Michelle Rowen - Dark Kiss

It was trendy for some kids to get a wing tattoo—especially the guys on McCarthy’s football team, the Ravens. But they usually got it on their arms.

My rational mind wanted me to believe it was just a big version of the Ravens tattoo. However, these wings weren’t feathery like a bird’s. They were more webbed and … batlike.

Another shiver raced through me and my teeth began to chatter. My hair was now drenched from the icy-cold rain.

“I’ve seen enough,” Bishop said.

The boy lowered his shirt. Just like Bishop, he wasn’t wearing a coat despite the chill in the air and the falling rain.

“So now what?” the boy asked.

“Now you need to be brave.”

The boy’s attention shifted to the gold-bladed knife Bishop pulled from a sheath on his back that I hadn’t noticed before. “What are you going to do with that?”

“What I was sent here to do,” Bishop said. “My mission.” He plunged the knife into the boy’s chest.

A scream tore from my throat. “No! What are you doing?”

Bishop sent a fierce glare over his shoulder at me. “You weren’t supposed to see this.”

I ran toward the boy and grabbed hold of his arm as he staggered backward. A flash of lightning forked across the sky followed by a crack of thunder, and the rain came down even harder.

“You … You’re a—” The boy clutched at me, his eyes widening with pain and shock. I looked with horror at the blood soaking through his dirty white shirt as the boy’s grip on me grew painfully tight. “A gray.”

“What?”

But then he slipped out of my grasp, dropped to his knees and, with a last hiss of breath, fell face forward onto the pavement.

“Oh, my God! You killed him!” I could barely breathe. My entire body began to tremble. I’d never seen anyone murdered before. Not in real life.

Bishop grabbed me and slammed me up against the brick wall. I shrieked as he pressed the sharp golden knife against my throat.

“A gray,” he growled, and there was nothing remotely confused in his fierce expression anymore. He looked like he wanted to slit my throat right here and now. “I wasn’t sure before … but you are one of them.”

“Let go of me!” I wanted to struggle, but I couldn’t move much for fear that the knife would cut me. His body pressed against mine, effortlessly pinning me. His short hair was now slicked to his forehead from the rain and his eyes glowed—literally glowed —with blue light. Before, I’d found his eyes beautiful, but now they were absolutely terrifying.

And suddenly, I remembered seeing those eyes before—in my dream, the one I’d had when I passed out at Crave. The dream where he’d let me fall into the horrible darkness.

Something slid behind his gaze, past the fierceness. It looked like bitter disappointment. “How many souls have you devoured since you were turned?”

Tears burned my eyes and I tried to press back against the wall so I wouldn’t have to be so close to him. The knife at my neck made it difficult to speak or breathe. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“You’ve been kissed. Your soul is lost. You’re one of them now.”

Kissed .

The bitter taste of bile rose in my throat as I remembered the cold sensation when Stephen had kissed me. At the time it had felt like riding a roller coaster in the winter. Exhilarating and thrilling. It hadn’t been a normal kiss. I’d known it then, but I’d tried to pretend it never happened at all. Even though it had.

I should warn you, it’s a very dangerous kiss , Stephen had told me. It will change your life forever .

Bishop looked pained and the knife eased off a fraction. “I don’t understand why you helped me—why you could help me. They told me grays would be completely controlled by their insatiable hunger. But when you touched me—”

Oh, I’d touch him, all right.

I drove my knee up between his legs as hard as I could. He gasped and let go of me. I didn’t think twice before running away. I ran as far and as fast as I could through the maze of alleys and backstreets we’d taken to get there, before looking over my shoulder. My vision was blurred by tears and rain, but I could see that he wasn’t chasing me.

Bishop was insane. A killer. And I’d led him directly to his victim.

I stopped the first police cruiser I saw and ran to the driver’s side. “There’s been a murder!”

I quickly took the cop back to the alley, but by the time we got there it was empty. Completely empty. The cop looked at me skeptically as I craned my neck, looking for any sign of what had happened here. I knew it was the right alley. The half-eaten hamburger was still lying on the ground in a puddle.

“It happened only a few minutes ago. Please, you have to believe me!”

My insistence seemed to get through to him and he started to take me seriously. He asked me questions about what I’d seen and where I’d been tonight. He told me that there had been a few missing persons cases recently and that I should be careful.

I didn’t read the papers or watch the news, so I’d had no idea. If I had, I never would have walked home alone with my head in the clouds, stopping to help out a good-looking kid on the street. Bishop could be the reason behind these disappearances.

“I’ll come back tomorrow morning to check the alley again,” the cop told me. “Even with the rain, a murder like you’re describing would leave blood evidence behind, but I don’t see any here.” He paused. “Is there any chance this was your imagination? You said you’d gone to see a horror movie earlier, right?”

I opened my mouth to argue with him, but then closed it. He was right. If I said that I’d witnessed a murder, but there was no body, no blood, only minutes after the crime had taken place, then what was he supposed to think?

What was I supposed to think?

He drove me home in his cruiser and told me again not to worry about anything, that the police were on top of it. He assured me that the city was safe and that he was quite sure I’d just been imagining things. I nodded, my brain spinning as I felt sick to my core. He walked me to my front door and waited till I unlocked it and went inside before he went back to his cruiser and drove away. I was soaked to the skin from the rain and shaking from cold and fear.

My mother had a business dinner with her real-estate associates that she’d said would keep her out until at least midnight. I didn’t often want to spend a lot of time with her—we were so different that we had practically nothing in common anymore—but I desperately wished she was home right now.

I wanted to call Carly and tell her everything. I even went so far as to get my phone out of my bag, but the screen flickered and went out as I scrolled through the numbers. Dead battery. I swore under my breath. Before I went for the landline, I had second thoughts. I had no proof that what I’d seen was even real. I didn’t think Bishop had had enough time to pick up the body and carry it away with no trace.

But I’d seen it. I had . I wasn’t going crazy.

I glanced out the narrow window at the side of the front door, past the blind, to make sure I hadn’t been followed.

Grays are controlled by their insatiable hunger .

A sob caught in my chest. I didn’t even know what a gray was, other than a drab color. All I knew was that I was hungry all the time. And I knew, down deep, that it wasn’t just for food.

The blond kid’s face haunted me. He’d looked so alone and confused. I’d seen the hope in his eyes when he thought Bishop was going to help him. Instead, Bishop had stabbed him in the heart.