Wicked Kiss

She kissed him a moment before the Hollow reached for her and yanked her back into its wide vortex of a mouth, right out of Roth’s arms.

Roth shoved himself back up to his feet and stared at the vortex as if stunned and transfixed. “She isn’t dead.” His voice broke. “Not yet...she was still breathing!”

“Bishop—do something! He’s going to—” But I couldn’t finish my sentence in time.

Roth began to run toward the Hollow as if ready to jump in after Cassandra.

Bishop grabbed for him and yanked him back just in time. Roth turned around and slammed his fist into Bishop’s face.

“Let go of me! I have to save her!”

“No!” Bishop yelled back at him. “We can’t lose you, too.”

Roth struggled hard, but Kraven was also there to help restrain him, and Connor, too. It took the three of them to pull the demon back from the Hollow.

A few horrible moments later, the vortex closed and silence fell.

Cassandra was gone. She’d saved the city from the bodiless angel. Her sister. And the full truth about her real mission was one that broke my heart.

It was a suicide mission from the moment she arrived—and she’d known it all along.

Roth believed she was still alive when the Hollow took her, but I’d seen that dagger. The Hallowed Blade—the only weapon capable of killing an angel or a demon—hadn’t missed her heart. She was dead.

Roth fell silent and still. Finally, the others let go of him.

“Roth,” Connor said uneasily. “I’m sorry. I had no idea that you and Cassandra...”

“Shut up.”

“Let’s go get a drink,” Kraven suggested. “A real one. None of this kiddie stuff.”

“No. Leave me alone. All of you.” He turned the darkest glare I’d ever seen on the rest of us.

“You cared for her,” Bishop said. “We all did.”

He scowled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Stupid angel getting in all of our ways. I’m glad she’s gone.”

Without another word, Roth shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and started walking away.

I didn’t need to read his mind to tell that he was lying. His anguish was written all over his face.

Bishop picked up the dagger from the ground and stared at the blade for a few moments of silence.

“What now?” Connor asked, his voice grim.

“Patrol,” he said simply. “You and Kraven head out. I’ll meet you back at the church later.”

For once, and despite their earlier fight, Kraven didn’t say a word against him. With a last look at me, a thousand questions in his eyes, he followed Connor down the street until they disappeared into the shadows.

I watched them walk away, again wondering what Connor had been talking about before about distractions and games. Who was hiding? What did Connor know?

I felt Bishop take my hand, and the shimmer of electricity between us worked to snap me out of my semidaze. I looked at him, our eyes locking.

“I thought that angel had you,” I whispered. “I thought I was going to lose you, too. At that point, I was okay with it going into somebody else, anybody else, if it meant you’d be all right. But Cassandra...I didn’t want her to die...”

“Me, neither.” His jaw was tight as he squeezed my hand. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”

All I could manage was a nod.

* * *

It was so strange returning home after the events of the past couple days. My familiar house seemed oddly unfamiliar to me. Like the person who once lived here all her life had moved far away. Or died.

There was something waiting for me on the doorstep. A brown envelope. I picked it up to see that my name was written on it with black marker.

I exchanged a tense look with Bishop. “What do you think this is?”

“Open it,” he said.

I tore open the envelope and pulled out the contents: a small, plain, gold locket on a long chain and a note.

“What does it say?” he asked.

It didn’t say much, but what it said stole my breath. I held it out to him so he could read it, too.

Samantha,

This belongs to you. Consider it my payment  for helping give me the chance to escape. Be normal again. One of us should  get that chance.

—Stephen

Bishop touched the locket in my hand, his gaze rising from the note to mine. “It’s your soul. It’s contained inside this locket.”

I could barely speak. “I helped give him the chance to escape? Did I really do that?”

He shook his head. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t want me to hurt him. You didn’t want me to kill him. I guess he considered that a debt to be repaid.”

Stephen still had Carly’s soul, but was this the proof I was looking for that Stephen wasn’t totally evil now? Or was he a super-gray who liked to have a clean slate to work with?

I stared down at the locket. It was what I’d wanted all this time—to have my soul back. To find some semblance of normalcy in my life again. To escape the supernatural craziness I’d been plunged into as much as I possibly could.

“So I get rewarded after everything and Cassandra has to sacrifice herself? It doesn’t seem fair. Not even close.”

Bishop watched me, studying my face as if looking for clues to some mystery there. “Cassandra knew what she was getting herself into when she arrived. What she did was very brave...and incredibly stupid. I wish she’d told us everything. Together we might have been able to find another way to end this.”