𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐇 𝐊𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐒
❝ They're the French Kissers,
that's what they do.
They will lure you in
and then they'll kill you
with a kiss. ❞
━ in which the leader of the french kissers
...
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Her head still spun when she trudged into the main chapel, her back hurting from a tattoo turned scar, her lips tingling from a kiss ended too soon.
"Rose, I'm so sorry." Arwen hurried to her, taking hold of her arm while the Kissers behind them reloaded guns and talked strategy. The corners of her eyes were smudged with black tears. Some belonged to her husband; others to Élodie. "I should have known..."
"Don't blame yourself." Rose wobbled and clung to a pew. On the far side of the church, Christopher and Jules dragged bodies out the door with lips set into a grim line. "I'm sorry about your husband."
"He always said I should go to church more often." Arwen tried to smile, but it came out a grimace. "Ironic that he'd die in one."
Rose reached for her arm, but the sudden sound of a side door opening startled them both. A small sigh escaped her swollen lips when Raphael, Finn and Isaiah walked in, whispering to each other, like old friends in the back of a classroom.
"Did you find anything?" Nicolas asked from behind the altar. Rose looked up at him, and a knife twisted between her ribs. Trust my love. The late afternoon sun glimmered down his walnut locks. He met her gaze, eyes landing on her lips. Maybe he could see Thomas in them. Or maybe he still saw Steaphan. Never himself. The knife twisted deeper when he looked away.
"No, we checked all the rooms, she's nowhere to be found." Raphael scrubbed a hand over his jaw, the skin over his knuckles open.
Rose glanced at the floor, to where drops of blood smeared the colored shards of the stained glass. What would the nuns she had worked with think of such sacrilege? How could there be a heaven when she had spent a life steeped in hell?
"Have you checked the bell tower?"
"Fuck," Raphael said, the bones in his back cracking when he turned around. Finn and Isaiah scurried to follow him, and Nicolas and Rose ran after them, her breath coming in gasps as her wounds throbbed.
They stepped into the early scraps of sunset and into the tower, racing up the stairs, their steps echoing on the eerie silence. Raphael and Finn reached the top first, and not a second after, two shots shattered the quiet. Biting hard on her tongue, Rose dashed after Nicolas, almost bumping into him when he halted.
Two Saurets lay dead, white shirts sprinkled with a vermilion stream that dripped down their foreheads. Rose passed them without a second look. Beneath the bell, hunched over her knees, Andrea rocked back and forth with closed eyes.
