Poisoned Kisses

by Stephanie Draven

  “Damn it. If you had to get involved, Marco, why didn’t you just shoot her in the head?”

  “Why should I do your dirty work? For all I know, you deserve everything she was threatening to do to you.”

  The woman—the vulture, whatever—was breathing shallowly. He could still feel her pulse at her throat, though he’d opened a wound at the back of her head, which was now dripping onto the floor beneath her. Add that to Kyra’s gunshot wound and there was blood everywhere. Thankfully none of it was his, but it was triggering him. He was already seeing blood as it sprayed up from a ditch in Rwanda. He was seeing blood as it flowed red over all of the Congo. He needed to clean this up before he went crazy.

  Meanwhile, Kyra lowered her gun. “How badly is she hurt?”

  “Concussion probably,” Marco said. He wasn’t a medical expert, but he’d seen plenty of wounds. He’d been willing to call an ambulance when he thought Ashlynn needed one and the most troublesome questions the authorities were likely to ask were about the wrecked car. He had a false registration for that. He had a false face for that, too. But a shooting was going to involve more than traffic cops and Marco really needed to get out of here. “If you want to be on the safe side, take her to the hospital. I’m sure you’ve got a car stashed somewhere around here, all hidden away like your cell phone.”

  Kyra shot him a look, flipping that long black hair over one shoulder. Now that she wasn’t disguising herself, her hair was straight as a razor and sharply cut at the edges—just like her. “I left the car at the funeral home.”

  Just how many lies had the nymph told him? “Ah, of course. I should have wondered why you needed a ride home. I’m not usually such an easy mark. But then, my enemies have never tried to manipulate me at my father’s funeral.”

  He could have sworn he saw a flash of hurt pass over Kyra’s features, but then both of them heard a hideous gurgling noise. The woman he’d knocked out was stirring, but didn’t open her eyes. At just this small show of life, Marco saw Kyra’s stark look of panic. No matter what she said about not needing help, Kyra was obviously in some kind of danger. Truthfully, the redhead didn’t look like much of a threat, but what did he know? Until this morning, he thought Kyra was Ashlynn, so looks could be deceiving.

  Kyra was still wearing his overcoat, which was now bullet riddled and bloody, and she put the gun in the pocket. Then she crouched behind the vulture woman, grasped her beneath the armpits and began dragging her toward the kitchen. Marco was fascinated. “What are you doing?”

  “Getting her into the basement,” Kyra said, stopping every few feet to take a deep breath. “I don’t know if she brought any of her friends with her and I don’t want them looking for her. At least, not until you’re safely away from here.”

  He knew better than to trust anything Kyra said to him, but her story about Ares and the war gods was all starting to take a dreadfully consistent shape. After all, the man on the phone had threatened Kyra, and it was a message Marco hadn’t delivered. If he’d warned her about the phone call, maybe she wouldn’t have been shot.

  “Let me help you,” Marco said, grabbing the unconscious woman’s arms.

  “I told you I don’t need your help,” Kyra said, as she staggered and fell. He caught her before her hands hit the carpet.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Marco asked, trying, but failing, to keep the genuine concern from his voice. “I thought you said bullets can’t hurt you?”

  “They hurt me a lot. They just won’t kill me,” she said, steadying herself and pushing him away. “Anyway, just go. Get out of here before Daddy’s vulture wakes up and sees you.”

  It was sensible advice. So why wasn’t he taking it? It was still icy outside, but he could just start walking. Better yet, he’d take the unconscious woman’s car. He went over to her body, found the keys in the pocket of her ski vest and pocketed them. Now he could leave this damnable nymph of the underworld alone to deal with all this. But instead, he asked, “What if her friends come looking for her?”

  Kyra lashed out like a wounded animal. “I dunno. But I have her gun. Guns solve everything, right? In any case, I’m fine by myself.”

  She was not fine. There was clearly something wrong with her. Though he wanted nothing to do with whatever drama Kyra had gotten herself into, he remembered all the threats the vulture woman had made about eating Kyra’s liver. With an irritated grunt, he picked the redhead up into his arms, letting her bloody head loll back, and carried her to the basement door.

  Kyra followed him down the stairs and kept her mouth shut until he reached the bottom stair. “Just put her in the cage,” Kyra said, obviously winded.

  Marco snorted. “How stupid do you think I am? You think I’m just going to walk into that cage and let you slam the door shut behind me and lock me in with her?”

  “The last thing I want is to lock you in there with her. I don’t want her to know you even exist!”

  “Yeah, well, you can drag her the rest of the way yourself.”

  “So that you can slam and lock the door behind me?” Kyra asked.

  Oh, this was rich. She didn’t trust him? Marco shrugged, setting the vulture woman down. “Guess you’re just going have to take that chance, Angel.”

  She glared at him, and the two of them stood there, in this basement, the tension thick between them. This was the same woman who had tried to kill him. The same damned woman who had seduced him not once, but twice, in the guise of a former lover. It made him feel violated and furious. He wasn’t giving in.

  With a frustrated sound, Kyra grabbed the woman and dragged her a few feet into the cage. For a moment—just a moment—Marco considered slamming the door on both of them just as she’d feared he would. Then he could get some semblance of control over this situation. But he had no idea what powers the vulture woman had and whether or not she could really hurt Kyra the way she’d promised to.

  Besides, he didn’t like to think of himself as the type to reward trust with betrayal.

  Kyra dragged the injured vulture only a few feet into the cage, then jumped back out and slammed the door to shut. “Go upstairs before she wakes up,” Kyra said, pushing Marco, insistently. But it was too late. The vulture was already scenting the air. A few moments more and the vulture’s eyes blinked rapidly as she looked directly at him. Thankfully, the bars were too close together for her to escape, even in her vulture form. “Let me out of here!”

  “Give me one good reason why I should,” Kyra panted, double-checking the lock.

  “Because your father’s vengeance will be terrible,” the vulture threatened. “You know how much Ares enjoys punishments.”

  “Maybe he won’t find out. Vultures disappear all the time,” Kyra said, trying to instill a little fear of her own. And it worked, too.

  When the vulture spoke next, there was a touch of panic in her voice. “You’re not just going to leave me down here…”

  “Sure I am,” Kyra said, slumping back against the steel support beam for a breath. Being shot had weakened her far more than it should have, and she didn’t want the vulture to know it.

  But the witless creature was now fixating on Marco. “Who is the man?”

  “If I were you,” Marco answered. “I’d worry less about who I am and more about being nice to Kyra. She has your fate in her hands.”

  “Fate?” The vulture shuddered, as if her feathers were ruffled, then gave Marco a penetrating stare. “She can’t let go of it, can she? Poor little lost nymph. Has she taken you for a lover to distract her from her troubles?”

  “Yes,” Kyra said quickly. There was no reason for her father’s minion to know who and what Marco was. As long as Marco didn’t take on another face right in front of the vulture, or bleed his toxic blood, no one had to know that he was the war-forged hydra Ares was looking for. Let the vulture think Marco was just a lover.

  “Isn’t he a pretty little pet?” Kyra asked, sidling up alongside Marco and tilting his face down so that she
could kiss him. She felt him go stiff, anger brewing just below the surface of his skin, but he didn’t pull away. He let her kiss him, her real lips against his real lips. And if she didn’t know better, she would swear he kissed her back. The taste of him, the smell of him, the feel of him, brought back memories of the dark night before. But once again, it was all pretend.

  When she pulled away from Marco, the vulture looked unimpressed. “Oh, Kyra, you’ve taken up with another mortal man?”

  Marco’s body went rigid by her side. Was it jealousy or stung pride? Remembering the way he’d accused her at gunpoint, mocking her in the very bed in which they’d been intimate, Kyra decided to make it sting a little more. She put her hand to Marco’s cheek, luxuriating in the feel of the stubble there as it scratched her fingertips. “How could I resist these dark good looks? He looks like Narcissus in the right light.”

  Marco glowered as if he might break her hand if she touched him again. Even the vulture picked up on his foul temper. “You,” the vulture called to him. “I can smell the irritation on you. You’re already tiring of the nymph…you’re angry with her. You don’t have to do as she commands. Let me out of this cage, and I’ll give you a reward.”

  “I’ve already got more money than I can spend.”

  “Then do it for spite. You know you want to get away from her,” the vulture told Marco. “That’s always the way with nymphs. They’re so exciting at first, aren’t they? So intense, so raw, so hard to resist. But they always get too attached, too emotional, too much for a mortal man to handle.”

  Kyra’s jaw clenched, pained by the truth in the vulture’s words, and a little dizzy, too. This weakness couldn’t just be that she was in the New World. She’d been away from the Mediterranean before, farther away than this, and never felt so powerless. This was more like she’d felt after she was poisoned with Marco’s blood. She was so tired. Too tired even to respond to the vulture’s taunts. There was no point in it, anyway. She had to get Marco away from here—get him away from Ares.

  Kyra turned toward the stairs and started to climb, motioning for Marco to follow. But before he could, the vulture continued, “Oh, I’ll grant you, Kyra’s a little different. She comes from the line of Ares—she’s harder than most nymphs, less likely to be overcome with love than bloodlust.”

  Kyra’s voice tightened over the lump forming in her throat. “Don’t listen to her. She doesn’t know anything about me.” But why should it be so important to her that Marco knew the truth of her heart? He was just some criminal, some monster, some arrogant mortal man.

  “Oh but I’ve known Kyra all my life,” the vulture insisted. “She hasn’t experienced the all-consuming obsessions so typical of her kind. But she was born a nymph, and it’s a nymph’s lonely fate she’ll have.”

  All Kyra wanted was to get up the basement stairs, but she felt trapped by the fate of her kind—as trapped as if Marco had locked her in that cage.

  The vulture crowed, “Of course, if you’re really special to her, you’ll change her when you go. Everyone knows that a nymph’s lover never stays. Even she knows it. Why do you think she’s fleeing up the stairs to hide her broken heart?”

  Oh, if Kyra had her knife and just a little more strength, she’d carve this vulture up like one of those New World Thanksgiving turkeys!

  “That’s enough,” Marco growled.

  But the vulture ignored his warning. “She’ll end up some sad plant, mark my words. Maybe she’ll go mad, like her mother.”

  That was one taunt too many. Marco slammed one hand against the cage. “Shut up! Just shut the hell up.”

  Kyra held her breath. Was Marco actually defending her? Or was it just that they both shared that special pain of losing a mother to mental illness? Marco took her arm and steadied her on the stairs. “Come on. We’re going.”

  The vulture banged against the cage, her voice coming out in a series of woofs and chuffs distinct to her species. “You can’t just leave me down here!”

  “Why not?” Kyra returned. “You should die slowly, suffering, waiting for the rats to pick the meat off your bones. Isn’t turnabout fair play?”

  Marco helped Kyra up the last few stairs and locked the basement door behind them.

  Flattening herself against the locked basement door, Kyra fastened her peridot choker around her neck where it belonged. Marco was coming toward her, impossibly close. In spite of everything, his proximity was potent. She could actually feel the heat of his body. She took a deep breath, fighting down her gratitude to him for having defended her against the vulture. Fighting her desire to be near him. Did he remember that this was the body he held in his hands, last night? That this was the skin he had kissed? That these were the eyes that guided him in the dark? Not Ashlynn’s body, but hers?

  But as always, Marco’s mind was on weaponry. He thrust his hand into the pocket of the borrowed overcoat she was wearing, pulled the vulture’s gun out and tucked it under his belt with his own weapon. “Nice friends you have,” Marco said.

  “I thought it was pretty obvious that vulture isn’t my friend. But that’s just the kind of person you’re going to turn out to be if you fall into the clutches of a war god. They turn their minions ugly—uglier than they were before.”

  If her words were getting through to him, he wasn’t letting it show. “Ah, I see. So you only tried to kill me to save me from such a horrible fate.”

  Damn him. “Aren’t you ever going to let that go?”

  “What? That you tried to kill me?” He gave an incredulous snort, lifting his hand to show off the jagged scar she’d left him that night in Naples. “No, I’m pretty sure I’m not going to let it go. Even if I could get past it, there’s still the fact that last night I slept with a woman who looked like my ex-fiancée, but who turned out to be a homicidal maniac with Daddy issues, relationship baggage and a penchant for locking people in cages.”

  “I’m not a homicidal maniac!” Every fiber of her being seemed to scream out in protest against that accusation most of all. “I’m not really going to leave the vulture down there to die, you know. As soon as we’re both far away from here, I’ll make an anonymous call.”

  Marco sighed, but didn’t argue. Instead, he took a kitchen towel and walked into the foyer, where, to her amazement, he stooped down to wipe up the blood.

  “Haven’t you been listening to anything I’ve been saying?” Kyra asked. “We need to get out of here! Ares could come looking for his vulture at any minute.”

  “I’m not leaving the place all bloody like this. Besides, I need to wipe the house down so that none of my fingerprints are left behind. It’s bad enough we’re leaving her alive to give a description of me.”

  Kyra was so frustrated. In her day, no one ever had to worry about things like fingerprints or DNA. Now with the humans cataloging everything and keeping track, technology was intrusive enough to make immortals despair of retaining their divine mystery. “If you’d just done what I told you, the vulture wouldn’t have seen your face.”

  “I stopped following orders a long time ago,” he said.

  She watched Marco methodically clean, erasing himself from the place as if he’d never been there. As if he wished he’d never touched anything, or anyone, in this house. Kyra bit her lip, an ache in her chest that went well beyond exhaustion. “I’ll finish up here, Marco. I’ll make sure there are no traces of you—I owe you that much. You can go. Get out of here before the police come or more vultures arrive.”

  “I’m still waiting for my ride,” Marco said without meeting her eyes.

  Kyra dug into the bullet hole in the floor with one toe. “Now who’s lying? I saw you snatch the vulture’s keys from her pocket.”

  He actually looked abashed. That surprised Kyra. She wouldn’t have expected that a man like him—one who lived in a world of thieving, lawbreaking and assumed identities—could be shamed by being caught in a lie. But he was. “I’m going to take her car and leave, but I want to make sure that y
ou’re okay first. I don’t believe almost anything that comes out of your mouth, but it does sound like some guy’s got it out for you. If he finds you, what’s he going to do to you?”

  “Don’t worry,” Kyra said with as much bravado as possible. “I won’t tell my father that you’re the hydra he’s been looking for. I hold up well under torture.”

  “He’d torture you?” Marco’s lips thinned and he shoved his hand through his dark hair. “Look, let’s both just get the hell out of here, then. If you clean up and get dressed, I’ll take you with me as far as Toronto.”

  He’d take her with him. Kyra’s heart beat just a bit faster and she muttered a silent curse at herself. It was always this way for nymphs. Reading far too much into a man’s words. Wanting to believe they meant something they didn’t. “Marco, after the way I tricked you, why would you help me?”

  “Because you helped my mother.”

  Chapter 12

  Marco put on his sunglasses to guard against the glare, then eased the SUV down the icy driveway. In the passenger seat beside him, Kyra was quiet. The only sound was the snow and glass crunching beneath the tires; they were leaving a whole lot of wreckage behind—and not just the smashed-up car in the ditch.

  Underneath it all, he was still filled with rage. Last night, he’d trusted her. He’d shared with her his darkest secrets and she’d betrayed him. He’d never had an inherent distrust of women—not even after what happened with Ashlynn. But right now, everything about Kyra seemed like an embodiment of sexy feminine deceit. And as if that weren’t bad enough, she was annoying him by adjusting and readjusting the side mirror. “What the hell are you doing?”