Stephanie Draven - Poisoned Kisses

It took her more than three attempts before she was able to pull the needles from her arm. All the while, the paramedic tried to restrain her. Again, his mistake. Self-preservation gave her the power to pin him against the vehicle wall. “Don’t make me hurt you,” she growled.

The paramedic shrank away, the whites of his eyes showing like a horse about to rear up. He seemed to have realized all at once that she was no ordinary mortal woman. There was a chain at his throat upon which dangled a little golden cross, and he held it up as if to ward against evil. Just what did he take her for? Angel or devil? The mortals could never decide! Muttering a curse at him under her breath, Kyra leaped out of the back of the ambulance before he could stop her.

The rising sun knifed through the lavender cloak over Lake Avernus, its light cutting a thin golden gash across the dark waters. Kyra didn’t like mornings. It was night that protected her—it always had. Luckily, it was still dark enough that she didn’t have to obscure her true form. Escaping from the ambulance had seemed like a good idea, but as Kyra staggered toward the little villa apartment that was her lair, she feared she’d collapse before she could make it home.

Marco Kaisaris’s blood had done this to her.

Things that killed humans rarely affected immortals this way. Then again, the poison in Marco’s blood was no ordinary kind of poison. It was the poison of a hydra. Achilles, the great warrior of the Iliad, died when he was shot in the heel with an arrow dipped in hydra poison. And he wasn’t the only demigod to die this way. Hydra blood had also killed mighty Hercules. The thought sobered her. Hercules was the son of a god, but his mother was mortal. Just like Kyra’s.

Surely she was nothing like those legendary heroes. They had died young, whereas Kyra had lived for thousands of years. They had walked among the living, whereas Kyra drew breath with shades in the underworld. She’d never thought of herself as vulnerable. She’d lived so long, and so recklessly, that death was nothing she’d ever contemplated for herself. Was it possible that Marco Kaisaris’s blood could actually kill her?

She needed to get to Hecate. Perhaps her old mistress had just enough magic left to brew a curative potion. Even if she didn’t, who else could guide Kyra over the threshold from this life into the next but the goddess of the crossroads? Yes, Kyra had to get to Hecate. Nothing else was as important. She kept going on pure adrenaline, feeling vulnerable, naked without her powers. It was disorienting to rely on normal human sight—luckily, she found the street where Hecate’s shop was illuminated by a swinging lantern at the end of a rusty hook. The worn and faded sign over the door read Notte Incantesimi: Tè e Chiromanzia.

The Night Enchantments Tea and Palm Reading shop was the last refuge of the once-powerful goddess who had—for centuries now—been reduced to fortune-telling and serving herbal infusions. Hecate’s black hounds bayed in greeting and the goddess appeared in the parlor doorway wearing an absurd embroidered gypsy robe, a sprig of yew berries in her luxurious silver hair. “My best little nymph has come to call on her old mistress,” the once-mighty goddess crowed.

Then Kyra collapsed at her feet.

There was no point in disguising himself here in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a place Marco still thought of as Zaire. The militias knew him. Some even feared him. And though the corrupt government called Marco the Merchant of Death, many of the locals said he was their salvation. And that’s why he kept coming back. Why he would keep coming back as long as they needed him.

Marco’s driver—a dark West African named Benji—was waiting for him at the jungle airstrip. “That’s quite a bruise on your jaw, Chief,” the kid said, glancing at him from beneath the sweaty bandanna on his brow. “And your hand doesn’t look good, either. Trouble at the border?”

Marco didn’t answer; after all, he didn’t want to tell anyone about the she-devil that attacked him in Naples. Instead, he put his sunglasses on, retreating behind the shades as they rattled along the dirt road.

Their vehicle was a patchwork of rust, duct tape and white paint. It made a fat, slow-moving target. With all the money he made selling weapons he should be able to afford a better ride. He should be less vulnerable to his enemies…enemies like the siren who had tried to stab him.

Reminded of her, Marco flexed his hand around the disintegrating bandage. It was a deep cut that would scar, but meanwhile his blood was eating through the cloth. He couldn’t risk going to a hospital, so he’d stitched it himself in the back of the cargo plane and now it hurt like hell. It was no consolation to him that his attacker was, no doubt, hurting worse—if she was even still alive.

Who was she? No, more importantly, what was she? In the club, he’d taken her for just a rich party girl looking for a quick hookup. But in his penthouse, she’d literally transformed into another woman—one with ethereal skin, raven hair and unnerving black eyes. She’d been like an angel of death, knife at the ready. Until that moment, he’d always thought he was the only person in the world with this…affliction. But now he knew he wasn’t the only one who could change faces. The woman had the same power, and she’d used it to hunt him down like prey.

They stopped at a jungle checkpoint. These government soldiers should have tried to halt the spread of weapons throughout the Congo, but that wasn’t how things worked here. Benji simply paid the customary bribe to the guard who waved them through. Then they veered away from the city, heading into rebel territory, winding up steep roads into the mist-soaked mountains.

Africa was a furnace, even at this higher altitude. A little bit of hell on earth. A cluster of gun-wielding boys dressed in camouflage marked the entrance to the stronghold on the road up ahead. They were playing some kind of game with rum and matches and Marco growled. “How many times do I have to tell him that they’re just little kids?”

“They’re little killers,” Benji muttered under his breath. “And the general doesn’t listen to anyone anymore. I tell you, the devil is in him. He’s become the devil!”

When Benji was just a teenager, Marco had rescued him from a diamond mine in Sierra Leone. Since then, the kid had helped Marco steal more guns than either of them could count, but Marco had never asked him to fight. Even so, Marco felt defensive. “The general means well. These orphaned boys have nowhere else to go. At least if they serve in his army, they get fed.” It was a sad and all-too-familiar story in this part of the world. But giving children guns and calling them soldiers was evil, and Marco knew it.

Benji knew it, too. Parking the vehicle, he muttered, “Think what you want, Chief, but he’s the devil.”

The encampment was a primitive mountain fortress surrounding grass-roofed huts. Even so, with the weapons Marco supplied them, these rebels held their own against the Hutu militiamen—and sometimes even the government. Wearing green camo and military boots polished to a mirror shine, the general approached Marco sporting a brass-tipped baton. A pack of dogs barked at his heels and all his boy soldiers saluted as he passed. His ebony face warmed with a smile of greeting. “Ahh, the Great Northern Warlord has arrived!”

Marco’s old friend seemed leaner, gaunter, with a hint more mania in his eyes, but the two men embraced like comrades. They’d been together in Rwanda and seen the horrors of genocide. Now it was an obsession for both of them.