Kitabı oku: «Poisoned Kisses», sayfa 2

No one would.

Chapter 2

Kyra found herself in an ambulance, squinting into the peculiar light. Her arm was caught in the grip of a blood-pressure cuff and she realized that her heart must have stopped because a stunned paramedic loomed over her with paddles.

For one moment, she understood mortal fright. It used to be that the dying would take comfort to see her by their bedside with her torch in hand. Now, if they opened their eyes to see a dark nymph like Kyra standing beside the men with the paddles, they feared her as an evil harbinger. Sometimes they screamed in terror.

These days, dying mortals only wanted to see angels. Some of her fellow nymphs of the underworld played along, pretending to flap ridiculous feathered wings, singing, “Follow the light!” But Kyra refused. She was a lampade, a guide, a warrior for men’s souls. If mortals didn’t want her to attend them at death, she still had a heroic destiny to fill. Which is why she’d gone after the hydra, and how she ended up on this gurney in the first place.

She was shocked at how wretched she felt; her skin was clammy, yet she felt as if she were being boiled alive. Under normal circumstances, she’d have already recovered, but the hydra’s poisonous blood had weakened her somehow. With difficulty, she tried to sit up. It was then that the emergency medical technician reached for her peridot choker, perhaps with some foolish notion that removing it would help her to breath. His mistake. Kyra’s choker was the only keepsake she had of her mother’s. Anger that this stranger should try to take the precious stone gave her a surge of strength. Kyra stared into his eyes, trying to see if he was an enemy, or perhaps one of her father’s minions. But when she couldn’t illuminate his soul, her insides flailed in fear. Had the hydra poison extinguished her powers altogether?

It took her more than three attempts before she was able to pull the needles from her arm. All the while, the paramedic tried to restrain her. Again, his mistake. Self-preservation gave her the power to pin him against the vehicle wall. “Don’t make me hurt you,” she growled.

The paramedic shrank away, the whites of his eyes showing like a horse about to rear up. He seemed to have realized all at once that she was no ordinary mortal woman. There was a chain at his throat upon which dangled a little golden cross, and he held it up as if to ward against evil. Just what did he take her for? Angel or devil? The mortals could never decide! Muttering a curse at him under her breath, Kyra leaped out of the back of the ambulance before he could stop her.

The rising sun knifed through the lavender cloak over Lake Avernus, its light cutting a thin golden gash across the dark waters. Kyra didn’t like mornings. It was night that protected her—it always had. Luckily, it was still dark enough that she didn’t have to obscure her true form. Escaping from the ambulance had seemed like a good idea, but as Kyra staggered toward the little villa apartment that was her lair, she feared she’d collapse before she could make it home.

Marco Kaisaris’s blood had done this to her.

Things that killed humans rarely affected immortals this way. Then again, the poison in Marco’s blood was no ordinary kind of poison. It was the poison of a hydra. Achilles, the great warrior of the Iliad, died when he was shot in the heel with an arrow dipped in hydra poison. And he wasn’t the only demigod to die this way. Hydra blood had also killed mighty Hercules. The thought sobered her. Hercules was the son of a god, but his mother was mortal. Just like Kyra’s.

Surely she was nothing like those legendary heroes. They had died young, whereas Kyra had lived for thousands of years. They had walked among the living, whereas Kyra drew breath with shades in the underworld. She’d never thought of herself as vulnerable. She’d lived so long, and so recklessly, that death was nothing she’d ever contemplated for herself. Was it possible that Marco Kaisaris’s blood could actually kill her?

She needed to get to Hecate. Perhaps her old mistress had just enough magic left to brew a curative potion. Even if she didn’t, who else could guide Kyra over the threshold from this life into the next but the goddess of the crossroads? Yes, Kyra had to get to Hecate. Nothing else was as important. She kept going on pure adrenaline, feeling vulnerable, naked without her powers. It was disorienting to rely on normal human sight—luckily, she found the street where Hecate’s shop was illuminated by a swinging lantern at the end of a rusty hook. The worn and faded sign over the door read Notte Incantesimi: Tè e Chiromanzia.

The Night Enchantments Tea and Palm Reading shop was the last refuge of the once-powerful goddess who had—for centuries now—been reduced to fortune-telling and serving herbal infusions. Hecate’s black hounds bayed in greeting and the goddess appeared in the parlor doorway wearing an absurd embroidered gypsy robe, a sprig of yew berries in her luxurious silver hair. “My best little nymph has come to call on her old mistress,” the once-mighty goddess crowed.

Then Kyra collapsed at her feet.

Chapter 3

There was no point in disguising himself here in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a place Marco still thought of as Zaire. The militias knew him. Some even feared him. And though the corrupt government called Marco the Merchant of Death, many of the locals said he was their salvation. And that’s why he kept coming back. Why he would keep coming back as long as they needed him.

Marco’s driver—a dark West African named Benji—was waiting for him at the jungle airstrip. “That’s quite a bruise on your jaw, Chief,” the kid said, glancing at him from beneath the sweaty bandanna on his brow. “And your hand doesn’t look good, either. Trouble at the border?”

Marco didn’t answer; after all, he didn’t want to tell anyone about the she-devil that attacked him in Naples. Instead, he put his sunglasses on, retreating behind the shades as they rattled along the dirt road.

Their vehicle was a patchwork of rust, duct tape and white paint. It made a fat, slow-moving target. With all the money he made selling weapons he should be able to afford a better ride. He should be less vulnerable to his enemies…enemies like the siren who had tried to stab him.

Reminded of her, Marco flexed his hand around the disintegrating bandage. It was a deep cut that would scar, but meanwhile his blood was eating through the cloth. He couldn’t risk going to a hospital, so he’d stitched it himself in the back of the cargo plane and now it hurt like hell. It was no consolation to him that his attacker was, no doubt, hurting worse—if she was even still alive.

Who was she? No, more importantly, what was she? In the club, he’d taken her for just a rich party girl looking for a quick hookup. But in his penthouse, she’d literally transformed into another woman—one with ethereal skin, raven hair and unnerving black eyes. She’d been like an angel of death, knife at the ready. Until that moment, he’d always thought he was the only person in the world with this…affliction. But now he knew he wasn’t the only one who could change faces. The woman had the same power, and she’d used it to hunt him down like prey.

They stopped at a jungle checkpoint. These government soldiers should have tried to halt the spread of weapons throughout the Congo, but that wasn’t how things worked here. Benji simply paid the customary bribe to the guard who waved them through. Then they veered away from the city, heading into rebel territory, winding up steep roads into the mist-soaked mountains.

Africa was a furnace, even at this higher altitude. A little bit of hell on earth. A cluster of gun-wielding boys dressed in camouflage marked the entrance to the stronghold on the road up ahead. They were playing some kind of game with rum and matches and Marco growled. “How many times do I have to tell him that they’re just little kids?”

“They’re little killers,” Benji muttered under his breath. “And the general doesn’t listen to anyone anymore. I tell you, the devil is in him. He’s become the devil!”

When Benji was just a teenager, Marco had rescued him from a diamond mine in Sierra Leone. Since then, the kid had helped Marco steal more guns than either of them could count, but Marco had never asked him to fight. Even so, Marco felt defensive. “The general means well. These orphaned boys have nowhere else to go. At least if they serve in his army, they get fed.” It was a sad and all-too-familiar story in this part of the world. But giving children guns and calling them soldiers was evil, and Marco knew it.

Benji knew it, too. Parking the vehicle, he muttered, “Think what you want, Chief, but he’s the devil.”

The encampment was a primitive mountain fortress surrounding grass-roofed huts. Even so, with the weapons Marco supplied them, these rebels held their own against the Hutu militiamen—and sometimes even the government. Wearing green camo and military boots polished to a mirror shine, the general approached Marco sporting a brass-tipped baton. A pack of dogs barked at his heels and all his boy soldiers saluted as he passed. His ebony face warmed with a smile of greeting. “Ahh, the Great Northern Warlord has arrived!”

Marco’s old friend seemed leaner, gaunter, with a hint more mania in his eyes, but the two men embraced like comrades. They’d been together in Rwanda and seen the horrors of genocide. Now it was an obsession for both of them.

“What did you bring for me this time?” the general asked.

“Ammunition.” Marco motioned toward the crates of bullets being unloaded. “We’ll parachute the weapons in, but…your soldiers are too damned young.”

The general waved away Marco’s concern with his baton. “I know it displeases you, my friend, but what can be done? We’ll talk business later. First we drink!”

In the general’s hut, they sat on patio chairs. Marco almost took a cigarette until he remembered his close encounter with an angel of death. She’d challenged him to quit and he’d said he would. For some reason—maybe because of what he was sure his blood had done to her—it was an unspoken promise he felt compelled to keep. “I’ll take a beer instead.”

“I stole this from Hutu militiamen,” the general bragged, handing Marco a bottle. “It is good, no?”

Marco took several gulps before asking, “What happened to the militiamen?”

“You don’t want to know what happened to them.” There was an awkward silence. Then the general leaned forward. “Benji, your boss is from this place of mists and rainbows…this Niagara Falls, where everything is soft and covered with dew. He sometimes forgets what life is like in Congo. He forgets what it is to fight for survival in Africa, what it is to make war. But we know, don’t we?” Benji looked as if he might crawl out of his skin. “He is scared of me.” The general chuckled, poking Benji with the end of his baton. “Boo!”

Marco flexed his bandaged hand. “Leave him alone.”

The general smiled enigmatically and blew a ring of smoke. “Have you never told your boy here how we met?”

Marco wasn’t much for show-and-tell when it came to his employees, but the general was intent on telling tales. He pulled an old photograph from his pocket, where it must have been positioned for just this occasion. “Ahh, Benji! You see that soldier in the picture, so proud under his blue beret? That was your boss, upright as a Mountie. In those days, Marco even kept a letter from his betrothed for luck.”

Benji stared, amazed, though whether it was at the idea Marco had once been a UN peacekeeper or that he’d once been engaged, Marco couldn’t tell. “And do you see that skinny black man standing next to him in the picture?” the general asked. “That is me. I was a teacher then, and twenty little Tutsi children came to my school to learn. The Hutus swore they would kill us all. But Marco promised he would keep my students safe.”

Marco stood abruptly, nearly tipping his chair in the process. Several beer bottles clinked together and fell at his feet. “That’s enough reminiscing. I need to find a bed.”

Marco hadn’t had to feign exhaustion; he hadn’t slept since the night the woman attacked him in Naples. And now he couldn’t stop thinking of her. That night, he’d just learned about his father’s prognosis; the knife-wielding vixen had taken advantage of a weak moment, his yearning for an easy connection. He remembered the feel of her under his hands, the way she gave back as good as she got. She’d been perfect, crafted for sex. It made him break into a sweat just to remember.

But it hadn’t just been that. There’d been something about the way she looked at him—the way she looked into him, as if she could see into every little hidden crevice. It’d made him feel as if one person in the world might finally understand him.

And then she’d tried to kill him.

That night, Marco dreamed of Rwanda again. The Hutus were coming with their machetes, but United Nations forces had been ordered out of the area. The evacuation convoy raced down the dirt road, away from the grenades, which sent plumes of soil into the air. Marco had the wheel when they saw a group of militiamen herding villagers into a ditch.

Stand down, soldier!

He was supposed to keep driving, but Marco jerked the truck to the side of the road, tires shrieking to a stop. He was out of the vehicle, weapon drawn, in one smooth motion. Behind him, another truck stopped and his commanding officer jumped out. Marco had halted the whole convoy. “Get back on the goddamned road!” his commander bellowed.

“They’re killing the whole village right in front of us,” Marco argued. The murderers hadn’t even hesitated at the sight of the UN convoy. Instead, the militiamen opened fire on the civilians with the few guns they had and hacked and dismembered the rest with machetes. From the ditch came the horrific screams and the stench of death.

Marco lifted his service pistol and aimed it at the militiaman giving the orders. He thought his commander might do the same. The villagers were unarmed. They called out for help, reaching for mercy. Blood was in the air like a fine mist of a waterfall, and for a moment, Marco couldn’t hear anything but the roar.

Stand down, soldier!

Marco pulled the trigger. Damn the rules, Marco shot first, and a burly Hutu militiaman returned fire. Marco was hit in the left shoulder, but it didn’t knock him down, so he lifted his pistol and aimed again.

Stand down, soldier!

His red-faced commanding officer was shouting. “We’re observers!”

Observers. They’d been ordered to observe while the world did nothing. On the news somewhere, politicians dithered over the definition of genocide and the world was busy with other matters. Citizens didn’t want to hear it. So, standing there bleeding while his fellow soldiers tried to haul him back into the truck, Marco observed as the killers finished their grisly business. He watched until the last little hand of a village child twitched in its death throes. Then he watched as the militiaman who shot him turned and smiled.

Stand down, soldier!

Later, Marco returned to bury what remained of the bodies. In the empty eyes of a dead woman, he saw his fiancée, her lips twisted in a rictus. In the bloodied face of an old man, Marco saw his father. He saw among the dead even his own face. He was one of them. He was the brother, the lover and the son of the dead.

But he had not been their savior.

Marco woke in a cold sweat, his stomach churning and the taste of vomit in his throat. These were his sins, his crimes, and how he’d come to be the way he was. He wondered what sin the shape-shifting woman had committed to give her the same powers. She was probably dead—his blood had almost assuredly killed her. There was no point in thinking about her either way. Whoever she was, no matter how he had felt about her when they were kissing, she could be nothing but poison.

Chapter 4

In the small guest room above Hecate’s shop, Kyra tossed and turned with fever, shivering under a pile of blankets. A beaded curtain separated her sickbed from the kitchen, where Hecate was tending to a teakettle. It shamed Kyra to have her former mistress care for her like a lowly nursemaid, but the hydra’s blood had left her as helpless as an infant.

Hecate came into the room bearing a tray and sighed before pouring the dandelion tea. “Drink this. I used to brew so many magic potions we’d have our pick of them, but it’s the best I can do for now. If only you’d let me call Ares—”

Kyra shook her head. Daddy was the last person she wanted to see in her weakened state. Hecate pressed the matter, anyway. “Ambrosia would restore you.”

Ambrosia. Precious ambrosia. The scarcest resource in the world. A large dose of it as a child had given Kyra immortality in the first place, and she had her father to thank for that. He kept a secret store of the stuff, but not even for the elixir of immortal life would Kyra want to be indebted to a war god. Not even her father. Perhaps especially not him.

“I don’t need ambrosia. I’m getting better on my own.” Kyra’s words were belied by the fact that she could barely hold her own cup. A little tea slopped over the rim and Hecate had to wipe it away with a napkin. Then the old woman settled into an antique rocking chair with a threadbare cushion and Kyra’s weak flicker of inner torchlight revealed that the goddess was decidedly cross. “I didn’t know Marco Kaisaris’s blood could kill me.”

“Of course you knew! You just didn’t want to admit it to yourself because now that angels are popular, you have a death wish.”

Kyra hung her head. “No, I just wanted to do something good again—something important.”

Hecate swirled a golden spoon in the ancient teacup—one of a thousand treasures she’d hoarded in her cluttered shop over the years. “Did you really think that killing Marco Kaisaris would make the world a better place?”

“A little, yeah,” Kyra cracked.

Hecate took a sip from her cup. “Killing is your father’s way.”

Kyra hated to be compared to Ares. She might be his daughter, she might have tried to serve him once, but that was only because she’d wanted to forge a relationship with her only living parent; she’d never been one of his bloodthirsty gang. Unlike her other war-born siblings, she’d never ridden with Daddy into battle; she’d only been there to guide the souls of the dead afterward. How dare Hecate pretend otherwise?

But then, it wasn’t Hecate’s role to guide the dead anymore, was it? She’d given up her divine responsibilities long ago. She’d never comforted the shades of today’s murdered children, their skulls fractured by Marco Kaisaris’s bullets. Kyra had. She was only trying to rid the world of a monster.

As if reading her thoughts, Hecate’s lips tightened. “Kyra, why can’t you settle into your life? I’ve released you—you’re no longer my minion. Yes, you’re a lampade, but you don’t have to guide the dead anymore. You don’t belong in the world the same way you once did. None of us do. I hoped you’d use your freedom to find some happiness, but instead you’re off chasing monsters! Do you do these things to get attention?”

Maybe. A little. “I went after Marco Kaisaris because you once told me I was destined to destroy a hydra, remember?”

Hecate sputtered, as if some old memory were taking shape. “I said you’d conquer one, not kill him! When Hercules vanquished the hydra of his age, he used a torch to do it. You’re a torchbearer, Kyra. You have a gift. You can illuminate the truth of a human heart, find the wounds and sear them closed—”

“No,” Kyra said bitterly. “I’ll never do that again and you know why.”

It’d been a long time since they’d spoken of Kyra’s mother and Hecate’s sad eyes showed understanding. “Kyra, that was so long ago. You were such a young nymph and unsure of your powers. You didn’t mean to—”

“Condemn my own mother to a life of madness?” Kyra finished, furling her lip at the familiar but bitter taste of the dandelion tea. “I wanted to heal her, but she only saw Ares in me. It doesn’t matter what I meant to do. It only matters that she was a mortal with only a few years of life to enjoy and I robbed her of them.”

“You’ve seen her shade since then…you know she forgives you.”

But Kyra had never forgiven herself. She’d wielded her torch in her mother’s soul, trying to cauterize the wounds her father had left—and instead burned new ones there. Even after all these years, whenever she visited her mother in the underworld, there was an awkwardness between them. Perhaps it would’ve been awkward, anyway. After all, Kyra’s mother had been born in a world of togas, grand temples and state worship; she couldn’t understand the realities of the modern world in which Kyra would live forever. She’d become, for Kyra, a shade in truth. A beautiful stranger.

“I won’t use my torch that way again,” Kyra insisted. “Marco Kaisaris sides with the war gods every time he sells a gun so he deserves to be destroyed, but he doesn’t deserve to live as a raving lunatic. It’s kinder to kill him.”

“That’s the bloodlust in you. Perhaps you really are your father’s daughter.”

It wasn’t fair that Hecate knew exactly how to shame her. Fine, Kyra thought. Maybe she could just chain Marco Kaisaris in some dungeon, hide him away, so that none of the war gods could harness his powers. Maybe keeping the man at her mercy was the humane thing to do. Still, the thought of shackles on those strong wrists brought an unexpectedly uncomfortable sensation to Kyra’s stomach. “Hecate, if I promise not to kill him, will you help me find Marco Kaisaris again?”

“Beware the obsessive nature of nymphs,” Hecate warned. “I don’t want you anywhere near this man. He’s a danger to you!”

In more ways than one. Most nymphs just had to worry about broken hearts, but just touching Marco’s blood had felled her. What if the poison got into her bloodstream? Into an open wound? If Kyra were wise, she’d never come into contact with this mortal man again. But then he might fall into her father’s hands and if Kyra had to live forever, there had to be some meaning to it. Otherwise, she was a power without purpose. She had to find some point to her long life other than the bloodlust Ares said she was born to.

Besides, she and the hydra had unfinished business between them. More than just his poison had gotten under her skin. His kiss, his touch, his voice…oh, that voice. “I’ll be more careful this time,” Kyra promised. “Help me find him. I know you can still work some magic and you don’t need a crystal ball to do it.”

As one of Hecate’s black hounds settled at her feet, the older woman took on the more imperious stare of her gloried past. “I don’t want to risk your father’s wrath. Think of Ares, won’t you?”

“I am. If I don’t find the hydra before Daddy does, imagine the damage he’ll do. He could use hydra blood to poison whole armies. Whole countries!”

The ancient goddess had always been a benefactress of mankind. She didn’t relish human suffering. Kyra knew she’d relent, and she did. “You’d have to get on a plane—I know how much you dislike flying.”

Kyra hated flying. Nonetheless, she was determined. “I’ll manage.”

“Very well.” Hecate sighed. “You’ll find the hydra in the New World. He’s on his way home, because he’s about to lose someone very dear to him indeed.”

Niagara Falls in winter, with its thundering gray river, was gloomy as the Styx. Kyra watched the netherworld entrance of mist below the tumbling water of the falls, and waved to the receding shade that had been Marco’s father. Kyra hadn’t killed him, but she’d guided the stubborn old man a little ways when he died. Giving him some light between the threshold of this life and the next had seemed like the least Kyra could do. She even let him see her as a sweet angel, because it seemed to comfort him.

He spoke of his estranged son, how heartbroken he’d been to lose Marco to a world of weapons and war. Kyra didn’t add to his burden by telling him that Marco had become a monster in truth and that she planned to cage him for the greater good. She’d built a dungeon to contain him. Now she just had to find a way to lure him there.

Of course, Kyra couldn’t just put on a sexy outfit and pick up the hydra in a random nightclub again. He’d be wary of strangers now, and twice as dangerous.

Fading so that none of the mortals could see her, Kyra made her way to the funeral home. That’s where inspiration struck. Marco’s ex-girlfriend made only a brief appearance—just long enough to express her condolences to the family. Long enough for Kyra to study her face and memorize its shape.

Ashlynn Brown wasn’t the sort of woman that Kyra would’ve expected to find in Marco’s past. The hydra was a fierce warrior; she’d discovered that from painful firsthand experience. So how had he ever cared for someone so delicate? With doe eyes and fawn hair, the woman looked as if she were ready to bolt at the first sign of unpleasantness.

It’d be tricky to impersonate such a meek woman, but it was the best idea Kyra had.

Kyra waited until Ashlynn left, then took on her appearance, right down to the prim black dress. The soft eyes, the rosy skin, and the wavy hair that could not seem to commit to being either light or dark. She even disguised her peridot choker as Ashlynn’s classic string of pearls.

The hydra might trust Ashlynn. He might go home with Kyra if she looked like Ashlynn. Then she could lock him up in the basement dungeon she’d built and Daddy would never find him.

Marco knew that funerals were for the living, so the least he owed his family was to show up wearing the face his mother recognized. Consequently, he eschewed all disguises and made his way down the funeral home’s hallway in a dark suit and overcoat, bracing for the inevitable reunion; he just didn’t expect it to be with Ashlynn Brown.

His ex was sitting on a polished wood bench by herself. Her hair fell in soft waves over her shoulders, and she still dressed like a society girl, but there was something different about her, if only he could put his finger on it. Perhaps it was the confident tilt of her shoulders and the alluring smile. Or maybe it was the way she looked at him like he was some kind of hard candy she wanted to suck.

No. That was the look the angel of death in Naples had given him, just before she tried to kill him. So why couldn’t he stop thinking about her?

Ashlynn stood to greet him, a bouquet in her hands. “So sorry about your father.”

If they’d been anywhere else, he’d have brushed past her without a word. Ashlynn Brown belonged to another part of his life. Another life entirely. Still, it was his father’s funeral, and she’d been good enough to come, so he fumbled for a polite reply. All he came up with was, “Asphodel?”

Ashlynn seemed to suddenly remember the white lilies in her hand. “Oh! They’re for your father. I’m told it’s an old Greek tradition.”

“Very old.” In one of her saner moments, his mother told him that ancient Greeks used to plant asphodel on the graves of their ancestors to nourish them in the underworld. But Ashlynn had never been interested in his family’s ethnic heritage, so this was an entirely unexpected gesture. “Thank you…”

“Can we go for coffee, Marco? After, I mean?”

It was a spectacularly bad idea. The funeral dredged up enough bad feelings without adding a trip down memory lane to the equation. He’d only come to pay his respects and comfort his mother; then he planned to leave the country. There was a storm coming, and he had a jet waiting under an assumed identity in Toronto. But in spite of everything, the way Ashlynn looked at him, the way she seemed to look into him, made it hard to refuse.

Damn it. He was over Ashlynn Brown. He hadn’t thought of her for years. He wasn’t even sure he’d actually been in love with her when they were engaged, so why should he feel a pull toward her now? After all this time, he couldn’t imagine what they’d even have to say to each other, but bless her shallow little heart, Ashlynn might be the only person from his past still willing to speak to him.

“Sure, why not?” he found himself saying.