Sinner’s End (Forgotten Shadow Lords #1)

Chapter Thirty

Silence in the Stones

Mana

I want to resurrect the angel and kill him all over again, but I left Hell for a reason, and not unaliving others is supposed to be a large part of my not-so-eternal reprieve.

Not that any of that is happening in this endless hell of my own making. I should never have left my sire’s side in the first place. The hell was I thinking, pushing out on my own? Even a demon of my caliber isn’t built to survive the sins of this plane. Apparently, imposter syndrome hits the most resilient of beasts in their weakest moments.

The ongoing torments of a population determined to tear themselves apart in their short lifespan is more than any demon can do in a thousand years, beating down on themselves in a perpetual cycle of hate and destruction and self-indulgent misery.

And love.

Of all this worthless mound of dirt has to offer, love is by far its most wretched construct. Because at the center of all the pain and longing to belong to one another is this lifelong fear of not only attaining someone’s achievable desire but the fear daily—by the minute—of losing them. And now I have.

Adreana won’t return to us. Me. Harken. The walls may as well crack and shatter now for the emptiness that fills each stone, and there are thousands. Hundreds of thousands. I should know. I used to be able to count the occupants imprisoned there.

But it seems my previous tenant ate their sins and consumed their wretched souls, leaving me the master of an empty kingdom.

Empty, worthless. Loveless.

All the things I hate about this world I now suffer alone. Without her.

“ Fuck !” I roar, slamming my fists into my desk, through the hardwood.

Like the walls I imagined cracking a moment before, the surface splinters straight down the middle. The desk bows, tilting on its axis as the legs fail to hold the broken pieces together. Heedless of their capacity reached, I lean my full weight on my palms, hanging my head low. My shoulders scream with the strain, but I don’t care.

Nothing matters anymore. Not the life I tried to build here, not the years put into this place, the meaningless existence within Harken that only took on some speck of value when she came into my life.

Now all that is extinguished and I’m too fucking tired to deal with the fallout. Hell, all I need is some mortal to join us and bring a squad of red and blue flashing lights to my door. Maybe they can cart me away to a safer place where I’ll be given my own padded room, a jacket with no end, and a door no key can open from the inside.

My lips quirk. Hell on Earth. It sounds perfect.

Footsteps interrupt my reverie. I squeeze my eyes shut tight, blocking out the flat thuds like a toddler hiding behind his hands. But even that attempt at self-deception can’t save me from myself as their owner draws ever closer.

Lethe has more sense than to approach me now. It must be Kaleb, ever senseless and suicidal.

“Leave me the fuck alone,” I grouse, neck-deep in my bout of self-loathing, and enjoying my solitary bout of misery far too much.

Whoever said misery loves company was full of shit. Solitude is where it’s at. Give me that white, round room and a two-way window where I can entertain a cohort of shrinks for the rest of my immortal existence.

“Mana. This place. You need to leave it.” Addi’s soft voice shreds through my defenses without an inch of effort. “Come with me.”

I swing around to face her, untempered rage blazing from my every pore. “How the hell did you get in here?” I rasp, gripping the desk’s shattered parts to keep myself from wrapping my hands around her neck and squeezing.

Or from kissing her and falling to my knees. If I do that, I’ll never rise again.

She stares at me, the pulse at the base of her throat fluttering wildly. “I— the door was open. The floor. The walls…” She swallows, raising sanguine-coated fingertips to her face and turning them outward to show me. “What happened here?”

I smile at her, not an inch of humor left in me. “I grew too big for my own ego, little human,” I say softly, watching that pulse beat out of time with my own. My hands itch to hold her tight, squeeze until that pulse slows, and tap out the rhythm to match mine until we both…

Stop.

Her breath catches as I find myself a mere breath from her lips, arched over her body, long steps from my desk where I left myself the last time I checked. Instead of cursing up a storm or retreating, I reach for her. When she doesn’t back away, standing frozen like good prey always does, I fit my hand around her slim neck.

My thumb finds that spot I like, tapping gently as her body’s beat increases. A deep snarl leaves me when she doesn’t react the way I require.

Addi stares up at me, confusion, not fear, etching her stunning features. “What do you need?” she whispers, searching my face.

I should pull away, drop my hand, and let her go. I should tell her to leave this place and never return. Stay the hell away from the living dead who remain within the boundaries, because all we will do to her innocence is destroy her.

She cannot withstand our combined wrath unscathed. We will break her, like we ruined Bowen. He served me, and look at the outcome of that little venture.

A reaping, sin, and carnage.

The dirt floor of Harken bathed in my personal fluids, and not the fun sort.

I still have no idea how he managed to complete a full transfusion of his blood to mine, but right now isn’t the time to contemplate his wicked ways.

And yet despite all Addi’s declarations she’ll stay away, here she is, within arm’s reach. Within my hands.

“You said no sex, little hell kitten,” I breathe, watching her eyes dilate as I close my hand around her delicate, mortal throat. “But you didn’t say anything about death. What if I take us both back to my home, and show you what true pleasure is?”

A lie, because there’s no way I’ll take her to a place where she’ll never escape. After today I’m not certain of the welcome I’ll receive there when I do return. She could end up in the realm I left and I could be stuck … here.

Or nowhere.

The yawning pit of nothingness reserved for a greater sort of damnation than anything I’ve delivered with my eternal, unending soul.

“Do it,” she breathes, crystaline eyes sparkling with tears of the horrors she’s tread simply to get to me. “End us both and show me who you are, Mana. I want to know.” Her head tips back as she offers me everything without a single thought otherwise.

The sound that grows within my chest isn’t human.

“You have no idea what you’re asking, little one.” My thumb traces the line of her jaw. I could close my hand, collapse her windpipe, and crush her bone structure in one snap of my wrist. She’d feel pain for less than a second before she fell.

“Show me,” she begs with all the purity of a freshly broken heart.

I swallow the need breeding within me. “Another time I would pull your chest open and drink from your bleeding heart while you still breathe,” I serenade her, my voice low and seductive, the one I’ve used on a hundred-thousand souls ripe for devouring.

Addi quivers in my arms as her tears fall, but they aren’t for herself. No, these tears—they’re for the monster in me. She feels sorry for me.

The need to shred her flesh doubles, triples, until I’m fighting my own base nature to keep her alive in my hands. The simplest answer is to release her, turn around and throw myself from the window. I don’t care if I wake on the ground, alive, in pain, or not at all.

As long as I don’t take her with me.

I lean down and press a kiss to her pulse, gently, sweetly. “I will not bring that fate to you, Adreana.” Before I can claim her mouth, I release her, though I don’t back away, still inhaling the scent of her, needing to listen to the blood thrumming through her body. Needing to know she’s real.

This day is beyond fucked up. If she’s a hallucination, I won’t be surprised. Right now, I’ll take everything I can get.

“Because you love me.” New tears coat her face, glazing her skin with anguish.

I smile gently. “You should go, sweet girl. This isn’t the place for you. It never was.”

Her lips tremble. “Are … are you throwing me out?”

The odd rearrangement of our first meeting, the meaning the same, the words twisted, sits strangely in my gut, though it sounds right.

“No, my love,” I whisper to the girl I hated on sight and fell in love with for all the wrong reasons. “I’m not throwing you out. But this place is not safe for you. I am no longer your haven.”

She sobs, great wracking moans that rattle her body, tearing her throat until she rasps before me. And still I smile at her, wishing I could feel her lips move under mine one more time.

“You are so beautiful, do you know that?” I trace a hand over her hair, not quite touching the silken locks. Undeserving to lay my hand on her again. “Find a human, Addi. Make love to a man who will adore you as you do him.”

Horror fills her face. “You’re rejecting me?” she whispers, her hands shaking as she reaches for me.

Sadness overwhelms me. “Love, I’m saying goodbye. This …you’ll die with us.”

“I don’t care!” she fires back.

My smile returns. “I know, Love. You’re so stunning when you’re roused. Find yourself a good man. Find four, if that’s what it takes.”

“No one will replace you. Not ever.” Her breath catches in her throat, her eyes reddening as her tears wash her skin clean with loss and salt.

“Perhaps.”

I place my hands on her shoulders and lean in to press my lips to her temple. “Because I love you, I’ll break your rules once more. Just once, my love.”

Hope flares in her face, and my heart cracks. After this, there is no coming back. She’ll hate me the way I once hated her.

“Goodbye, Adreana. My love.”

My lips upon her skin are the last sacrilege, the final contact I need as I blink, shifting us to her room, lingering just long enough to see my loss reflected in her eyes, before I return to Harken and shatter the link with Sinner’s End. Even I can’t reestablish that connection now.

I stand in my study, leaning my back against the broken desk and face Kaleb who has finally dragged his horrified ass up to my level.

And he shouts the words at me that he wanted to scream downstairs, but couldn’t then. Nothing, however, stops him from voicing those four tiny words right now.

“What did you do?” he demands, out of breath, out of everything.

Like me. All of us.

Lethe appears, wraithlike behind him. The angel places the black blade on the stone floor of my office. It makes no sound whatsoever.

I close my eyes, unable to face either of them for this next part. “I told her I loved her. And I took her home.”

The finality of that simple phrase is enough to rock us all.

Kaleb slides to the floor, places his forehead on his knees, and cries. Lethe stares at the knife on the floor and looks torn between picking it up and joining his brother in arms.

Me? I stare out the window, and wonder how many souls I need to steal to make Harken sing again. One for every single stone in the foundations to the tip of the bell tower. Five hundred and fifty-four thousand, two hundred and twenty-three.

Enough to drown out my screams each night of why I let her go. Why I let myself be tortured and alone. Why I sent her into another’s arms.

But first, I need to find myself a new Chemist. And figure out what the fuck Bowen did with the soul of my old one.