Poisoned Kisses

by Stephanie Draven

  “What is it?” Kyra asked.

  He lowered his forehead to touch hers. His eyes were filled with emotion and Kyra’s own throat tightened in response. This was the moment. This was when he was going to reveal himself for who he was, and they would be alone together, with no disguises between them.

  And that’s when a ringing phone ruined it all.

  Chapter 16

  “Your phone is ringing,” Kyra whispered in his ear.

  He wanted to ignore it. He wanted to tell her that it wasn’t important. He wanted to tell her that cell phones were half to blame for the violence in the Congo, anyway, and that he felt like pitching his out the window. But only one person had this number and that was Benji. Disentangling from Kyra, Marco flipped open the damned phone with a growl. “What?”

  “Hello, my old friend!” Ogun’s big distinctive voice boomed on the other end.

  “How did you get this number?” Marco feared that he already knew.

  “I have Benji,” the god replied. “After a little persuasion, your boy told me what number to dial. Now I am calling to remind you that the clock is ticking. You will bring me the grenades. You will bring me the guns you promised. Or Benji will pay the price.”

  Marco tapped his fist against the unpainted plaster wall and forced himself to say, “So what? Benji means nothing to me.”

  “You are not getting any better at lying, my old friend. The boy is like a son to you, and he is still alive for now. Would you like to talk to him? Here, I will give him the phone.” Then the war god laughed. “He is still afraid of me, you know. All I have to do is shout, Boo! He jumps every time.”

  Benji shouted into the phone. “I told you, he is the devil!”

  Not the devil, Marco thought. Not exactly. But close enough. “Are you hurt?”

  “Not badly,” Benji said. “But I’m not alone. There’s a woman here, too. The general says she’s your woman.” Dread filled the pit of Marco’s stomach even before Benji said, “Her name is Ashlynn.”

  Marco squeezed his eyes shut as he heard Ashlynn scream in the background. What had he done? What the hell had he done? The general was on the phone again. “Ahh, Marco. She is so soft, your Ashlynn. So pretty. She would not live long here in Congo, no? How is it that the Great Northern Warlord could love someone so timid?”

  Marco breathed. “She has nothing to do with this.”

  Again the war god laughed. “It was not easy to abduct her from Niagara Falls, but I will let you take her back home to her safe little life in the New World. But first, you will bring me my grenades. You will bring me my guns. There is one flight from Kinshasa to Goma tonight. Be on it. You can find your way to Rwanda from there. The clock is ticking.”

  Then the line went dead.

  Marco didn’t remember punching the wall, but the reverberations of pain and the hole in the cheap plaster convinced him that he must’ve done just that. And there was the nymph, standing there watching him rage, without batting an eye. As if she’d seen the dark side of men before. He’d never have to worry about frightening a woman like her. She was gutsy. She was fearless. But he wasn’t about to drag her into the mess he’d made.

  “I have to go,” Marco said to Kyra as she dressed. “This thing between us, whatever it is, was obviously not meant to be, but I hope you find the man you’re looking for.”

  Kyra blocked his path. “I’ve already found him, Marco,” she said, taking his throbbing fist gently into her hands. She’d guessed who he was, then? He could feel that penetrating gaze of hers already halfway into his head, and besides, he hadn’t been very concerned about hiding his identity while he was on the phone. In light of what had happened to Benji and Ashlynn, it now seemed like a stupid game of pretend, anyway.

  “I don’t have time for this, Kyra,” he said, pulling his hand away. “Do you have any idea who that was on the phone? It was an African war god. He’s been using me all along. Just as you warned me. And if I don’t get his shipment of weapons to him in the next few days, he’s going to kill Benji or Ashlynn or both of them.”

  Her momentary gasp of surprise allowed Marco to push past her. He flung open the door and started down the hall. How the hell was he going to get to the airport in time? Kyra was on his heels, her long strides matching his. “Did you promise yourself to Ogun as his minion? Did you offer yourself up in any way?”

  Marco shook his head, keeping pace with her. “I made no promises but the one at the start—to protect the Tutsis from the Hutu militiamen. That’s what I thought I was doing all this time, but I guess you get the last laugh.”

  They reached the stair landing, and he started taking them two at a time. Kyra did the same, just one pace behind him. “I’ve never laughed at you, Marco. When I tried to kill you in Naples, I thought you were a monster. I wanted to do something, anything, to be useful again. But you’re not a monster and you’re not Ogun’s minion. Not yet. Not if you haven’t pledged yourself to him.”

  Marco burst out the doors into the dark African street. Shrill traffic whistles screamed into the night air and he was so frustrated he wished he could scream right along with them. “Why didn’t you tell me about him—about Ogun?”

  “I know the Greek war gods best. This isn’t my part of the world. But I did try to tell you that there were other war gods, lots of them, from all over the globe.”

  “Yes, you did,” Marco snapped. “And I didn’t want to listen. Now it’s too late. Ogun doesn’t seem like the type to take no for an answer. If it was just my life at stake, I’d let him kill me before I’d sell him even one more bullet. But he’s got one of my men, and he’s got Ashlynn. In any case, it’s not your problem.”

  “You’re wrong,” Kyra said, breathless as she all but ran alongside him. “I care about you. I care about what happens to you. Your problems are my problems.”

  It was really too much. He was already so raw, so angry, so betrayed. He couldn’t take one more lie. He came to a halt right there in the middle of the street, and took her by the arms. “Stop it,” Marco said, shaking her. “Just stop what you’re doing.”

  “What am I doing?” Kyra asked, her eyes as deceptively wide and guileless as he’d ever seen them.

  “I get it, okay? If I can get away from Ogun, I will. After Benji and Ashlynn are safe, if I can find a way not to sell another gun for the rest of my life, I’ll take it. You don’t have to keep trying to manipulate me into doing the right thing by pretending that you have feelings for me.”

  “I’m not pretending,” Kyra insisted. “I do have feelings for you.”

  Something tightened in his chest and he’d be damned if he could explain why. “You lie so much, Kyra, you don’t even know when you’re lying. If you felt anything for me, you wouldn’t have offered to go to bed with me when you thought I was another man.”

  “I knew it was you,” Kyra argued, her cheeks flaming at his accusation. When he started to protest, she bowled over his words. “How do you think I always find you, Marco? And did I seem even the slightest bit surprised when you dropped your Congolese accent?”

  She had him there. He paused; whatever spiteful words he’d been about to say just faded away. His grip on her arms went lax. “I knew it was you,” Kyra repeated, more gently. “I’ve told you before. I have an inner torch that lets me see into mortal souls. I always see the truth. I see the real you. Is that so hard to believe?”

  Her black eyes glittered with unspoken emotion and Marco felt himself softening. He fought against it. That way lay danger. Trusting people hadn’t worked out very well for him before now, and given the way he felt about her, she could just be the final nail in his coffin.

  Marco turned and walked away from her, raising his arm to hail a cab. The traffic on the streets of Kinshasa was thick, even at night, but if he managed to grab a taxi to the airport now, he might be able to catch the last flight out. And maybe that would get him there soon enough to save Benji and Ashlynn.

  But Kyra—stubborn, infuriati
ng Kyra—grabbed his arm. “I know you’ve been let down before. They made you stand there and watch murder and forbade you to do anything about it. Your family didn’t understand. But I do. I understand you, because you’re like me. You can trust me.”

  A cab pulled over and Marco reached for the door handle. He had to get to an airport right now. “Kyra, after everything that’s happened between us, how could I ever really trust you?”

  “Because you can kill me,” she said. “And you’re the only thing in the world that can.”

  That his blood could kill her was the second most dangerous confession Kyra could’ve made to Marco. The other, of course, being that she was falling in love with him. She hadn’t been brave enough to tell him that. She could be reckless with her life, but not with her nymph’s heart.

  Now he was staring at her and she had a pretty good idea what he was going to do. Marco was a hard man. He’d had a hard life. He was going to tell the driver to take off. He was going to leave again. She was sure of it. But instead, he said, “Get in.”

  As she settled into the seat beside him, Marco’s brow furrowed. They stared at each other for a moment, the silence between them deafening. The cab driver seemed to sense the tension, and when Marco told him to head toward the airport, he bobbed his head in time to the radio’s music and turned it up full blast.

  Marco brought his mouth to Kyra’s ear and, for one dizzying moment, she thought he was going to kiss her, but instead he whispered, “What do you mean I can kill you? Bullets pass through you. I thought you were immortal.”

  “I am—I was,” she stammered. Kyra had only told Marco that he had the power to kill her so that he would trust her, but now she could see that she was going to have to tell him the rest, and she was grateful that the radio was too loud for the driver to overhear. “When I was poisoned by your blood…it almost killed me.”

  “My blood…” Marco winced, jerking back his hand from her as if he could poison her just by touching her.

  Kyra tried to explain. “My mother was human. My father gave me ambrosia to keep me alive forever. But your blood counteracts that.” He stiffened. He looked so brittle, she was afraid to say more. Afraid to break him. But Marco needed to know the truth. “Since your blood poisoned me, I’ve been weaker. I’m aging. That’s why the vulture was able to hurt me. That’s why it takes me so long to recover from every wound. I used to heal up right away.”

  His expression went slack with guilt. “My blood can do that to you?”

  She put her hand over his, and gently stroked the pads of his dark fingers. “Marco, your blood can kill demigods. It could slay whole armies. Ogun could bleed you and use your blood to wipe out the Congo without firing a single gun. I’m surprised he hasn’t thought of it yet. He probably has—he’s just enjoying the shooting war too much.”

  The color drained from Marco’s borrowed black face until he was gray as ash. His dismay told Kyra that he’d never considered the fact that he could, himself, be turned into a weapon more deadly than those he sold. “So I’ve killed you…You were some perfect deathless creature and I—”

  “I could get better with ambrosia,” Kyra said quickly.

  “Then why the hell are you here chasing after me? Why aren’t you off somewhere drinking it, or eating it, or whatever?”

  “Because ambrosia is very rare and I don’t have any.”

  “What about your father? Can’t he give you some?” Marco asked, and she could see he was the kind of man who was going to methodically explore every possibility. He wanted—needed—to find solutions. And it endeared him to her more than ever.

  “My father might be able to find some, but it isn’t easy to come by. Especially now, with the world the way it is. Besides, I’m not sure I want to be immortal anymore.”

  His head jerked up at that. “What do you mean?”

  As the cab turned the corner, his thigh brushed against hers. The same thigh that had been pressed between her legs not long ago on the rooftop, driving her forward to the drumbeat, into an abyss of pleasure. But it wasn’t just the pleasure; it was that he’d made her feel as if she belonged in his arms—in fact, it was the only place she’d ever felt as if she belonged. Certainly, it felt more right than the life she’d been living. So why not be honest about it? “I’m not sure there’s still a purpose for me as a lampade,” Kyra said, a little breathless to be admitting it aloud, even to herself. “I don’t belong in this world. Hecate doesn’t need me. The people don’t call upon my kind anymore. What’s the point of living forever if no one needs you?”

  “Don’t say that,” Marco said, his hand sliding over her shoulder and gently cupping her cheek. “The world needs more people like you. You don’t close your eyes to anything. You see how screwed up the world is, and you want to do something about it. You’re not afraid to stare right into the heart of darkness.”

  “I’m a torchbearer,” Kyra said.

  “That’s what I mean. You’re no Miss Mary Sunshine spreading false cheer. You’re more like a beacon in the night. You say people don’t need you anymore, but you’re wrong. You’re an ange—”

  “Don’t say it,” she warned.

  But he wasn’t cowed. “I will say it. You’re an angel. A dark angel. The kind that carries the fire of redemption in one hand and a knife in the other. You want to right wrongs.”

  “Nobody needs that anymore. Nobody needs me.”

  “I needed you.” He hadn’t meant to say it, she could tell. And now that he had, he almost blushed. His shoulders tensed and he stared out the window at the lights of the airport as they came into view. “In fact, I still need you,” he said. “I need you to come with me to Rwanda.”

  Chapter 17

  The nymph was unusually quiet beside him in the crowded plane. A light sheen of perspiration made her bare shoulders shine in a way that reminded him of how heatedly they’d danced together on the hotel rooftop. He’d enjoyed having such a powerful creature give herself over to him. She wanted, she needed, she connected, in the most beautifully raw and primal way. But now, she was wound tight.

  “Are you all right?” Marco asked her as her hands tightened on the armrests.

  “I’m fine,” she snapped.

  She was not fine. “You’re knuckles are turning white.”

  She mumbled in reply, her cheeks coloring. “I don’t like to fly.”

  Marco loved to fly. The sky was the one bloodless, untainted place left in the world. He couldn’t imagine why someone like Kyra wouldn’t love it, too. “What’s wrong with flying?”

  “I’m a lampade,” she whispered. “I wasn’t made to look down on people. I was made to walk with them on the earth…or under it.”

  So, Kyra wasn’t entirely fearless, after all. There were cracks. Vulnerabilities. And if what she said was true, the poison of his blood had caused some of them. If he’d never touched her, if he’d never come near her, maybe she would have lived forever. But he’d infected her. He was nothing but poison to Kyra and every other woman in his life. Look what he’d done to Ashlynn.

  Marco sighed. What had Ashlynn ever done to deserve being kidnapped and caught up in this mess? Whatever happened, Marco had to get her released. He just hoped he could get the weapons shipment to Ogun in time. Luckily, Rwanda was just over the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and it’d be a relatively short flight. It was time to wear his own face again.

  Marco seemed to have no fear of being arrested here in the warm night air of Rwanda. He made his way through the crowded tarmac with self-assurance. He’d obviously been here many times before. He knew the country, he knew the people. Within a matter of moments, they were ushered past customs officials and let through.

  Kyra was oddly reassured by Marco’s competence. She stayed close to his elbow as he made a few calls. Shortly afterward, a government official picked them up in the dead of night. It was only once they’d arrived at some sort of military compound—some set of buildings that looked like barracks�
��that Kyra whispered, “How much did you have to pay him?”

  “Nothing,” Marco said, helping her out of the car. “I’m a friend of the Rwandan government.”

  Darkness posed no obstacle for her—she could see all the buildings quite plainly, and the weapons inside them. What she couldn’t tell was whether or not the guards were Rwandan soldiers or if they were in Marco’s employ. They certainly treated him deferentially enough. As for her, the guards all stared. She could feel their heated glances as they swept up and down her long bare legs, but none of them spoke to her. “Is this place yours?”

  Marco shook his head. The corrugated metal door screeched in the night as he pulled it closed behind them. Then he turned on a single lightbulb that swung from a wire overhead. “It’s a government stockpile. The Rwandans want the weapons to reach the general, and they’re happy to let me bring them over the border.”

  Kyra’s mouth actually fell open. “But why? What has Rwanda to do with the killing in the Congo?”

  “I told you before,” he said, hefting a crowbar. “After the genocide here, the guilty fled to Zaire—er, to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They hide out in the jungle, never having paid for their crimes. Worse, they continue to commit atrocities against the Congolese.”

  “Someone should stop them,” Kyra said, starting to see Marco’s frustration. “Marco, wait. Are you saying that the government of the Congo is harboring these…these—”

  “Genocidaires,” Marco finished for her. The word echoed off the walls. Kyra hadn’t known there was a word for such men. And she hadn’t thought that any government in the world would harbor them. She didn’t know what to say. But for once, Marco seemed willing to do the talking. “The Rwandans want justice but the government in the DRC can’t seem to give it to them. The general promised that he’d give them that justice. So did I.”