Dark Kiss

“Depends who you mean by you.”

“You’re alive.”

“Am I?” He looked down at himself, holding his arms out in front of him for inspection, then his gaze swept the length of me. “Hey, so are you. What a coincidence.”

A cloud of confusion swirled around me, making me dizzy. “But I—I saw you get stabbed in the chest last night.”

He got to his feet and closed the distance between us in only a couple of steps. I staggered back from him and looked around, realizing that we were all alone.

He cocked his head. “Did you really see me get stabbed?”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Are you completely sure about that?”

I glared at him. He was mocking me and I had no idea why. “Completely.”

He rubbed his chest. “Funny, because I feel just fine.”

“I’m not crazy.”

He walked a slow circle around me and it felt like he was studying every inch of me. Like, every inch.

“Name’s Kraven.” His lips curled into a smile that didn’t look friendly. “I’d say I’m pleased to meet you, but that would be a lie. I mean, things like you are the reason for this little mess, aren’t they?”

My stomach churned and I wrapped my arms around myself, trying not to shiver. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I continued to deny it, even to myself. There wasn’t anything else I could do. The moment I accepted that something was seriously wrong here—and with me in particular—was the moment I believed this insanity was real. And I wasn’t quite ready for the asylum.

“Sure you don’t. You’re just a normal girl, right? And that relentless hunger you’ve suddenly developed—what do you think that is? Just a regular case of the munchies?”

I shook my head, trying to block out how much he seemed to know about me. “Bishop stabbed you. I saw it with my own eyes. So why aren’t you dead?”

Kraven’s mischievous grin widened and his amber-colored eyes began to glow bright red. “Because it takes more than that to kill a demon.”

chapter 5

I couldn’t move. Fear crawled through my gut like a fistful of cockroaches. “A demon?”

“Impressed?”

I wanted this to be a movie on TV so I could press the off button and make it all go away. The cold feeling grew deeper, sinking so far inside me I didn’t think I’d ever feel warm again. I was sure all the color had drained from my already pale face.

Other than his eyes, there was nothing that made him seem anything other than human. He had a small freckle at the left corner of his mouth. His hair was the kind of blond color people got if they were normally light brown but spent the entire summer working outside in the sun. He looked so normal. Like a boy I might see at the mall, or the movies, or … eating garbage in an alleyway.

Unlike Bishop, there was no madness in his expression. Kraven was totally sane.

Which meant that I had to be the crazy one.

“Wh-what do you want from me?” I stammered.

“I want to do my job. The sooner the better.”

“What’s your job?”

“Why would I tell you my secrets?” Kraven brushed the front of his shirt, straightening out a wrinkle in the fabric, before his gaze, which had changed back to its normal amber color, returned to my face.

A cold line of perspiration slid down my spine and I took a deep breath before speaking. “I swear, I’m not what you think I am.”

“A hungry little gray with an appetite for human souls?” Kraven touched my hair and I swatted his hand away. Then he grabbed my wrists and pulled me closer to him.

Sabrina, a girl from my afternoon geography class, passed us and I craned my neck to track her. She was notorious for cheating off whomever was seated next to her, including me several times, and she had the As to prove it.

I’d never been so happy to see anyone before in my entire life.

“Sabrina, help me!” I shouted. “Please!”

She didn’t even glance in my direction.

“Why can’t she see me?” I struggled to pull away from him, but Kraven held me firmly in place.

He watched the girl disappear down the path. “Because I don’t want her to. I cloaked us so we could have a little chat all privatelike.” He looked at my mouth for a moment as if mesmerized by it. “Let’s get down to business, sweetness. How many have you kissed since you’ve been turned?”

“None!”

He raised an eyebrow and brought his mouth closer to mine. I could feel his hot breath on me as he spoke. “But you want to, don’t you? It’s a hunger you can’t resist, a raw desire, an … aching need. Tell me the truth. You want to, don’t you?”

“No.” I clenched my jaw, glaring at him for making it sound so dirty, but inside I felt sick and weakened. I’d ached to kiss Colin just now, and it had taken everything I had to pull myself away from him. I’d tried to ignore my cravings, feed them with food each time they’d appeared, but nothing had helped.

Kraven knew that. He shouldn’t have known anything about me, but he knew what I was feeling inside right now. And he saw the answer on my face even though I hadn’t said it out loud.

His smile faded. “Even if I believed you, it’s only a matter of time before you can’t control it any longer.”

He grabbed me by the throat so tight that I couldn’t breathe. I scratched and beat at his arms as hard as I could, but it didn’t do any good. He raised me off the ground so I was on my tiptoes.

No one could see that he was strangling me right in the middle of school grounds. I strained to get a breath, to scream, but I couldn’t. My fingernails dug into Kraven’s iron grip.

“Let go of her,” someone snarled.

Bishop had appeared a dozen feet away by the bench. My eyes widened, and the fear I’d felt the last time we’d been face-to-face came back in full force along with an almost giddy elation.

The demon finally tore his gaze away from me. “Or what?”

“Or I’ll kill you. Again.”

Kraven slowly set me back down on the ground, releasing my throat. I wheezed and gasped for breath. “You know, you’re a serious pain in the—”

Bishop launched himself at the demon, tackling him to the ground and slamming a fist into Kraven’s jaw. Before the next hit landed Kraven grabbed him and twisted his arm away. I recovered enough to leap back as they continued to fight. More students strolled past without glancing at them or at me.