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She grimaced. “I apologize. That was rude of me. Truth is, I’ve never even met one before face-to-face.”
Roth sat in the front row, eyeing her with caution while rubbing the shallow wound at his throat. Demons and angels usually healed much faster than humans, but after the ritual, when the wound was caused by the golden dagger, it was a different story.
It was more dangerous to a supernatural than any other weapon.
“Can you heal Roth?” I asked Cassandra. I needed to say something, to be part of the conversation, not just the helpless mouse who lurked in the corner trying not to squeak. “Not that you’d want to heal him, but I was just wondering if all angels had that ability.”
“We can, in varying degrees of strength. I’m quite a strong healer.” Her gaze shifted to the demon. “Do you want me to heal you?”
Roth shrugged. “Whatever.”
Her expression soured as she moved closer to him. “A real charmer, aren’t you?”
“I try my best.” Roth stiffened as she reached toward him and brushed her fingers against his throat. There was a soft pulse of light and his tanned skin healed right before my eyes.
“You’re very gifted,” Bishop said. His angelic powers were limited due to his fallen status. He watched Cassandra with a wistful envy that made my heart hurt for him.
“Now that that’s done we can deal with the problem at hand.” Cassandra turned to the rest of us. “Your mission was to clear this city of its recent infestation of soul-devouring creatures. Yet one is here with us right now. Why?”
“Good question,” Roth said.
I wouldn’t underestimate this angel. She might look harmless, but she was anything but.
At the same time, I didn’t blame her for her confusion. I’d ask the same thing if I was in her position.
“Samantha’s different,” Bishop said calmly. “She isn’t ruled by her hunger.”
Kraven snorted at that, and I shot a dark look at him.
“Something funny?” Cassandra asked.
“No, ma’am.” He put his laced-up boot-clad feet over the back of a pew bench and crossed his ankles casually. I braced myself, expecting him to share what happened earlier at Crave, but he kept his mouth shut.
Shocker. But I’d reserve my gratitude for later.
Bishop raked his hand through his short, dark hair, his gaze flicking to me for a weighted moment before returning to Cassandra. In the shadowy light of the church, I wasn’t sure if his eyes were glowing or if it was the candlelight.
“Samantha’s important to us,” he continued. “She has a special psychic ability—she can see the searchlights. I can’t because I’m damaged from my fall.”
“I did hear about what happened,” Cassandra said, her brows drawing together. “I’m pleased you seem very capable despite the misfortune that’s befallen you.”
“Doing the best I can.”
“You must be very angry.”
“Someone sabotaged me, sabotaged this entire mission. Now I’m forced to deal with the consequences of having this soul. Can’t say I’m happy about it.”
“Nor should you be. What happened to you is unfair.”
“That’s putting it mildly.” He snorted humorlessly, reminding me uneasily of his brother. “I hold out hope that it’ll be corrected when the mission is complete and I’ll be pulled back with the others.”
“One should always have hope.” Cassandra turned to eye me curiously. “So you have supernatural intuition. It’s rare, but not unheard of. Perhaps you’re mentally stronger than other humans.”
“I do pretty well in school,” I said as lightly as I could. “Mentally, that is.”
Cassandra and the others could never find out what I really was. If demons and angels were forbidden to be together—to such an extent that this love had destroyed my mother and sent my father into the Hollow after her—I knew if anyone learned the truth I’d be in even worse trouble than I already was.
“Samantha isn’t what I expected,” Cassandra finally said. “When they briefed me about grays, I thought they would all be the same.”
“I know.” Bishop crossed his arms over his chest. “We were told we’d find mindless creatures driven by their hungers—created by an anomalous demon who devoured souls. That much was true. But it’s not always like that for those who’ve been kissed—and I believe it’s not only Samantha who’s different. We’ve taken to eliminating only those who’ve completely lost their control and their reason. Anything else would be murder.”
Something heavy inside me lightened at this confirmation, a part that was worried he and the others were indiscriminately slaying grays across the city.
“Is that why you’re here?” I asked her. “Because all the grays haven’t been wiped out of the city yet? Because the barrier’s still up? Are you like...like some sort of quality control agent sent to assess how things are progressing?”
When I got nervous, I started talking and asking questions. I was surprised I’d been able to hold my tongue this long.
“Yeah, Blondie,” Kraven spoke up. “Just what are you doing here?”
“I have a mission, of course. Part of it is to assess how the team is succeeding...” She paused. “Or failing.”
“What is your main mission?” Bishop asked.
She swept her gaze over the four of us before she said anything. “We know the Hollow is not acting as it normally does.”
Just the sound of its name spoken aloud made an unpleasant shiver race through me.
“Are interdimensional gateways to supernatural graveyards ever that reliable?” Bishop’s expression had relaxed and his tone felt almost too light.
Bishop had as snarky a sense of humor as Kraven did, only he usually kept it under wraps as leader. However, he seemed different with Cassandra around. More relaxed, more easygoing. I wondered if it was because he felt comfortable with her here...or if it was just the opposite.
“What have you learned about it?” Cassandra pressed, and she shifted her gaze to Roth.
He shrugged a shoulder. “It opens when it’s supposed to—at the death of a supernatural. Sucks in the garbage. Then it closes up. Other than it spitting the Source of the grays back out to cause this current little citywide infestation, I don’t think it’s changed all that much.”
She frowned. “So it’s true. What has been cast into the Hollow now has a chance to return.”
I didn’t have to look to see that Bishop had drawn closer to me. I felt it.
“We think so,” he said. “If a supernatural finds him or herself in the Hollow, there is the chance for escape. But the barrier is here to keep anything that gets loose in the city contained so we can deal with it.”
“Keeping us trapped here like rats also,” Roth grumbled. “All grays should die. Thinking any other way is just delaying the inevitable. And, for the record, I don’t think that Bishop’s pet gray should be given a break. We don’t know that her soul can be restored.”
“Excuse me?” Cassandra said, her gaze moving to me again. “Your soul is still in existence?”
“The one who took it managed to contain it,” Bishop answered before I could. “We mean to find him and retrieve it.”
She watched me again like a scientist studying a fascinating microbe. “This must be why you’re different, Samantha.” She looked at Bishop. “Right?”
“Perhaps,” he conceded, but he believed I was different due to my secret origins.
Either way, I needed my soul back. It wasn’t even a question.
“Very good.” Cassandra nodded and slowly trailed her gaze over Bishop’s body. It was leisurely enough that the sour taste returned to my mouth. “Despite your personal difficulties, you appear to have everything under control here.”
“I do.”
“Then why are you bleeding right now?”
My eyes shot to him.
“Excuse me?” he asked tightly.
She pointed at his abdomen. “How were you wounded?”
His jaw tensed. “It’s nothing.”
“Bishop!” I exclaimed. “What is she talking about? Are you hurt?”
He didn’t look at me. “No.”
“Pull up your shirt,” Cassandra instructed. “Let me see.”
After another hesitation, he reluctantly reached for the bottom of his long-sleeved T-shirt and raised it up to show his flat, muscled abdomen. My breath lodged in my throat. There were three deep cuts in his skin. The flow of blood had slowed, but it had soaked through his shirt. Since the material was black I hadn’t noticed anything before.
I was horrified that he’d been walking around with these wounds all night and I’d had no idea. “Oh, my God! What happened to you?”
His gaze flicked to me. “Nothing. I was going to get Zach to heal me next time I saw him.”
“Nothing? That’s not nothing! Who did that to you?”
“He did it to himself,” Kraven said with disinterest, exchanging a wry look with Roth. “It’s his new thing.”
All I could do was gape at Bishop. “Why would you cut yourself like that?”
“The pain helps me concentrate,” he said through clenched teeth. “It takes my confusion away. I need to be able to keep my focus, no matter what.”
I clasped my hand over my mouth, stunned. This is what he’d discovered during the days we’d been apart. This is why he hadn’t needed me to touch him to help clear his mind.
Instead of sympathy for his struggle, hot anger surged through me. “That was an unforgivably stupid thing to do!”
His gaze hardened. “I found a solution. I used it.”
A strangled sound escaped my throat. “Yeah, fantastic solution, Bishop. Self-mutilation. Really brilliant.”
Kraven snorted.
It was as if someone had just drawn a blade over my skin as well and pressed down hard. He’d chosen to inflict injury on himself rather than seek me out. The realization stung like hell.
He lowered his shirt, frowning deeply. “I didn’t want you to know about this.”
“Such a martyr,” Kraven drawled. “Spare me the drama.”
“I assume you used the Hallowed Blade to do this. Otherwise, it would have healed by now.” Cassandra was pushing Bishop’s shirt back up. “Hold still.”
She placed both hands over his wounds and a few moments later, with that soft pulse of light from before, the cuts disappeared.
She didn’t let go of him right away, standing intimately close to him.
“Better?” She smiled up at him.
“Better. Thank you.”
“I know how hard it must be for you to deal with the side effects of your soul. I wish I could do more to ease your pain.”
I literally trembled with the effort it took not to close the distance between us and wrench her hands away from him. Even though I knew she’d helped him, I didn’t like how she was touching him.
I’d known Cassandra the Perky Blonde Angel for an hour now and I was insanely and irrationally resentful of her immediate connection with Bishop. I hated feeling this way, all these gnawing doubts in my gut joining my ravenous hunger pains.
Cassandra was beautiful, capable, smart and strong—and she could heal injuries with a mere touch. She was an angel, too. They had everything in common with each other.
Irrational or not, I hated her stupid blond guts.
“Do you give everyone this kind of personal attention?” I asked. “Or just Bishop?”
She glanced at me and gave me a small smile. “I healed Roth, too.”
I felt the heat of Bishop’s gaze on me, but I didn’t look directly at him. I knew every word that came from my mouth made me sound like a petty, jealous girlfriend. I’d always hated girls like that.
I fought hard to keep any discernible emotion out of my eyes. Despite our undeniable connection, Bishop wasn’t my boyfriend. I had no real claim on him at all.
I mean, I didn’t even know his real name.
That’s what my brain knew—that Bishop wasn’t mine.
My heart, however, had a totally different opinion on the subject.
Before anyone could say anything else, the side door clanged shut and a few seconds later, Zach and Connor entered the church sanctuary with us.
Great, I thought drily. The gang’s all here.
Zach was tall and thin, with red hair, freckles on his nose and clear, green eyes. He was kind and thoughtful, and typically did the healing in the group. I knew this from personal experience. Connor was an inch or two shorter, with dark skin, and hair so short I considered it shaved. He always had a joke to help lighten the mood. The two had forged a close friendship since they arrived, and usually went out on patrol together.
“Patrol” was the term for their endless city walks in search of grays who’d lost their minds, their control, who were so driven by their hunger that they became a true and monstrous threat to anyone they crossed paths with. Those grays were targeted for death—their bodies swept away to the Hollow after the deed was done. The golden dagger wasn’t required to kill a gray. They might be supernatural, but they were still mortal.
If I gave in to the kiss much more, I’d also become one of those zombie grays. Which was why what had happened with Colin had frightened me so much. Once a gray turned to that zombie state, there was no coming back from it. The horrible thought of losing myself completely kept me awake at night staring at my ceiling with my sheets pulled right up to my neck.
“We have a visitor,” Connor said with surprise as he noticed Cassandra—and it was very hard not to notice the beautiful blonde. “Hi, there. I’m Connor.”
