Dark Kiss

by Michelle Rowen

  I expected some smart-ass reply, but both demons just stared at me with eyes filled with shock before moving to Bishop. I turned to look at him to see he had begun to sink down to the ground, his back still pressed against the wall. His eyes were glazed, his skin pale white, and there were dark lines around his mouth.

  Watching through the fog surrounding my mind, I tried to piece together what I was seeing, what it meant, but it didn’t make any sense. He looked just like Paul had when I’d stopped Carly from kissing him.

  She’d been feeding on his soul.

  And, even though it should have been impossible, I’d been doing the exact same thing to Bishop.

  Chapter 19

  Angels didn’t have souls.

  But I didn’t care that it didn’t make sense. I just wanted more. I wanted to be left alone so I could kiss Bishop again. There was nothing else I wanted.

  Before I could move toward him, Kraven grabbed tightly onto my arms and peered into my eyes.

  “Oh, hell, gray girl,” he said grimly. “Just couldn’t keep your pretty little lips off him forever, could you?”

  “Let go of me.” It was like I was hearing myself from a mile away. I had to get back to Bishop. I had to kiss him again. I wanted more—so much more. I struggled against Kraven’s hold on me, trying to push and claw my way out of his grip.

  “Sorry about this,” the demon said.

  “What?”

  He smacked me hard enough to make my ears ring. I yelped and my hand shot to my burning cheek.

  And reality set in as fast as a bolt of lightning. The fog surrounding me disappeared and the horror of what I’d done became crystal clear.

  “Good, you’re back,” Kraven said, nodding. “Didn’t want to have to knock you out. Or did I? I guess we’ll never know.”

  I stared at him. “What happened?”

  “What happened?” Kraven repeated, the mocking tone returning to his voice. “Don’t you think that’s painfully obvious by now, sweetness?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw the angels join us and take in the scene. Zach looked shocked, but Connor looked bleak.

  Roth, as expected, just glared at me, his arms crossed over his chest.

  I shook my head. “But he’s an angel.”

  My gaze tracked to Bishop to see he was slowly recovering. The lines around his mouth had faded to nothing and color was returning to his face. Shakily he got up from the ground, still leaning back against the cold brick wall, and he touched his mouth, staring at me with shock and confusion—a mirror of how I looked at him.

  “Sorry to interrupt your romantic interlude,” Kraven said. “But we can sense when an attack occurs nearby.”

  I felt sick right down to my bones.

  “But I don’t have a soul,” Bishop said. He hadn’t looked away from me for a moment. While he still looked confused and shaken, there was still desire in his gaze that only continued to grow. I remembered my kiss with Stephen—it hadn’t been unpleasant, despite what it was doing to me. It had been exciting, exhilarating and filled with passion. I would have kept kissing him if he hadn’t stopped.

  And the kiss with Bishop had been so much better than that.

  I still ached to kiss him again. And if no one else was here, I think he might have let me.

  “Why were you kissing a gray in the first place?” Roth asked, clearly confused and disgusted by the thought of it. “Some sort of experiment?”

  “Doubt that,” Connor said. “Bishop doesn’t strike me as all that scientific.”

  “Bishop—” Zach moved toward him, concern on his face. “How do you feel?”

  “Angels don’t have souls,” Bishop said again.

  “Fallen angels do.” Connor leaned against the wall a few feet away from him, watching him warily.

  Bishop blinked at him. “Yeah, it’s an anchor to keep them in the human world—a punishment so they have no hope of returning to Heaven. They’re cast out forever. But I’m here only temporarily, for the mission. I’m going back.”

  Connor didn’t reply to that, but his expression remained grim. It was different from the sarcastic guy we’d walked back to the church with.

  I almost said something to defend Bishop, but I bit my tongue and stayed where I was, shivering in the shadows. There was nothing in the other angel’s expression that made me think he was speaking anything but the truth right now.

  A soul. Bishop had a soul.

  And I’d kissed him because I’d felt that hunger for him from the moment we first met.

  This wasn’t happening.

  “Did you know already?” I asked, my voice barely audible.

  Connor looked at me. “Yes.”

  “How?”

  “It’s why I was sent here.” He turned to study Bishop. “Something went very wrong when you left. Somebody screwed up. They made you fall. For real.”

  Bishop stared at him, his brow furrowed. “How could that happen?”

  Connor’s expression tensed. “There are those who want you to fail, for this mission to fail. The gatekeeper who sent you was one of the old guard—the very old guard. A zealot who thought the only answer to purge the human world of this new infection would be to destroy the city all Sodom-and-Gomorrah style. But to do that, you’d need to fail. When I got here, I expected you to be in bad shape, but you weren’t. So I figured maybe they’d been wrong and didn’t say anything. A soul usually messes up a fallen angel’s head big-time.”

  Bishop just stared at Connor with shock as this sank in.

  Zach’s expression was tense. “The rest of us were protected. But if nobody found us…we’d still be wandering the streets with no idea who we were.”

  “Yeah,” Kraven agreed, eyeing me. “If you hadn’t found us, gray girl, we would have wandered the city forever.”

  “She’s a damn gray,” Roth snapped. “Is this enough proof for you? She needs to die.”

  “Back off,” Bishop growled at him. “She didn’t know this would happen.”

  “She found us and that gives her a pass,” Kraven said. “This time, anyway.”

  Roth sank back into the shadows. I was surprised they weren’t all ganging up on me at this point. I’d just proven that I was every bit as horrible as they thought I was.

  I wanted to go to Bishop, to touch him, but I knew that would be the worst thing I could do right now. “This—gatekeeper who did this to him. Where is he now?”

  “Punished. I hope he sees the irony when he’s cast out of Heaven for his crimes.” Connor swept his gaze around the group. “There was no way to know how badly Bishop was affected by this. The barrier blocks nearly all attempts to monitor the situation. So they sent me to help.”

  I stared at him. “But if he couldn’t find the others, he couldn’t find you, either.”

  He nodded grimly. “See, I didn’t know he couldn’t spot the searchlights. I just knew he’d be messed up mentally. Hindsight’s a bitch, isn’t it? But now I’m here and I’m in it to win it. Five are better than four, I say. The mission stands. This is just a minor setback.”

  I gazed around, as if the night might have answers. The only light out here came from the full moon above and a lamp over by the street. A pair of headlights moved along in front of the church from a rarely seen car. I scanned the sky, but it was dark. No more searchlights, just stars.

  “Sodom-and-Gomorrah style,” I murmured. “Just like my vision.”

  “What?” Connor asked.

  “I—I had a vision that the city was destroyed. Everyone gone. It was…epic.”

  He frowned. “Do you usually have disturbing visions of the future?”

  I cleared my throat. “Not usually. But is that a possibility? If the old guard wants to do that, will they? If the mission fails?”

  “The mission won’t fail,” Kraven said. “So it’s a moot point. Put that out of your mind, sweetness. We have it covered.”

  Somehow, his assurance didn’t help. A chill went through me then, which was s
urprising. I thought I’d gone completely numb.

  Bishop raked a hand through his hair, his posture slumped as if he’d grown very tired. What I’d done to him had weakened him. “I can’t go back now.”

  “Don’t say that.” I moved toward him, but stopped myself from getting too close. Even a few feet away his scent made me dizzy and triggered my hunger again. I wanted to kiss him so badly it was like I was going into withdrawal from keeping my distance. He affected me now even more than ever before. I clenched my hands until my short fingernails bit into my palms. The pain helped clear my mind.

  “Why? It’s true. I might be crazy a lot of the time, but I’m not stupid.” He held my gaze, his face strained as if he might feel the same need to get closer to me, but then he tore his attention from me to look at Connor. “I was supposed to be extracted early, once I dealt with the Source. I got in through the barrier, so I could be pulled back out. That won’t happen now. And with this soul inside me, I might not get back at all, not if they can’t reverse this.”

  “I’ll do what I can when I get back,” Connor said.

  “Have you ever heard of a fallen angel returning to Heaven?”

  Connor didn’t speak for a moment. “No.”

  “Exactly my point.”

  My heart twisted. It sounded as if he’d already accepted that this was the end.

  Going back to Heaven and being cured of the madness that plagued him—it was all he’d wanted since he’d arrived, his beacon. If he couldn’t go back, he’d be like the homeless guy I’d met. I realized then that I didn’t even know what the guy’s name was. I hadn’t asked.

  “I met someone,” I said, breaking the silence. “A homeless man who hangs out near Crave. He was kind of out of it, rambling. When I touched him, I felt the spark similar to when I touch Bishop. He’s an angel, too.”

  A fallen angel.

  “Not surprised,” Kraven said. “There are plenty of fallen angels in the human world. Heaven has a way higher fail rate than Hell. When a demon stays in the human world, it’s usually a reward, not a punishment. Unless he’s been officially exiled.”

  Bishop stared at me and I saw the pain shadowing his eyes as he absently touched his lips again. His gaze flicked to Kraven. “Did you know this?”

  “Which part?” the demon asked. “I’m having trouble keeping track.”

  “That I was fallen? That what was wrong with me wasn’t just disorientation caused by the barrier?”

  Kraven’s lips thinned. “I saw the signs. And yeah, I thought it could be this. I wasn’t sure.”

  “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  There was nothing compassionate in Kraven’s harsh expression. “It’s not my fault you didn’t do your homework. I guess it’s just like old times, huh? Trust the wrong person, you end up screwed.”

  With no warning, Bishop attacked him, grabbing the demon and slamming him down hard on the ground. If Kraven had been a human, it probably would have broken his back. Bishop even got a couple punches in, directly to the demon’s face, before Zach and Connor forcibly pulled him back and tried to restrain him. He looked completely crazy right now, and it scared me. I was frozen in place—all I could do was watch and try to make sense of all this.

  “Get control over yourself,” Zach warned Bishop. “You’re only making things worse.”

  It was the first time I’d heard an edge of anger in the angel’s voice. Maybe he wasn’t always the kindhearted healer.

  Kraven wiped the blood at the corner of his mouth and pushed up off the ground. His eyes glowed red. “Yeah, I know. It sucks. But you can’t blame me for this. It’s not my fault.”

  “You should have told me,” Bishop hissed.

  “Why? What good would that have done? Your brain is toast. If it wasn’t for her—” he thrust a thumb at me “—you’d be off in a rubber room somewhere, drooling and rocking back and forth and the rest of us would be eating out of Dumpsters and sleeping on park benches. Just before the city was wiped off the face of the planet with us in it, like in your girlfriend’s vision.”

  The pain on Bishop’s face tore me up inside. “What can I do?” I asked.

  Kraven shot a dark glare in my direction. “You can stay the hell away from him.”

  “I didn’t know this would happen.” A sob rose in my chest.

  “I believe you. But it doesn’t change anything. You got a taste. Would you have taken it all if we hadn’t stopped you?”

  My breath caught. I’d felt it—tasted it. Bishop’s soul. I’d sensed it leaving him and entering me. And I’d wanted more.

  Roth eyed Bishop as if he were damaged goods that should be taken directly to the dump. “He’d probably like that. Suck the whole soul out, and maybe he could flutter back to Heaven without that ball and chain around his ankle.”

  “Or, more likely, it would destroy him completely and he’d be taking a nosedive right into the Hollow,” Connor said without even an ounce of humor. “Got a front row seat for that earlier. Not fun.”

  “Why would you think something like that?” I asked, alarmed at the very thought of it.

  He looked at me. “We’re not human. Well, not anymore. When we’re given the chance to be an angel or a demon, we’re changed on a base level.” He flinched. “It hurts, trust me on that. But once we’re finished with the conversion, we function without a soul. Having one—”

  “Would screw us up,” Kraven finished. “But it’s a lose-lose. Without a soul, a fallen angel or an exiled demon would perish in the human world. With it, you risk getting your eggs scrambled.”

  “Maybe,” Connor said with a shrug, “maybe not. When it comes to Bishop, anyway. What happened to him was a mistake, not a punishment. Maybe he’d be okay without it.”

  Maybe. That word didn’t sound like something I could put even an ounce of my trust in.

  Bishop had sunk back down to the ground. But he watched me, his expression raw, his eyes filled with something else—something I couldn’t name. Something aching and bottomless and filled with need. All directed at me. It scared me, because I felt like I was looking back at him exactly the same way.

  He should hate me right now. But he didn’t.

  Just the opposite.

  I realized I was moving toward him again when Kraven yanked me back, his grip painfully tight on my wrist.

  “Don’t go near him,” he growled at me.

  Zach crouched next to Bishop, a hand on his shoulder as he’d begun to rise. It was to hold him back from meeting me halfway. He was the moth, I was the flame. Right now I knew I could burn him very badly. Despite a nearly overwhelming urge to struggle against Kraven’s grip on me, I stayed back.

  “I feel it now,” Bishop said, pressing his hand against his chest. “My soul. It’s heavy inside me.”

  “Lighter than it was, though,” Kraven added, giving me an unfriendly sneer. And here I thought we’d almost become pals. Guess not. “After all, you were just dinner for your new girlfriend.”

  I hated everything about this. And there was absolutely nothing I could do to make it better.

  Kraven yanked on my wrist.

  I shot him an angry look. “What?”

  “I’m taking you home.”

  “I can get there by myself.”

  “Nah. Consider me your chaperone to make sure you don’t sneak back here and try to stick your tongue down his throat again.” He looked over his shoulder. “Roth, go with Connor on patrol. Zach, you take care of my darling soulful brother. Make sure he doesn’t follow after us. Looks like he wants to.”

  “Wait a minute,” Connor said. “Bishop’s your brother?”

  As Kraven dragged me away, I craned my head over my shoulder to look back at Bishop, anguished at the thought of leaving him like this. His blue eyes burned into mine. Confusion, madness, anger—and desire—all mingled together there in his gaze.

  Mix in an extra helping of guilt, and that was exactly how I felt, too.

  I wanted to cry, but my t
ears had dried up. Now my eyes just stung. I wanted to close them and try to shut out every memory of what just happened.

  When I first found him, sitting on the sidewalk, lost and confused and unable to find the searchlights, I’d helped him then.

  I’d helped destroy him tonight. Less than a week to go from one extreme to the other.

  “So you finally got a taste of angel cake,” Kraven said after a few minutes of walking. Each step away from Bishop felt heavy and forced. “Was it worth it?”