Poison Kissed (2 page)

But tingles crept up my arm, a hot teasing melody I couldn’t shake off. His pulse, the tension in his wrist, the whisper of hair on his cheek, the smooth moist sound of his breath. Sometimes, when he touched me, his skin stung cold, his blood slow and sluggish like the creature he hid inside him.

Tonight, he was warm.

I snatched my hand away as we rounded the corner, my face burning for more reasons than one. Diamond’s triumphant voice floated after me, singsong and taunting. “Be seeing you, bluebell.”

Retort bubbled to my lips in a wash of bile so banal, I forced a swallow to keep it down so I wouldn’t make an ass of myself.

You sure will, you slimy silicon-ass son of a worm.

But not if I see you first.

2

Crashing nightclub metal wound sinuous tentacles into my ears, vibrating my body with sweet longing until the club’s dark humidity caressed me like a lover’s fingers. You’d think a nightclub would be deafening for a banshee’s heightened senses, but I could hear everything: the warm rainbow whisper of wingbeats, sharp teeth clinking on glass, claws scraping skin, the silky slide of kisses, and the tantalizing friction of bodies shifting and swaying as they dance and drink and fuck.

Unseelie Court, the dirtiest, sexiest club in town. The hottest action, the coolest drugs, the wildest party. In here, fairies hid themselves from human eyes with glamour, that shadowy, look-away, don’t-see-me magic that makes them look normal. Vampires dazzled their prey, that mesmerizing glint in their eyes, and humans blink and sigh and forget they saw anything out of place. We all did it, glassy and effortless, and the air sizzled and clashed with spells, sparks alight, the magical stink of ozone faint but definite.

Beside me, Vincent DiLuca offered me a cigarette, his jagged dark hair damp with sweat. Lasers flashed off the red jewel in his earlobe to light his cocoa brown eyes with crafty come-hither. “What happened to your face, darlin’? Did Sonny kiss you, before you let him go?”

I ignored him, my scraped cheek stinging sweetly. Vincent is Joey’s cousin—we’re all cousins in gangland, even if we aren’t related, and family is everything—and he’s the guy who gets things. Untraceable handguns, blackjewel sparkle, an elephant-ear sandwich—if it’s out there, Vincent will find you one. Crafty like a rat, but just a human, not tough or intimidating enough ever to make it in gangland. Still, Joey didn’t trust the conniving little fucker, so neither did I. Vincent’s one of those few gifted humans who aren’t fooled by glamour, and for all I knew, Vincent had told Diamond about our ambush for some petty advantage of his own.

I crossed my arms in the dim reflection of flashing strobe lights and shifted my weight onto the other leg, flexing my leatherwrapped thighs to show how tough I was. I had an appointment with my therapist later—if you could call getting your memory chewed to magical shreds in an effort to remember the face of your mother’s killer
therapy
—and my belly tickled warm with impatience, but I suppressed it. I had work to do first, and work was just fine with me.

Vincent lit his own cigarette, smoke curling between his golden rings. No smoking allowed in Melbourne nightclubs anymore, but no one tells DiLucas what to do, and anyway, they’d have a pretty slim leg to stand on, what with the sparkled-up idiots screwing their brain cells into mush six feet away.

He slipped his silver case and lighter away into the ripped pocket of his jeans. “You could at least pretend you know I’m here.”

I sent him a sharp poison smile. “Hello, Vinny. Shut the fuck up,” I said, and turned back to the boss, scanning the crowd for threats. No gang fighting allowed at Unseelie Court either, and generally that rule got followed, but that didn’t mean some hormone-drunk dickhead wouldn’t decide it was his lucky night.

“I hate it when you call me Vinny.” Vincent dragged in a nicotine lungful and scanned the crowd, too, more likely for talent than for danger.

“There you go again. Mistaking me for someone who gives a shit.”

“Bitch. You know you want me.” He winked at me, dark eyelashes dipping.

I couldn’t help but smile. He already had a girlfriend, and he knew I was on ice, so to speak. You could see the sweet tanned curve of his ass through the fluffy tear in those perfect-fitting jeans, and he knew that, too. How the hell did he get a suntanned butt? “Tear you in half, pretty boy.”

“Any time.” He laughed, not quite convincing to my sensitive ear. What was he up to?

The tense vibration of his nervousness shivered my spine, but his tart tobaccosweat scent and the soft rustle of his hair invigorated me. Sparkle’s sugartoxic tang licked the air, tempting me, and I couldn’t help wanting, that snide and hungry addictworm chewing in my guts. Fairy drugs are the ultimate mindfuck, exquisite and dangerous, sucked like sparkling juice from stray memories and heartache by crafty fairy dealers with malicious spells on their candysweet breath.

They don’t always ask, and you won’t know until it’s too late. It pays to be careful about who you hook up with around here. A breathless clinch in the dark, a few careless kisses with a pretty fairy boy, and before you know it, you’ve forgotten your name or fallen out of love, or you curl up in the corner sobbing, with all your happiness drained away.

And then they pour your stolen emotions into a sparkling glass bottle and sell it. Anger, jealousy, sweet delight, lust’s dark oblivion. You can buy it all, if you’ve got something they want, and let’s just say the average fairy doesn’t care too much about money.

My palms itched. I was trying to quit. It wasn’t easy.

I surveyed my domain, my nerves on a shatterglass edge. The mezzanine, dim and fragrant with smoke and sweat, the ribbed metal floor vibrating and flashing in rippling lights. Some tasty boy candy had turned up at the Court tonight, and not all my frustration was sparklefever or memory itch.

Off to my left, a long-haired vampire in leather and rusted chains pressed his half-naked boyfriend up against the wall, hands sliding inside tight jeans in search of hot flesh. Helljuice-tainted blood dripped satinblack in their kiss.

To the right, a drunken fairy girl sprawled on the floor, giggling, her wet mauve wings splayed wide, while a muscly green troll licked his way up her purple thigh, sweat glistening on his massive chest. Trolls rarely wear shirts. Must be a rule.

I eyed his curving muscles appreciatively, and squirmed a little as his girl moaned and shuddered. Damn good rule. Pity about the pants.

I scanned behind me, my thighs twitching. A skinny blond human girl in a red satin party dress knelt on bruised kneecaps, and left off swallowing some gorgeous firefairy’s hard-on for just long enough to snort a shimmering blue line from a broken mirror. He took the glass from her, tossed his sweaty scarlet hair back, and inhaled the leftovers while she got on with it. Beautiful, he was, tight pale body and sultry black eyes and rubyglass wings licked with flame.

His pleasured groan and the wet squelch of his veins expanding tormented me. My mouth crackled dry with envy. I hadn’t had a hit all week, and I hadn’t had what he was getting for a whole lot longer.

I sighed, sultry harmonics humming, and warded off Vincent’s snicker with a glare. Two in the morning at Unseelie Court, situation normal. Everyone having a good time except me.

But I couldn’t complain. Being gang muscle is easy, so long as no one’s shooting at you or scraping your face into concrete. All you have to do is stay awake and look mean, and I had that last one down to my own unsettling brand of art.

First, I wore high stiletto-heeled boots—being on my toes was surprisingly practical in a fight—and black leather pants I squeezed into by a minor feat of quantum physics every night. My leather corset showed a few inches of my belly and pushed my breasts up into provocative shapes, and my black velvet choker was rimmed with silver studs.

I’d checked my jacket and knives outside the metal detectors—this was Melbourne, not Texas, and even DiLucas got arrested for flashing weapons around, especially now that those Valenti assholes had offed our best crooked cop—but still, leather’s smooth embrace buckled tight around my body made me feel safe somehow. Protected. No one could get in.

And I did look mean. I’m tall and lean, and this outfit showed every muscle and curve. Men liked my body. They ought to, after the work I’d put into it, but it also made them nervous. I was probably stronger than them, and they knew it.

Next, the Mad Banshee Aura. I tried dyeing my hair to look tougher, but it’s sky blue, and the black wouldn’t take, so I slashed the ends in sharp zigzags and let it spill over my shoulders, dead straight. I painted my eyelids a different rainbow shade each night, and sparkled my lashes silver. Sharp painted nails, strange spicy perfume. My teeth are cute and sharp, my lips improbably scarlet.

And lastly, I glower like a champion. I don’t smile or flirt or get distracted. I just scowl and pace up and down, quivering. Banshees are notoriously crazy, and it’s not an unwarranted reputation. I could be a yowling psychobitch. No one in their right mind messed with me, not anymore.

All part of the plan, see. One day, my mother’s murderer and I would come face-to-face, and I’d be ready.

Besides, looking dangerous was my job. It’s what the boss paid me for.

And there he sat, a couple of yards away, on a couch on the warm metal mezzanine. My boss, doing the business cool and unruffled, as if we didn’t escape by a buttwhisker from getting our asses thrashed to hell only an hour ago.

A glass of golden fairy wine glimmered untouched on the metal table before him. His cane leaned against the table’s edge, brass glittering, my fingerprints polished clean.

I watched him, pride mixing darkly with passion in my blood. Joey had built a fearsome reputation with guile and a few carefully chosen demonstrations of sheer ruthlessness, and what he is underneath freaks people out. All faeborn creatures are weird—not human, not fairy, a kind of in-between genetic accident—and most are crippled, deformed, their unhumanity in plain view. But Joey’s weirdness is invisible until he shows it, and that makes it all the more threatening. People sidle away, break eye contact, avoid him if they can.

But they didn’t see what I saw.

Call me crazy—I’m a banshee, after all—but I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

He reclined with his long legs crossed in denim, one ankle over the other. White shirt, sleeves turned up to show strong wrists and lithe forearms, one draped across the couch’s back. Hard, lean, muscled body, not a mote of wasted flesh. Just a beguiling flush of darkness showing beneath that taut skin, luminous sweat caressing the tantalizing glimpse of his chest with a faint green glow. He moved, lazy, and his thighs didn’t so much ripple as
slide
—like all his movements—serpentine, erotic.

I sighed. Fantasy cheekbones I longed to trail my mouth over, crisp whiteblond hair just made to sift through my fingers. Top lip fine and bow-shaped, the lower one sinful and ripe for kissing. He didn’t wear jewels or gold. He didn’t need any. His eyes shone brighter than any gemstone, piercing and relentless and greener than envy.

Joey’s faeborn glamour is transparent enough to be useless, so he covers himself, and usually he looked sleek and dangerous in his suit and hat. But these last few nights, summer had closed in, dry and relentless, parching the city to a crackle, and it’d just been too damn hot, even for him. It’s hell, this crisp dry heat, scratching your eyeballs and scorching your face raw, and you sweat and sweat until your skin swells clammy and your head aches like poison from dehydration, but the air just sucks it up like a hungry sponge.

But I wasn’t complaining. Not if it meant I could see him like this, the sensual nightclub light caressing his skin, underwater shadows pouring, sultry air sticking that crushable hair to his cheek.

Beside him, a skinny metal fairy hunched, his deformed spine twisting like his jagged-toothed smile. Rust rotted his stubby ironfeathered wings. His skin gleamed dusty pewter, his hair lank and bronze, his long limbs emaciated like muscled wire. Metal bracelets decorated his wrists, the rusty barbs drawing dark hematite blood.

Silvery drool slipped from his misshapen lips, and he wiped it away with deft crooked fingers. He caught my gaze, one eye blue, the other muddy green, and dropped me a sly golden-lashed wink.

I scowled, my stomach rich with disgust. Iridium, another of our dead boss’s leftovers, assassin and threatmonger, an unsettling metal monster who liked watching people hurt. With the Valentis gunning for us, we needed all the friends we could get, but for me, Iridium took far too much pleasure in his work.

Some say Iridium’s an artist. Joey doesn’t trust him, but says he’s necessary.

If you ask me, Iridium’s a fucking psychopath.

The willowy bronze earthfae girl Joey spoke to slid a chunk of cash onto the table—her drug trade, it’s either us or Sonny Valenti, and we don’t smash your knuckles to a bloody mess with quite so much relish. Joey cut her share back to her and made the rest disappear.

She blushed and stammered something in reply, her dusky golden wings flushing dark.

Iridium giggled, rusty, and I resisted a jealous yowl. The boss’s charm was hard-earned. I didn’t want it wasted on her.

I tried to concentrate on the crowd, but invisible magnets constantly yanked my eyeballs back to Joey. I liked watching him, watching him move his body, now touching hands briefly with a wild-haired waterfae courier. Talented hands, fluid like a pianist’s, his voice’s soft timbres sliding between the music’s dark frequencies like a velvet caress. The eeriest thing about the boss is his flawless skin. Every time he shifted, it remade itself.

Not that I’ve ever seen him, beyond the fingerwebs and the fangs and that one time a few weeks ago when we needed to sniff out a bunch of murdering fairies and he . . .

I squirmed, the memory of that smooth black skin hot and arousing.
Never mind that. Brain on the job, please.
If they got to him because my mind wallowed in the gutter, he’d be just as dead.

I scraped sweaty hair from my neck and reefed my gaze back to the crowd. The band started another set, and the screeching melody of frenetic cymbals and pissed-off guitars vibrated sweetly in my flesh. A shifty green spriggan eyed me off, leathery skin gleaming, black hair sticking up like a wirebrush between pointed ears heavy with golden rings. His dirty jeans were tight and torn over one scrawnymuscled thigh. His black T-shirt read
I’M MEAN BECAUSE YOU’RE
STUPID
, and his round belly stretched the letters out of shape.

I scowled at him until he looked away. I don’t like spriggans. Too many bad memories, bad breath and wicked teeth and horny yellow claws. Call me racist, but I never met a spriggan I didn’t want to murder.