“Yeah, right. You’d never risk anything for a girl. Not you.” Kraven snorted. “So what I just interrupted—you weren’t about to go at it right here in the alley? Or are you going to try to convince me that as an angel you’re totally priestly all the time? All self-denially?”
Bishop hissed out a breath. “I have everything under control.”
“I sure the hell hope so.” I could hear the sneer in Kraven’s voice. These guys really hated each other; I didn’t care what Bishop said about angels not hating. Their interaction felt personal, like there was bad blood between them. “I know she works some kind of hocus pocus on your brain when you two touch. Can you imagine what she might do to you if it’s full naked-on-naked contact? Maybe you should get it out of your system and just throw her down and—”
The next sound was a grunt of pain after a fist connected with some part of a body. I chose that moment to round the corner and saw Kraven now crouched on the ground favoring his stomach before he slowly rose to his feet. His eyes glowed red in the darkness. Bishop stood with fists clenched at his sides as if ready for the demon to attack. Both their fierce glares turned in my direction.
I faltered for a moment under the heat of those glares, but then forced myself to lean against the wall with my arms crossed, an echo of Kraven earlier. “So…am I interrupting anything?”
“Not at all,” Kraven said, regaining that hateful, twisting smile. “Thought you might have run off already.”
“Not yet, but it’s tempting.”
Bishop didn’t look happy. Whether he was more upset with the direction of their argument or that he’d resorted to violence to end it, I wasn’t sure. Personally, I was secretly thrilled he’d defended me like that. He wouldn’t have done that if I was only a means to help him find his team, would he? That had been personal.
Still, I was a little surprised that he’d let Kraven’s cheap shots bother him. He’d obviously never gone to a public high school. I’d known guys like Kraven all my life. All talk. Emotional manipulators. And yes, jerks. Just because he was a demon didn’t mean I didn’t have his number.
Him I could deal with. The angel—well, he was brand-new for me. The whole situation had me so off center that I had to focus on keeping my balance.
That seemed to be the entire reason behind their mission. Keep the balance. Get rid of the threat that was consuming the souls that Heaven and Hell needed to keep their all-important universal balance. I got that. It was insane and scary and way too big for my head to wrap completely around, but I got the gist of it.
“You want to go home now, don’t you?” Bishop asked. The question wasn’t filled with anger or accusation. He searched my face for the answer, his hands still tight at his sides.
I swallowed hard. “More than you know.”
“We need you.”
“So you say.”
“It’s true.”
I looked at Kraven before summoning my faltering bravery and moving closer to him. I wouldn’t let him believe I was afraid of him. I couldn’t give him that kind of power over me.
“Do you need me, too?” I asked.
He sneered at me. “No.”
“Can you see the lights to find the others?”
He stepped closer to me as if challenging me back, and he reached down to take a tight hold of my wrist. I tensed but didn’t try to pull away. “You’re kind of bright and shiny, gray girl.”
He held my gaze, half his mouth turned up in that patronizing grin.
And suddenly I could read his mind.
I saw past his bravado, past his sneering exterior, down deeper into those amber-colored eyes of his. It felt a little like what had happened this morning, when I’d zapped him to protect myself. This ability drew from the same place. Eyes were the windows to the soul, I’d heard. Since demons didn’t have souls, I figured I was just seeing down to Kraven’s true self.
I don’t know if I can do this. Not with him here. I didn’t know it would be this hard.
It was his thought, not mine. I knew it. I felt it. It was crystal clear to me.
“You’re doubting yourself,” I said aloud. “You’re worried you’re going to fail. You’re just like Bishop that way. You two have way more in common than you might admit.”
He snatched his hand back from me. The amusement had completely left his expression, replaced with confusion.
“How did you—?” he began.
“They wouldn’t have picked you if they didn’t think you could do this.” If Kraven had been sent on this mission, he must be skilled. Someone who could be counted on to come through in a tough situation. Didn’t he realize that?
“You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.” He cast a dark glance at Bishop, who stood watching us intently.
Bishop raised an eyebrow. “See? I told you she was special.”
Kraven turned his fiery glare back on me, and this time it took a lot of effort not to flinch. “Don’t do that again.”
“You don’t want anyone to see the real you?”
“You don’t want to see the real me, trust me on that.” He shot a look at Bishop. “You don’t want her to see the real me, either, do you? Or how about the real you?”
“I’ll take my chances,” Bishop replied evenly.
Kraven’s steely gaze met mine again. “How did you do that?”
Whatever it was felt natural. Felt easy. Like it was simply an extension of who I already was, which I knew made no sense at all. “I honestly have no idea.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“That’s your problem. And you didn’t answer my question.” I tried to keep my voice steady. “Not properly anyway. Can you see the searchlights that lead to the others?”
He answered through clenched teeth. “No, I can’t.”
I nodded. “Well, I can. And I’ve spotted a new one, so I guess you do need me. And if you keep looking at me like you want me dead, I can’t say I’m all that interested in helping you out.”
“Kraven,” Bishop growled. A warning. “Be nice to Samantha.”
The demon studied me a bit longer with that disturbed and angry look on his handsome face before a smile finally snaked across his expression. It didn’t reach as far as his eyes. “Of course. Welcome to the team, sweetness. Looks like we’re going to make a big fat exception for you.”
Great. I’d never been much of a team player before and, if I had been, I would never have picked one like this.
I nodded and pulled my coat closer around me, cinching the belt tightly at my waist, and tried my best to swallow my fear. “Okay, then. Follow me.”
Chapter 9
Bishop’s gaze stayed on me as we walked—a heated sensation on the side of my face that I couldn’t ignore even if I tried to.
I glanced at him warily. “What?”
“How did you get in the demon’s head?”
That was a very good question. I hadn’t wanted to do it. I didn’t want to have anything to do with him at all if I could help it. “I don’t know.”
“Can you read my mind?”
“I don’t know,” I said again.
“Try.”
We slowed for a moment and he looked into my eyes. I concentrated, but I didn’t exactly know how to access this ability, only that it had been really easy with Kraven. With Bishop, his nearness was a major distraction, but staring into his blue eyes did nothing but make my heart start to pound hard and my breath come faster. “I don’t think I can. No—there’s nothing.”
Oh, there was something. But it had nothing to do with reading his mind.
“Maybe there’s nothing in his skull to read in the first place,” Kraven grumbled. “Or nothing that hasn’t already been all shaken up like a snow globe when he slammed through that barrier.”
“Or maybe his mind is stronger than yours,” I countered.
“Doubt that.”
“Have you had moments of psychic awareness in the past?” Bishop asked, ignoring the dem
on’s jibes.
I shook my head. “Never.”
“No mind reading? No uncanny intuition of things that might happen in the future?”
“Like I said, never.”
“Only since you’ve been turned.” Bishop and Kraven shared a look. For an angel and a demon who hated each other, their confusion about my newfound skills had finally given them some common ground.
“When I first touched you,” I said to Bishop, “I had a vision. And even before I met you I had a dream about…well, I’m pretty sure it was you.”
I decided not to mention the dream where I’d killed him.
He was right at my side then, studying me intently while we continued to walk toward the searchlight. I kept my eyes locked on it in the distance.
“What did you dream?” he asked.
“Sex dream, probably,” Kraven said with a smirk. “Right?”
“No.” Did I mention I hated this guy? I could definitely see why he lived in Hell. I wanted him to return there as soon as possible. “It was a bit fuzzy, but I was about to fall into a black hole and Bishop…well, he had a hold on me until he let go.”
Kraven snorted. “Nice. Maybe that was a premonition that he’ll come to his senses and kick you straight into the Hollow.”
I looked at him. Bishop had used that term in Crave earlier as a threat to Stephen. “The what?”
Bishop glared at Kraven. “Shut your mouth.”
“Why? She’ll find out soon enough. Thought we were in sharing mode tonight. Or is that only okay when it’s you doing the sharing up against a brick wall?”
Again, Bishop chose to ignore the demon and turned his gaze back to me. “What about the first vision, Samantha? What was that?”
“I don’t really remember it. At first it was vivid and then it, like, started slipping away. It was bad, though. Epically bad. Something about this city—about Trinity.” I glanced around at the tall buildings. The darkness tonight felt almost like a living, breathing thing closing in on me. “Destruction. Everything and everyone gone.”
Silence was my only answer to that. Even Kraven didn’t have a snappy comeback, which wasn’t reassuring.
“I figure I was sensing you were going to help save the city. I don’t know.” I shrugged and shoved my hands deeper into my pockets to try to warm them so I’d stop shivering. I knew one way to get rid of the chill I felt—hold Bishop’s hand. But that wasn’t going to happen. Not with Kraven around. The thought made a strange longing burrow into my chest. I’d told Bishop earlier that I wanted to touch him as little as possible. I wished that had been the truth.
“But you didn’t see that I succeeded,” he said. “You saw only destruction.”
“I—I don’t know. I don’t remember. Why? Is that what happens if you fail? The city goes boom?” I said it flippantly, but the looks on their faces was so collectively bleak it sent a deep chill through me. “Will it?”
“No,” Bishop said firmly, flicking a glance at the demon. “Because we won’t fail.”
“Just a gray,” Kraven mumbled as if he was talking to himself more than us. “I know you are. I don’t get anything else off you. But what’s with the sight? Nothing all that special about you that I can sense.”
I glared at him. “Then why can I see the searchlights? Why could I zap you before? Why can I read your mind when I look into your eyes?”
The reminder earned me a sour look from the demon. “That is the question of the day, sweetness. But a warning…don’t try it again.”
“Why? Afraid of what I might find in there?”
He grabbed my arm to pull me to a halt and drew me closer. A shudder of fear ran through me.
“Just don’t,” he said.
“Let go of me.”
He did. I wasn’t sure if I could zap him again like I had at school this morning, but I didn’t have to try.
I jumped when Bishop took my arm, drawing me away from the demon. The moment he touched me, a wave of warmth flowed through me and my fear faded. A little.
“We’ll figure it out, Samantha,” he said. “Doesn’t have to be all at once.”
I nodded and tried to ignore my rapidly pounding heart.
“How much farther?” There was strain in the angel’s expression and unless it was my imagination, his eyes had become more unfocused. I didn’t need him to tell me that he was starting to feel a bit unhinged. I guessed he hadn’t touched me long enough to totally clear his head.
“We’re nearly there.” I started walking again. The light was just around the corner, in a small park flanked by office buildings. It was like a tiny oasis in the middle of the concrete city, with trees, grass, a walking trail and several park benches. The leaves had mostly fallen off the trees by now and blanketed the ground. It would be very pretty in daylight.
By moonlight, it was eerie.
There was another boy, around the same age as Kraven and Bishop, sitting on a park bench. As soon as I spotted him, the searchlight that led us there went out.
“That’s him?” Bishop asked.
Mouth too dry to speak, I nodded.
“I wish I knew how many we’re looking for.”
“There’s supposed to be four of us,” replied Kraven.
Bishop looked at him. “Four?”
“Yeah. Two demons, two angels. That’s what I was told.”
Bishop rubbed his forehead. “I don’t remember—maybe I was told that. It’s kind of jumbled up. So much to figure out.” He pressed his hands to his temples. “Spinning and spinning like a top. Never stopping.”
Kraven frowned. “Dude, you okay?”
No, he wasn’t okay. Far from it, and he wasn’t getting better. He’d said this wasn’t how it was supposed to be—that he was more disoriented than he’d expected.
Without thinking about it, I reached for Bishop’s hand and felt that breathtaking crackle of electricity between us. Slowly, the confusion lifted from his expression and his eyes cleared of the growing madness.
“Will you be okay?” I asked him.
He squeezed my hand and I saw the frustration in his blue eyes. “Hopefully long enough to do what I’m here to do. When I go back to Heaven it’ll be better. I’ll be healed immediately.”
“When will that happen?”
“After we’ve found and dealt with the Source. After we’ve made sure the city is safe. I think I can be extracted a week from now at the most.” He looked down at my hand in his and shook his head. His lips curved into a small but devastating smile. “Amazing. One touch and you’re able to clear my thoughts. What would I have done if you hadn’t found me?”
I didn’t even try to answer that. If nothing else, I had a time frame to work with. Roughly a week was how long he thought he’d be here. Then I could have my soul restored, get back to my normal life and try to forget about all this.
Kraven made a snoring sound. “Can we get on with it?”
I cast a glance toward the boy sitting on the bench. I think he’d been sleeping before we arrived, but his eyes were bright and aware as I moved closer to him.
If he was one of the four, then he was a demon or an angel, unaware of where he was or why he was here. He looked totally human to me. Reddish-brown hair with a slight curl to it. Green eyes. A few light freckles on his nose.
He stared at me. “I know you, don’t I?”
I pointed at myself. “Me?”
“Yeah. I think I had a dream about you.”
I looked at him with alarm. “You had a dream about me?”
I exchanged a look with Bishop, whose dark brows were drawn together as he considered this. Maybe this was a sign that I was meant to be a part of this after all, as crazy as that sounded. Maybe Bishop was right—I thought I’d just randomly found him the other night, but if an angel or demon was dreaming about me…then maybe this was meant to help.
I wished I knew for sure.
“Samantha’s everybody’s dream girl this week,” Kraven said. “Except mine, of course. I
have much better taste than that.”
I wondered if they’d be okay with the team being reduced to only three? I was fine with Kraven being the expendable one. Maybe they could send a replacement.
“What was the dream about?” Bishop sat down next to the kid, but made no immediate move for that nasty golden dagger of his. It was a relief, but I already knew where this conversation was leading. The ritual. The one that still haunted me even though I now knew why it was so necessary.
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