Poisoned Kisses

by Stephanie Draven

  She ripped the headset off. “Wait, you’re doing what?”

  “I’m hiking into Goma. It’ll take me a few hours.”

  “Why can’t you just call Ogun to arrange for a swap? Your weapons for his hostages? You can call him. I know he has Benji’s phone.”

  “I have to do something first, and there’s no time to explain.”

  Red anger rose to her cheeks. “So you’re leaving me here?”

  “It’s safer this way.”

  “For who? There’s a UN mission in Goma. If you hike into that city, they’re going to arrest you!”

  Marco almost laughed at her naiveté, but he didn’t have the heart to. “I’m more worried about Ogun. He has spies everywhere. If I’m spotted in the city, I want to be seen alone. I don’t want him to see you.”

  Kyra turned to him in her seat, flipping that sexy dark hair. “Now, you listen to me. Ever since Benji and Ashlynn were kidnapped, I’ve let you run the show. I’ve followed you around and done everything you said like a good little girl. But it’s not my nature. And I don’t like your plan. You can’t expect me to sit here in the middle of the Congo without you.”

  “Kyra, if someone captures one of us—mortal or god—wouldn’t it be better if the other of us were free?”

  She clenched her teeth, then stared gloomily out the window. “So you’re just going to leave me.”

  Damn it, he didn’t have time to argue with her. “Kyra—”

  “Fine,” she said, giving him a shove. “Just leave me like Odysseus left Calypso on the sands, so you can go off to rescue your pretty, proper Penelope!”

  Penelope? He’d have liked to have known what the hell she was talking about, but a quick look at his watch told him that he needed to get going. He cupped Kyra’s cheek, trying to calm her down. “I’m not just leaving you here. I’m coming back.”

  “How do I know that?” Kyra asked.

  “Because I’m giving you my promise. I’m giving you my word.” He leaned forward and kissed her, hoping it wouldn’t be his undoing.

  “Why am I even here?” she whispered when he withdrew, her lips set in a near pout. “Why did you even bring me back with you?”

  He put his hands in her hair, stroking it back behind her ears. “Because, when Benji and Ashlynn are safe, I’m going to need you to bury me.”

  He’d tried to say it as gently as he could, but the shock of his words sent a shudder through her. Marco couldn’t let her see even a hint of doubt in his eyes. “When this is all over, Kyra, we’re going to dig a hole in the sand. I’m going to climb into it and you’re going to shoot me in the head and bury me. This way, none of my hydra blood will ever hurt you or anyone else again.”

  He couldn’t be serious…but then she saw that he was. He wanted her to kill him and hide the body. She pulled away, horrified. “You can’t mean that!”

  “It’s the only way,” Marco said. “You’ve always known that. That’s why you tried to kill me in Naples.”

  Acid boiled up in Kyra’s stomach. She thought she might retch. She was as sick at the thought as she had been when his blood had first poisoned her.

  “You said it was your destiny to rid the world of a hydra, didn’t you?” Marco asked. “We’re both Greek, Kyra. We both know we can’t cheat fate.”

  He was right, about everything. She had only one argument, and it was the one she dared not make. She didn’t want to kill him. She loved him and wanted to be loved by him. But those words would not come, no matter how hard she tried to summon them.

  “I have to go,” Marco said.

  He pressed a gun into her shaking hands, she shoved it away. “I don’t want one of your stupid guns!”

  “Take it for your own protection. In case anyone comes while I’m gone.”

  “I prefer knives,” she insisted, but she didn’t expect him to actually produce one.

  Fumbling in a case in the back of the cockpit, he drew out a blade. “It’s a Glock field knife. Take it.”

  She let her fingers curl around the hilt as he made his way out of the plane. She sat there with the weight of it in her hand as she watched him tuck an envelope into his shirt, sling a backpack over one shoulder and take off into the bush. It might be the last time she ever saw him, and she was acutely aware of it. She tried to burn the memory of him into her mind—the way his linen shirt clung to his back with sweat. The way his strong shoulders moved as he cut a swath into the jungle, like Odysseus working the rigging of his ship.

  He’d promised to come back, but the promises of mortal men were nothing nymphs could cling to. In the end, Marco was going to save Ashlynn and the two of them would find their way back together. That is, if Kyra sat here and did nothing.

  In Kyra’s defense, she tried to do as Marco asked. She sat in that plane for several hours before deciding to take matters into her own hands. She told herself it was his own fault for giving in to Ogun’s blackmail without considering all the weapons he had in his arsenal. Kyra was a deadly weapon in her own right and she wasn’t about to wait around for Marco to rescue his damsel in distress when she was perfectly capable of doing it. And she didn’t need Marco to lead her to Ogun’s rebel encampment, either; this place was filled with the shades of the dead, many of whom were eager to tell Kyra what they knew.

  Ares held the cell phone to his ear. “Hecate swore we’d find Kyra there!”

  “Maybe the old witch lied to you,” his vulture said hurriedly on the other end of the line. “I’ve been sitting outside the UN mission in Goma for days and I haven’t scented Kyra or her lover.”

  Ares supposed it was possible that Hecate had lied to him. Oh, the once-mighty goddess had cried out in pain as he burned her. Her sweet shrieks still echoed in his mind and gave him an erotic thrill. But perhaps he hadn’t let the delicious torture last long enough to ensure she was telling the truth…. No, Hecate dared not lie to him. Not about Kyra. “Listen, my little buzzard, do I have to come there myself?”

  If he had to go to Africa himself, he’d make someone pay dearly. He hated the idea of roaming so far from his home. There were still-standing temples to him in North Africa, but the Democratic Republic of the Congo was much farther than his ancient influence had reached. He didn’t relish the idea of trespassing on the realm of another war god, but he was getting very tired of his minion’s incompetence.

  “Wait,” the vulture replied. “I think I smell him!”

  “Then you know what to do,” Ares said, and snapped the phone shut.

  As Kyra moved silently among the huts, she came upon several child soldiers who purported to be guards. The sight of them, wearing chains of bullets around their little necks like tribal toy beads, was disturbing on more levels than she could name. Two of the boys were crouched, taunting a third, who was crying. The shades had told her to expect this—to know that some of the boys had come willingly to this warrior’s life, and others had been forcibly abducted from nearby schools and pressed into the general’s army. Drugged, beaten and forced to kill. And if Marco gave Ogun the guns, that’s what would happen to the crying boy. He’d kill or die. And Kyra couldn’t live with that.

  With renewed purpose, Kyra faded and slipped past the boys. They didn’t see her. Even so, she was cautious, staying low and creeping from hut to hut until she found them. Kyra almost didn’t recognize Benji. His eye was swollen shut, and a gag held his jaw in a distended position. Ashlynn sat beside him on the floor, her face in her hands.

  Kyra was surprised by the sudden surge of protectiveness she felt toward Ashlynn. She’d expected to want to claw the woman’s eyes out in a jealous fit of rage. But Ashlynn was someone who Marco cared about, someone he’d once loved, someone he might love still. And though she couldn’t explain it, that made Ashlynn somehow precious to her. So Kyra was gentle when she put her hand over Ashlynn’s mouth and whispered, “Don’t make a sound. I’m here to help you.”

  Then she let herself be visible and Benii’s eyes flew wide. Once she was sure t
hat Ashlynn wouldn’t scream, Kyra cut the ropes and realized that Benji had already managed to slip halfway out of his. He was every bit as resourceful as Marco boasted. “I’m here for your boss,” she said to Benji. “There’s a car by the checkpoint at the bottom of the mountain. Marco tells me you can steal just about anything. Can you hot-wire the car?”

  He nodded, still wide-eyed.

  “And you’ll take Ashlynn with you? You’ll make sure she gets out okay?”

  Benji nodded again. Could she trust him? A gentle illumination into his soul showed her the outlines of his devotion to Marco and she decided that would have to be good enough. “You might need to bribe some people to get out of the country.” Kyra wanted to give them money, but didn’t have any cash in the pockets of her cargo shorts. She thought it might just kill her to do it, but she unfastened the peridot choker at her throat and handed it to Ashlynn. “Please don’t sell it unless you have to. It’s antique, and very expensive.”

  Priceless, in fact. It hurt more than just about anything to give her mother’s necklace to the woman. Especially to this woman. But Kyra’s mother had been a priestess of Hecate. She’d have wanted her jewelry to help guide another to safety. That helped her let it go, even though she had to strangle a sob in her throat to do so.

  “What are you?” Benji asked, pulling the gag from his mouth. “You look like…an angel.”

  “Well, I’m not. I can’t flap my pretty white wings and fly you out of here. I can only create a distraction outside to let you get away. So, when you hear an explosion, start running.”

  As the daughter of Ares, Kyra had a preternatural sense for weapons of war. Ogun’s rebel cache of grenades wasn’t hard to find and since mortals couldn’t see her, she simply walked past the guards into the warehouse and pulled a few pins.

  The resulting blast was cacophonous. Numbing. Mesmerizing, really. The sight of dirt plumes in the jungle air made soldiers come running from all directions. No one’s eyes were on the hostages; if Benji had an ounce of sense, he and Ashlynn would be well away by now.

  Kyra stopped to appreciate her handiwork—a riveting show of fire and shrapnel. Daddy wasn’t entirely wrong when he said she was bred for destruction. But it was always her undoing. As Kyra turned to flee, a meaty fist closed around her throat. Clawing at an iron grip that left her no room to breathe, Kyra found herself staring into cold obsidian eyes.

  “Now what manner of creature do we have here?” Ogun asked.

  And then he laughed.

  Chapter 19

  The last thing Marco remembered was stuffing an envelope under a door at the mission of the United Nations Organization—the world’s understaffed and outgunned attempt at peacekeeping in the area. Inside that envelope was everything Marco knew about the general’s rebellion. He’d given maps, locations of encampments and an inventory of every weapon he’d supplied for the past decade. He hoped they’d put it to good use.

  But now he had no idea where he was. Blinking awake, his eyes made out the fuzzy outlines of a beach house. The scent of eucalyptus trees and volcanic ash let him know he was still in Goma. The lake outside had to be Lake Kivu. Steadying himself on the mattress he saw the shape of a woman standing over him. He could see she wasn’t a stranger, either. She was the vulture and she was eyeing him like he was a rotting corpse in the sun. “Oh, you woke up. Such a pity.”

  “What do you want?” Marco reached back to rub the sore spot on his head and was relieved to find that he didn’t have an open wound.

  “I knocked you unconscious. I wanted a little payback,” the vulture said, and he could see she had his gun. “Mmm, well, you are a tasty morsel,” she said, bringing her face close to him and digging her talons into his arm. “Let me just have…a little bite.”

  “You’re not my type,” Marco snapped, jerking away.

  She leaned forward. “Is Kyra?”

  Marco ground his teeth. It was hard enough to make sense of the feelings he had for Kyra. To speak of them with this woman, this creature, seemed somehow obscene.

  “More importantly…” The vulture knelt in front of him, licking her lips in a pornographic mockery of an act a man might otherwise welcome. “Are you Kyra’s type? Or are you merely an amusement? You see, my master hopes that you’re just another one of his prodigal daughter’s playthings—in which case, I’m going to kill you very slowly and eat your innards at my leisure.”

  The vulture didn’t know! She didn’t know he was a hydra, or that consuming his blood would kill her. She was so dumb, she really thought he was just one of Kyra’s lovers. “And what if I’m not just another one of Kyra’s playthings?”

  “You mean if she actually loves you? Then I hope you don’t bore easily, because your life is about to become much, much longer.” The vulture drew a syringe out of her pocket, holding it up so that the fluid shimmered in the light. “This is ambrosia. The rarest and most valuable liquid in the world. A little bit will heal you, a little bit more will extend your life, and a little bit more will make you immortal.”

  Ambrosia. “Give it to Kyra. She needs it.”

  “Oh, this isn’t for Kyra,” the vulture said. “This is for you. If she’s truly set her nymph’s heart upon you, my master doesn’t want to see it broken by your fragile mortality. You see, nymphs are ridiculously dramatic. Love changes them, ruins them, and Ares has plans for Kyra. He’s not about to let her transform herself into some babbling brook or melancholy wildflower on your account.”

  Was it possible that Kyra loved him? What did it matter? He was going to die soon enough, but with Ashlynn and Benji’s lives on the line he really didn’t have time to die today. “Look, I don’t have time for this. I have an angry African war god waiting on me.”

  In his frustration, he’d only meant to be flip, but the vulture recoiled. Panic flittered over her face, and her arms flapped nervously. “Which war god?” she squawked.

  “Ogun,” Marco replied slowly.

  The vulture took three steps back and lowered the gun. “You’re Ogun’s minion? I—I had no idea. But you seemed so ordinary.”

  He didn’t know what sort of divine rules of etiquette were at play, but she seemed distinctly less intent on feasting upon his innards now that she assumed he had Ogun’s protection. She had jumped to the wrong conclusion, but it had changed the equation in his favor and he wasn’t about to contradict her. “Looks can be deceiving.”

  “I’m only here trespassing in Ogun’s realm because Ares sent me,” the vulture said. “The nymph is his daughter, under his protection. So, you see, it’s Kyra’s fault. She shouldn’t be here. This isn’t her home. She shouldn’t even care what happens in Africa. She doesn’t belong in Africa.”

  “Maybe you people should stop trying to tell Kyra where she belongs,” Marco growled. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a shipment of weapons to transport.” He got to his feet and walked toward her, free hand extended for his gun. He wasn’t about to leave without it.

  And she even seemed inclined to surrender it to him, too, until he got close enough, and she tilted her nose up in the air, taking a faint sniff. “Is something burning?”

  “It’s Africa, something is always burning.” But he was suddenly and acutely aware of the small scratch she’d left on his arm and the little dots of toxic blood that were boiling at the surface of his skin.

  “Your blood, it’s—”

  He caught her by the wrist before she could touch it. “Careful.” As much as he loathed the creature and the carrion stench of her breath, Kyra had told him that the vulture was mortal. In spite of everything she’d done, she probably didn’t deserve to die just for curiosity’s sake.

  “You aren’t an ordinary man at all,” the vulture said, her eyes widening. “You’re the hydra. She found you.”

  “That’s right,” he said, seeing no advantage to denying it. “My blood can kill you. And it will kill you if you stand in my way. So, give me my gun, my cell phone and that syringe of ambrosia.”


  She swallowed audibly, yanking her wrist away, and took another two steps back. “Not the ambrosia.” Her long red fingernails closed around it. There were apparently some things she feared more than death. “I’ll give you the rest, but you can’t have this.”

  “Why not?” Marco asked. “You said it was for me, didn’t you?”

  “There were conditions,” the vulture hissed. “Ares said I was only supposed to give this to you if Kyra truly loves you.”

  Marco found it vexing that the Greek god of war should care anything about true love, but then again, he was Kyra’s father. “Just give me the syringe. Maybe she does love me, though I’ll be damned if I know why.”

  “Then where is she? If Kyra loved you, wouldn’t she be by your side?”

  Marco frowned, remembering the way Kyra had asked him not to leave her with the plane.

  “No answer for that?” the vulture asked, tossing Marco his gun and his phone.

  Marco took one look at the display and saw the text message from Benji. He muttered a string of expletives in just about every language he knew.

  Damn it. What had Kyra done now?

  Chapter 20

  Marco locked the vulture in a closet, then returned Benji’s text, telling him to bring Ashlynn to the beach house. Meanwhile, he was grateful the scrape on his arm was a shallow one that scabbed over quickly. He bandaged it, anyway, just to be safe.

  When Benji and Ashylnn arrived, the sight of Kyra’s peridot pendant was like being doused in ice water. He knew what that necklace meant to Kyra and what a sacrifice it must have been for her to give it up. It made him more afraid for her than ever.

  Ashlynn was only a little bruised but more than a little traumatized. She held her head in her hands, whispering, “I didn’t know there were places like this, people like this. I never wanted to know.”