Fury’s Kiss

by Nicola R. White

  I was done letting Jackson Byrne walk all over me.

  Chapter 22

  Unlike the last time I’d set foot in the place, Spyder’s was packed. Locals and tourists alike crammed in shoulder to shoulder at the bar and were throwing drink orders at Nora so fast she could hardly keep up. I tugged my black bandage dress down a couple of inches, squared my shoulders and prepared to wade in. Behind me, Rachel did the same, slicking a little more war paint on her lips as she advanced. We linked arms, took a deep breath, and crossed the threshold.

  Inside, Rachel signaled her intention to head to the bar, unable to make herself heard over the band playing at the far end of the crowded space. I nodded my understanding and headed for the dance floor. Even if my galloping metabolism hadn’t guaranteed that getting a drink would be a waste of money, I wouldn’t have indulged. The dim lights of the bar combined with the scores of infrared auras I was picking up already made the scene look like a midway on acid, and I needed a clear head for the task at hand.

  I stepped onto the dance floor and started to sway with the beat, swinging my hips and tossing my hair. Hopefully, one of the men eyeing me with interest would be just the slimeball I was looking for.

  Half-blinded by the strobe light set up in front of the small stage, I shimmied my way across the room, trusting Alecto to let me know when we came across someone who fit the bill. But she stayed quiet. I could feel her watching the swirl of people moving around me, taking it all in, and I realized that this was the first time she’d seen anything quite like it. They’d had theatres and the Olympics in ancient Greece, but there hadn’t been anything like Spyder’s.

  I turned in slow circles as I danced so the Fury could see and digest it all. What now? I asked when she’d had a chance to get her bearings. How do we know who’s guilty, and of what?

  You are not ready, she answered. It would be too much to show you.

  Not ready? I countered. No choice.

  Whoever was after Ruby and me had attacked us twice already—three times if you counted my run-in with Priest at the Stardust—and I had no doubt that they would try again. I didn’t intend to be at less than full power when it happened.

  Help me find someone, or I’ll get myself in trouble so we have no choice but to defend ourselves. I was being reckless, still angry at Jackson, but I didn’t care. I wanted a fight, a physical release to blow off some steam.

  Alecto hissed her annoyance but showed me a mental picture of a door made of intricate wrought iron, a pattern of metal ivy creeping over sharp spikes. While the door I had previously imagined between us was something out of an old Dracula film, this one straight out of a fairy tale. Where it had come from, and how she had kept it hidden from me? And more importantly, what was behind it?

  Do you think you are the only one who holds our boundaries? the Fury asked me. You must learn that there is no mistress here. Each must do her part to keep the whole together.

  As I tried to puzzle out what she meant, I lost track of where I was dancing and backed into someone standing at the edge of the dance floor. “Oops. Sorry,” I apologized without taking my eyes off the crowd surging in front of me.

  “Don’t mention it,” a familiar, Southern twang answered me. “How’s hunting?”

  My skin tingled with sudden awareness at the sound, and I looked up to see Jackson was the someone I had run into. I just shook my head at him and turned away.

  “You look worried,” he said, watching me watch the dance floor.

  “Alecto’s being difficult.” I tried hard to sound indifferent to his closeness. “She says I’m not ready, whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

  “Maybe she’s right. Maybe you ought to find another way to get your strength up. No telling what you could get yourself into if you pick the wrong person.”

  “Excuse me?” I felt a flush creep up my neck. “You were there in that motel room when I dealt with Priest, weren’t you? And you saw what I did to Clinton Miller. I think it should be pretty clear by now that I can handle myself.”

  I turned away and pushed back into the gyrating mass of people on the dance floor, making sure to put an extra wiggle in my step as I went. As always, my anger lent me strength, and I thought again of the door Alecto had shown me. I pushed against it, hard, and Alecto pushed back. Whatever was behind that door was not something she wanted me to access.

  Well, too frigging bad. I’d had enough of being talked down to by Jackson, and enough of Alecto’s attitude. If she really wanted us to work together, she needed to give a little. Meaning you need to get with the program and open the damn door, I told her as I pushed again. Finally, she hissed out a sigh and let go, swirling colors through my mind that were the mental equivalent of hands being thrown up in disgust. The door swung open and the secrets Alecto had been keeping from me rushed in.

  Images came in flashes, one after another, and I stumbled again. I would have lost my balance if Jackson hadn’t followed and been there to steady me, catching me by the arm and steering me over to a little table in the corner.

  “Tara?” He frowned down at me. “What is it?”

  I couldn’t answer, caught up in what Alecto was showing me. Finally, I was learning what it meant to be a Fury. I stared off into the distance, speechless, as I watched history flash before my eyes. I saw Alecto striding into battle with her sisters beside her—fierce, beautiful women carrying swords and wearing armor. There had been dozens of them once, with Alecto and two others to lead them. Their names came to me—Tisiphone and Megaera—and a fierce rush of joy and adrenaline flooded my veins, sisterhood and the love of battle singing a siren’s song in my heart.

  Then came loneliness, rolling over me in a great wave as Alecto’s memories caught up to the present day. Trapped in a world she didn’t understand, longing to be reunited with her sisters. Furies weren’t monsters at all, just women blessed with the attributes of predators. Some, like Alecto, were serpentine, while others had the keen eyesight of birds of prey. Still others had the ability to weave in and out of the shadows like wolves or great cats. And all of them were focused on one thing—protecting the weak and punishing those who deserved it.

  Tears formed at the corners of my eyes and I swallowed past the lump in my throat. I’m so sorry for your loss, I told Alecto. I didn’t know. I felt her confusion at being called back into a world that had all but forgotten her, without even the comfort of her sisters to aid her. I vowed that if there were other Furies out there—other mythobiologicals of any kind—we would find them. Alecto may have been trapped inside my head by some twist of the Fates, but she wouldn’t be alone.

  Finally, I looked around, dazed, at the crowd surrounding me. Along with the memories had come the key to finding my prey.

  On top of the infrared auras I’d detected earlier, I now saw blood everywhere. On everyone. Invisible until now, it stained the hands of everyone in the bar with a ghostly red echo of past sins, just a few drops on some and crimson splashes up to the elbows on others. I looked down and saw that even Jackson’s hands were covered in red. Acting on instinct, I reached out and gripped his hand.

  Flash. I saw Jackson as a boy, hungry and dressed in hand-me-downs, unable to protect his little brother from the taunts of a bigger, older bully.

  Flash. Jackson again, almost a man now and wearing a military uniform. He argued with his brother, who begged him not to go.

  Flash. Miles of sand under a blazing sun.

  Flash. A dark beach under a full moon.

  Flash. A jungle creeping with things that screamed in the night. Men dying, bleeding out on strange soil far from home. And Jackson, always running from what he’d had to do in those far-away places.

  Flash. Going deeper, I saw something that haunted him even more. A funeral. He blamed himself for his brother’s death, felt that he should have been there. Should have done something to save him. Instead, he’d been halfway across the world, killing other men over oil or politics. More than anything else, this was what d
efined Jackson Byrne—he had left, and his brother had died.

  And he would never be done paying for it.

  I pulled my hand away and the images disappeared. My chest ached for the men I’d seen dying in Jackson’s memories, and for Jackson himself, who had to live with them. I’d experienced the wrenching guilt he lived with every day, the conviction that his younger brother had needed him and he hadn’t been there. But what I didn’t feel was the need to punish Jackson or avenge his brother and the men he had killed in the name of duty. Whether he accepted it or not, Jackson’s guilt was payment enough for his crimes. I hoped that someday he would be able to understand that.

  For now, though, there was nothing I could do to help him, and the coppery scent of blood hung thick in the air.

  I knew what I smelled wasn’t real, that it was as much a phantom as the red that stained the hands of Spyder’s patrons, but it teased me, calling to something inside of me. Jackson had paid for his sins, but there were others here who hadn’t, and their unrepentant souls clamored for my attention. Ignoring Jackson’s questions, I got to my feet and glided away, slipping through the crowd faster than he could follow.

  Flash. Adultery.

  Flash. Jealousy.

  Flash. Lies.

  I brushed against person after person, seeing their secrets and feeling their guilt. Some were sorry, some weren’t. Some regretted their actions, and some only regretted getting caught. I passed a few I wouldn’t have lost sleep over attending to, but something pulled me on. There was someone ahead with more blood on their hands than all the rest put together.

  There. At the bar, leaning over to flash some money at Nora, stood my gorgeous, guilty prey. He was a golden boy with sun kissed skin and the best blond-on-blond highlights that money could buy. I narrowed my eyes as I watched him. I knew him from somewhere. But where?

  Rachel stood at the other end of the bar, trying to get my attention. She mouthed something at me. What was it? She jerked her head toward the guy at the bar and mouthed the word at me again. A name.

  Perris. Of course.

  Christos Perris, heir to the DeVille empire. With his Apollonian good looks and wad of cash, he had the attention of every girl in a twenty-foot radius, and some of the guys. I tuned out the flashes of memory threatening to overwhelm me as I walked through the throng of his admirers, like white noise on a radio, and elbowed my way over to him. I flashed Perris a smile and glanced down at his hands, then recoiled. If the phantom blood coating them had been apparent to anyone but me, the girls flocking to him like bees to honey would have started a stampede in their haste to get away. I brushed against his arm as I leaned over the bar to ask Nora for a drink.

  Flash. A girl at a party, too drunk to say no.

  Flash. An employee, too afraid of losing her job to tell anyone what her boss had done.

  Flash. A woman asleep in her bed. A man with a knife looming over her. Perris’s excitement washed through me as though it were my own, and the smooth wooden handle of the knife he held fit my hand like I’d been born holding it. For a brief second, I was the New England Slasher, and suddenly it all made sense. The attacks were random because Perris traveled unpredictably for work and pleasure. And he took his hobby with him wherever he went.

  I lurched back, sickened at the anticipation and pleasure I’d felt in the memory, and had to force myself to stay in contact with Perris. I swallowed nauseously, reminding myself that it wasn’t me, that I wasn’t really as twisted as I’d felt for that brief second.

  That I hadn’t liked it.

  But I knew better. This was the dark side that came with being a Fury, this intimate identification with my prey.

  I forced myself to go deeper, looking for more, but before I could get more than a fleeting glimpse of each memory, the film of Perris’s past flickered onward. Image after image, they kept coming, an entire life filled with exploitation and entitlement. Of power used to threaten and intimidate, and enough money to keep it quiet. Almost since he’d been old enough to understand his own twisted desires, Christos Perris had been acting on them.

  And even stranger than the jumble of sick fantasy and memory I saw in his mind, were the images Perris had of himself. Sometimes he was a young boy, then he was in the prime of his life. Now a young man, then thirty, even forty years older than he currently was. No one else I had touched that night had such a weird, non-linear perception of themselves. I took it as a sign of the disorder that permeated Perris’s mind.

  Finally, mixed up in the disgusting mess, I saw Miller and Priest. Aha. Here was my proof—it had been Perris who’d sent them after me. I couldn’t see how he’d learned of my existence, or of the Fury inside of me, but I sensed his desire to hurt me, made even stronger by his physical proximity to me. Since efforts to arrange for my pain and humiliation had failed, Perris’s desires had brought him to Hawthorne to take care of me himself. Alecto flexed, instincts roused by what we’d seen in Perris’s memories.

  It was time to end this.

  Chapter 23

  I leaned over to whisper in Perris’s ear, an invitation to follow me outside. He turned to meet my eyes, and I didn’t pretend not to know who he was and what he had done. A predatory gleam lit him from within, and I knew he would follow. Though he could have had any woman in the place—easier prey, certainly—I had something that no one else in the bar did.

  I was his obsession.

  Somehow, somewhere, Christos Perris had seen me and decided that he wanted me. And what he wanted, he got. It would have taken far more than the knowledge of what I was to keep him from following me. In fact, it was that very knowledge that urged him on—a Fury would be his ultimate conquest.

  Not to mention the fact I was the only obstacle between him and the oracle I had sworn to protect. I knew from his memories that Ruby had something, some piece of information, Perris wanted. Since his discovery of her presence in Hawthorne, it had only been his arrogance and love of playing games with other people’s lives that had kept him from coming to take the girl sooner. Miller, Priest, and the attempt on Ruby’s life had all been nothing but a test. Perris wanted to see what I was capable of, to make his domination of me even sweeter.

  Jackson, seeing that I was leaving the bar with Perris, tried to follow, but the crowd surged, making it impossible for him to get to us. I didn’t waste any time waiting for him to catch up; it was for the best. Although he would blame himself if anything happened to me, it would be worse if Perris hurt him as well, leaving Ruby with no one to protect her. Once outside, Perris led me to his car, an expensive foreign model with a shining black paint job and tinted windows.

  “I hope you’ll excuse my presumption,” he said as he held the passenger door open for me, every inch the perfect gentleman, “but I assume you desire privacy as much as I do.”

  I nodded tersely and slid into the passenger seat. His civilized facade was nothing but a mask for the monster he hid inside, but I felt confident that I could handle whatever he was up to. The tinted windows were the perfect cover for whatever happened inside the car, and if he tried to take me anywhere I didn’t want to go, I would simply break his arms.

  Hopefully, he wouldn’t scream too loudly.

  Perris went around to the driver’s side and slipped behind the wheel. He locked the doors in one smooth motion and turned to look at me. “Alone at last. I’ve waited for this moment for a long time. Your photos don’t do you justice, you know.”

  I stayed silent, watching him, and he smiled.

  “Now, now, there’s no need to play games. I know what you are.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice as though we were sharing a confidence. “A little bird told me.”

  “If you do know what I am, you’re either very brave or very stupid to lock yourself in this car with me.”

  “Oh, no,” he replied. “I’m neither. In fact, I’m a very smart man.” He undid a button at the cuff of his shirt and rolled up the sleeve to reveal a sharp, serrated blade holstered against
his forearm. I remembered the joy he’d felt holding it; this was his favorite blade.

  “You’re the Slasher,” I accused. Again, I saw the image of a woman menaced with that same blade. My stomach clenched in disgust.

  “Clever girl.” He grinned at me as he unsheathed the knife, admiring its weight and balance. Its sharp edge gleamed evilly.

  “Do you really think I’m just going to sit here and let you slice me up?” Bloody tears formed at the corners of my eyes and my hair started its serpentine dance. “You clearly have no idea what I’m capable of.”

  I shot my hand out and grabbed him by the wrist that held the knife. “I ought to carve you up myself.”

  “I’d like to see you try.” He was still smiling. “I really would.”

  What a lunatic. I’d just threatened to carve him like a turkey, and he still talked like he had the upper hand. I squeezed his wrist, forcing him to drop the knife, then grabbed him by the throat and prepared to give him my Fury’s kiss. This time, I would take all of his memories, not just the ones I’d been able to glean in the bar. I needed to know exactly what he wanted from Ruby.

  As I pulled him close and sealed my mouth over his, he squirmed against my hold, fumbling something out of his pocket. He held it up, breaking my concentration. “Sweet little Ruby,” he gasped, choking out the words as I looked at the picture he held. “Do anything to me and you’ll never know what I have planned for her.”

  “Trust me. I’ll know.”

  “Maybe. But it will be too late by then.”

  “What are you talking about?” I growled at him. “And tell me quick, or I’ll get it out of you a piece at a time.”

  “I have another little bird at home just like sweet Ruby.” He was speaking in riddles again. “He told me what to expect from you, so I put certain protective measures in place. All it will take for Ruby to die is for me to miss one little phone call.”