Poisoned Kisses. Stephanie Draven

general was intent on telling tales. He pulled an old photograph from his pocket, where it must have been positioned for just this occasion. “Ahh, Benji! You see that soldier in the picture, so proud under his blue beret? That was your boss, upright as a Mountie. In those days, Marco even kept a letter from his betrothed for luck.”

      Benji stared, amazed, though whether it was at the idea Marco had once been a UN peacekeeper or that he’d once been engaged, Marco couldn’t tell. “And do you see that skinny black man standing next to him in the picture?” the general asked. “That is me. I was a teacher then, and twenty little Tutsi children came to my school to learn. The Hutus swore they would kill us all. But Marco promised he would keep my students safe.”

      Marco stood abruptly, nearly tipping his chair in the process. Several beer bottles clinked together and fell at his feet. “That’s enough reminiscing. I need to find a bed.”

      Marco hadn’t had to feign exhaustion; he hadn’t slept since the night the woman attacked him in Naples. And now he couldn’t stop thinking of her. That night, he’d just learned about his father’s prognosis; the knife-wielding vixen had taken advantage of a weak moment, his yearning for an easy connection. He remembered the feel of her under his hands, the way she gave back as good as she got. She’d been perfect, crafted for sex. It made him break into a sweat just to remember.

      But it hadn’t just been that. There’d been something about the way she looked at him—the way she looked into him, as if she could see into every little hidden crevice. It’d made him feel as if one person in the world might finally understand him.

      And then she’d tried to kill him.

      That night, Marco dreamed of Rwanda again. The Hutus were coming with their machetes, but United Nations forces had been ordered out of the area. The evacuation convoy raced down the dirt road, away from the grenades, which sent plumes of soil into the air. Marco had the wheel when they saw a group of militiamen herding villagers into a ditch.

       Stand down, soldier!

      He was supposed to keep driving, but Marco jerked the truck to the side of the road, tires shrieking to a stop. He was out of the vehicle, weapon drawn, in one smooth motion. Behind him, another truck stopped and his commanding officer jumped out. Marco had halted the whole convoy. “Get back on the goddamned road!” his commander bellowed.

      “They’re killing the whole village right in front of us,” Marco argued. The murderers hadn’t even hesitated at the sight of the UN convoy. Instead, the militiamen opened fire on the civilians with the few guns they had and hacked and dismembered the rest with machetes. From the ditch came the horrific screams and the stench of death.

      Marco lifted his service pistol and aimed it at the militiaman giving the orders. He thought his commander might do the same. The villagers were unarmed. They called out for help, reaching for mercy. Blood was in the air like a fine mist of a waterfall, and for a moment, Marco couldn’t hear anything but the roar.

       Stand down, soldier!

      Marco pulled the trigger. Damn the rules, Marco shot first, and a burly Hutu militiaman returned fire. Marco was hit in the left shoulder, but it didn’t knock him down, so he lifted his pistol and aimed again.

       Stand down, soldier!

      His red-faced commanding officer was shouting. “We’re observers!”

      Observers. They’d been ordered to observe while the world did nothing. On the news somewhere, politicians dithered over the definition of genocide and the world was busy with other matters. Citizens didn’t want to hear it. So, standing there bleeding while his fellow soldiers tried to haul him back into the truck, Marco observed as the killers finished their grisly business. He watched until the last little hand of a village child twitched in its death throes. Then he watched as the militiaman who shot him turned and smiled.

       Stand down, soldier!

      Later, Marco returned to bury what remained of the bodies. In the empty eyes of a dead woman, he saw his fiancée, her lips twisted in a rictus. In the bloodied face of an old man, Marco saw his father. He saw among the dead even his own face. He was one of them. He was the brother, the lover and the son of the dead.

      But he had not been their savior.

      Marco woke in a cold sweat, his stomach churning and the taste of vomit in his throat. These were his sins, his crimes, and how he’d come to be the way he was. He wondered what sin the shape-shifting woman had committed to give her the same powers. She was probably dead—his blood had almost assuredly killed her. There was no point in thinking about her either way. Whoever she was, no matter how he had felt about her when they were kissing, she could be nothing but poison.

       Chapter 4

      In the small guest room above Hecate’s shop, Kyra tossed and turned with fever, shivering under a pile of blankets. A beaded curtain separated her sickbed from the kitchen, where Hecate was tending to a teakettle. It shamed Kyra to have her former mistress care for her like a lowly nursemaid, but the hydra’s blood had left her as helpless as an infant.

      Hecate came into the room bearing a tray and sighed before pouring the dandelion tea. “Drink this. I used to brew so many magic potions we’d have our pick of them, but it’s the best I can do for now. If only you’d let me call Ares—”

      Kyra shook her head. Daddy was the last person she wanted to see in her weakened state. Hecate pressed the matter, anyway. “Ambrosia would restore you.”

      Ambrosia. Precious ambrosia. The scarcest resource in the world. A large dose of it as a child had given Kyra immortality in the first place, and she had her father to thank for that. He kept a secret store of the stuff, but not even for the elixir of immortal life would Kyra want to be indebted to a war god. Not even her father. Perhaps especially not him.

      “I don’t need ambrosia. I’m getting better on my own.” Kyra’s words were belied by the fact that she could barely hold her own cup. A little tea slopped over the rim and Hecate had to wipe it away with a napkin. Then the old woman settled into an antique rocking chair with a threadbare cushion and Kyra’s weak flicker of inner torchlight revealed that the goddess was decidedly cross. “I didn’t know Marco Kaisaris’s blood could kill me.”

      “Of course you knew! You just didn’t want to admit it to yourself because now that angels are popular, you have a death wish.”

      Kyra hung her head. “No, I just wanted to do something good again—something important.”

      Hecate swirled a golden spoon in the ancient teacup—one of a thousand treasures she’d hoarded in her cluttered shop over the years. “Did you really think that killing Marco Kaisaris would make the world a better place?”

      “A little, yeah,” Kyra cracked.

      Hecate took a sip from her cup. “Killing is your father’s way.”

      Kyra hated to be compared to Ares. She might be his daughter, she might have tried to serve him once, but that was only because she’d wanted to forge a relationship with her only living parent; she’d never been one of his bloodthirsty gang. Unlike her other war-born siblings, she’d never ridden with Daddy into battle; she’d only been there to guide the souls of the dead afterward. How dare Hecate pretend otherwise?

      But then, it wasn’t Hecate’s role to guide the dead anymore, was it? She’d given up her divine responsibilities long ago. She’d never comforted the shades of today’s murdered children, their skulls fractured by Marco Kaisaris’s bullets. Kyra had. She was only trying to rid the world of a monster.

      As if reading her thoughts, Hecate’s lips tightened. “Kyra, why can’t you settle into your life? I’ve released you—you’re no longer my minion. Yes, you’re a lampade, but you don’t have to guide the dead anymore. You don’t belong in the world the same way you once did. None of us do. I hoped you’d use