Poison Kissed (21 page)

21

The dusty floor glitters in flitting moonbeams. My mother groans, a horrid multilayered chord of agony and despair. A window shatters, and hot breeze gusts in. I breathe in, pollen and sweet moonlight sparkling on my tongue.

This is new.

The angle is different, the colors strange. I can see my mother’s hands clawing at the rug, her ripped nails painted blue, the bloodstained jewel in her ring. Everything is splattered with an eerie metallic light I’ve never seen before, shadows tarnishing the shapes with gold. Terror no longer constricts my chest. My limbs no longer cramp and shake. Strange lightness fills my body, like my bones are hollow and my flesh less dense. Breeze blows my hair back, and I smile.

The images struck me dizzy. This wasn’t right. I’d never felt this before. What was Ivy doing to me? What feral lies did she feed me?

The banshee’s pewter gaze rolls, sweeping the room, and it lights on me.

Dread pierced my bones like hot needles, agonizing. No, Mother. Don’t see me. Don’t see how I failed you.

Her mouth gapes ugly in terror. Her nails rake the floor, grasping for a hold as she tries to crawl away from me, but her legs crumple and she wails in frustration.

I giggle, rage and mirth rolled into a prickly black ball in my throat, and look down.

I’m six feet off the floor. Hovering on glitterlight wings that trail past my feet. Sparkles dance in my breeze and flow from my long silver hair. And below me, crouched in a shivering mess behind a dusty black sofa, hides a skinny blue-haired banshee girl in a tight black T-shirt and lacy jeans. High-heeled feet blistered. Smeared eyeliner bleeding onto her face in a wash of terrorblack tears.

I wanted to wail and kick. Ivy was there. Ivy saw it all.

And everything I’d seen while I sweated and writhed in Cobalt’s reluctant embrace, I’d seen through Ivy’s hate-twisted eyes.

Fourteen-year-old me hadn’t really seen the killer at all. They weren’t my memories. They were hers.

And whatever Joey was hiding from me just got a whole lot bigger.

My blood iced, but I couldn’t close my eyes. I couldn’t stop watching. As her spellsharp fingers wormed deeper into my brain, ripping me apart in search of whatever elusive spark brought my song to life, her brimming thoughts bubbled over, splashing like bright raindrops into my memory.

And like a bodysnatcher’s unwilling victim, I became her.

Footsteps whisper in the silence. I dart back into shadow, flick, flutter, fly. It’s Joey, dark and slender in the long coat and neat black suit he wears to hide himself. With that longish blond hair and deathpale skin, he almost looks human. But he can’t hide his aliengreen eyes, so deep and shining and unblinking like a snake’s.

My bleeding cheek twitches in memory of his nasty slashing claws, and hatred bubbles like tar in my throat. Inwardly I giggle. Everyone knows what you are, DiLuca. I’ll make sure of that.

He tastes the air, spears his cold green gaze left and right, and with a smooth wristflick pulls his pistol from under his coat.

The banshee woman moans and gazes up at him. No fear in her tarnished silver eyes. Only pleading, deep and desperate and heartbroken, tears rolling down her cheeks in black and bloody streams. “Please. Help me.”

A nasty cackle rises in my throat, and I swallow it before he hears. He doesn’t know her, the crying banshee. I don’t know her. She was just in the way. See what happens when you cross me, serpent? People get hurt. And hurt. And hurt, over and over until you say you’re sorry for what you did to me. Until I scar you the way you’ve scarred me.

Joey kneels beside her, black coat flaring on the dirty floor. His free hand goes to her forehead, her throat, her chin, and his whisper comes out ripe with sympathy and disgust. “Christ, lady. You’re a mess. C’mon, before she comes back.” And he slides his arm under hers, tries to help her up.

“Nooo!” A drawn-out moan, empty, her magical voice a parched husk. Her hands flap, beating away invisible bats, and her lips stretch around silent, heart-ripped words she can no longer make the sounds for. “Please. Just finish it. The monsters . . . get them off me . . . ahh!” And she surrenders to helpless squeals and thrashes, her mind gibbering insane. She claws the air, her spine distorting. Her eyes roll, blind and bloodshot, her pretty mouth froths pink, her breath rattles with phlegm and blood like plague-rotted death.

She’s lost.

Joey’s fist clenches, and slowly he lets her go. Stands. Sights. Fires.

The shot shatters the brittle air, and the echoing tingle along my arms makes me jump.

His head twitches up, his senses uncannily accurate.

I freeze, my glamour slim and silent, making me invisible. I hold my breath, wrath twisting my mouth tight. Oh, no you don’t, snakefreak. I’m not finished with your sorrow yet.

He stares right at me, but vision isn’t his forte. He can’t see me. I smile, triumphant. And with an angry snap of wet fingerwebs, he flicks the weapon away and stalks out.

I howled inside, my body shaking. It was all true. Joey shot my mother. There, in front of me, clear as ice. He’d taken her life, right there on the floor in our dusty living room, and in all these years, he’d never said a word to me. He’d lied to me, just as I’d feared.

But he hadn’t murdered her out of spite, oh no. I should’ve figured it wasn’t that simple. He killed her out of mercy. To spare her agony and dribbling madness.

To save her from Ivy, who’d already killed her with memory magic. Torn out her song and her mind and her soul, squeezed them mercilessly like tortured rats until sparkling banshee-juice dripped out, and poured it still screaming into a tiny glass prison.

Like she’d surely do to me, if I couldn’t break free.

Ivy giggled and capered about, rubbing multijointed hands together. Foul memorysauce bubbled and roiled with delight in my guts, grabbing my mind’s edges with eager talons and wrenching them apart. My consciousness stretched, distorted like melting plastic, a blazing pain deep in my skull that wouldn’t ease.

Mindless noise filled my throat. I couldn’t open my mouth. Ivy hit me again with her spell’s full force, a hurricane buffeting through my mind, hurling everything in its path to the winds. Pressure squeezed tighter, like a metal band around my skull, and something inside my head tore free.

Agony ripped fresh current through my nerves. A spasm thrashed my body like a whip. My jaw ripped free at last, and I howled.

Broken. Torn. Empty. No magic in my voice. A forlorn, desperately human sound that made no echo.

Ivy screeched, her hair streaming back in eldritch breeze. “Give it to me!”

My spine whiplashed again. Cosmic glass shattered, and I thudded to the ground, my breath knocked away.

With a metallic groan, time started.

Glass tinkled. Discarded paper whipped in the wind. Joey’s body broke from its prison and speared through the air to the place where Ivy had been, and he tumbled and rolled to his feet with serpentine grace. Still human, his claws twitching, shiny black snakeskin creeping up his forearm.

I struggled to scramble up, my spine shrieking in pain. My wits clogged. Had everything happened in the space of a blink?

I tried to talk, to make sense of it all, but my jaw wouldn’t move. My tongue numbed. I pushed myself up, and my arm buckled like rubber under my weight.

Panic frothed my blood to bubbles. But all I could do was flop like a beached eel.

Ivy loomed over me, wings spread threateningly, her face a mask of fury. Joey swiped at her with bared claws, venom splashing, but she snarled and blasted him back against the wall with a handful of swirling wind.

Joey hissed and slashed, and she pointed a threatening finger at him, sparkstrewn wind whipping her hair wild. “Away, serpent, or your pretty banshee dies. Just like her mother.”

And her squealing magical shade dived at me like a transparent bat, fangs bared, those invisible talons clawing deep into my brain once more. My ears screeched and exploded, wetness pouring down my face. Pain rocketed through my bones. Flesh tore inside my head, hot blood spraying the walls like some homicidal madwoman’s padded cell.

But I could still see. I could still feel, every scrape and munch and vicious slash in my brain, a petrified patient awake on the operating table. And somewhere inside, the little iron ball of my will swelled shiny with the last ragged scraps of my pride, and I held on to my sanity with grim, determined fingers.

No. Fuck you. You can’t have me.

But terror bloomed bloody in my heart, and I sobbed, my dignity drowning in crimson agony.

Screw not showing my pain. I don’t care if he sees me weeping. God, please, if you’re there, don’t let me live much longer. I don’t wanna die like her, slobbering and insane.

Please, just let me pass out.

But I didn’t.

22

Mina screams, and it’s the worst sound Joey’s ever heard.

His bones jangle, worse than claws raking a blackboard. More horrible than a dying scream, because she’s still alive. The awful ripped melody of her horror shatters through his sinuses, and cold reptile blood seeps into his throat. Broken, terrified, raw with agony and despair.

Just like her mother.

Ivy’s revelation pierced him cold, like a bullet to some bright nerve center deep in his heart.

Mina, that dead banshee’s daughter.

He staggers against the wall, trapped by Ivy’s magical cage, his mind reeling with misunderstanding and cross purposes and all the fucking stupid things he’s said and done.

He never knew. Never picked it up. Never saw the resemblance in Mina’s sharp little nose, the delicate feminine line of her chin.

Crazy images spin and flee, memories, conversations, the intoxicating heaven of her kiss. All adding up to the crushing conclusion that she never meant any of it. Never wanted him. Never felt anything for him but hatred, when all along his feelings for her have been . . . unfathomable. Frightening. Impossible.

How long has she known? Has she been waiting all these years simply for him to drop his guard?

But no time to reflect on his foolishness. Ivy looms over her like some appalling albino bat, screeching in delight at her misery. The magical green ball casts their shadows on the wall, eerie neon silhouettes with a life of their own, and green shadow-Ivy’s claws hack a jagged crack in shadow-Mina’s skull and wrench it apart in a splash of shadow-blood.

The real Mina groans, her body jerking in some magic-whipped fit. Her face shines deathly pale. She chokes, and blood coats her delicate lips even redder. She can’t move, can’t fight. Can’t free herself.

Invisible enchanted fists pound Joey’s body into the wall. A bone crushes in his hip, excruciating, and he bites back a yell. Instinctively he shifts the joint, a fluid motion of sinew and bone and muscle from human to snake and back again, and the break mends, but it doesn’t stop fucking hurting.

Bits of green shadow-brain splatter the wall, and shadow-Ivy cackles and delves for more, poking inside shadow-Mina’s spreadeagled skull like a mad fairy surgeon. Mina’s head falls to the side in a beautiful spill of bloody blue hair, and she gazes directly into Joey’s eyes.

For a moment, his heartbeat strangles.

Sparkling static crackles between them, furious fairy magic and everything that’s gone unspoken. Her throat jerks, but no sound comes out. Tears spill from her terrified ruby eyes. Her mouth quivers, and she stretches painful lips around words that fire like guilt-drenched arrows straight to his snakeblack soul.

Help me. Please.

His guts twist with rage, and he thrashes against his magical bonds, the force smashing into his body over and over, squashing his breath away. A rib breaks, stabbing like hot wire into his lung, but he can’t care.

If he can’t help her, she’ll die.

But he can’t get free. Can’t save himself, let alone this woman, who for some insane reason, he would risk everything for.

This woman who’s trying to kill him. The woman he’s obsessed with beyond reason and common sense and every clever and cautious thing he’s ever learned.

His vision blurs, and the stubborn reason-creature in his mind kicks and thrashes in denial. He can’t love her. It’s impossible. It’s foolish. It’ll get him killed.

But it’s real. Might as well call it what it is.

The wall carves into his shifting shoulder blades, infuriating. Snakeflesh writhes dark and hot just beneath his skin, itching to burst forth, snap tight, escape. The serpent might be too narrow and sinuous to be caught in Ivy’s magical web. He’d get free in a swift thrash of tail and fin. Maybe. Unless the spellwrought threads snap his spine in half.

Acid frustration sears his blood. He can’t. Not the hideous creature, not in front of her. She’ll shrink away, turn from him, never let him help her once she sees what he really is.

Never let him love her.

Ivy knows too well his ugly self-loathing. It’s what she’s betting on.

He can’t. But he must. Better Mina lives and despises him, than the alternative. Either way, he’d better get used to being without her.

Besides, if she dies . . .

The black mist fogging his brain to midnight clears in a warm flash of jasmine-scented sunlight.

If she dies, none of it fucking matters anyway.

Pungent faestruck chemicals spurt into his blood, and he shifts.

His bones creak in protest for a millisecond, and then they sigh in aching relief, and stretch. His skin warms, exothermic energy spilling to the air. Scales erupt, tighten, flex, his new skin drying rapidly in the heat. His spine crackles, subsuming limbs, sprouting fins and tailspike, twisting and growing ribs, pulling guts into shape.

His vision dims, colors bleeding out, and shapes sharpen and wobble as his eyelids recede and his lenses snap tighter. Nerves lengthen and flare alive in his flesh. His pulse quickens and cools. His sinuses stretch and snap into shape, the vibrating air a sharpsweet glory on his tongue, in his mouth, over his elongated throat. Fangs erupt from his gums and bleed bitter venom.

An intoxicating wash of scents dizzies him. So beautiful, this fresh sensory banquet. So soothing and satisfying, the cool shift of elongated muscle and bone.

So much like home.

Sweet resignation floods his snakecold heart. Let her see. It’s the truth, after all. Might as well call it what it is.

Mina chokes, and stares.

Blood clogged my throat, rich and thick like salty chocolate, making me wheeze for breath. My head ached like a thousand scorpions threw a wriggling stingfuck party in there.

But I didn’t care.

Because through the dizzy haze of my agony, I saw something I never thought I’d see.

Black, so black and delicious like midnight velvet, but smooth, gleaming, sleek. His long body curved gracefully, twice the length of a human or more, the razor fin along his back sparkling with broken glass and venomsplashed fairy glitter. Glossy webbed fins folded neatly along his flanks, tipped with delicate claws that glimmered like tiny green jewels.

He flexed lithe muscles along his spine, his elegant head rearing back, and his tapering tail curled into view, topped with a wickedly sharp spike. His underside shone an even deeper, softer black. The exquisite line of his jaw gleamed narrow and perfect, his fangs shining clean and sharp and lovelier than any vampire’s cruel weapon. His eyes glowed, the deepest green I’d ever seen, stripped of their human defenses and burning with pure and powerful emotion.

And his primal, honest beauty broke my heart.

My ravaged brain managed a splash of awestruck incredulity, sprinkled with wonder.

This was what he hid from me? This astonishing, perfect, magical creature?

Delight swirled crazily in my chest. I couldn’t deny this anymore. He didn’t want to share, didn’t want me close to him. But he’d exposed his worst secrets, shown me his deepest, blackest heart, and I still didn’t want to look away. I couldn’t bear to look away.

I knew the truth now. About my mother. About Joey. About what lurked beneath his human form. And about what he meant to me.

He was part of me, and for better or worse, I couldn’t live without him.

Tears flooded my eyes, a burning mist. Maybe because I was already crying. It didn’t matter.

Nothing mattered anymore.

I let my eyelids flutter closed and waited to die.