Sinner’s End (Forgotten Shadow Lords #1)

Chapter Ten

A Line of Sinners

Bowen

I turn away from Kaleb’s little make-out session at my hidden position behind the wayward fallen tree with a raging hard-on that shouldn’t be possible. I don’t like women. Fuck, I don’t like anyone. The only reason I get Mana off to the point of agony is because he thinks he deserves punishment, and I fucking well know he does.

The fluids I prefer are the sort black with sin, or red, glistening and running.

Which means there was only one place I could go to get myself off before Kitten’s little meating with Mana. And meant that way—he’ll take his pound of flesh from her one way or the other. Either Kaleb will watch, or he’ll join in.

I know his sort. Perfectionist, determined. Thinks his shit doesn’t stink like the rest of us. I do, and I fucking well know the stink of sin and the stain an inflated ego leaves on a person’s soul. Kaleb will fall, just like the rest of us. And it will be fucking Candyland when he does. Souls like his ‘n’ hers make a pretty collector’s set for a being as powerful as Mana.

I snort as I wind my way into town, to the room beneath the high school where, during daylight hours, the kids play and get their education. Fascist bullshittery, if you ask me, but funnily enough, no one ever does.

No, the gaping hole beneath the school was once a place of ritual where blood was sacrificed across an altar. The place itself holds no power, though the act did. And unbeknownst to the cage-fighting crew who set up there two years prior, they now offer fresh blood in their own sort of ritual.

Same shit, different day.

All one and the same, each sunset running into each other until my existence is all about mother-loving sunshine stained with the tinge of blood. Fuck, I’ll coat the place in it if it means I can go home. But I couldn’t and I can’t, so none of it matters.

Thus, sunrise to sunset, I stalk my newest little obsession, wondering why pretty lips, perky tits, and a cunt I can scent from across town even fucking matter. It shouldn’t. She shouldn’t.

But she does.

My existence’s current great mystery, until she ages into dust and I find a new obsession. Something tells me she will keep me going for a millennia or more. Long enough to see Mana’s return to the underworld, and I’ll be left alone.

Except for maybe Lethe. He’s … interesting. Strong, has no idea who or what the fuck he is. But interesting, nonetheless. I wonder if he would like to sample the pleasures of my painful tongue. After all, he is the sort to self-flagellate with a dark joy, just to get up and do it again.

Same shit…

I slink down the stairs, my white, grit-covered clothes stained their usual gray. I’m not above a little mood-based symbolism, but after tonight my clothes will bear a new color, one I won’t be able to wash away with a few punches and their saliva that flows across the floor.

Tonight, I intend to end a life and secure my small rein on earth with a little death.

Self-flagellation indeed.

Or perhaps self-sabotage.

Emmanuel’s eyes widen when he sees me, his face breaking out into a shaky smile. “Bowen, my friend. What sort of night is it tonight?”

I stare at him, my face blank. That appears to be the thing that scares these mortals the most. Nothingness. Like a psycho ready to kill.

Ah, that’s what tonight is, then.

“I’m not your friend. Pick something worthless.”

“You mean someone,” he mumbles, frowning as he adds my name to the middle of the roster.

I take his pen from his limp, sweaty fingers and cross out all the names. “The first three live. After that…” I shrug. “Who do you want to get rid of?”

His eyes gleam. “I’ll make some calls.”

I snort in his wake as he hurries the departure from this world of those he hates or who are in his debt that he sees as a liability. Thirteen slots. That’s cute. Thirteen favors he will owe me at the end of the night. Not that he understands the depth of his personal depravity right now, but he will.

“ Soon ,” I whisper, mocking Kaleb’s serenade to his little hellcat. His kitten . Excuse me while I puke glowy fucking angel goop on my feet.

The little slut heated up the moment he touched her. Hell, I had God’s own trouble keeping my hands out of his, stealing his touches as my own. But breaking them up and causing a fight with Kaleb doesn’t suit my plans right now.

And yes, I can say the “G” word without being ended. Well, I was ended, but that was because of a certain incident with another of my kind.

“Cage one. You’re good to go,” Emmanuel says, all eager like a newborn puppy with his world about to be shattered.

I crack my neck lazily. “All slots taken?”

“Yes. All filled. They’ll be arriving…”

Now.

I smirk as a train of men, each lankier or more sinful or just fucking stinkier than the last, parade through the doors. “What did you promise them?”

Emmanuel cackles a little under his breath like a good, ignorant lackey. “Your head with your balls in your mouth.”

I smirk. “Creative.” Who knew the little slug had it in him?

I pat his shoulder in a familiar, oh-so-human gesture, pressing my fingers along his spine and clicking the bone there. A tiny drop of blood breaks inside his skin, though he doesn’t know it yet, and the black mark that stains his flesh as part of our bargain will never disappear. His soul is mine now. Who said it was only up to devils and demons and gods to play such games?

The first three leave the ring quickly. One unconscious, two with many contusions and broken bones. In one of my human facades, I studied medicine back when cadavers were opened on a table beneath many eyes on another continent. When all the modern machines came in, I had to fucking well do it again, both amazed and appalled at how much we got right the first time … and what we didn’t.

So many bodies I watched come in and go out. Not all were dead when they arrived, but they left their bodies to meet … well, someone, by the end of the session.

I am no stranger to sin. Much like the multitudes I will claim as my own mini-legion, souls I collect for a battle to come.

The first of the dead men steps into my cage, and I crook my finger.

“Come to Daddy.”

I relish the eye roll, the fist that comes my way. At the air that whistles beside my head, the way my jab folds in his windpipe, crushing it. How my elbow at his temple stops him worrying about how to breathe. The touch at the crook of his neck as his soul leaves him and becomes mine.

Nine more to go.

My clothes are drenched with red by the third dead man walking, and when Emmanuel comes in, I smile.

Perhaps it is not just the nothingness expression that terrifies, after all.

It is a good night.