Chapter 3
Three
Sebastian
I strutted around like a peacock with his feathers out after fading into the Underworld. I haven’t had this much energy in…ever.
All this energy and nothing to do with it.
Isabella Wen.
I smiled as I roamed the City of the Dead.
Dark place. The sun didn’t exist down here, but a fake moon did.
It never actually got brighter down here either, always staying the same nocturnal, bustling place.
Not many places to shop in the Underworld so you were always bumping into something else on the streets.
An arm… or a tentacle if you were unlucky.
Slimy as shit. Water demons were disgusting and one was close by. I sidestepped to avoid it.
Oh, look, there was the semen shop. I was mildly curious what witches and warlocks needed with it but not curious enough. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and glanced around.
Back to Isabella… tiny little critter but I wasn’t fooled, she was packing major power in that body.
She didn’t look her age. She looked young, but I knew by my Reaper senses that she was over thirty.
There was an innocence about her though that age had nothing to do with.
Maybe I just flustered her or maybe it was because I wasn’t human but she had gotten so red.
I chuckled at the image in my head of her reddened cheeks.
The real question was, how the hell did she wake me up, not once, but twice?
But then again, did that even matter when she gave me all kinds of fucking energy in the process?
Nope.
How long would this burst of energy last? Hmm…
I got the feeling Izzie didn’t like me much, which was strange.
I happened to be very likable. Maybe I came on too strong?
Was it because I slipped my hand on her stomach?
I hadn’t meant to make her uncomfortable; it hadn’t even been sexual.
I was just testing out my theory, which was proven correct.
She was like my own personalized energizer.
I made up my mind. Izzie and I were friends now. Friends let friends use them as an energy outlet. Friends were totally cool with touching each other.
Now…. About friends. Both persons had to want to be friends for friendships to work.
Back to the problem at hand, how did I make shorty get friendly?
Someone slid their hand down my arm as they passed me on the street. I stopped and turned my head to see a beautiful redhead giving me a flirtatious smile. I smiled back, naturally. I was friendly like that.
“You have an interesting energy around you,” she told me, studying me.
I couldn’t get a read on her. I couldn’t even tell what kind of demon she was. Something was off about her. “Is that so?” I asked.
She met my eyes again. “You should stay away from energy like that,” she added as she dropped her hand from my arm.
Then it hit me, I was suddenly drained.
She smirked. “You look tired, Sloth.”
How the hell did she know who I was? What did she do to me? Why did it feel like she took what the witch gave me?
I still couldn’t get a read on her. I couldn’t even find a name for her, which was unusual. First, I couldn’t read how the werewolf died, and now I couldn’t find any information with my Reaper senses on who this chick was.
What the hell was going on?
“Who are you?” Just as I reached for her, she ported.
I cursed and grabbed my head. I was so sleepy again. After the small bit of energy, it truly sucked to feel this way again.
I had hoped to give Isabella some time before I went to her again, but at this rate, I would fall asleep soon…
My phone dinged, and I pulled it out. It was a text from Payne.
Time to go to work.
I groaned. We were always working. Only none of us were as enthusiastic about it as Payne.
◆◆◆
I yawned, stretching as I did so. Barron shot me a dark frown and growled, “Who thought it was a good idea to bring the Sloth?”
The way he referred to me as Sloth you’d think he detested me, but we were brothers, me being the eldest of seven siblings.
You got used to Barron. He was cursed to be miserable and angry.
He treated everyone, even the ones he loved—which was only the family because no one else could tolerate his delightful personality—horribly. But he was the sin of Wrath after all.
“Oh, just like we let you out of the house to play with that personality of yours?” I retorted, and his dark eyes seemed to turn a shade darker.
Payne sighed, stepping between us. “Stop the family feuding, let’s do what we came here to do.” Payne, the son of two notorious villains, was a friend of the family. His parents turned over a new leaf and became friends with Mom and Dad, who were the very ones that took out bad guys like them.
Yeah, no, that wasn’t weird at all.
Weird perfectly described the fucking story of our family. Our parents actions was the reason why we were all cursed.
“If he fucking passes out, which he will, I ain’t carrying him back,” Barron said as he referred to me like I wasn’t there.
He crossed his arms over his chest and looked the other way.
We were complete opposites in our looks, while we were both over six-feet-tall, he took our dad’s dark hair and eyes while I took our mom’s blue eyes and light-colored hair.
Payne smirked but otherwise said nothing.
“Is August coming?” Barron asked, turning his head back toward us. August was our other brother, the sin of Greed. Another delightful asshole.
“No, but no worries. I’ll protect you idiots,” Maureen said, fading beside Barron with a smirk.
Barron grinned which was no surprise. Out of all our siblings, Barron got along the most with our sister Maureen. The two were close, maybe because they were so much alike.
“Who are we taking out?” she asked, looking over us all with a toothy smile.
“Imps. Grim suspects they’ve been trafficking children into the Underworld and harvesting them,” Payne told her what I already knew. Imps were nasty little critters with wings that preyed on kids as well as teens. They went after demon children too. They didn’t discriminate.
She nodded. “Well, what are we waiting for?”
◆◆◆
“Are you sure this is the right place?” Maureen asked as she took a step toward the cave entrance.
“Are we ever wrong?” Payne asked her. He wasn’t joking or smiling, just stating the facts.
Maureen gave him a smirk as a thin sword materialized in each hand. She twirled her wrists around. “I would knock…but there’s no door.” And with that, Maureen faded.
“Well, let’s not let her kill them all before we get inside,” Barron said with a crooked grin before fading himself.
Payne, Mr. Straight and Narrow next to me, couldn’t fade like us, but he had a portal chip.
I watched as his jaw ticked before we both sprinted inside.
It didn’t take long for some of the imps to greet us.
Payne kept two weapons at all times. A rifle and a huge ass sword lay across his back, and most people would think it was odd he carried them around but not when you knew his parents.
His dad was into guns, and his mom was into swords and daggers, it was only natural that he took a liking to both.
My own weapon—a machete—materialized, and I hacked away at the first one that jumped at me, teeth bared. I took out another one as Payne grabbed his rifle and blew the head off the one that was jumping toward him. Bang! Bang! Two more.
It didn’t take us long to find Barron and Maureen, literally waist deep in imps, and a hundred or more flying all around us. Not that it was necessarily a problem, just tedious. The real problem was the number of children in the cave.
“Shit,” Payne muttered what we all thought.
“How did they get so many?” Maureen hissed as she brought her blades out and twisted her entire body in a circle, slicing into every imp around her.
Something snapped within me when I saw all the children, most of them human, especially the ones cut to pieces lying on the ground. Their ghosts wailed and screamed, some even transitioned into poltergeists with their hatred and fear of what had been done to them intact.
“How did we not know of this sooner?” I practically growled, gripping my blade tighter. I was already on edge with the way my Reaper senses had been acting up, now I was beginning to understand that maybe it wasn’t just me.
A muscle in Payne’s neck jumped. “Feel that?” he asked.
I arched a brow, then proceeded to hone in on what Payne wanted me to feel as I sliced into some imps and he shot them down from the sky.
And I did feel it. Not only feel it, I heard what was lacking inside their chests. Their hearts were brutally carved out. Their souls screaming for their injustices. It wasn’t what they said, which was nothing, it was everything they poured out into their very essences.
There wasn’t anything ordinary in the deaths of these children. “Their hearts are missing.” Barron must have heard us.
He was right though; their chests were opened. “There’re remnants of something powerful in the cave. Some sort of spell or ritual… Or it could be a thing,” Maureen added.
“Kill them all.” I noticed the way Barron’s voice altered, the way his body twitched, and his muscles flexed in and out. Payne tossed me a look the same time I did him because he knew that my brother was seconds away from raging out.
“My thoughts exactly,” Maureen nodded. “They can’t speak, so it’s not like they can tell us what they were doing with the children.”
“Maureen,” I hollered in a severe tone that made her turn and glance back at us. I motioned to Barron and her eyes were quick to find him and that was all it took. Maureen could manage Barron better than all of us. Sometimes she could talk him out of his rage before he fell completely into it.
“Barron,” she called to him, all the while still taking out imps.
There weren’t many left. Most were in the sky and Payne was shooting them down.
I morphed my weapon into a thick black chain and sent it into the air, slicing into them.
They squawked, and the entire cave was painted in their green blood.
In the distance, the children whimpered, some huddled together in a cage while others were chained up. They were safe now that we were here, and I could focus on Barron who we needed to get under control.
“Don’t fucking rage,” she told him. “We have to get these kids out of here.”
While Payne shot down the last of them, I hurried toward Barron and Maureen. Barron didn’t have any thoughts, he didn’t even have a consciousness when he raged, which meant the children were in danger if we didn’t get him under control.
“Barron!” I yelled, and he snapped his head around to me. His eyes were already blackened. “Whoa, don’t give me that look. I’m your brother.”
“I don’t think talking is gonna work this time,” Maureen told me. “Seeing all these dead children has darkened all of our moods, especially Barron’s.”
I knew she was right.
I slung my chain out to the side. “Guess it’s restraining him.” Cocking my head to the side, I asked. “Did you bring the syringe?”
Maureen took a deep breath and morphed her sword into a chain like mine. “You two and August are gonna be the death of me.” She made us sound like a handful.
I wanted to chuckle but then something worse happened. The wave of exhaustion slid over me, blanketing my body, invading my mind. I staggered to my right.
“Um, Maureen…might need to find a bed too while you’re at it.”
Her eyes widened in horror. “Oh, no, no, no,” she shouted at me.
I slumped forward, heading face first into the dirt just as I saw Barron charging at me with murder in his eyes.
“Payne!” Maureen screamed. “Reaper down! Reaper down! And Barron’s—”