Kissing Sin (Riley Jenson Guardian 2)

"Do your worst," he said.

I thrust the rifle point hard enough to break skin and draw blood. "You think I won't?"

"I think that soon it won't matter."

The amusement underlying his words sent chills down my spine. He was up to something, I was sure of it. But what?

Frowning, unease growing, I lowered a shield and psychically reached out. His mind was surprisingly unguarded, but maybe whoever had sent him here hadn't expected he'd be caught. I thrust deeper, capturing his thoughts, freezing both them and him.

He was telling the truth in one respect - he didn't know who'd sent him to kill the woman. He'd received his orders via phone, like he always did, the voice on the other end the same as it always was - deep and lacking inflections, as if the person behind it was somehow less than human, more a machine. The orders were simple. Kill the two women at table sixteen.

So why hadn't he waited for Roberta to arrive before he'd taken a shot?

The smell was growing stronger, becoming one more of boiling decay than shit. I wrinkled my nose, trying to ignore it, trying to disregard the fear itching at my skin.

The answers I had weren't enough, so I thrust further into his memory. Saw a large house surrounded by lush gardens. Here there more creatures like him - black ghosts, waiting for orders to kill. And locked behind stout cages, there were others as well. Blue things with rainbow wings. Men and women who had the faces of gryphons and the claws of demons. Mermaids and mermen and God knows what else.

There wasn't an army of them - not even a unit - but there was more than enough to suggest that in a few years there could be.

The labs behind these creatures had obviously found the secret behind successful crossbreeding of nonhuman races. And it didn't matter if their success rate was high or low. They were in the process of creating an army of abominations, beings nature had no intention of bringing into existence, and they were being developed for one reason only - to kill.

I tried to delve further, get more information, but the air was so thick and rich with the reek of rot that I was gagging, and couldn't concentrate.

I withdrew my thoughts, and met his gaze. Death roamed in his eyes, and it approached fast. It was then I realized his face looked gaunter, as if in the last few minutes he'd lost a huge amount of weight. The press of his skin against my shins and butt felt like the touch of fire.

Then it clicked, and the look of death in his eyes made sense.

Misha had once asked me to imagine the super soldier that could be built if the secrets of vampires, wolves, and other nonhumans could be unlocked. There'd be little you could do to stop such a force, he'd said. What he'd forgotten to mention was the added improvements - that if they did get caught, they could kill themselves, and therefore stop any efforts of getting information.

This man was growing hotter because he was about to spontaneously combust. Only there wasn't anything spontaneous about it.

I rolled away from him, the gun held at the ready should he try and move. He didn't. Couldn't.

His gray eyes were wide, and the death I'd seen earlier was all-consuming. Only this time it was his death I saw, not mine, and the realization of it had wiped away the faint amusement so evident only moments before. His thin lips were open, as if he were screaming, but no sound came out, only a gush of bloody liquid. Water was beginning to pool under his entire body and steam rose from both legs. He was melting, disintegrating, from the inside out. What a God-awful way to die.

I couldn't sit here and watch it. Couldn't sit here and just let it happen with such agonizing slowness. This wasn't death. This was torture, and no one - not even a lab-developed freak - deserved this sort of ending.

I touched his arm, flinching a little at the heat. His flesh rolled under my touch, as if it were molten fluid barely contained by skin. "Do you wish a quick ending?"

His gaze found mine. "It shouldn't be like this." His words came out hoarse, interspersed with shudders of pain. "They said it wouldn't be like this."

So they'd lied to their creations. No surprise there, really. The people behind all this had shown little in the way of morals so far, and lying was undoubtedly the least of their sins.

And Misha was one of them. I couldn't afford to forget that. Not ever.

The shadow creature's body was beginning to close in on itself, collapsing like a tent in extreme slow motion. Steam was rising from his torso now, and the stench of stewing flesh was thick enough to carve.

"Do you wish a quick death?" I repeated, swallowing bile and barely resisting the urge to run from this man and his death.

"Yes.'" It came out little more than a hiss of pain.

"Then tell me why you killed that woman." It was a horrid thing to do, but I needed at least one answer.

His gaze flayed me with his pain, and I briefly closed my eyes against it.

"Directorate too close," he gasped. "Chopping off limbs... to save head."

I didn't bother asking him to name the head. He was only a weapon, and a dispensable one at that. Instead, I rose and stepped away from his melting, steaming body. His gaze met mine, the gray depths pleading. I answered that plea and pulled the trigger.