One of the difficult lessons I’ve learned about the book industry is that size matters. People gave me well-meaning advice to write what I love and let my muse fly free, but I had to learn the hard way that as long as books are still printed on paper there are going to be word count limits which will determine the scope of my story and how I can tell it. As Poisoned Kisses is my debut paranormal romance novel, it was my best teacher when it came to this lesson. Harlequin Nocturne has a stated word-count limit of 75k and I was quite proud of myself when I squeaked in under that limit. Imagine my shock when my editor asked me to cut ten thousand more words. Yes, that’s right, ten thousand more words!
After I talked myself out of slitting my wrists, I got down to the Herculean task of cutting the novel. The end result? Something fast-paced and tight-as-a-drum. I can’t say I regret a minute of it. It was one of the best writing exercises I’ve ever done. It made me a better writer and the final product thrilled me. But…and you knew there was a but coming, didn’t you…there is a little part of me that would have loved to save my darlings. I know how directors must feel when making movies and having to chop scenes. Luckily, thanks to the power of the internet, I can share with you my own Special Features, including this completely unedited, deleted scene from Poisoned Kisses. I hope you enjoy it!
Niagara Falls in winter, with its thundering river, was gloomy as the Styx. Kyra watched the netherworld entrance of mist below the tumbling water of the falls, and tried to take some comfort in that. She tried to tell herself that the New World and its spiritual variety could accommodate the powers of an Old World nymph. But North American gods were strange, and the forces of nature here were brutally cold.
She would almost rather face Ares; almost. In fact, she might have turned right around, got back on the plane, and abandoned this mission if not for her hatred of flying. And of course, this morning’s newspaper.
Renewed hostilities had broken out in the Congo and she knew whose guns were to blame. Marco’s near-fatal encounter with her obviously hadn’t given him second thoughts about gun running, so now Kyra was going to take a new approach.
What had Hekate said? That sometimes locking a wild thing in a dungeon was the only way to make it see reason? And even if it didn’t make him see reason, at least she’d be able to keep the Hydra out of her father’s hands. Ares had his vultures everywhere—it was only good fortune that had allowed her to discover the existence of the Hydra before he did. Now Kyra planned to press her advantage.
The first thing she did was rent a house in the hinterlands—one with a basement. It probably had not been wise of her to ask the realtor if the beams would hold the weight of a human male, and she had probably spent too much time in the hardware store picking out locks and security systems. Oh, the irony. She was a daughter of Ares, but compelled to build her dungeon out of parts she found at the local hardware store.
The trick was going to be luring Marco into said dungeon without making him bleed because she was not sure she would survive a second dose of Hydra poison. Marco was deadly, and she had best remember it.
Of course, all of this would be for naught if Marco didn’t come back home. And what if he didn’t? What if she never saw him again? It happened all the time with mortals—their lives were so brief, a nymph might meet a man in his youth and not see him again until he was a shade in the underworld. It shouldn’t make much difference to her, shouldn’t more than annoy or frustrate her, but somehow she knew it would be harder to accept than that.
As a bitter gust of wind buffeted her, Kyra buried her nose in her scarf and kept walking. How had a Hydra like Marco Kaisaris come to be born in this far-away, uncivilized land of Canada? She supposed there were Greeks everywhere in the world now—mostly everywhere, anyway. How else had the shrine to Hekate, at which her mother once worshipped, come to be in the heart of Italy? Even here in North America, Marco’s was a Greek family in a Greek part of town.
She stopped first at the Kaisaris family restaurant, only to find the doors to The Acropolis locked shut. The restaurant hours were clearly posted, and she had arrived during business hours, but the sign hanging haphazardly from the door said closed.
So it was happening already then. The Hydra’s father was dying, or dead already. Either way, Kyra felt the pull of her most ancient duty—one much older and more urgent than the one she had taken upon herself in capturing the Hydra.
She forgot about Hekate, she forgot about her rebellion against Ares. She even forgot about Marco. What she remembered was that she was a nymph of the underworld, and nearby, there was a man in need. Kyra picked up her pace, making the short jaunt from the restaurant to Marco’s childhood home with long strides. Somehow she knew the family would be here, and not at the hospital.
The door was open. She simply walked in and crept up the stairs to the bedroom where the old man lay dying in his bed. A woman was there too—his wife, sitting beside him. Kyra guessed this was probably Marco’s mother and when Kyra came in, the silver-haired woman with a face full of grief turned and looked right at her.
When mortals looked at Kyra, she could make them see what she wanted them to see—and in this case, it was nothing. But when the dying man also turned to look at Kyra, a flicker of recognition shining in his eyes. Kyra recognized him right away from the photo she’d first seen in Marco’s hand, but he’d lost weight, and withered.
There was nothing so sad as a strong man gone frail, and as his chest rose and fell with his struggles for breath, she saw the fierce determination in his eye. He saw her, his brows knotted in concentration, as if he were trying to place her. He was already half-way between mortal life and the next; he could probably see the outlines of Kyra for what she was, and the closer to death he came, the easier it would be for him. Meanwhile, his wife turned and stared at the place Kyra stood again, asking, “Is there someone there?”
The old man began to cough then, and patted his wife’s hand, as if to reassure her. This touched something in Kyra—to see a dying man give what little strength he had to the woman he loved. Nymphs like Kyra might have immortality, but mankind had love, and for a single moment, Kyra wished for it with all her heart.
“It’s time for your medicine,” Mrs. Kaisaris said to her husband. “I’ll get it for you, and something to drink.”
He kissed her hand before she left, that one gesture shaky and profound. Then he watched his wife walk past Kyra and out the door, a wistful look in his eye as if he thought it was the last time he would see her. “She’ll join you one day,” Kyra said softly, her heart filling with compassion. “As a shade.”
“Do I know you?” he croaked, trying to lift his aged head from the pillow. She let her internal light shine, she lit a path into him and saw how much pain he was in. She opened her eyes wide enough that it lit a path into her too.
“Yes,” she said soothingly. Given that she’d tried to kill his son, and was now intent on throwing him in a dungeon, offering some light and comfort between the threshold of this life and the next had seemed like the least Kyra could do for the old man. “You know me. You’ve been waiting for me.”
Marco’s father blinked several times, then he sighed with contentment. “Oh yes, I see now. You’re an angel.”
Kyra sighed at his mistake. Even this very old man was too young to remember when nymphs of the underworld guided the dead. He was but an infant in the cosmic scheme of things, and now she coaxed his shade from his body like a baby from the womb. “Follow me. Follow the light of my torch.”
And with that, Kyra stretched a hand to him. Only his spirit reached for it. His real hand lay trembling upon the bed as the ethereal essence of his fingers grasped Kyra’s. “Will it hurt?” he asked her.
“Only for a moment,” she promised, and then, slowly helped pull his shade free.
The body gave one last shudder, then stilled and shrank—giving up the animating force within.
Released from pain, the old man actually smiled. Then he realized how young he was again, and it made him smile wider. “I was a handsome devil once,” he said.
“You look like your son,” Kyra said, leading him down the stairs and out of the house into the crisp air. Kyra shivered with the cold, but the old man’s shade shouldn’t have felt it. Even so, he stiffened.
“You know my son?” he asked.
Well, in a fashion. She had kissed him, tried to kill him, nearly been killed by him. If that wasn’t the true essence of knowing a human being, what was?
“Is he dead too?” the man asked, anxiety returning. “Is my son dead too?”
“No, no,” Kyra reassured him, because she felt certain that she’d know if the Hydra was dead. “But he lives a very dangerous life.”
“He could have opened a second restaurant for us,” Marco’s father said. “He had the head for business. He was a good cook too, like his mother. And he was my only son. My only son. But he decided to be a soldier, instead.”
“He liked the violence,” Kyra said, feeling the sour expression creep over her face.
“No, he watched too much news. Wanted to do something good. At least he said he did. I should have told him I was proud of him then, but…”
“What happened to him?” Kyra asked, turning off towards the Falls. There were many entrances to the netherworld, but this was the closest, and now that evening was falling, it was beautiful.
“Africa broke his heart, then he broke mine.” The dead man paused beside a tree, marveling at the way his hand passed right through it. “Yes, I think it was Africa. But maybe it was his high school sweetheart, Ashlynn Brown. Either way, in the end, someone broke his heart and then he broke mine.”
Ashlynn Brown. This was a name Kyra didn’t know. Who was she? Given the way Marco went through women now, she hadn’t expected that he’d have a former lover who had broken his heart. Marco seemed more likely to be the heart-breaker, after all. Kyra listened as Marco’s father told her how he’d started stealing caches of arms from the military, then selling them in Africa. It clearly made him angry to recount the way his son’s life once-promising life had spiraled into something that shamed him. But not once did he mention Marco’s poisoned blood, nor his ability to wear faces not his own.
“Was he always so good at . . . disguises? Even as a boy?” she asked, careful to give nothing away. Some Hydras were made, not born, and the confusion on the man’s face made her even more sure that Marco was the former.
“No, he was always an honest boy. An earnest boy,” Marco’s father said. “If a customer paid too much at the restaurant, he would always go chasing after them with the change. Always wanted to put things right. But now look at him? Now he’s rich. Rich!”
“And he doesn’t share his wealth with his family?” Kyra asked.
The old man growled with insult. “We won’t take a penny of that filthy money. I love my son, but I lost him to a world of weapons and war. I can’t forgive him. I . . . couldn’t forgive him.”
Kyra was silent. In her long experience with these things, the dead often regretted the unresolved relationships they’d left behind. Forgiveness helped them to let go, but she could see by the set of this man’s jaw, that he was stubborn. She wouldn’t argue with him.
Even so, he seemed to sense her disapproval. “What he does—putting weapons into the hands of children, running from the law, taking money from warlords—some things are unforgivable.”
No, Kyra supposed, some things couldn’t be forgiven in this life. But maybe in the next…
“We’re here,” she said softly, as the mist rose from beneath the bridge to wet her face.
“Thank you for guiding me,” he said, his face filled with wonder. “I would have been lost and frightened otherwise.”
He had nice manners, this man. How had he raised a son to be an arms dealer? It had been some time since anyone had thanked her, and it pleased her. “You’re welcome,” she said. “But before you go, you should know I’m not an angel. I’m a lampade.”
Marco’s father squinted for a moment, then the word seemed to snap something in his memory and he laughed. “So the old Greek stories are true!”
“Some of them,” Kyra demurred. “You are about to find out which ones.”
“Should I jump, then?” the man asked, his mortal fears still plaguing his shade.
“Yes, jump. It can’t hurt you now,” Kyra promised. “And someone at the bottom is guaranteed to catch you.”
Too bad things were never that way for the living when they fell.
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