Page 111 of The Sinner and the Priest: Part Two

Do I know that husky voice?

The memory of plush lips with a beauty mark at the corner brings a flicker of warmth, breaking through the void. Eager for more of that feeling, I let go of my meal, the face I once knew, and it stumbles away. More sound crashes in. More sights and details.

I hunt through the darkness and find another face. This one is surrounded by coppery hair, wild and free. She wears an unfamiliar, billowing white dress with yellow flowers. It’s too big and hangs off one freckled shoulder.

Freckles.

On her shoulder.

“Cisco.”

She speaks. Blue eyes lock with mine, and it feels like a hit to my solar plexus. I can’t breathe. Can’t focus on anything else but her face. Her beautiful face. Those lips.

I know those lips.

I know that beauty mark at the corner.

Sensations ignite in my chest as I recall the feeling of those lips on my mouth, my neck, my body. I ache when I remember those lips flattening, and her beauty mark disappearing. An inferno when those lips stretched tight, when she smirked and called me Padre.

“Mercy,” I rasp.

“Hey, babe.” Glimmering eyes crinkle. “What’s happening?”

“I—” I look at my hands and blink. “I don’t know.”

She has the sword. She’s here to kill you.

My jaw clicks shut. I glance down at Mercy’s hand where a blade of fire crackles, and I snarl. Its divine power flares in response, and it feels like blisters against my skin. My darkness reacts, swelling and swarming at the threat.

Kill first.

Eat.

Devour.

Shadows erupt from my body, but halt instantly when the fiery threat winks out of existence. Turning full circle, I open my senses and hunt for it.

“Babe?”

That voice again. I know it.

“It’s just me now,” she says.

A patch of warmth breaks through the clouds like the sun, but it’s not fire. Not flame. It’s just her.

“Mercy,” I choke out, stumbling forward, swiping to clear the shadows from my path. I need her. Can’t forget her again. Where is she? “Mercy!”

Ribbons of shadows flee from my swiping hands and reveal more of her beautiful face directly before me. She’s rising from a crouch, palms facing me, expression wary. The fiery sword that was in her hands is now a dead thing on the ground.

“You’re safe,” she says. “Promise.”

She sacrificed her power?

That notion sparks more heat in the emptiness, and it hurts. Dio, it hurts as if I’m being incinerated, only . . . I’m not losing parts of myself. I think . . . I think I’m finding them.

I double over, clutching my stomach. The shadows ripple around me and attempt to keep me upright, but I am a heavy weight. A puppet on marionette strings.

“You fool! You should use it to save yourself.”