Wicked Kiss

by Michelle Rowen

  Kraven made a face. “I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.”

  I stared at Bishop. Even though there was that edge of madness in his words tonight, he sounded so damn sincere.

  For a moment, I’d doubted. After everything that had happened between us, I’d still doubted him.

  I was such an idiot.

  From the first moment I saw him, there was something there. And yeah, maybe it started off as an instant attraction to his soul, but it was something. And it had only grown since that night when my life had changed irrevocably. Now it wasn’t due to a soul or an instinct or a moment of irresistible craving...for me it was real.

  I could never love somebody who hurt people for fun. Who killed because it was a rush, a hobby, something they felt no remorse for. I wasn’t interested in falling for a sociopath now or ever, no matter who he was.

  I’d never really totally trusted my heart, even when it was yelling so loudly it was impossible to ignore. And I didn’t really favor doing spontaneous things—things that could get me in trouble at school or put into the backseat of a police car.

  Sometimes, though, I had no other choice.

  Sometimes, there was only one answer and it appeared with crystal clarity and stubbornly stuck around even when challenged again and again.

  I couldn’t ignore that.

  “Let me see.” I said it so quietly I wasn’t sure anyone had heard me.

  Bishop watched me steadily, his gaze not leaving mine for a moment. “Samantha...”

  “Let me see your memories. Drop your walls completely and let me see what happened back then. This has tormented you for over a hundred years. I know it has. But I think I can help you learn what really happened.”

  “What really happened?” Kraven scoffed. “He made a deal with Heaven and got a big shiny knife and a pair of fluffy wings for his troubles. I remember how that knife felt when he sank it into my back.”

  It wasn’t until I looked at the demon that I felt a hot tear splash to my cheek. His brows drew together as if whatever expression was on my face was the exact opposite of what he’d expected.

  “Don’t look at me like that, sweetness. I don’t want your pity.”

  He called it pity. I called it empathy. “You’ve suffered all this time, too, but for a different reason. You believe the brother you loved more than anybody else betrayed you for some sort of prize. You would have done anything for him, I know you would have. Even now, you can’t help yourself when it comes to Bishop—”

  “Adam,” Kraven bit out the name. “And he can’t even admit to his own damn name. Pathetic.”

  “—you still want to help him when he gets in trouble. You still want to save him when he’s in danger. You can tell yourself you hate him and that you only took this assignment to get the chance to make him suffer, but you’re lying to yourself. Theme of the night—no more lies. No more secrets. You think you’re so damn tough, Kraven...”

  “I am,” he gritted out.

  “You are,” I agreed. “But not when it comes to Bishop. You still love him, you can’t help it. That sort of love is unconditional, even if he hurts you. Even if he...kills you.” I turned from Kraven’s now stricken expression to look at Bishop. “Will you let me see your memories? You can’t fight me on this if I try. I have no damn idea what I’m doing or even if it’ll work. It’s always been accidental before.”

  Bishop was silent for so long I was certain he was ready to walk away and try to forget about this.

  But finally, he nodded. “We can try.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Kraven said, but there was an edge to his voice now. Something raw and pained that went miles deeper than the surface. This pain he felt toward his brother went right to the center of his entire being. “You two have your sexy little mind-meld experiment. I have better things to do.”

  When I reached out and grabbed his wrist he turned a very dark look on me that once would have scared me to my very core. To be completely honest, it still did.

  “No.” I tightened my grip on him. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I’m not?”

  I shook my head. “It’s time for the truth. Are you ready to see it?”

  Chapter 33

  Kraven glanced down at my hand on his wrist. “That feels kind of tingly. I like it. What are you doing now, sweetness?”

  My new hunger was currently at a very controllably low level, which was good. I couldn’t let my new problem interrupt this. “Ignore it.”

  “I’ll try my best.”

  I took hold of Bishop’s hand. He eyed me uneasily. “So you’re going to try to be a true connection between Heaven and Hell tonight, are you?”

  “It might even work.”

  “You literally have thirty seconds before I’m out of here,” Kraven said, his jaw tight. “Tick tock.”

  No pressure there.

  I looked at Bishop. “Try thinking about back then, when everything went wrong. When your memories first got faulty.”

  His expression tensed. “I’ll try.”

  I nodded, holding his gaze—holding it harder than I ever had before since I knew this was so important.

  If it worked—and that was a big if—this could go either way. It might only confirm that Bishop snapped and went on a murdering rampage. Or that he’d made some deal that required the life of his brother offered up to Hell on a silver platter.

  What I was trying to do might possibly make everything worse.

  Doubt worked its way under my skin in record time.

  Maybe I shouldn’t do this. Maybe I should put it off till another night when there was less on my mind and I had more answers about Nathan...

  Maybe—

  Snap!

  James was right. My sight’s back to normal. Hell, it’s better than normal. Walking around without thick glasses and the constant threat of going blind is an amazing feeling.

  Magic. I never would have thought it’d work.

  The man who helped me, who James had found through one of Kara’s contacts in the city, cost a small fortune—James has yet to tell me how much—but it worked.

  Time to find my brother and thank him for saving my eyes.

  I get back to Kara’s place thinking I might find him here. James and I have our own house, an abandoned one on the east side we’ve taken unofficial ownership of. We saw our mother enough before and after the jobs she sent us out on. One day we’d find jobs that didn’t require us to be indebted to her any longer. Jobs that didn’t require weekly visits to the cemetery.

  “Where’s James?” I ask the moment I see her.

  She gives me a stiff smile and pats back her hair, which is a golden shade I know she still uses like money to earn the attentive gazes of many men. “Haven’t seen him today.”

  “Let him know I’m looking for him.” I turn away.

  “Adam, darling. Wait. I know you’re angry with me.”

  I tense up. “Forget it.”

  “I can’t forget it.”

  “I don’t want to interrupt your meeting. You’re having one now, right?”

  She glances back toward the door to the basement, the one part of this house I’ve never been invited to see. For years, it’s only been a mysterious locked door leading to the place she holds her secret meetings.

  Her secret magic meetings. The same ones I’ve always laughed at behind her
back.

  Now that my eyes are fixed, I’m not laughing quite as loud.

  “You should be careful,” I warn her. “I don’t know what you all get up to down there...or why you need the bodies you don’t send on to the medical school...”

  “Darling, please forget all of that.” She gives me a tense smile that fans fine lines out around her eyes. “It’s my little thing. Nothing to worry yourself about.”

  “I never said I was worried.”

  She presses her hands to my cheeks and looks deep into my eyes. “So much like your father, always trying to do the right thing, to convert me from my wild ways.”

  The subject of my father’s always been a sore point. Mostly because she’s told me next to nothing about him other than the fact he’d left her. I wasn’t even sure if he knew I existed.

  “Not like James’s father,” she says, her expression darkening.

  She hates Thomas Kraven and has for nineteen years since he got her pregnant and discarded her. He already had a wife and two mistresses, so he didn’t want any more obligations. When she threatened to go public with James and tell everyone that he was Thomas’s child, he’d made it clear that both she and James would die if word got out about his bastard. He would never acknowledge James as his son, and Kara would never get any money from him.

  He was a cold and heartless man—and very dangerous. Kara never doubted he’d follow through with his threats.

  My mother has changed since those days. Now she took money for other people’s bodies...but not her own. At least, not to my knowledge.

  “You need to let go of the hate you have for him.” This isn’t the first time I’ve told her this.

  “I can’t.”

  “You’re not even trying. It’s consumed you all these years.”

  Something in her eyes sparks. “Perhaps it’s finally time for those who’ve wronged me to get what they deserve.”

  A shiver goes down my spine when she talks like this because I know she means every word.

  “I love you, Adam.” She pulls me into a hug that I try to return. “You’re the only one who cares if I live or die.”

  “James does.”

  “James is just like his father. Arrogant, selfish, a user from the day he was born.”

  Always exaggerating, my mother. “From the day he was born? An arrogant, selfish infant?”

  “You know what I mean.” She pulls away, her eyes damp with tears. “You’ve always been my favorite.”

  “Don’t say that.” I hate it when she dismisses James as if he’s meaningless to her.

  “But it’s true. Your father was my one true love.”

  “A man who abandoned you and never looked back?”

  “He had his reasons. One day you might learn what they were.”

  “Yeah, right.” I had to get out of here. “If you see James, tell him I’m looking for him.”

  “Yes, my darling.”

  She hasn’t even noticed I’m not wearing my specs. Hasn’t noticed that I can see without bumping into things for the first time in ages.

  Her favorite. Sure, I am.

  As I reach the front door, I freeze when I hear a sound.

  Raised voices coming from downstairs. One I recognize immediately as James’s.

  But Kara said he wasn’t here.

  Instead of leaving, I turn and slowly and quietly move toward the door leading to the basement. Kara’s already gone downstairs, but she left the door slightly ajar behind her.

  I push the door open farther and take a step down. The stairwell leads to a short hallway and a room beyond. It’s in there that Kara must have her meetings. It’s there that I’m drawn to as if I have no choice but to see for myself what’s going on.

  “Get away from me!” James’s voice is raised, angry.

  “Stop acting like a fool,” our mother replies. “You agreed to this.”

  “Agreed? To join your little soirée? Yeah, I agreed to check it out. Wanted to finally see what you all get up to every week. But if your friend touches me again with that, I swear I’m going to cut off his hand.”

  “James,” Kara soothes, her words strong and steady. “To be welcomed as a new member of the group we must first draw these symbols on you.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to join anymore.”

  “Strange. You were so eager last week when I promised to give you the name of the man that could help your brother.”

  “That was then.”

  I move closer and peer around the edge of the doorway to see them inside. James’s back is to the door and he stands shirtless before Kara and five men dressed in black robes. The room is dark, lit only by candles and torches set into the stone walls. There’s a pit filled with smoldering ash in the center of the room. Chains and manacles are attached to the walls.

  It looks chillingly like a dungeon.

  “We helped you.” Kara gives him one of her special smiles, the one that’s made many men over the years lose their coins into her purse. “And now you will help us.”

  “Not sure about that, Mother.”

  She grimaces. “I’ve asked you not to call me that.”

  “Sorry, keep forgetting. Don’t want these nice men to know you’re ancient enough to have a son my age, do you?”

  She nods at another man, her expression impassive. “He’s going to be a problem.”

  “What should I do?”

  “Whatever you feel you must to gain control over this situation.”

  He draws out a long metal bar from under his robes. James doesn’t even see it coming as he’s struck in the back of the head. He falls to the ground unconscious and bleeding.

  I don’t hesitate before racing into the room.

  “What are you doing?” I demand.

  Kara looks at me with shock, which shifts swiftly to disappointment. “Adam, you shouldn’t be here.”

  “Why did you knock him out? You told me he wasn’t even here and now you do this to him?”

  “He agreed to be a part of this.”

  “Sounded like he changed his mind.”

  “It was stupid to render the boy unconscious,” another man in robes says through clenched teeth. “The vessel needs to be conscious. It has already begun. There’s no stopping it now.”

  The ashes in the pit begin to swirl as if touched by an unseen wind and the room grows colder until I can see my breath freeze before me with each exhale. I crouch over James, a fierce need to protect him from these strangers—even Kara, whom I’ve never totally trusted but never considered a true threat.

  “Oh, Adam,” she says, shaking her head. “You don’t know what you’ve interrupted here.”

  “Some sick ritual to help you get revenge over Thomas Kraven?”

  “Him and many others.”

  “Is that all that matters to you? Revenge, power, money?”

  She looks at me as if confused. “Yes, of course. It’s what I want, what I’ve been working for all these years. Why I had two children—one to sacrifice to the darkness when the time came. It was never supposed to be you, my darling. James’s soul is already spoken for.”

  Three years ago she admitted to selling James’s soul to give her access to black magic. I’d assumed she was drunk and hadn’t taken a word she said seriously. But
James had gone very quiet.

  He believed. He’s always been the one to believe in Heaven and Hell. Every time we dug up a body for Kara, he’d pray to be absolved of his sins afterward. He didn’t think I heard him, but I did.

  The idea that his mother had sold his soul for her own gain had hit him hard even when I tried convincing him it was all lies. He’d barely spoken to her since, even when I tried to convince him she’d been lying.

  “Do it,” Kara now says quietly.

  Two of the men grab me, their grips so tight I can’t break free. Another man cuts open my shirt with a dagger, then dips his finger into a bowl of thick red liquid and begins to trace symbols on my chest. It’s blood. He’s drawing on me with blood.

  My stomach clenches with fear and disgust.

  “What are these symbols? What are you doing to me?”

  Kara nods. “It’s right that it’s you. This is a true sacrifice. They will see that and they will reward me.”

  “Kara!”

  “You should have minded your own business. Your brother didn’t need your help. You think you’ve saved him?” She pats my cheek hard enough to hurt. “There’s no saving him. His soul belongs to Hell.”

  “You’re such a bitch.”

  “Only because life presented me with no other options, my darling.” She looks over her shoulder at the swirling ashes. “It’s here.”

  The two words turn my blood to ice.

  The ashes begin to rise up from the pit. The air is so cold it’s like it’s suddenly the dead of winter despite it being midsummer.

  They wanted to do this to James. Whatever this is.

  I can’t move. All I can do is stare at the ashes as they draw closer to me, forming a line like a rope that slithers around my wrists, my waist, my throat. It’s choking me. It’s killing me...

  But as quickly as it starts, it’s all over.