. “I’m a friend of the Rwandan government.”

Darkness posed no obstacle for her—she could see all the buildings quite plainly, and the weapons inside them. What she couldn’t tell was whether or not the guards were Rwandan
soldiers or if they were in Marco’s employ. They certainly treated him deferentially enough. As for her, the guards all stared. She could feel their heated glances as they swept up and down her long bare legs, but none of them spoke to her. “Is this place yours?”

Marco shook his head. The corrugated metal door screeched in the night as he pulled it closed behind them. Then he turned on a single lightbulb that swung from a wire overhead. “It’s a government stockpile. The Rwandans want the weapons to reach the general, and they’re happy to let me bring them over the border.”

Kyra’s mouth actually fell open. “But why? What has Rwanda to do with the killing in the Congo?”

“I told you before,” he said, hefting a crowbar. “After the genocide here, the guilty fled to Zaire—er, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They hide out in the jungle, never having paid for their crimes. Worse, they continue to commit atrocities against the Congolese.”

“Someone should stop them,” Kyra said, starting to see Marco’s frustration. “Marco, wait. Are you saying that the government of the Congo is harboring these…these—”

“Genocidaires,”
Marco finished for her. The word echoed off the walls. Kyra hadn’t known there was a word for such men. And she hadn’t thought that any government in the world would harbor them. She didn’t know what to say. But for once, Marco seemed willing to do the talking. “The Rwandans want justice but the government in the DRC can’t seem to give it to them. The general promised that he’d give them that justice. So did I.”

It was all starting to come together now. This was the war Marco couldn’t stop fighting. The war that he’d promised to fight. But look where it had led him. “Are you giving them justice, Marco, or revenge?”

“Maybe a little of both,” he said, prying the top off a crate to reveal a row of Kalashnikov assault rifles. AK-47s. Cheap
to make. Easy to use. The gun of choice in civil wars around the globe. Kyra knew because she had seen them in Daddy’s armory. Hell, these guns could have actually come from one of Ares’ warehouses. And the thought made Kyra sick.

“Ogun isn’t interested in justice and you don’t have to give him these weapons. He’s blackmailing you and you don’t have to give in to it.”

“What options do I have? Can I defy a god?”

“I do it all the time,” Kyra said, but Ares was her father. He’d only torture her; he wouldn’t kill her even if he could. They might not have the most loving father-daughter relationship but they were kin. The same couldn’t be said for Ogun.

“Can Ogun be killed?” Marco asked. “Maybe with my hydra blood?”

Kyra shook her head. “No. Your blood only affected me because my mother was a mortal woman. Ogun is a god. The worst thing you can do to him is deprive him of the forces that he feeds upon. War. Violence. Wrath…”

She might as well be asking him to ensure world peace, and he knew it. “Can Ogun be
captured
, then?” He couldn’t look at her while saying the word. “Can he be chained?”

Kyra bit her lip. The fact that she’d once intended to lock him up was still a fresh wound between them and she wondered if it would ever heal. “Perhaps, but not forever. And not by us. He’s a god of Africa. This is his realm. He’s most powerful here, and his bloodlust is obviously well nourished. Maybe if another god opposed him, or an army came against him…”

Marco threw the crowbar on the floor and it bounced on the cement with an angry clatter. “Then I have to do what he wants. I have to get him the weapons.”

“He’ll only use them to escalate the civil war.”

“I have no choice, Kyra.”

“Yes, you do. You could run. I know places in the world
that Ogun would fear to go. And you can wear a thousand different faces. He might never find you.”

“Run?
If it was just my life on the line, that’d be one thing. But he has Benji and he has Ashlynn.” Right.
Ashlynn.
She took a deep breath knowing that Marco was going to blow his one chance to escape, because of the woman Kyra had all but single-handedly brought back into his life. He could run—he could even run away with her—but instead, he was going to go back for his simple mortal woman. Kyra tried to make her nymph’s heart cold and hard. “So you still love her.”

He didn’t confirm or deny it. “Ashlynn’s an innocent in all this. I can’t let her be hurt because of me. I can’t live with that.”

And Kyra couldn’t live with Marco becoming the minion of a war god. If he gave in to Ogun this time, he’d have to give in to him the next time and the time after that. Kyra knew how the gods were. She’d gone after Marco in the first place to keep Daddy from using him. She couldn’t give up just because another war god got there first. “Marco, I could infiltrate Ogun’s stronghold. I could free Benji and Ashlynn.”

He looked dubious. “You can sneak into an armed encampment?”

“I’ve done it before,” Kyra insisted. “As long as I’m careful and paying attention, I can make mortals see whatever I want them to see. Or nothing at all. I can fade so that none of the mortals would see me even if they looked straight at me.”

“What about Ogun? He’s not mortal. Can he see you?” She didn’t want to lie to him. She didn’t want to lie to him ever again. So she said nothing. “No. It’s too dangerous,” Marco said with a note of finality. “You said yourself that you’re not as strong as you used to be. In the morning, we’ll load up the plane and I’ll fly it in to Rwanda. And I’ll need you with me.”

“For what?”

“I’ll tell you when we get there,” Marco said before leading her out and pulling the warehouse door shut. “If we’re going to save Benji and Ashlynn, we have to leave at dawn, so we’d better get some sleep.”

In truth, Kyra was exhausted. She was hot and sweaty and wanted nothing more than a bath and a soft bed. But the closest thing to be had was a hammock in one of the empty barracks. She settled into the coarse net, not liking the way it suspended her body in the air. She let Marco find her a blanket and pillow, then watched him take a seat on an empty crate. His hands came to rest loosely between his knees, and in one of them was his gun. “No good-night kiss?” he asked.

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Do you want a good-night kiss or are you just trying to find a way to handcuff me to the door again?”

He smirked. “Which would you prefer?”

Kyra didn’t dignify that with an answer. “Aren’t you going to sleep?”

“I’ve got too much to think about. But I’ll make sure no one bothers you.”

She pulled the blanket over her, ignoring its musty scent. “Why would anyone bother me?”

“You didn’t disguise yourself on the way in. You’re an exotic, scantily clad woman surrounded by a bunch of soldiers. They’d be all over you if they didn’t know that you came with me, and that I’d put a bullet in any man who touches you.”

It was a possessive and territorial thing for him to say—and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. But she might have liked it. “That’s a little extreme, isn’t it?”

Marco let his irritation show. “They all eyed you like wolves eye a sheep.”

“Well, this sheep bites back.”

“I remember.” He leaned back on the wall behind him, ejecting a magazine from his gun, then replacing it with another he fished out of his shirt pocket.

“I can handle myself, you know. It’s not like I’m some wide-eyed virgin. I’ve had plenty of men before you.”

Marco tapped the discarded magazine against the wood crate a few times, as if it was a habit. Then she realized it was annoyance. “Why would you throw that in my face?”

Had she thrown it in his face? Maybe she had. She couldn’t say why. Maybe it was because the memory of Ashlynn, his sweet ingenue, kept tap-dancing on Kyra’s last nerve. “You started it.”

“When?”

“Back in Niagara Falls. The morning after we—” She stopped herself. What was it they’d done? It had felt like making love… “The way you accused me of tricking lots of men into bed. You’ve taunted me about it several times—as if you’re some paragon of purity.”

“I was angry.” Marco tilted his head back, eyes on the industrial ceiling. “I was a jackass. I was just trying to hurt you.”

He was actually admitting that he was wrong? Kyra couldn’t quite believe it. “No, I remember the way you looked when the vulture was taunting us about all my mortal lovers. What she said bothered you.”

“No. It bothered
you
.”

Kyra held her breath. Try as she might, she couldn’t come back with a smart-mouthed reply. There had been men, yes, many. But she’d lived for more years than she could count. It was foolish to wish he’d been the only one.

“Kyra…you don’t owe anybody an explanation for who and what you are. You’re wild. Primal. Beautiful.”

She didn’t want to hear him say it because she’d heard it all before. This is what all men loved about nymphs but it never held their attention for long. Once a nymph let a man do everything to her that he could’ve dreamed of, he inevitably returned to a woman like Ashlynn. Kyra glanced away, her emotions a jumble.

“Look at me.” His tone demanded obedience, so she met his eyes. “On the rooftop, when we were dancing…the way you moved against me. The way your face looked when you came. You didn’t give a damn what anybody thought. I’ve never seen anything sexier, and nobody has any right to want you to be different. Not even me.”

“But would you
want
me to be different?” Kyra asked. “If I
could be?
”

He didn’t even hesitate. “No. But I wish
I
was different.”

“You can be…you weren’t always a gunrunner.”

“I wasn’t always some face-shifting, doppelganger monster, either. My blood wasn’t always poisoned.” He rubbed at the stubble on his chin and they were both silent until he said, “You said I was
war-forged,
Kyra. Is there a way to…to unforge me? Or is killing me the only way to get rid of my poisoned blood?”

Again, she was silent because she didn’t want to lie. But neither did she want to tell him the truth. If she tried to explain to him about her inner torch—about how she might be able to use her powers to destroy the hydra within—she’d have to tell him about her mother, and she wasn’t sure she could bear it. But Marco’s eyes were so intently searching hers that she had no choice. “There might be one way.”

He sat up straighter, his boots flat on the floor. “How?”

“In the ancient stories, the only way to destroy a hydra was with a torch and a blade. The hero would chop off the monstrous heads and cauterize the wounds with a torch. I’m a torchbearer. I might be able to use my powers to illuminate your soul, to step inside you and cut away the poisoned parts and sear them shut with my flame.”

That sent him to his feet. “So do it!”

Kyra shrunk down into the hammock, sorry she’d mentioned it. “Don’t you remember what happened the last time I shined my torchlight into your eyes?”

“Yeah. I blacked out and crashed the car. But we’re not on
the road now and if I fall unconscious the worst thing that’ll happen is that I’ll bump my head on the cement floor.”

“That’s not the worst thing that could happen. I caused that accident with just a short burst of light into your eyes—and reflected light at that. If I shined directly into your eyes for as long as it would take to find your inner hydra and vanquish him, it would…” She couldn’t say it. She just couldn’t say it. She fingered the peridot choker at her throat and tears welled in her eyes. “Look, I’ve tried this before and it ended badly.”