Sinner’s End (Forgotten Shadow Lords #1)

Chapter Seven

Small Favors

Mana

My ears still ring from the screams of hours before. This time at least only half of them are mine. I swallow on a raw throat as I pry my eyes open on a darkened belfry. Thanks, Bowen, for dragging my ass somewhere safe. It looks like the angel left me where I fell afterward, exposed and unable to provide my usual dose for the Chemist in the basement. Like that’s a normality I can accept, that I have accepted for the past decade or more.

A harsh laugh ripples its way along my damaged throat. Yes, because that’s an experience I look forward to daily. The entire setup sounds like a horrific manga.

And this is the human existence I garnered for myself.

The loss of Kaleb, the human Renfield who would have shouldered my dead weight—pun intended—back to ground level, deeper as required, after his torture at my hands is a deficit I don’t want to ruminate upon.

All over a girl. The girl. The one who consumes us all.

Except maybe Lethe, seeing as he hasn’t had the pleasure of tasting her fear as often, though he was present when she towed her pathetic facsimile of a sister from the showers last night. No two girls so different inside should look so similar on the outside.

One with moss green eyes the color of a forest at dusk, stunning auburn locks like silken ties that could wind a soul in and tether him to her like a belonging … a pet. Something I knew any one of us would rent our existence apart to become. To possess. Because if she possesses one of us, we will own her, too.

Kaleb thinks he’s won the prize, but he didn’t consider all the elements of my deal. I know he believes I required him to stand throughout the night to fulfill his bargain, but he failed to consider my earlier wording. He fell first, and that puts him back in my … what do the humans say? My bad books.

How apt.

I smile at the rising moon and slither down the stairs, wondering what the seven-story drop would do to this form if I took the leap. Would I lie there, shattered on the hard-packed dirt floor until this body repaired itself? A feature of the asylum itself. Another soul for the grounds to claim. This land and the hallowed grounds at Sinner’s End provide the entirety of my domain on this earth. This realm.

I should have begged for more from my creator. Perhaps that’s why I’m so harsh in my dealings in this place. Because I was so desperate to leave that I forgot to negotiate in full.

Why should I do any less for the desperate souls that frequent Harken? Clinging to that remnant of control, I find the basement door and push it open to find the Chemist waiting for me. Alonzo’s sharp gaze misses nothing.

“Thanks for coming to retrieve me,” I murmur, unable to keep the pettiness from my voice.

I turn my back to the human and wince. The leathers draw too tight across my cock where the angel broke his promise and sank his fangs into my balls, draining me in an inhumane way, and a totally unsatisfactory conclusion to our … foray.

Kaleb’s face, on the other hand—I’d never been sure if he swung both ways, but from the way his body reacted to our touches, I suspected he kept more than one internal door shut in his obsession for the girl who clouds our vision.

Perhaps we can take turns wining and dining the pretty piece of fluff, then fuck her together, and play with each other after.

The image keeps me mostly sane as the Chemist digs into my veins with his endless supplies of needles and drains me in another way.

****

“You let her wander away,” I whisper, my voice still a ruin a mere three hours later.

Lethe stands on the other side of my desk, his back as straight as though I hold him that way on marionette strings. Mind, if I held up a puppet, the strings would be a tangled mess of half-broken promises and twisted orders that turned back on themselves over and over again.

“I saved her innocence.” He stares over my head like he can’t stand to be here, but has nowhere else to go. A truth, though I don’t appreciate either his candor or his distance.

I snort. “That girl fucks herself with a toy every night and spreads the fluids of her sin across her bed to sleep in. I can hear her all the way down in the bowels of this prison I’ve made for myself.”

Under our watchful eyes. Does she know how many otherworldly beings observe her nightly behavior? I could swear she’s drawing us in, a tempting little morsel of bait on the end of a short line.

Not that I can even enter her house until one of the sisters either invites me or is in mortal peril, enough that I can break the bonds of the agreement on that land. It stands on the other side of my boundary, inside the line of hallowed ground where the cemetery resides. Does she know how the souls call to me? How hers sings louder the closer we are? It’s a beautiful melody of torture and wanting, of predator and prey.

When I fucked her sister’s mouth the night before, I imagined Adreana’s mouth latched around my cock, choking on it. I can’t forget that it’s not her who swallowed me, letting me bruise her slender throat, or choke her until I constricted my hand around my cock through the thin membrane of her flesh.

I can’t forget, even though I left the other girl with no memory. Another puppet to play with.

What began as a game has devilled into boredom. I need a new puzzle. One with auburn hair and moss green eyes. One I’ll play with and make her remember.

If I have to exist within my pool of torment, so will she. I want to see her eyes flare wide, her mouth stuffed with this body’s flesh as I moan through the pleasure laced with pain and my cum jets down onto her stomach.

I will watch her writhe with the orgasm the act gives her, because that’s what my fluids do.

One to forget. One giving pleasure.

Both are a cursed promise. Once tasted, it’s an addiction. I have to make the endless line of nightly toys forget, else they’d be ravenous, clambering over me.

I only want to do that to one female, and my restless day’s sleep on the bell tower’s stone balcony was filled with the torture of knowing she was near and not being able to touch her. All the while she was at her strange house with its ridiculous caveats and deals that tether her so far from me, yet close enough to taste.

Maybe I should bargain for the restrictions on that land to be reduced. How many years would that shave off my penance here, or would it add to them? Did it matter? It’s not like I’m intent on marrying the girl. I want to possess her, be who she craves, what she wants every minute of every day. I want her begging for my cock, to train her mouth to flood with saliva the moment I put her hand on my crotch.

Perhaps she and Bowen can serve me together.

Twisting the angel’s purpose—knowing he also craves her—that eases the hurt within me. And like any addict, it still isn’t enough.

I need more.

My fist slams onto my desk, leaving a large dent in the hardwood surface. “Bring her to me.”

Lethe doesn’t so much as flinch as he offers a sharp nod and strides out of my office with purpose.

It’s been a damn long time since I moved like that. Finally letting my guard down in the absence of prying eyes that might foresee the show of weakness as what it is, I slump in my seat, letting out a heartfelt groan. Fuck this form. I’m too weak, too human.

I almost envy Lethe in his ability to forget everything.

A demented smile etches my face. “Lethe,” I call softly, though the walls echo my words to perfection, obeying the single command of pure thought: bring him back to me.

Lethe returns to my office, pausing with a single toe of his bared foot over the threshold. “Yes?”

His imperious tone brings me to my feet. I fist my hands until hot fluid coats my fingers and runs between them. The scent of burning sulphur fills my office.

“Fuck with her date first.” I breathe hard through my nose. And show a little obsequience.

“I beg your pardon?” Lethe’s brow dips.

“You heard.” I let the growl rend the air between us in a threat I’m not entirely certain I can carry out right now. From the disdainful look on Lethe’s face, neither is he.

“You want me to … mess with her?” he asks slowly.

“Is such an order beneath you?”

He blinks, and his face clears. “No, sir,” he says softly. “Who is the date?”

“Kaleb.”

A hard smile lights his face. “My pleasure.”

In a swift turn on his heels, he’s gone.

I lean back in my chair and smile.