Keri Arthur - Kissing Sin

Horror filled me, boiling through my body until it felt like my stomach was going to leap up into my throat.

Misha was being eaten from the inside out. When that spider creature had leapt onto his face, it hadn't only eaten his flesh. It had also poured part of itself into his body and somewhere inside re-formed to continue its bloody task.

His hand caught mine, dragging it to his mutilated lips, pressing a kiss I couldn't really feel against my fingertips. "End it, Riley. If you feel anything at—" He stopped again, and this time the rush of water that accompanied the cough was thicker. I shuddered, the bitter taste of bile heavy in my throat, the urge to run battling with the urge to scream and rage against the wiles of fate.

"End it, Riley," he pleaded. "Please."

I closed my eyes for the briefest of moments, then took a deep breath and said, "Tell me who your boss is, Misha. Please, just give me that."

"I can't."

"Not even a hint?"

"Not even… Not dead." He coughed, bringing up more flesh and blood. "Please. Stop."

I leaned forward and pressed a gentle kiss against his battered lips.

"May you find what you're looking for in your next life, Misha."

He raised a hand to my cheek, cupping it gently, his skin like ice against mine and his eyes gentle. I'd been wrong before. A lab-born creature could feel love. It was there, right now, in his eyes.

"But I have already found what I want. We could have been good together. Real good."

The tears blurring my eyes fell down my cheeks. "Yes," I whispered, and raised the laser.

He caught a tear on his fingertip, raising it a little, a touch of wonder briefly lifting the pain from his gaze. Then he closed his eyes and smiled, and I knew in that moment that he was thinking of us together, thinking of a future he could never have had.

I fired the laser, ending his pain, and his dreams.

It was only after I'd run from the building and his body, when I knew I was safe from the spiders and the creatures, that I let myself cry for the man I didn't love.

Five days later, recovered from my wounds if not the memories, I was back in the bowels of Genoveve, my hands clasped behind my back as I stared out over the bloody sands of the old arena.

Behind me, Jack was speaking to Rhoan, but his words were little more than a babble of sound that was making no sense. Not that it mattered. I knew all the important stuff already. Roberta Whitby was dead. Jack and Rhoan hadn't got there in time to save her—a bomb had blown the vehicle apart long before she'd ever reached the tunnel where their trap waited. And the man who'd been Mrs. Hunt had been reduced to little more than unknowing flesh, his brain fried so completely he wasn't even capable of looking after himself. This despite all the shields the guardians who'd been bringing him in had placed on him.

Despite all he'd done in the last few days, all that we'd been through, Jack still didn't know the location of the second lab. Still didn't know the name of the man behind it all. While he mightn't be back at square one, he hadn't advanced much beyond it, either.

Except for the fact that Misha had, in the very end, come through with his promises. In the aftermath of his death, he'd given me the answers I needed—although that wasn't something Jack knew just yet.

I closed my eyes against the bloody images crowding my mind. I didn't want to remember how Misha had died, but rather, how he'd lived, in the times when he'd been just a lover and a good friend. Because that was what he was, despite everything. A friend.

A friend who had died loving me.

He'd been buried without fuss in the traditional wolf manner, his body burned and his ashes scattered in the woods of one of his estates. That I'd been asked to the reading of his will surprised me, as did the fact that he'd left me two things—an undeveloped strip of land in the hills where I could—in his words—run free, and a letter.

It was the letter that had provided all the answers. I reached into my pocket and lightly touched the folded piece of paper. I'd read it often enough over the last few days to be able to recite it by heart, and yet the words still had the power to shock me. Or maybe it was the sentiment—the fact that he really had loved me.

Even if he'd never really understood what that meant.

If you are reading this, then I am dead , it started, and you and the Directorate are left to fight this monster alone. For that, I am sorry. I want his madness stopped, as I have wanted almost nothing else, and everything I have done in recent times has been to that end. But I fear I have played my cards too close to my chest, and that in doing so, have placed myself in his hands.

He has two identities, Riley. I cannot tell you the first, because it is an identity he has guarded very closely. But I know it is someone you see often — not a ft tend, not a lover, but someone close all the same. Nor is it to him Gautier reports to at the Directorate, but rather, our clone sister. Both she and Gautier will escape this cleansing, because he is not aware that you know about Gautier or the fact that there is someone else at the Directorate. Her lab-given name is Claudia Jones, but I have no idea what name she uses at the Directorate .

The other identity he has taken, and the one he most closely resembles, is Deshon Starr. He has taken over the cartel who rule the docks and claims inner Melbourne as its territory. He is ruthless and without morals. His operation is a closed group, and few outsiders are ever permitted into its ranks without intense scrutiny. But I have found the chink in the armor. Deshon likes men, and he likes to have lots of them at his disposal, so that gives the Directorate one entry point. The other is Deshon's two lieutenants. They are lab-enhanced — an area the cartel has been exploring for over forty years. They are not clones, not lab-born crossbreeds, but humans who, while still fetuses, underwent several procedures that involved cross-planting DNA from shifters to enhance their reflexes and senses. These experiments also gave them an overdeveloped sex drive. Sex is a fix they must have every day, and they go through women like sharks. Lovers are vetted, but less carefully than others, because they tend not to last long. The one who used you at the breeding center was Alden Merle. The other is Leo Moss. Of the two, Merle is probably the saner — but that's not saying a great deal. Both men are extremely dangerous and live only for two things — to obey Deshon, and to kill .

One thing more I must tell you.

For the longest time, the only emotion I have ever felt was the hunger to succeed. Then I met you.

Is love the desire — no, the need — to be with that person, whatever the cost? Does it cause the rue of rage when you see that person with another? Does it make you ache to hold her, to whisper things that sound foreign and strange to your tongue? Does it make you wish for things you know can never be ?

I haven't the answers, Riley. In all that I've learned over the years, no one has ever mentioned a force such as this. Bui whatever it is, I feel it for you.

We would have been good together.

I closed my eyes against the tears suddenly stinging them. I may not have believed his words in life, but I had no such choice on his death. He'd proven he meant what he said, because he'd given me—or rather, the Directorate—the answers, and the name we needed. And he didn't have to do that.

"Riley? Are you paying the slightest attention to what I'm saying?"

Jack's barked question made me jump. I took a deep breath and turned around. "Actually, no, I wasn't. Was it something important?"