Chapter 1 #3
Pinned in place by that invisible power, he could do nothing but watch as the figure stooped over Evan, lifting him up and forcing his head back at a painful looking angle.
The creature’s head tipped down, and black smoke rose from Evan’s face, billowing up under the demon’s hood.
His body shrank, turning gray and withering before Nicolas’s eyes.
Evan screamed, his voice going high and choking off as the life left him.
Panic pounded through Nicolas’s veins, and he closed his eyes as he listened to each member of his squad die.
He clung to his sword and drove his shoulders and elbows into the wall behind him, but no amount of pushing freed him.
He didn’t want to die like this, helpless and scared. He at least wanted to go down fighting.
“Let me go!” he roared, thrashing against the invisible thing pinning him still.
He came off the wall so suddenly that he staggered several steps, catching himself in the doorway. Everyone was already dead, their bodies withered and gray. They all died in just a few minutes, and he couldn’t do a thing to stop it.
“My God,” he wheezed, leaning heavily on the door frame. His knees wobbled, and his stomach twisted. He was going to be sick. “They’re all dead.”
“Evil,” the figure croaked, turning to face him. Its voice was deep and raspy, like old pipes rattling in a house.
Nicolas tried to take a breath, but his throat was too tight. “What?”
The demon stepped over a body—he couldn’t even tell who it was anymore—and Nicolas saw a flash of claw-tipped toes.
It stepped closer, and Nicolas should have backed away or raised his sword.
Instead his mind snagged on the demon’s deep voice, on the way those orange, glowing eyes trailed down his body and back up, like it was savoring him.
“Evil,” it said again. “Dark souls.” It lowered a clawed hand toward one of the bodies’ faces, then raised it to its own face.
“That’s what that was?” Nicolas asked. “The black stuff that came out of them. That was their souls?”
That hooded head inclined in affirmation. It was even closer now, almost near enough to reach out and touch. The being was half a head taller than him, and that was enough that it loomed. Nicolas should flee. Why wasn’t he moving?
“You ate their souls?” he whispered.
“Sin,” it said, then touched the center of its own chest. “Sin eater.”
Nicolas trembled. He was a sinner, too, wasn’t he? He had doubts. He questioned God’s plan. There was enough rage in him over what they’d done to Daniel to blow a geyser. He was just as bad as the rest of—
His thoughts screeched to a halt when the demon’s hand touched his cheek, sharp, black nails tickling softly.
“Bright,” the demon—the sin eater—said. “Bright soul.”
“What?” He lifted his own hand to wrap around the demon’s surprisingly human-like wrist, intending to push it away but getting distracted the moment their skin touched.
It had four long, bony fingers and a thumb, an elbow, a shoulder.
It seemed relatively human-shaped underneath the cloak, but its skin was black as coal.
He couldn’t make out any facial features beneath the hood except for the burning glow of its eyes.
“Beautiful.” The raspy rumble of the demon’s voice rolled down his spine. Its thumb stroked his cheek, and Nicolas trembled. It leaned in, the hood falling around Nicolas’s face and hiding the rest of the world from view.
He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the pain to start, but it never came.
Something soft grazed his cheek, and when he opened his eyes in shock, the warehouse was visible again.
The demon had ducked its head toward his neck and inhaled.
The fabric of the hood was brushing his cheek.
Lips grazed his skin, and then a wet mouth attached itself to his neck, sucking tenderly.
His stomach bottomed out. Nicolas panted, his head swirling with adrenaline and fear and something else he didn’t dare put a name to.
This wasn’t how the sin eater killed the others.
This was something far different. He gasped, breath wheezing through his tight throat.
The demon smelled like ancient stone and petrichor.
“What are you doing?” His voice quivered.
Strong fingers slipped between his palm and the hilt of his sword, prying it from his loose grip.
It fell to the concrete with a loud clang, and then the demon pushed him backward, into the hallway and against the wall.
The door to the factory floor swung shut behind them, hiding the bodies and his sword from view and cloaking them in the near absolute darkness of the hallway.
He still had his knives, but he barely remembered them.
His hands got lost in the demon’s supple black cloak.
“Need,” the demon rasped.
“Need what?” he whispered. “My soul?”
“No.” A long, wet tongue dragged up the column of his throat, and Nicolas shuddered, warring with his own body.
Why did he want to arch his head back? He inhaled deep lungfuls of the demon’s scent, squirming against the solid body beneath the cloak.
Their legs tangled, and a long thigh parted his.
His breath froze in his chest at the sudden friction, and it came out in a long, helpless moan.
God, it had been so long since anyone had touched him like this.
The demon raised its head slowly, glowing eyes burning Nicolas’s mouth.
“Again,” it rumbled.
Nicolas flushed with heat. The demon leaned in, applying more pressure, and Nicolas hissed through his teeth. His body moved of its own accord, flexing his hips to rut against the demon’s thigh, and he moaned again.
The demon lunged toward him. Nicolas gave a startled gasp, and then that long tongue was pressing between his lips.
This was not what it looked like when the sin eater was eating.
Nicolas froze, incredulity and disbelief outpacing shock or horror.
This demon was kissing him. Or—not kissing, but exploring.
Its tongue was longer and more pointed than a human tongue, and it swept through Nicolas’s mouth slowly, curling around his teeth, gliding under and around his own tongue, brushing the inside of each cheek. Like it wanted to learn him.
When it slipped further back, finding his soft palate and triggering his gag reflex, he jerked away, banging his head against the wall and twisting to free his mouth. “No, please, enough. Why are you doing this?”
The demon’s thumb swept across his damp lips, as though in apology.
Nicolas found the demon’s eyes again, and the hood tilted like he was a particularly curious specimen.
Both of its hands fell to his hips, guiding him to move again, and he hummed as unwitting pleasure coursed through him.
The demon did it again and again, until Nicolas was panting once more.
“Want,” the demon rasped. “You.”
“Please,” he breathed. He didn’t even know what he was asking for anymore.
His freedom? A climax? Or that strange tongue again, because it took his breath away but not in a way that repulsed him?
He should be fighting to escape. He should be reaching for the forgotten knives on his belt and carving his way out of this demon’s arms. Instead he was rocking against it, clutching the unfamiliar fabric of its cloak and resisting the urge to lean in for another ill-advised kiss.
He felt a bulge nudging against his hip.
Did that mean this demon was a male? Before he could decide, the demon took his collar in both hands and ripped his shirt right down the middle.
Nicolas stared down at his own panting chest. The demon’s hands trailed down his skin, sharp claws brushing the coarse hair that dusted his chest and circling one of his nipples curiously.
Nicolas stiffened, and orange eyes flickered up to his face.
Studying him intently, it—he—grazed Nicolas’s nipple with the sharp tip of his claw.
“God,” Nicolas moaned.
“No god,” the demon said, then ducked down and sucked the hardened bud into his mouth.
Sharp teeth pinched around his areola, and the perfect mixture of pain and pleasure drew a sharp cry from him.
His knees buckled, and the demon effortlessly took his weight, keeping him pinned between his cloaked body and the wall.
“This—this is wrong,” Nicolas tried, but it was hard to remember when all his body wanted to do was rock against the demon under him until he was a sated puddle. “We have to stop.”
“No.” The demon’s palm pressed flat against the bulge in Nicolas’s jeans, and he whimpered, his head and shoulders hitting the wall as he rocked into the touch.
Something was wrong with him. This couldn’t be normal.
His squad was dead on the other side of that door.
He should care. Even if they were idiot assholes who bought into Sloan’s propaganda.
That didn’t mean they deserved to die. Why did this demon get to be judge, jury, and executioner?
That cold dose of reality had him swatting the demon’s hand away from his groin. The demon’s head jerked up, and the fear returned with a vengeance. If Nicolas refused him, would the demon kill him, too?
“Don’t.” His voice quaked, but he lifted his chin defiantly. “We can’t do this. I won’t. If you’re going to kill me, just get it over with.”
The orange glow of his eyes winked in and out, and Nicolas realized he was blinking at him.
“No,” he rasped. “Not kill.”
“No?” Nicolas repeated, afraid to hope. He didn’t understand why this creature would kill his entire squad but not him.
Maybe it was a trap. A ploy to lure him into a sense of safety before striking.
But that didn’t make sense, either. This demon hadn’t done that with any of the others.
Their deaths had been painful but quick. He hadn’t toyed with them.
Sharp claws tickled his cheek. “Mine,” the demon said.
Nicolas struggled to inhale. His? What did that mean? “No,” he said reflexively.
The demon’s head bobbed back, like he was drawing back in affront. “Yes.”
“N-No. I don’t understand what… I’m not yours. You killed my squad.”
The demon tilted his head. “You care?”
“Of course I care!” But did he? Did he really?
Any of them would have turned him in if they found out he’d contacted Julian last month.
He didn’t trust any of them anymore. They were just people he was stuck with on patrols, because Sloan wouldn’t have found any of his complaints about their behavior valid.
He was a terrible person. He should care that they were dead.
One claw tapped his nose. “Guilt.”
Nicolas blinked at him, sagging. “Yes. I feel guilty.”
“No.” He pointed blindly at the door behind him. “Evil.”
“No, they weren’t.” At least, he didn’t think so.
Maybe they’d made some bad choices, but no one was truly good or evil.
Everyone had the capacity for both within them.
They were just doing what their commander told them was right.
He couldn’t blame them for that, not really.
Not when he could remember a time not so long ago when he considered those men his closest friends.
The demon leaned in, gripping Nicolas’s chin hard. His claws pricked his skin. “Saw it. Ate it. Evil.”
Nicolas stared into the burning points of the demon’s eyes, wondering why he cared what Nicolas thought at all.
“And what about you?” Nicolas whispered. “Are you evil?”
“I…” the sin eater rasped, “am justice.”
As crazy as it sounded, Nicolas believed him.
This demon—this incredibly powerful being—for some reason believed Nicolas was worth something.
He’d fought tooth and nail to become one of the youngest paladin captains in the guild, and it wasn’t enough to please the ghost of his father that lived on in his head.
He’d died when Nicolas and Daniel were just teens, but the memory of his disapproval survived, sharp and barbed and embedded too deep to remove, cutting him every time he dared to feel proud of himself.
It didn’t seem fair that a demon should be the thing that finally soothed that ache.
Nicolas stared up into glowing orange eyes. They reminded him of a marigold—his mother’s favorite. He put a fresh bouquet on her grave every spring.
For just a moment, he wanted to let himself stay. Here in the dark cocoon of the sin eater’s arms, he felt… wanted. His fingers sank into the supple cloak, and the demon’s body shifted closer. His hooded head tilted, and Nicolas had never felt so studied before.
“You’re…” Nicolas stopped. He had no idea what to say next. An enigma. Not a monster after all. Nicer than he expected.
But reality was a cruel constant. No matter how nice it felt, he was a paladin, and this was a demon.
Nicolas consciously loosened his grip on the sin eater’s cloak. “I have to go,” he whispered. His shirt was hopelessly ripped, but they had spares in the back of the SUV.
He slid along the wall, away from the demon, who turned and fell into step with him. Nicolas stilled, side-eyeing him.
“What are you doing?”
No response.
When Nicolas took another step, the demon matched him.
“You—You can’t come with me,” he said.
The sin eater tilted his head.
“I’m a paladin,” he said. “We can’t be seen together. They’ll—They’ll kill me if they find out about this.”
A low growl rumbled from him. The sound sent some primal part of Nicolas’s brain on alert.
This demon might have been willing to spare him for some reason, but he wasn’t a human being.
He was probably the most dangerous creature Nicolas had ever been in the presence of, no matter how nice he seemed.
He clutched the tatters of his shirt together. “Just stay away from me. That’s the best thing for both of us.”
He didn’t wait for acknowledgment, turning and striding away.