When I drew closer, Bishop caught my wrist, keeping me from taking another step. He, like everyone else present, regarded Stephen now with shock.
“What are you, then?” Bishop asked.
He drew in another shaky breath. “I am...I was...an angel.”
Bishop’s eyes widened. “An angel?”
Zach and Connor exchanged a surprised look, but they didn’t budge an inch. Jordan shivered a few feet to my right, and Kraven watched all of this with interest. He rarely looked surprised about anything that ever happened, even the shocking stuff.
For me, I was stunned by this revelation. Stunned speechless, in fact. If my aunt had been an anomalous demon that hurt people, that made a twisted kind of sense. She’d been a demon. But an angel...
They were supposed to be the good guys.
“How did this happen?” I managed to say.
“I was expelled from Heaven,” the angel speaking through Stephen explained. “The soul inside me, it drove me crazy. It was torture, every day I existed here in the mortal world. I wandered, trying to find a place for myself, but there was nothing but pain and misery. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer. I had to end my suffering. I—I set myself on fire, hoping the flames would purge my pain. That death would give me silence and peace. The Hollow claimed me.”
“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 hu
rt, 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—w
hich, 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.
Wicked Kiss (Nightwatchers) Page 24