Wicked Kiss (Nightwatchers) (25 page)

“That was stupid,” Kraven said without emotion at this horrific
tale. “A fallen angel or an exiled demon can’t kill him or herself with fire. Or
a bullet. Or a hungry shark. That soul inside you takes on a life of its own and
retains your consciousness, even if the body’s been destroyed.” His lips
thinned. “But I suppose you’ve already figured that out, haven’t you?”

Stephen’s face held endless misery. “I have nothing left except
my hunger. When I move through those here in this world, it gives me temporary
relief.”

“But you’re hurting them,” I said, my throat tight. “You have
to stop.”

He nodded. “Tonight I will ease my pain once and for all. It’s
why I’m here. Why I was released from his kingdom. I do what he tells me.”

“What who tells you?” I asked.

“The only one that matters. The only one that knows the truth.”
His eyes locked with mine. “You know, but you don’t. You can’t see, not yet. But
you will. You will see everything like I do. Like he wants you to. Soon, very
soon.”

I shivered.

Bishop met my gaze and his expression was bleak and haunted.
This was a fallen angel, just like him, one whose soul had driven him insane.
But this angel had chosen suicide as his only way out, which only made things
worse.

He composed himself quickly and turned away from me to face
Stephen again. “What do you mean? What are you going to do?”

Instead of replying, Stephen let out a strangled moan and
dropped to his knees. Connor and Zach finally lost their hold on him and seemed
uncertain of what to do with this most recent development.

“Bishop?” Connor asked.

“Don’t touch him again,” Bishop warned. “Not yet.”

Stephen’s eyes lost the opaque sheen and returned to their
normal color. Again, I felt that strange crackling sensation slide over my skin.
It made my heart race knowing it was caused by a bodiless fallen angel with a
touch of death.

I exchanged a look with Jordan, who was rubbing her bare arms.
She’d felt it, too.

“That was seriously freaky,” she said, her voice trembling.

Jordan was what Cassandra originally thought I was. A human
with supernatural intuition. She saw what others didn’t. She sensed the
invisible. She saw the unseen.

I guess we did have way more in common than I’d originally
thought.

“Too much pain,” Stephen groaned. “Make it stop. Please, make
it stop.”

My gaze shot to him as he crawled toward Zach, reaching a hand
up beseechingly. “I hate what I’ve become. I hate that I hurt her. I’m sorry,
Jordan. I’m sorry for everything. I want it to end. Please, kill me.”

“Stephen, no!” Jordan gasped out. “What’s wrong with you?”

“The angel—” I grabbed her arm to keep her from moving closer
to him. “He took Stephen’s will to live—just like what happened with Julie.
Bishop, do something! He’s going to hurt himself!”

Connor and Bishop both moved quickly to grab Stephen and they
pulled him back up to his feet. But now Stephen, loose from being restrained,
used that super-gray strength of his to fight, shoving Connor with enough force
that he flew back, landing hard on the pavement.

“You’re not hurting anyone else tonight.” Bishop grabbed the
back of Stephen’s shirt.

“Kill me then,” Stephen begged.

“Sorry. It’s not that easy.” Bishop slammed the gray into the
wall of the warehouse hard enough to knock Stephen out. He sent a look in my
direction and raised a dark eyebrow. “Too violent for you?”

I fought to breathe normally, and repressed a nervous laugh.
“I’ll allow it.”

The barest of smiles moved across his lips. “I’ve wanted to do
that for a while.”

“Go team,” Kraven said drily. “So what happens now? When he
wakes up? Do we have a suicidal gray on our hands?”

Bishop shook his head. “My bet is it passes. The will to live,
happiness in general, is not a measurable entity. It’s an emotion, a mental
state. It’s possible when he wakes up he’ll be back to normal. We’ll take him to
St. Andrew’s and monitor him.”

Stephen was incapacitated. Jordan and I had escaped. Any broken
bones had been healed.

We were lucky. It really could have gone much worse than
this.

“I’m so sorry. It was my fault.” Zach shook his head. “I had
him, but he slipped away from me.”

Connor had pushed himself to his feet. “I’m fine. A couple
bruises. Nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah, forget it,” Bishop said. “He was possessed. You’re lucky
he didn’t attack you, too. His strength is off the charts.”

“But I’m the one with the dagger.” Zach looked down at the
golden weapon in his grip. “I should have been the one to stop him.”

“Like I said, forget it.”

“I can’t. I can’t forget it. It’s always this way. I have
potential, but I don’t live up to it. My father told me that once. Nothing I did
ever impressed him. Nothing.” He let out a shaky sigh. “He was ashamed of me. It
made me ashamed of myself. I hated him so much. I—I can’t believe that hate
didn’t turn my soul dark and heavy. There were times that I wanted to kill
him.”

I’d completely stopped breathing. “Zach...the angel...did it
touch you, too?”

He turned his anguished gaze toward me. Tears began to streak
down his cheeks. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t do this anymore. It’s too much. I
thought I was strong, but I’m not. Trinity is doomed. We were set up to fail. Do
you know what happens then? The city will be destroyed—wiped off the face of the
earth because I failed. I have nothing to live for. Nothing!”

“No, Zach! Don’t!” I screamed.

But it was already too late.

Zach turned the dagger toward himself and plunged it into his
chest.

Chapter 23

There was nothing we could do to stop him.

“Zach!” I screamed again, but the sound of my voice was swept
away by the thunderous roar of the Hollow opening up.

Zach dropped to his knees.

“I’m sorry,” he said, before collapsing completely.

“What—what is that?” Jordan shrieked. “What’s going on?”

“Stay back.” I held out my arm to block her from coming another
step closer. Panic shot through me as Bishop started moving toward Zach. “What
are you doing?”

He met my eyes, his expression grim. “The dagger.”

Oh, God. The Hallowed Blade...it was still in Zach’s chest. And
the Hollow was reaching out for him with its fingerlike tendrils of
darkness.

Bishop was ten feet away from Zach. I was farther back, but
even I felt the powerful suction.

My throat hurt, and I realized it was because I was screaming.
Losing Zach like this was bad enough, but Bishop was risking everything to get
the dagger back.

“Leave it!” I yelled. “Don’t get closer to him!”

But Bishop rarely did what I wanted him to do.

I hated that dagger, an instrument of death that had taken Zach
and was about to take Bishop, too. I started to move closer to stop him, but
Jordan held tightly to me to keep me back.

Bishop made it to Zach’s body and didn’t waste a second before
pulling the dagger from the dead angel’s chest.

The very next moment, the Hollow’s dark fingers wrapped around
Zach’s body and snatched him back into the horrific, swirling vortex.

Then it reached out for Bishop. He struggled against its pull
as those smoky, black tendrils moved around his wrists, his chest, his
throat.

“Bishop!” I screamed.

Suddenly, Kraven was on the move, nearly too fast to see. For a
second, I was terrified he was going to shove Bishop all the way into the
Hollow. I let out another strangled cry. Connor appeared at my side to help
Jordan hold me back and keep me out of the vortex’s pull.

But instead of pushing him, Kraven tackled Bishop hard and
rolled them both out of range.

The Hollow didn’t disappear; instead, it swiveled as if on an
axis. When I was lined up in its sights, it stopped. I swear it stared at me—a
hurricane of darkness.

I stared back as my heart thundered in my chest. I couldn’t
have looked away if I tried.

So close now. Can you feel it? I will need
you soon—sooner than I thought. Prepare yourself, Samantha. He can’t save
you. Only I can.

The words sounded hollow in my head, loud and clear, but empty
and devoid of emotion. And a sudden, terrifying realization froze me in
place.

This thing, this horrible
thing,
had a mind I could read. It was sentient.

And it knew who I was.

I couldn’t keep looking at it. I forced myself to tear my gaze
away toward Bishop and Kraven, who scuttled away from the Hollow’s roaring
mouth.

A moment later, it began to swirl smaller and smaller, until it
disappeared completely. The roaring sound vanished, but the echo of it still
rang in my ears.

The five of us stood in the warehouse’s empty parking lot in
stunned silence.

Zach was gone.

Bishop was at my side in an instant, pulling me into his
arms.

“What just happened?” Jordan demanded. “Am I going completely
insane?”

The next moment, Stephen began to come to. He groaned and
lifted his head. Kraven swiftly moved toward him, pulled the groggy gray to his
feet, then whacked his head off the wall again. “Stay down.”

We’d saved the monster, but lost an angel.

* * *

Walking next to Kraven, Connor carried Stephen
fireman-style over his shoulders as we made our way back to St. Andrew’s. Jordan
trailed silently next to me, sending scared, but annoyed looks at me every few
moments. Bishop was to my right, his solid presence something I needed for
strength right now, even though we weren’t touching.

No one said anything. We were all in shock.

Standing between two people with tempting souls, I struggled
against my hunger, which had begun to increase again to a level impossible to
ignore.

The misery must have been clear on my face.

“How much longer?” Bishop asked quietly.

He didn’t have to clarify that he meant my stasis. That had to
be what the voice in my head had also meant, although I didn’t know what or who
it was, only that it scared the hell out of me. “I don’t know.”

“Guess.”

I swallowed hard. “Not long.”

He swore under his breath. “When Stephen wakes up again, I will
get your soul back.”

I tensed. “By hurting him.”

“I’ll do whatever it takes.” He said it so firmly that I
believed every word. The cold that had worked its way into every part of my body
thawed just a tiny bit to know he was willing to go to extremes for me.

But I didn’t say thank-you. I couldn’t thank him for an offer
to torture somebody for information, even if it was to save my life.

Once we returned to the church, the reality of losing Zach set
in. Grief clawed at my chest, but I fought to hold back any tears.

Also the fact that I’d been held captive for a day and a half
was catching up to me.

“I need water,” I said. “My throat’s so dry.”

“There’s a bathroom at the end of that hall.” Bishop nodded
toward the back of the sanctuary.

With a sweeping glance over the group, including Jordan, who
didn’t meet my gaze, leaning against the pews in the darkened church with its
high ceiling and stained-glass windows, I slipped away to freshen up. I
desperately wanted to eat, drink and have a shower. Not necessarily in that
order.

The halls were dark, but I found the bathroom easily. I pressed
my hand against the smooth, cool door and pushed it open. The electricity might
not work in the church, but the water did, which was a relief. I scooped
handfuls of it from the tap to my mouth, until my thirst faded.

I heard something and stopped drinking, raising my gaze to look
at my reflection in the mirror above the sink. I saw a very pale girl with dark,
tangled hair and haunted brown eyes.

The sound I heard was low voices from nearby. I immediately
recognized them as Cassandra’s and Roth’s.

I left the bathroom and moved farther down the hall to the end,
where there was a small secretarial office, its door slightly ajar.

“You have to stop this,” Cassandra said.

“You think it’s that easy?”

“It has to be. There’s no other way.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Then you’re delusional. I didn’t come here for this. I never
wanted this.”

“That makes two of us.” Roth’s words were sharply edged with
annoyance.

“I hate you.”

“Yeah, I hate you, too.”

What were they arguing about now? Cassandra despised the demon
as much as I did, but constant squabbling wasn’t going to help anybody right
now.

They’d gone silent, but then I heard a quiet moan. My heart
skipped a beat. If he was hurting her...

I pushed the door open all the way, ready to interrupt like I’d
done at Ambrosia the other night.

Then I stopped when I saw them, and my mouth fell wide-open in
shock.

They weren’t squabbling. And he wasn’t hurting her.

They were kissing. Passionately.

I must have gasped loud enough for them to hear, because they
broke apart so fast it was almost comical. Cassandra’s hand flew to her mouth
and her gaze shot toward me.

Guilt flooded her expression.

“This isn’t what it looks like,” she managed.

Roth glared at me defiantly. “Yes, it is.”

She sent him a withering look. “Shut up.”

I hadn’t just seen things. They
were
kissing. Mouth to mouth. A demon and angel were
kissing.

Roth met my surprised gaze full-on, and I sank into his mind
like butter. He was currently wide-open, his walls one hundred percent down.

Damn angel. Why does she make me feel this
way? I’m so screwed.

From the look on Cassandra’s face, the feeling was mutual.

They were falling for each other.

And here I’d been absolutely sure she was into Bishop with her
touchy-feely-healy ways. Boy, was I wrong about that.

Normally, and despite my animosity toward Roth, I might think
this was cute. But I knew the rules that forbade demons and angels from being
together like this. I was the result of such a relationship—and it had destroyed
my real parents. It had killed my birth mother.

My thoughts must have been written all over my face, because
Roth swore. “Influence her to forget this.”

Cassandra shot him a look. “I’m not doing that.”

Now
she has a problem using her
angelic influence—which, for the record, I didn’t think would work on me,
anyway. Before, however, with my mother and her impromptu trip to Hawaii, she’d
had no second thoughts about taking the easy way out.

They were afraid I was going to tell on them. But doing that
would doom them, just like telling anyone my secret about being a nexus would
potentially doom me.

I knew all about keeping dangerous secrets.

“I won’t tell anyone.” It was the first thing I’d said since
entering the room.

“How can we trust you?” Roth asked tightly.

“You’ll just have to.” Honestly, though, if I’d read anything
malicious in his mind all bets would have been off. But he liked her. He didn’t
want to, but he did, anyway.

Roth, the hateful demon, had emotional layers. Who knew?

“Where have you been?” Cassandra suddenly demanded, coming
toward me to grab my arm. “We’ve been so worried about you!”

“I’m fine now,” I said, swallowing hard. “But you need to know
something. Something bad.”

I told them about Zach. Roth’s expression hardened, but
Cassandra’s eyes filled with tears.

“No,” she whispered. “It can’t be.”

“But it’s not a demon like you all thought,” I said, my voice
hoarse. “It’s an angel. One who feeds on happiness and the will to live with a
touch. It happened to Stephen, too. We don’t know how he’ll be when he wakes
up.”

“This is terrible. I didn’t know it would be this bad.”
Cassandra drew a shaky hand through her long, pale hair.

I looked at her, confused. “What do you mean? It sounds like
you knew it was an angel.”

She nodded gravely. “I’ve been searching the city for her.”

“Her?”
Roth said, every bit as
surprised as I was about this. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“I’ve been trying to find a solution to this problem myself,
but I’ve failed. I was about ready to share the details of my true mission with
the rest of you.”

So Cassandra did have a secret mission after all. And it was to
find the bodiless angel who’d escaped from the Hollow.

“I wish you’d told us earlier,” I whispered, my throat
tight.

“Me, too.” She blinked back tears.

They followed me down the hall toward the office at the far end
where Connor had tied up the still-unconscious Stephen, the ropes tight at his
wrists and ankles. Bishop and Kraven stood nearby. I lingered at the doorway as
I filled Bishop in on everything—everything
except
Roth and Cassandra’s secret romance.

Jordan stood next to me, her attention fully focused on
Stephen. She slanted a glance at me as I watched her carefully. “What?”

“Don’t you want to go home?”

“Not yet. I need to know what’s going on here.” She blinked.
“And nobody’s kicked me out yet.”

“So Blondie’s an angel with secrets, huh?” Kraven said, rolling
his eyes. “How utterly shocking.”

He had his smart-ass mask firmly in place. The fact that he’d
saved Bishop from the Hollow hadn’t come up since it happened. It was one of
many elephants in the already too-small room.

Roth thrust his chin at Stephen. “Why didn’t you just kill this
loser?”

“Because he has Samantha’s soul,” Bishop said with a look
toward me. Our eyes met. He was holding on to his sanity with both hands
tonight, but I could see it was a struggle. I wanted to help him, but I held
back. Since I was a large part of the problem right now, the least I could do
was stay out of the way.

“So what do we do?” Connor asked.

“We deal with this,” Bishop replied. “Then we go out and find a
way to stop that angel.”

“And how do we do that if it doesn’t have a body to kill?”

“Simple,” Roth said. He was making an excellent attempt at not
looking at Cassandra at all, even though she stood right next to him.

“Simple?” she said with disbelief. “How can you say anything
about this is simple?”

His jaw tightened, but he still didn’t meet her eyes. “Sounds
like the angel sometimes possesses a body before it feeds. That’s when it’ll be
at its most vulnerable. We can kill it with Bishop’s dagger.” He finally glanced
at her, giving her a half grin. “Not simple, but fairly brilliant. Don’t you
think?”

She didn’t comment on Roth’s brilliance.

But I would. “That’s a terrible plan.”

Roth glanced at me, his eyes narrowing. “Why?”

“Because you’d have to kill a human—or whoever the angel is
possessing. That’s called murder.”

He just stared at me. “Bishop, could you muzzle your pet,
please? She’s getting all moral on us.”

I spun to face Bishop. “You can’t possibly think this is a good
plan.”

His expression was grim. “It’s not a good plan. But it may be
the only one we have that will work.”

I felt the color drain from my face. “You’re serious, aren’t
you?”

“Yes, I’m serious. That angel’s driven at least two dozen
people to their deaths, including Zach. If it takes the sacrifice of one
innocent in order to save an entire city, then that’s unfortunately what will
have to happen.” His harsh expression softened just a little. “Try to
understand.”

I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t find the words. It was a
horrible plan, the worst ever, but I couldn’t think of another way to end this.
And I didn’t want more people to die because of that angel’s hungers.