Demon Kissed (22 page)

“I don’t want to kill you, Ivy.” His weary face looked at mine. He swallowed, “I’ve tried so hard to stay away from you, but your soul is so powerful. It can’t be ignored. It calls to me. It’s like trying to resist every lust you’ve ever suffered—all at once. I feel that every time I see you. The only reason I haven’t given in, is because I was free to choose. I chose to let you live. But you trapped me.” His face contorted, “Now the lust calls to me non-stop. I can’t control myself much longer. Ivy, you have to break it.
Now.”

I tried to pull myself away from him. He felt my will resist his. I attempted to walk up the stairs and leave him behind. I pictured my feet running away, and leaving him here. But it didn’t matter. The only thing that mental pictures did was show him I wanted to leave without him. The images seemed to settle him.

He finally sat down on the floor and leaned back against the wall. His fingers ran through his dark hair, and he closed his eyes. I sat on the bottom step and stared at him. The pull to kiss him consumed me, even knowing what he was. A stupid idea filled my mind. It was a way to snap the bond temporarily. “Do you trust me?”

He looked at me for a moment. His feelings flooded the bond. He was tired. I knew he needed to get away from me, and I knew that what I was going to do would make it harder for him.
 
He tensed when he felt my intention. “That’s not a good idea.”

“I have to. It’s what the bond has wants me to do. The more I resist, the worse it gets.” Fear and longing were growing together. I couldn’t think about it. I needed to act quickly before I lost my nerve. But I wasn’t sure about Collin. It might push him over the edge. “Can you be still?”

His eyes shifted to mine. His voice whispered in my mind.
I think I can. But Ivy, I can’t resist you much longer. If this works, if the bond snaps, don’t stay. Run away from me.

I nodded, and rose off the dirty step and kneeled in front of Collin. I moved slowly. My hands trembled. He could feel my fear. My breath caught in my throat. I tried to push the panic back into my stomach. I touched his face softly, feeling his body tense under my hands. I sucked in a scared gasp, as the tingling sensation I’d come to expect flooded us with a jolt of ice and heat. Once it subsided it felt like we were the same person. I felt Collin’s fear, and his control was loosening. His primal needs were going to win. I could sense it. I kept my hand on his face and whispered to his mind,
Be
still
. His inner urge to destroy me didn’t respond. Instead the bond pulled me to him.
All the way.
I leaned into his chest, and my face went where the bond led me. My lips swept softly against his cheek. Collin’s eyes closed on contact. The softness of his skin against my lips calmed me. The sensation flooded me like magic. It felt like pixie dust was poured into my veins. I felt powerful.
Lighthearted.
And more connected to Collin.

The kiss sated his hunger. He relished the sensation of my lips on his skin. I lingered for a moment before backing away. When I pulled back, I could feel the bond go slack. It felt like the steel cables that held us together unwound in a snapping motion. I knew I could leave. But I stayed wondering why he didn’t destroy me when he could have?

Collin’s eyes popped open. The blue was totally gone, replaced with eyes that looked like blood pooling with fire. He brushed one word against my mind.
Run
.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“So.
What happened?” Sister Al held a cup of hot tea in her hands.

“You were wrong!” I said hysterically. “The bond is
bad
. Like way bad. It’s gonna kill me!” I didn’t make much sense when I first got there. My hands were flying, my heart was ready to explode, and words were pouring out of my mouth in incoherent ramblings. Sister Al’s remedy was to shove a steaming drink in my shaking hands.

“Hmm,” she said. “I
coulda
been wrong. Cause you didn’t tell me everything. What’d
ya
leave out, Ivy?
Anything—important?”
She looked calm, and pursed her wrinkled lips to blow on her hot tea. I shifted in my seat, and made an
argh
noise as I pulled my hair a little. Sister Al kept talking, “Anything about, I don’t know, saying bad words? Lying? And stuff like that? I’ve heard dirty words before,
ya
know. Nuns got ears, girl.”

My heart hammered in my chest. I couldn’t stand it anymore. She beat me down. She won. I simply nodded and said, “Yup. Stuff like that.”

A smile pulled at the corners of her mouth, and she put her cup down. “It’s about time. Do you know how hard it is to think of metaphors for being what you are?
Pies.
Bah. I was down to nothing with that one. So spill girl. I swore to protect you—I don’t lie. I will protect you no matter what words fly outa your mouth right now.”

I looked around the room. Only one thought kept me from spilling everything right then. “What about Julia?”

Al straightened in her chair. “Julia means well, but she
ain’t
here. And she
ain’t
my boss. My boss hasn’t been seen for over two hundred years. And no, I didn’t see that coming.” She laughed at her own joke. “I’m as high up as you can get in my branch of things. And no one is above me. So, what I say goes. And I say you have my protection. So you do.”

I paused, looking at my teacup. “Julia scares me. But I need help. I’ll be dead tomorrow if I don’t get it. Julia will kill me the next day if she finds out.” I paused. My face was pained, but I couldn’t hide it anymore. “I’m tainted. I was marked as a Martis. It was blue that first night.” I took a huge breath and blurted it out. “But now, it’s not. It turned purple.” I pulled my comb from my hair and pushed back my hacked off bangs, showing her the mark.

She lowered her cup to the table and said, “Oh my. I had no idea,” totally deadpan.

I tried not to roll my eyes. I suspected she knew, but I wasn’t sure until then. “You knew this whole time, didn’t you?”

“Of course I knew! I’m old, not stupid.” She smiled, taking a sip, and returning the smoldering drink to the table. “And when I saw you, I knew you were the girl in my visions.
Dressed in solid black with a hole in her heart the size of… something really big.
Of course it was you.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that you knew?” My thundering heart started to relax, since I wasn’t going to die right then. “I thought you’d want me dead. I heard Eric and Julia talking about the prophecy and that they had to kill the girl in the painting—me. Eric doesn’t know. I’ve been lying to him. I
hate
lying to him.
And the bond.
The bond!”
I yelled as tears ran down my face. “It’s linked me to one of
them
.”

She snorted. “Well, he’s really
not
blue then, huh?”

“It’s not funny! How can you laugh? He wants to kill me.” I wiped the tears off of my face. “The bond keeps throwing us together, and it’s pushing us to do the one thing that will kill me. I don’t want to die, and he doesn’t want to kill me. The only reason I got away from him tonight was, because I gave the bond what it wanted—a kiss, but on his cheek. The cords that held me to him snapped, along with his self-control. So I ran. If I wasn’t just a little bit faster, he would have killed me! For all I know he’s waiting outside.” I rubbed my hands over my eyes. “What am I supposed to do?”

Al looked at me. She left her steaming cup on the table while I ranted. My grief and fear floated to the surface and spilled out of my mouth. She extracted bits of info from the muck. “So, you’re bonded—but not bound—to a demon kissed boy, who doesn’t want to kiss you?”

I nodded.
“Yeah.
But it doesn’t matter. His control is gone. I broke it tonight to get away from him.” We sat in silence for a while. The emotions that flared through him that night were intense. He wanted to protect me. And he tried so hard, but he knew he was failing. I was his undoing. His thoughts flooded into me, and I could feel it. My voice was a whisper, “When his eyes flashed, it reminded me of Jake attacking me. But I wasn’t afraid of this guy.”

“What’s your question, dear?” the nun asked.

I breathed in, trying to steady myself, “Eric told me that they can’t feel - that they
don’t
feel anything. Since I can sense his thoughts and emotions, I know he wanted to protect me. Is that possible?”

“Anything’s possible,” she sipped her tea. “It’s unusual, but not impossible.”

“What do I do?” I asked.

“Something is going to happen with the two of you. Do you have any idea what it is?”

I nodded. “I think so. But I don’t know how or why. He’s in the painting. The guy I’m pulling up—or the one who’s pulling me down. It’s him. I’m sure it is.”

She sipped her tea. “Then you have nothing to worry about.
With him anyway.”

My incredulous eyes flicked to her face.
“Yeah, right.
Al, he was ready to rip me apart tonight.”

“But he didn’t,” she shrugged. “And his self-control is remarkable. It almost as if… ” her voice trailed off. The rest of the thought passed through her brain and she left me out.

“As if, what?”

“Demon kissed
are
selfish and self-serving. But you can feel his desire to keep you alive. You need to know
why
. The only way you’ll find out is to use the bond.”

I shrunk away from her. The thought frightened me. I felt my jaw tighten. “No. I can’t see him again. I can’t.”

Her head snapped toward mine. “What do you mean,
you can’t
? You aren’t weak. I’ve seen you with Eric. And you have been resisting and breaking the bond with the Valefar boy. Unless one of us knows what caused it and what it wants, you’re stuck with it. And if he’s trying to protect you, there is something else at stake here. Maybe it’s the prophecy. But maybe it’s not.”

“What else could it possibly be?” I slumped back in my chair.

“It might be the prophecy, but there is only one way to be sure,” she said.

A yawn escaped me. I hadn’t yawned in weeks. Suddenly my eyelids felt heavy. “Sis-
er
..,” I said weakly reaching out to steady myself. Then the room spun, and I passed out.

My first vision filled me with horror. At first, I was surrounded by blackness. It crept in like fog before a storm. Coldness pressed into me. My body felt dreamlike, but I wasn’t in my own body. I was watching
me
. When the black fog cleared, I saw myself sitting a few feet away. I watched myself. A cool breeze lifted stringy curls off my face. The moon hung low on the horizon. As I watched the vision, I looked around to take in my surroundings. There were shadows that looked like people looming beyond me in the distance. The ground was glistening red. I held a limp body across my lap. Buildings were in the distance, but I only sensed they were there. I couldn’t see anything clearly that I wasn’t focused on in the vision.

I watched as my sobs grew softer, as I was speaking to the guy in my lap. I cradled his head in my arms. I was unable to see his face, only a crown of dark hair.
That could be anyone
. But from the way I was reacting, I knew it wasn’t just anyone. It was someone important to me. Desperate to know who it was, I called out to her, um, me, “What’s wrong?”

But she didn’t respond. None of them did. It was like I wasn’t even there. I walked closer trying to see the young man in her arms. He was covered in his own blood, streaming from a large gash below his neck. It leaked out of his dying body in a steady stream, too fast to fix. As I neared, I could see that my hands were covered in scarlet, and there was a wound across my palm. The vision flickered as I watched my hand press to his head.

A scream, “
Nooooo
!” came from one of the shadows. It moved forward quickly.

I tried to see the boy’s face. I had to know who lay dying in my arms, but I couldn’t. Then, the darkness swirled and I was back at the old church. The musty smell of stale air filled my lungs.
 

Sister Al loomed over me, watching me lying on the floor. “Well, that was weird. You fell asleep.” I rubbed my head, and found a dishtowel rolled up under my neck. I pulled it out and sat up slowly. Al grabbed it. “I didn’t know how long you’d be out. The rest of us go into a trace when we see. None of us sleep.” She put the towel in the sink and turned back to me. “Have you been sleeping?”