I grimaced. “He has to stop that.”
“I agree. It’s barbaric. But I do have to wonder how he realized such a thing would work for him.”
I’d wondered it, too, at first. But I think I’d figured it out.
Bishop must have realized that pain from the dagger helped clear his head when he’d been tortured by the Source of the grays—who just happened to have been my demon aunt, Natalie, my birth father Nathan’s sister. This was another fact that nobody on the team knew but Bishop.
My aunt was anomalous—a demon with a scary glitch created in the conversion from human to infernal being. She had a disturbing taste for human souls and had been branded a problem that needed to be dealt with, especially since souls, both light and dark, were essential to helping keep the universal balance. She was tossed into the Hollow still alive as her punishment. Nathan, too, had an anomaly—according to what Natalie had told me, he could kill with a touch by absorbing life energy.
Seventeen years later, Natalie escaped and arrived here in Trinity. Her strange ability had evolved. Now she was able to create more creatures with her hunger through the “kiss.” And they could do the same. Like a contagious disease. That was why there was a barrier up, so none of us “infected” could spread this disease to the rest of the world. It was an invisible citywide quarantine that would be here till we were all gone.
Natalie had known who I was. And being that I was the daughter of a demon and an angel, she thought that my nexus abilities could help her on her path of destruction and revenge. To do so, she got Stephen to remove my soul in a single kiss. She’d used the metaphor of removing a lid from a box. The soul was the lid keeping my supernatural abilities closed off to me. As soon as it was removed, the contents of this strange and scary box were finally revealed. She’d also promised that she was the only one who could lead me to my birth father, who still existed...somewhere. I figured he was still trapped in the Hollow.
And yet, even though she presented this “upgrade” to me as something good and beneficial, I still had to deal with the hunger of a gray. She’d told me she believed these hungers would fade for me since I wasn’t totally human to begin with.
The evil woman was a liar about many things.
A week had passed since she’d been killed, and, if anything, my hunger was even worse than before.
So Natalie failed. She died before I could learn more information about my birth father’s whereabouts. But before she was killed she’d used Bishop’s dagger to carve him up as duress to get me to do what she wanted. It nearly worked. I’d been very close to doing anything to make her stop torturing Bishop. That must have been when he’d realized that injuries from the dagger would chase away his growing confusion.
“Are you all right?” Cassandra touched my arm, snapping me out of the horrible memory.
“Yeah, fine.” I inhaled shakily and looked up at the sky. It was clear and black and studded with stars. My eyes burned, but I swallowed back my tears.
I tried to put on a brave face, but this was all still very new to me. I’d gone from being a normal high school student trying to keep a high average in order to ensure a bright future—to not knowing if I’d have a future at all.
Fear was not a friend. All it did was weaken me. I couldn’t let myself be weak.
And I flatly refused to be afraid of this angel. I refused to be afraid of my future. I was in control here. I’d find Stephen and everything would be better again. My life would never revert completely to what I’d thought of as normal, but it would give me time to figure everything out. And it would give me a chance to find Carly again. If my aunt had managed to escape from the Hollow, then she damn well could, too.
I needed to change the subject to something more productive. Immediately.
“Can Bishop be helped?” I asked. “He’s not supposed to have fallen. Somebody messed with him. But he gives me the impression this is permanent.”
“There are only a few angels gifted with the ability to burn a new soul into a fallen one. It’s not a process that is typically reversed.”
“But it was a mistake! They have to make an exception for him.”
“I completely agree and I hope that’s what they’ll choose to do.” Her brows drew together. “He’s dealing with these difficulties with admirable grace and strength. He’s rather amazing, isn’t he?”
“Yeah. He is.” I agreed with everything she said, but it still rubbed me the wrong way that she was so impressed by him. I kicked my jealous thoughts into the corner like a pair of dirty socks and tried to ignore them. They weren’t helping. Also, they smelled bad.
We’d finally emerged from the dark and abandoned neighborhood containing the church. This was more populated, more active, with a main road up ahead and lines of restaurants. It wasn’t far from the shopping district known as the Promenade.
Still at least another twenty minutes before we got to my house, though.
I had to keep extra money in my purse for bus fare from now on. Like, seriously. I enjoyed a good walk, the chance to clear my head and get some fresh air, but this was ridiculous.
We passed a couple homeless people sitting with their backs against the fronts of closed-up shops. I scanned their faces quickly, but neither one was the homeless person I’d been searching for.
There was a man named Seth somewhere in this city. Just like Bishop, he was a fallen angel, one who’d fallen a long time ago. I knew he could give insight and help if I introduced him to the team, but I hadn’t seen any sign of him in a week. I’d started to think that maybe he’d just been my imagination.
No, he wasn’t. He was real. Carly had met him, too.
I’ll find you, Seth. I swear I will. I need to talk to you again.
Cassandra slowed to a halt, studying an amorous couple on the side street we’d turned down. The streetlamps cast spooky shadows on the sidewalks and brick walls.
“It’s not polite to stare at people making out,” I told her.
“Is that what they’re doing?”
“Yeah, I mean...” But I stopped talking. At first glance, I’d assumed they were doing just that—two people kissing passionately, so into each other that they ignored the world around them.
But at second glance...
Before I could say anything or do anything, Cassandra walked directly toward the couple and grabbed hold of the man’s arm.
He broke off the kiss and turned to face her. His eyes were black, his skin so pale in the darkness that it seemed luminescent.
He was a gray.
I turned my horrified gaze to his girlfriend—or, victim, rather—who looked just as Colin had earlier. Glazed, dazed, with the telltale black lines branching around her mouth. She collapsed to the ground.
No one but us had witnessed this. We were fifty feet from the main road.
The gray looked to be in his early twenties, and was handsome when his pallor returned to normal and his eyes shifted back to human.
“Can I help you?” he asked calmly, wiping his hand over his mouth to remove traces of his victim’s lipstick.
Cassandra’s hands clenched into tight fists at her sides. “I know what you are.”
“Do you?” He raised an eyebrow at the blonde angel who’d stopped him from continuing his dark kiss.
The girl who’d fallen to the ground wasn’t moving. Her eyes remained glazed, and she wasn’t snapping out of it as Colin thankfully had. The black lines remained aroun
d her mouth.
“Oh, God. No,” I whispered.
This gray had taken her entire soul in that kiss, and she hadn’t been strong enough to survive it.
“She’s dead,” I said, louder. My stomach convulsed. “You killed her!”
“Too bad,” he said without emotion. “She was very tasty.”
Cassandra’s eyes flashed with rage. “You’re evil. A plague upon this city. Upon this entire world. You must be destroyed.”
He laughed. “Yeah, good luck with that.”
She didn’t pull out a weapon, but she stalked closer to him. I held my breath, watching, trying not to look at the dead girl again. I hadn’t seen anything like this before. I’d seen the kiss before, I’d been guilty of the kiss myself, but I’d never seen it kill anyone.
This was proof that it could. That what I was, and what I could do—that this ravenous hunger I felt every hour of every day—was one hundred percent evil.
I felt no pity for this gray. Instead, all I felt was rage. I wanted Cassandra to kill him right here and right now. She was a warrior like the others; there was no doubt in my mind about that.
But as she drew closer to him, the gray watched her with open amusement. “You’re one of the people I’ve been hearing about. The ones trying to stop us from having any fun in this town.”
She launched herself at him, her hands out as if prepared to grab his throat and strangle him. But with a flick of his wrist, he backhanded her. It was so hard that she went flying through the air and hit the wall on the opposite side of the street with a violent smacking sound.
Cassandra crumpled to the ground unconscious.
I spun to face the gray, stunned. “What did you—?”
He grinned at me. “Impressed?”
I rushed toward Cassandra and snatched a jagged piece of wood from the side of the road, holding it in front of me.
The gray watched me carefully. “What exactly do you think you’re doing?”
“Defending myself from a killer.” My voice shook.
He laughed. “Seriously? You’re one of us, in case you weren’t aware. I saw you last week with Stephen at Crave.”
Suddenly, I recognized him. He was one of my Aunt Natalie’s minions who’d hung out at the nightclub. This was one of the grays who’d held Bishop in place while Natalie tortured him.
Fear and hatred stormed inside me.
“You’re not supposed to feed!” I held the sharp piece of wood out in front of me like I was a vampire slayer. I wanted to check Cassandra and make sure she was all right, but I knew I couldn’t turn my back on this monster for a second.
“I didn’t. Not for a long time. I tried to follow the rules.”
“Why are you so strong? Grays aren’t any stronger than humans. What are you?”
He studied me without looking the least bit concerned about my impromptu weapon. “You know butterflies start as ugly caterpillars, right?”
My heart pounded so hard I could barely hear over the sound of it. “Is this science class?”
He shrugged. “You need to come with me. We can be friends.”
“I don’t want any more friends. Not like you.” Something occurred to me. My gaze snapped to his. “Where’s Stephen? I need to find him!”
His lips stretched over straight, white teeth. “Come with me and we’ll all have a nice chat.”
Crap. Even the possibility that he knew where to find Stephen was like throwing out tantalizing bread crumbs and then asking me to follow him to the loaf. But I couldn’t trust him.
“No way. Tell me where Stephen is.”
“Nah. Not if you’re hanging around friends like these.” He flicked a glance at Cassandra.
I swallowed hard, not sparing more than a worried glance at the unconscious angel. “Why are you different than other grays?”
“Am I?” He gave me a grin—one of those frustrating ones that showed that he believed he knew something I didn’t know...and he wasn’t talking.
Even from a distance, I felt his evil like thick slime spreading over my skin. He had no remorse about the dead girl lying four feet away from him. Not even a glimmer.
It was as if he had become one of the zombie grays—but he wasn’t mindless. It shouldn’t have been possible.
Whatever he was, it was wrong. Dark. Malicious. He knew right from wrong, yet he’d chosen to destroy someone’s life anyway. He might have control, but he didn’t bother to use it.
When he stepped closer to me I took a shaky step back. Cassandra was in my sightline, but she still wasn’t moving.
“You need to join with the people who understand you,” he said. “Don’t get caught on the wrong side of this tug-of-war.”
“How many are left?” I asked, my voice choked. “How many grays?”
“Have you seen the papers? They’re calling us a kissing mob. A gang of people who randomly kiss strangers. They have no idea what we can really do. What we really are.”
I’d seen it. It was buried in the Trinity Chronicle as an amusing fluff piece on page fifteen. Nobody realized what a threat it was. Nobody realized that the dozens of people who’d gone missing or turned up mysteriously dead in recent weeks—articles that ran much closer to the front of the newspaper—were related. It was a mystery. There were no signs of trauma found on the bodies, apart from the mysterious black lines left around their mouths. Those lines didn’t fade on a dead victim.
“Give that to me before you hurt somebody.” He looked so calm it was maddening.
When he reached for the piece of wood, I slashed it at him, cutting his arm.
He snarled at me. “Bitch!”
This time when he grabbed for my weapon I slashed the palm of his hand. Blood dripped to the ground as pain flashed across his expression.
He whacked me across the face so hard that the makeshift stake flew out of my hand, and hit the wall. White-hot pain momentarily blinded me.
I opened my mouth to scream, but he clamped his hand so tight over my mouth I thought he might break my teeth.
He began to drag me down the street. “I think you need to feed. I can set you up. Your head will get a lot clearer soon. Promise.”
“Let go of me!” My screams were muffled by his hand. I tried to bite him. I fought against him, scratching and clawing, but his bleeding arm may as well have been made of steel. This guy wasn’t human. Not in any way. And he was more than just a gray.
If he shoved me in a small room with a human, based on how I’d dealt with Colin earlier, I wasn’t sure if I was strong enough to resist. Maybe for a little while, but not forever. It would be my worst fear come to life.
Suddenly, Bishop stepped out from behind the corner up ahead. For a moment I thought it was all my imagination, that my brains had been rattled when the gray hit me. But it was true.
He was here.
And he looked mad enough to kill.
Chapter 6
My heart leaped at the sight of him.
Bishop’s gaze was narrowed and dangerously fixed on the gray. “Take your hands off her right now.”
The gray removed his hand from my mouth, instead twisting it painfully into my hair to hold me still. I shrieked. “Is this the rescue party? Go check on the blonde. She’s one of yours. This one...she’s one of mine.”
“Wrong,” I snarled.
Bishop’s eyes flashed bright blue. The dagger was already clenched in his grip. “Roth, check on Cassandra. I’ll handle this.”
r /> Roth, who’d been standing just behind Bishop, moved toward Cassandra just as the gray shoved me away from him. I slammed hard into the wall, knocking my breath away and rattling my bones. I wheezed for a second and struggled to stay on my feet. This time, I tasted blood.
I whirled around to see Bishop charge the gray, dagger in hand. Much better than a piece of sharp wood.
“Be careful!” I yelled.
He wasn’t being very careful. He didn’t hesitate—just as he hadn’t hesitated with Cassandra.
At the last second, the gray brought his foot up to smash Bishop right in the face, knocking him backward. He landed hard on his back, but leaped back up a moment later, shaking himself off.
“Interesting,” Bishop said with a frown. He was now bleeding from a vicious cut on his forehead.
“Good word. Interesting. I’ll take it.” The gray grinned. “And I’ll take the girl when I’m finished with you and your friends. She’ll be happier with her own kind.”
“You can try to take her. You’ll fail.”
“We’ll see.”
Bishop studied him with narrowed eyes. His gaze flicked to the victim lying nearby before grimly returning to the gray. “What are you? I thought you were a gray, but you’re something else.”
“Nope. Just a run of the mill ‘gray.’” He even made sarcastic air quotes as his smile stretched. It was a term made up by Heaven and Hell, not by grays themselves. “Time changes things. By not slaughtering all of us last week, you gave us the time we needed to adapt, to evolve. We’re glad you sent Natalie’s ass back to the Hollow. She was a serious buzzkill.”
“Bishop,” Roth growled. “We need Zach. Her back’s broken.”
I stared at him with horror. I didn’t think a broken back could kill an angel—only being stabbed by the golden dagger could do that—but if she didn’t get healed quickly it could cause serious problems. She could be paralyzed.
Bishop swore under his breath. “Let’s get this over with.”