“That’s painfully obvious.” Bishop finally let him go and Stephen staggered back a couple steps. His gaze returned to the golden dagger as Bishop sheathed it. “By the way, if I ever see you again, I will kill you, whether you’re feeding regularly or not. Have a nice night.”
Then he turned, took my arm and guided me down the stairs.
Nobody followed us.
Chapter 7
At the bottom of the spiral staircase, I forced myself to pull away from Bishop’s firm but strangely comforting grip. I wanted to find Carly and get out of here as soon as possible.
He eyed me. “You’re welcome.”
A million insults swelled inside me, battling with gratitude and relief. “You think you can just push me around like that?”
He didn’t look much friendlier than I felt. “What were you thinking, coming here and seeking him out? Are you looking for trouble?”
“Have you been following me? Hiding in the bushes? Do you have a pair of binoculars trained on my bedroom window, too? Trust me…I always pull the blinds before I get naked.” I shivered at how close he stood to me even though his brief touch had filled me with warmth again.
He seemed at a loss for words, as if he wasn’t sure how to reply to my “naked” comment. His eyes burned into mine. “Are you always this irrational or is this just my lucky night?”
I took a deep breath. I wondered when the serenity Stephen mentioned might start. Not tonight, that was for sure. “Where’s Kraven? Is he stalking me, too?”
His mouth went tight. “I’m not stalking you. Once I met you, touched you, I became able to track you. It’s a talent I have—one of the very few I haven’t managed to lose.”
“Oh, that sounds much better. Tracking me. Nothing weird about that.” I was wearing heels tonight, but he still towered over me, overwhelming me with his very presence.
“You could have been hurt confronting that thing up there, you know. Not the smartest move.”
“Says the guy with the big, sharp, glowy concealed weapon.”
“Tell me what happened.”
For someone who just last night had turned from confused yet charming to murderous and angry, he now looked genuinely concerned. After guiding me out of sight of the jerk on the second floor, he took a step back from me and didn’t attempt to touch me again.
Fine with me. Even though my skin tingled from where he’d had his hand on me and I still had a hard time catching my breath being anywhere near him, I didn’t want him to touch me again. No way.
I crossed my arms. “I wanted to know how to get my—my soul back. Before that I wanted to know if it was even true, that it was gone. I don’t feel any different.”
His blue eyes met mine directly. “Yes, you do.”
“What, are you in my head or something? I don’t. I’m hungry, yeah, and I’m always cold, but other than that there’s nothing wrong with me.”
“Which is one of the things that is wrong. You should feel different.”
“But I don’t.”
He scanned the club as if assessing it for incoming threats. I was surprised he hadn’t insisted we leave, but I wasn’t going anywhere until I found Carly again. He was the one who should leave. Even though it was a weeknight, the music down here—as opposed to the shielded upstairs lounge—was loud. I had to stay closer to Bishop than I liked in order to hear him. Close enough to smell him—and he smelled just as good tonight as he had last night. Warm, clean, spicy. Maybe it was a special angels-only cologne.
I forced myself to take a step back.
“How are your hungers right now?” he asked.
“Bad.” They’d ramped up to an impossible-to-ignore level in the past few minutes, actually. I eyed a passing tray of chicken wings. “Maybe I should eat something.”
“You think food will satisfy you?”
“I’m not loving the alternative.” My attention was irresistibly drawn to his mouth. “Unless you’re volunteering.”
Immediately my cheeks heated. Where had that come from?
He raked a hand through his short, dark hair. “Sorry, but angels don’t have souls. I wouldn’t be able to help your hunger very much.” He watched me with cautious interest, as if he expected me to burst into flames at any moment.
My face was blazing, and now I had a vivid and unwelcome image of kissing Bishop lodged in my head and couldn’t shake it loose. Angels didn’t have souls. Okay. I added that to my very limited knowledge about him. “I wasn’t sure who I hated more, you or Kraven, but I’ve decided that it’s you.”
He didn’t seem surprised. “And what brought me ahead in the race?”
“The fact that I originally liked you.” That seemed to shut him up. Nice to know that the crazy angel had no comeback for once. Speaking of… “How’s your head?”
“It’s been better. I don’t like feeling this way.”
“But you’re feeling relatively okay now?”
We were tucked into a corner, away from everyone, but he still looked around to check whether anyone was eavesdropping, even though the music was more than loud enough to shield us. “No. The confusion hasn’t gone away. It’s still circling. It’ll come back…it’s only a matter of time.”
“Kraven seemed fine.”
That earned me a sharp look. “Kraven was protected when he entered the city. I was not. That’s why he had to go through the ritual, so his true self could be returned to him.”
I stared at the darkly gorgeous but annoying angel. “Your lips are moving but I’m not understanding a word.”
“Seems to be the theme of the week.”
I glanced around the club for Carly and spotted her chatting with a couple of our friends. I hoped she’d be done soon so we could leave—the sooner the better. Reassured of her safety, I turned back to Bishop. “So the ritual involves you stabbing him with that big, shiny knife of yours.”
“Yes.”
I shuddered at the memory. “Sounds like the stupidest ritual ever created.”
“His temporarily mortal form had to die in order to be reborn with his memories and his true self returned. And, yes, it has to be done with this big, shiny knife of mine.”
I swear, most of the time it felt like he was making fun of me. “So demons can be stabbed in the chest and just bounce back from it like it’s no big deal?”
“Regular knives won’t hurt demons. They’re immortal, just like angels. This dagger, however, is very special.”
Why was I still talking to him, edging closer to him with every moment that passed? Why couldn’t I just turn away and go get Carly?
I shook my head. “I’m officially not a part of this. I’m walking away, going back to my normal life, okay? And that means I don’t want you anywhere near me—tracking, stalking, harassing, whatever.”
He hissed out a sigh. “You can’t be normal again, Samantha. You’re a gray now. It’s been confirmed both to me and to you. Even though you’re different from the others, it doesn’t change what you are. What you need.”
To kiss someone. Badly. Even a soulless, dangerous, and frustrating angel. My cheeks now flushed more from anger than embarrassment. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m here because of grays. That’s why the others are here as well, like…Kraven.” He said the demon’s name with distaste. “Grays can’t leave the city—no supernatural can. I need to find the Source. She’s the one who’s responsible for this new infestation. It’s like a disease that will keep spreading if we don’t stop it. And we’ll use force to stop grays whenever necessary.”
I didn’t think it was possible, but I felt even colder at that. “With that shiny dagger of yours?”
“Grays consume souls. If they give in to their hunger, it can kill a weaker human. Stronger humans can survive losing their soul, but they will become infected—they’ll become a gray, too. Being gray changes them, and grays who feed too much, get too greedy, are incredibly danger
ous. I’ve already seen it.”
Fear shuddered through me. “Change how?”
His gaze searched mine as if he was looking for more answers there. “Being soulless seems to strip humanity and reason away from the very start. But if a gray feeds, it makes it more uncontrollable.”
“But I don’t have a soul and I feel the same as I ever did. I definitely know right from wrong.”
Bishop’s dark brows drew together, still searching my face as if he couldn’t look away. “You’re different. I don’t know why or how it’s possible, but you are. Maybe it’s because you haven’t fed yet at all. You can’t give in to the hunger, Samantha, or it will change you.”
I realized I’d moved so close to him that my hand brushed against his. I took a shaky step back. “You’re lying to me. About all of this.”
“Angels don’t lie.”
I gaped at him. “I still don’t believe you’re an angel.”
“Do you believe Kraven is a demon?”
“I don’t know.” I blinked, thinking back to the scene in the alley last night. I frowned. “Do you have a tattoo like he does? Is that some sort of a sign of what you are?”
“It’s not a tattoo. Our wings are made of energy that isn’t visible or accessible in the human world. But their imprint remains on us.”
“Show me.”
He just looked at me. “You can’t just take my word for it?”
“No. Show me your…your imprint, or whatever it is.”
“Will that be enough to convince you?”
“I don’t know.”
He gave me a stern look. “I don’t take orders from anyone. I’m the leader on this mission.”
I felt sick and confused, but determined, too. All I could focus on was one thing at a time or I would be overwhelmed. More overwhelmed.
“Here’s how I see it, Bishop. You were sent here to take care of a problem. I’m part of that problem, according to you. However, you already figured out that I’m different, I’m…special. I saw that light in the sky when you couldn’t—and you don’t know if you’ll be able to. You can’t find the others, not without me. And you have only a short time to find them or they’ll be lost forever.”
He didn’t look pleased by the reminder that he wasn’t necessarily the one in charge at the moment. That gave me the strength to continue.
“That guy up there.” I thrust my thumb in the direction of the upstairs lounge. “No question that he’s a total creep, but he also promised to help me. He said I was like him, like the others. That I had a place to belong now. So my question is, why would I want to have anything to do with you—another jerk who nearly killed me last night—when I can go hang out with my new friends?”
It was the last thing I wanted, but currently my only bargaining chip.
He was silent for a long moment. “Because if you say you really haven’t changed, then you must see how wrong all of this is.”
My jaw tensed. He was right, but I didn’t want to let on that was how I felt. Something was off about Stephen. Really off. He was cold, in both body and mind. He said this had freed him from his previous problems, but I wasn’t convinced. Something that felt this bad—feeding off other people’s souls—just couldn’t be right, no matter how he tried to spin it.
It wasn’t a matter of becoming a zombie and having a major craving for brains. To my knowledge, a soul didn’t have substance. But it existed and it was priceless. It was what went to Heaven after you died. Your spirit that lived on even when the rest of you was dead.
And mine was gone.
I swallowed past the thick lump in my throat and forced myself to stay strong. To not let Bishop think he had the upper hand. I had something he wanted and I still wasn’t sure I wanted to give it to him. But I needed something to believe, something that might make all of this remotely okay again.
“Show me your imprint,” I said firmly. “And maybe we can talk.”
Bishop’s blue eyes sparked with emotion as he studied me. Nobody had ever looked at me like that in my entire life, like he could overpower me in an instant but was trying very hard to hold himself back.
When he turned away from me, my heart lurched and I thought he was going to walk away. But he didn’t. After doing another sweep of the area, probably to make sure we didn’t have an audience, he grabbed hold of the bottom of his shirt and pulled it up. Not all the way, but enough for me to see some skin.
It was fairly dark in this corner of Crave, but there was enough light to see the imprint on his back. It was different from Kraven’s black, batlike tattoo. This was more of an outline with some light shading. It looked like actual feathers. Then again, Kraven was a demon and Bishop was…
An angel.
I still wanted to deny it, but that was getting harder with every passing minute.
“You see it?” he asked, glancing at me over his shoulder.
I nodded. He was about to pull his shirt back down, but I wasn’t finished yet.
“Wait.” I drew closer to him so I could get a better look—was it ink or something else? I ran my fingers over the lines to find it didn’t feel like anything but smooth skin. But I felt something else—an energy, a hum, that warmed me being this close to him.
When I’d touched him the first time, I’d had that strange vision that had since faded. For a while, I’d assumed it was just my imagination running wild, but now I wasn’t so sure. Bishop looked like a painfully attractive boy with dark hair and vivid blue eyes, but he wasn’t that. Not at all.
“You’re an angel,” I finally said.
“Thank you for the confirmation. All done?”
Suddenly, I realized that I was touching his back in an intimate way. My cheeks flamed and I pulled my hand away so fast it was comical. Bishop lowered his shirt and glanced at me as if he, too, was surprised I’d been touching him that way only minutes after telling him how much I hated him.
An angel. Here in Trinity.
And I’d just totally groped him in public.
“Sam?” Carly approached us slowly. I guess she was done chatting.
I cringed and turned to look at her. “Uh-huh?”
“Um, what’s going on?”
Good question. I wondered how much of that she’d witnessed. By the look on her face, probably too much.
“Nothing.” Denial was always a nice thing, even when it didn’t help at all.
“Who’s he?” She glanced at Bishop.
“Nobody. We should go now.” I grabbed her arm and started to direct her toward the exit. I felt a strong urge to get Carly somewhere much safer. And I needed to regroup and decide what to do about my problem.
“Leave? Right when it looks like you’re starting to have some fun?” She was actually smiling. My life was falling apart, and she thought it was hilarious.
“No, Samantha,” Bishop said. “We’re not done here. There’s too much to do to wait another day. I need your help now.”
Carly waggled her eyebrows. “He needs your help, Sam. That sounds intriguing, doesn’t it?”
“It’s not like that.” I pulled her farther away from the blue-eyed angel. We were so close to the exit. Just another dozen feet to freedom. I stole another glance at Bishop, who’d stopped following and was now staring at me, and ignored my racing heart.
“I knew there was a reason we came here tonight,” she whispered. “I thought it was so you could confront Stephen, but it was so you could meet this guy. He’s a total hottie. You had your hands all over him just now! And he looked like he didn’t want you to stop. Guess you’re breaking that no-romance rule of yours, aren’t you?”
I grimaced. “It wasn’t what it looked like.”
“Sure, it wasn’t.” Her smile faded a little. “I’m all for you finding someone awesome and gorgeous. As long as it isn’t Colin.”
Oh, yes. Thanks so much for the reminder. I dreaded seeing him again tomorrow. He’d asked me out and then I’d nearly accosted his mouth. There was no way he wasn’t goi
ng to take that the wrong way. He probably thought I was into him.
For the record, I wasn’t. However, just thinking about how close I’d come to kissing him made my stomach growl softly with hunger. That was disturbing.
Carly slanted a glance in Bishop’s direction. He stood with his arms crossed, leaning against the wall near the staircase. He wasn’t watching me now; his gaze was on the rest of the club as he did another security check.
“Can you give me a second?” I asked Carly.
“Are you going to give him your phone number?”
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