Poisoned Kisses

by Stephanie Draven

  And she knew his secrets. She knew what he’d done, what he was, and still wanted him.

  He’d lost himself in Africa but, last night, she’d found him again. Since Rwanda, Marco had taken on so many different faces that he’d become anonymous to himself; she’d helped him remember who he was. She’d compared him to a monster, but somehow made him feel more human than he’d ever felt before. She’d pulled him free of the darkness as surely as he had pulled her from that icy drainage ditch. She’d been a beacon of light on one of the darkest nights of his life and he didn’t know how the hell he was ever going to thank her for it.

  Every muscle screamed as he moved, but he rose carefully so as not to wake her. It was a new day. A beautiful day, actually—the sunlight glistening off the ice-encased trees outside to illuminate a winter wonderland. It was the kind of day that made him wonder if maybe the world wasn’t quite as irredeemably screwed up as he thought it was. Maybe today, he really could decide to change his life. But whatever he decided to do with this day, it’d have to start the same way. He’d have to get dressed, hike up the road and find a phone.

  He slipped into Ashlynn’s laundry room to get his clothes and the first thing he noticed was that there wasn’t any laundry—just his stuff in the dryer and Ashlynn’s coat in a basket. The second thing he noticed was that the coat in the basket was making some kind of music, like a funeral dirge.

  With a sense of dawning dread, Marco reached in and found a pink cell phone with a macabre ring tone. He flipped it open.

  “Kyra.” It was a man’s voice, and it was menacing. “I want you to listen to me carefully and consider the consequences of your actions. Return the file on the hydra and I’ll consider forgiving you for what you’ve done to my armory in Bosnia.”

  For a moment, Marco felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He felt as if something had hit him square in the chest and knocked the air right out of him. He just stood there holding the phone against his ear, all but deaf and dumb. “Do you understand me, Kyra? Defying me would be unwise.”

  Marco finally broke in. “Who the hell is this?”

  Silence. Then a click—the end of the call.

  Some instinct—probably the same instinct that had kept him alive in war zones—told Marco to dial information and ask for Ashlynn Brown.

  “Hello?” It was Ashlynn’s voice. All restraint and sweetness.

  Marco just stood there, listening to her breathe, as his worst fears were confirmed. Whoever he’d gone to bed with last night wasn’t Ashlynn. It was the shape-shifting assassin from Naples. It had to be. But how the hell had she survived coming into contact with his blood?

  Ashlynn’s voice rose a bit. “Hello, is anyone there?”

  The smart thing to do would be to hang up. He had his answer. That should’ve been enough. But instead, he found himself saying, “It’s Marco.”

  There was a hesitation on the other end. Did he hear the laughter of children in the background? The scratch of a dog’s claws on the kitchen linoleum? He could almost imagine her, coffee cup in hand, leaning up against the countertop with her hair in a tight ponytail behind her head. “Marco, I’m not sure calling me is a good idea.”

  He forced the words. “I came home for my father’s funeral.”

  “I’m so sorry.” There was a precisely measured amount of sympathy in her voice. “I went to pay my respects, but I didn’t see you there. We must’ve missed each other.” So she had been at the funeral. Perhaps if he’d arrived a little earlier, everything would have worked out differently. Perhaps he’d be standing in her kitchen instead of in some creepy house out in the middle of nowhere with an imposter.

  Who was the woman who had lured him to this house? What did she want with him? Why had she gone to bed with him?

  “Marco,” Ashlynn broke in. “You should know…your sister told the police that you were at the funeral. The authorities were at my house this morning but I told them I didn’t know anything. Which is the truth.”

  Marco closed his eyes. Lori. Swallowing down the bile of betrayal, he said, “I’m sorry you had to deal with that. I really am. I’d have thought with this ice storm, the police would have better things to do.”

  “They said you’re wanted in connection with some missing weapons.”

  Marco kept his voice low and a wary eye on the bedroom door. “And you want to know if it’s true?”

  Another hesitation. “No. I don’t want to know.”

  He could have predicted her answer, and it was just as well because Marco had already had this conversation with the woman impersonating Ashlynn the night before and wasn’t sure he could do it again. “Are you happy?”

  At that, Ashlynn gave a brittle laugh. “I’m getting a divorce.”

  “I’m sorry,” Marco said, and this time, he was pretty sure he meant it.

  “He ran off with his secretary,” she said, again, very calm. Ashlynn was never one for big shows of emotion. “I suppose you’d have never done that, Marco. You were always the type to stick with a commitment to the bitter end.”

  Was she trying to pay him a compliment or point out a character flaw? What surprised him was that he didn’t really care. The emotions he expected at hearing her voice didn’t come. Maybe it was because he’d already experienced them with a pretender. Maybe it was because he was over Ashlynn and had been for a long time, which made what happened last night with the stranger even more inexplicable. And it was something he was going to have to deal with sooner rather than later.

  “Take care of yourself, Ashlynn,” he said, then hung up the phone.

  Chapter 10

  Blinking awake, Kyra stretched like a cat in the unfamiliar bed. She reached for Marco but he wasn’t there. He was sitting in a chair, fully dressed, his overcoat spread on his lap. She actually smiled at him until she realized he was pointing a gun at her.

  “Who are you?” he snapped and before she could lie he added, “I just talked to Ashlynn—the real Ashlynn. I called her on the phone you said you didn’t have.”

  So he knew. There was no point in denying it now. With a shudder, Kyra let go of Ashlynn’s shape and let him see her true reflection. Her pale skin and the rest of her, too, hair and eyes black as night. To his credit, this time he didn’t recoil. He just stared, as if confirming what he already knew. “So it’s you again…and you’re like me.”

  “No,” Kyra said, mindful of the muzzle of the gun pointed at her. “I’m not like you. At least, not in the way you mean. You’re a war-forged hydra. Your blood is deadly and you take on the faces of people who’ve hurt you.”

  “So do you,” he countered.

  “No. I can look like anyone or anything or nothing at all.”

  He shifted forward in the chair. “What are you, then? And who sent you?”

  “I tried to tell you last night. I—I wanted to tell you,” she stammered. “I’m a nymph.”

  “A nymph?” he asked with a dark laugh of surprise. He’d lived with poisoned blood long enough to accept the supernatural, so it must have been something else that surprised him. “Those sweet spirits that live in rivers and woodlands?”

  In spite of the night they’d just spent together, he obviously thought she was too malevolent an entity to be one of those. “Woodland spirits aren’t the only kinds of nymphs. I’m a nymph of the underworld. The Romans called us nymphae avernales, but we’re more properly known as lampades.”

  He looked bemused but didn’t lower his gun and she couldn’t tell whether he believed her. When he spoke, his lips were curled with contempt. “And just what did you do to get turned into a nymph of the underworld?”

  “I was born this way,” she said, now eager for the whole truth to come out. “My mother was a priestess of Hecate and my father is Ares—”

  “Ares?” He laughed again, but it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. She worried he was going to pull the trigger. “From the Greek myths?”

  “They’re not all myths.”

  “No?” he asked. �
��So you’re saying, what? Gods like Ares are real?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Marco pointed to the window. “You’re telling me Artemis frolics out there through the ice-covered woods in a loincloth?”

  “It’s a bit cold here for her,” Kyra said, her lips tightening as he mocked her. “But I’d appreciate it if you took me seriously. I’m trying to explain the world to you.”

  He snorted. “You want me to take seriously the idea that ancient gods exist? How do you know they’re not just people with powers, like you and me?”

  “They do exist, though not likely the way you imagine them and they’re not like us. There are old gods of all kinds. Greek, Norse, Hindu, Native American… It’s just that most of the oldest immortals no longer hold any sway in this world because people don’t believe. But war is a part of every age. The people still call upon the war gods—even if they don’t know their names. And when they call, the war gods answer.”

  “Well, I didn’t call them,” Marco said.

  “Yes, you did. Every day you ship guns to some war-torn part of the world, you chum the waters for the war gods with human flesh. You feed them.”

  She expected him to deny or justify it. Instead, he asked, “What do you feed upon?”

  She pulled the blanket beneath her chin, suddenly self-conscious of her nudity. “Struggle, I suppose,” she murmured.

  “What was that?”

  “Struggle.” Now she lifted her eyes in challenge. “I was a torchbearer of Hecate, dark goddess of doorways, thresholds and crossroads. Maybe that’s why I was attracted to you—why I still am. Because whether you know it or not, you’re struggling and you need help. You know what you’re doing is wrong and you want to change.”

  “A torchbearer…” For a moment, she thought she was getting through to him. He lowered the gun and his body language changed like it did when he confessed his secrets. But then something seemed to snap together in his memory. “Torchlight… I thought I saw a torch during the accident. You caused the accident.”

  “Yes,” Kyra said, hoping a ready confession would make up for what she’d done.

  But he raised the gun again, his mouth a hard, thin line. “You’d better tell me what game you’re playing, or you’re not going to live long enough to spin another lie.”

  “You can’t kill me with that gun,” Kyra said with more bravado than was strictly called for. Bullets would pass through her, but they’d also hurt like hell. “So just let me explain—”

  “Explain what? Why you tried to murder me in Naples?”

  She winced. “Yes. Among other things.”

  “Are you going to explain why you’ve got a basement outfitted like a dungeon? Who were you going to imprison down there?”

  So, her cell phone wasn’t the only thing he’d found while she was sleeping. There was no point in answering, but he let the silence stretch on and on until finally she blurted out, “You! Okay? I was going to lock you down there.”

  His eyes darkened dangerously, and with more than a little arrogance. “But I’m stronger than you, so you needed the tranquilizers, or sleeping pills, or whatever I found in your bathroom. Seduce me, then sedate me. Was that the plan?” It had not been the plan only because she hadn’t thought that far ahead. She hadn’t known she was going to impersonate Ashlynn Brown until the moment she saw her. But Marco continued with his theory, anyway. “The problem is, I don’t trust easy. You had to sleep with me twice before I trusted you enough to close my eyes, and by then, you were pretty exhausted yourself. Putting on such an enthusiastic sex show must have really tired you out.”

  “It wasn’t a show!” Kyra sputtered, angrily. He shouldn’t taunt her. Really, he shouldn’t!

  “Why so offended?” He sneered. “That’s how you got me alone the first time, isn’t it? You literally thrust yourself into my lap so you could stick a knife in my heart.”

  Heat came to her cheeks. “Yes, that’s what happened the first time. But that’s not how it was last night.”

  “Right.”

  Kyra’s nostrils flared. “Last night I wanted—”

  “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t know what you want from me, and I don’t care.”

  Fine. It was time to make her intentions as naked as she was. “I want you to be careful of the war gods. I’ve told you that they exist. What I haven’t told you is that Ares is looking for you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he collects monsters!”

  He grimaced, as if she’d cut him again, and she supposed she had. “And you think I’m a hydra. That’s what you were going on about last night.”

  “I know you’re a hydra—”

  “You’re wrong. I wasn’t born like this. I grew up just a normal man. Like anyone else. It wasn’t until Rwanda—”

  “You were war-forged there,” Kyra stressed. “Monsters aren’t all born, Marco. Some of them are made. What you said—sometimes in war you see things so toxic that they poison you—that’s true.”

  “Then why aren’t there thousands like me around the world? Millions!” he roared, slamming his free hand into the door next to his chair.

  He was angry. Furious. And whether he knew it or not, he had the power to kill her. Kyra should’ve been terrified of him, but all she could think about was how to explain. “The circumstances have to be right. You were shot. The lead is still inside you, poisoning you. You’re Greek…just think about your name… And your mother was—”

  “Don’t even speak of her,” he warned. “And don’t tell me I was born of some raping pig.”

  Kyra bit her lower lip. She waited until his breathing steadied before saying, “It doesn’t matter how you became a hydra, Marco. It just matters that you are one, and that Ares is after you.”

  “For what?”

  Kyra sighed. Wasn’t it obvious? How could he be so dense? “For your poisonous blood.”

  “Well, he can’t have it.”

  “You may not have a choice if he finds you. He could kill you and drain you of every drop. But more likely he’ll try to bind you to him in oath. Daddy’s like all the other war gods. They make it seem like what you’re doing is just your nature, that it’s your own idea, all the while extracting promises from you to turn you into a minion.”

  “Luckily, I don’t make promises anymore,” Marco said.

  But he had. He’d made her promises last night, with his words and with his body. Some liked to say that skin doesn’t lie—but Kyra knew better. And it hurt. She tried to shake it off, as much for his sake as her own. “The gods will want you to pledge to be their minion and they don’t care a whit for your consent. They only care about claiming you as their own, so that other gods can’t take you away.”

  “Well, I’m no one’s minion,” Marco snarled. “Are you?”

  “I used to be.” Kyra sat up straighter on the bed. “I was given to Hecate as an infant and swore myself to her when I came of age. But she freed me a long time.”

  He narrowed his eyes, as if trying to figure out what to make of her. “So as a hobby, you now go around assassinating arms dealers?”

  She snorted. “You were my first.”

  He raised a suggestive eyebrow. “Somehow, I really doubt that.”

  “My first assassination attempt,” she spit out. “I’ve killed other men and monsters in self-defense, but you were the first person I tried to kill outright.”

  “Should I be honored?” he asked, that voice of his low and dangerous.

  “Look, Marco, Daddy had a file on you. He was looking for you—actively searching you out. So I took the file, I used it to hunt you down in Naples, and then I destroyed it. Don’t make it all have been for nothing.”

  Something she’d said ignited a spark of recognition behind his eyes. “If Ares really exists, why can’t he just snap his fingers and find me?”

  Kyra tried very hard not to roll her eyes, and mostly succeeded. “Gods aren’t all-powerful. They never were. Do you think Hera would
have let Zeus get away with all his affairs if she could’ve just snapped her fingers and found him anytime she liked?”

  Marco sucked slightly at his teeth. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  She had no answer for that. “I know you think you’re doing the right thing, but what you’re doing is illegal—it’s immoral.”

  “Yeah? Where were all these laws and morals when it came to Rwanda?” he demanded. “Some people want to make it seem complicated, but the way I see it is very simple. Where do you think those genocidal Hutu militiamen went after they were kicked out of Rwanda? They went to Zaire, and the people there need guns to fight them.”

  “That’s not what the people there need,” Kyra said, though she wasn’t prepared to debate global weapons policy in the nude. Since she was reasonably sure he wasn’t going to shoot her, she found her underwear and started to put them on. He watched her bared breasts as she slipped into her bra, his face caught somewhere between arousal and contempt. And that’s when Kyra heard tires crunching on the snow outside. “Someone’s here.”

  He stood, starting for the bedroom door. “Yeah, I called the people that work for me. I just didn’t expect Benji to be here so soon.”

  “But you can’t leave,” she blurted.

  Marco hesitated only a moment. “Why not?”

  There were many reasons, and not all of them had to do with her destiny or thwarting Ares anymore. She wanted Marco to stay because he needed her. Being with him made her feel like she still belonged in this world. But to admit such a thing to a mortal was self-destructive. He’d only leave her, anyway, and then she’d be like all the other sad nymphs who had changed into weeping trees and crying fountains and teardrops of amber. Kyra wouldn’t let that happen. Never! “You can’t leave because…because I need to convince you to let me hide you from Ares.”

  Marco snorted. “You can’t convince me of anything, Kyra, because you’ve already told too many lies. Is that even your name?”