Always two sides.
Hah, King of the demons.
I wondered what they would all say if they knew the truth… That I wasn’t just a demon… never have been, never would be.
TIMBER
I was maybe one mile into my drive when my cell went off.
“Give me good news, Saint.” I grunted as one of my associates chuckled on the other end, ah, it wasn’t going to be good. And the day was going so well wasn’t it?
“Sorry, Timber, Tarek’s working out just fine.”
I almost exhaled in relief. It’s not like a werewolf, especially a royal one, knew how to be polite around so many demons, it wasn’t in their nature to befriend something dark, no it was in their nature to completely destroy it with their bare teeth, and yet I had him working at one of our bars. What the hell had I been thinking?
Oh, right…
Give him a chance.
Let him see something outside of his home in Scotland, allow him to get groomed for the role he would eventually take by Mason’s side as his younger brother, blah, blah, blah, blah—oh, look a hummingbird, blah.
“So what’s the problem?” I was already turning around and making my way into the city. I owned a dozen bars around the Puget Sound, my largest was called Soul, get it? Soul? Because none of us had one, and we used it as a way to lure humans into our sanctums and suck them dry.
But those were the good ol’ days.
Now my race was divided between those who wanted redemption, who, when we did leave this earth, wanted to be reunited with the Creator… and those who looked forward to the Abyss, Hell, Tartarus—whatever you called it, it didn’t have unicorns and sunshine.
There weren’t many left that were fully dark, but the ones that were, seemed to keep to themselves. I’d cleaned every bar up and only allowed my men to feed on a woman if she was willing.
We had a hell of a Non-disclosure agreement.
Then again, they were so high on our blood that they just nodded and walked out the door where our vampire security made sure they never remembered a thing.
It was working.
So why was I getting a call?
“Listen, someone came in asking for a job…” Saint grunted.
“We have enough people,” I barked in a loud voice as I took the exit, waited at the stoplight and then hit the accelerator toward the Pier.
“That’s what I said, but Tarek felt bad, and he—”
“Is Tarek suddenly making himself the manager?”
“No, but he is quite… persuasive.”
I just bet he was.
“I’m pulling up now.”
Rage filled me, feeding the darkness within as I slammed the door and stomped past security into the dimly lit bar with its loud pumping music and sweaty bodies, people all touching one another on the dance floor. Standing room only, why was I not surprised?
Like I said, we were like a drug to humans; once they were in, they were known to dance until we kicked them out.
Something about us just called to them.
They thought it was the beauty on the outside.
Joke was on them, because it was the ugliness on the inside that called, the darkness that matched their own. People are under the assumption that they’re only attracted to good.
Spoiler alert.
Humans are fallen.
Meaning they’re equally attracted to pure evil.
I grinned at that, even though I knew I shouldn’t. My blue eyes searched the grinding bodies and finally stopped when I saw Tarek wave a huge hand in my direction.
The guy was at least six foot three and had long brown hair he pulled into a man bun that made me roll my eyes every time I had to look at him. He was a Scottish hippy in an American bar.
I had to hand it to him.
The guy raked in the tips every time he opened his bloody mouth.
“Tarek.” I dug my fingernails into the wooden bar and then scratched into it a very graphic design of me hanging him over a tree and using a baseball bat to show him why hiring without my decision was a poor choice in life.
He just grinned down at the little fingernail drawing and said, “That’s cute.”
“You’re a pain in the ass.” A growl thundered in my chest earning cautious looks from people nearby. I gave my head a shake as the red threatened to take over my line of vision. “You’ve been here a week and already you’ve fired two people and then hired a person… Who died and gave you my job, because I’m pretty sure my heart’s still beating.”
“Pretty sure or sure-sure?” His eyes narrowed.
I let out an annoyed sigh. “I’m alive, which is more than I can say about you if you don’t explain yourself in the next three seconds.”
He gave me a smug grin. “So there was this woman…”
“Well shit, by all means, give her the keys to the place!” I roared, just as a short pixie looking thing rounded the corner, she had blue streaks in her hair, a nose piercing, and was wearing a tiny tank top paired with cut off shorts and red cowboy boots.
“As I was saying…” Tarek elbowed me like we were friends and then winked. “There was this woman—”
“Shouldn’t women be taller?” I wondered out loud.
“Does it matter? Look at her.”
“She’s passable,” I lied.
“Bullshit. She’s gorgeous, and she begged me for a job.”
I jerked my gaze to his. “Was she willing to do anything, then? You’re a dog, a complete mutt, I should put you down…”
“Slow your roll Demon King,” He grinned again. “I’ve got a girl back home I’ve had my eye on for a few hundred years.”
My right eye twitched. “Well, by all means, move slower.”
He lifted two middle fingers. “She’s special.”
“Yes that’s why you should wait five hundred years to hold her hand—she’s special, different. Tarek, I was fighting wars before your people were even gifted with the rule over earth. Believe me when I say, all of them are the same.”
“Hi!” A peppy voice had me craning my neck and then looking down… down… down. The woman was barely five feet tall! “I’m Kyra Apollonia!”
I stared and stared, then crossed my arms and muttered. “You’ve got to be shitting me.”
My tattoo seemed to shiver across my palm, the pain dissipated briefly before coming back full force like it was warning me about something.
Fantastic.
“What the hell kind of name is Kyra Apollonia?” I just had to know. Really. Who has the last name Apollonia? It was like Pollyanna but worse.
“Oh,” Her bronzed cheeks seemed to pinken a bit. “So my parents are from this super old Greek family. Long story short, my father was Egyptian, my mother was Greek, and they wanted to combine both traditions. So Kyra Apollonia it is!”
“Kyra.” I repeated her first name. “Or Kyros, like Ra, the sun.” The room tilted as she sucked in a breath and then her jaw went slack.
I turned my attention back to Tarek. “Is she good?”
The infuriating thing waved a hand between us. “Hello? Standing right here? And how’d you know that? Did you study Egyptian mythology or something?”
I barked out a laugh at that. “Your mythology is my Bible, strange, but true.” I rolled my eyes and looked back to Tarek. “If she breaks one glass she’s done.”
Silence ensued between them.
I sighed. “Multiple glasses then…”
“Thank you!” The woman I hardly knew, who barely came up to my chest, wrapped her arms around my body so tight and fast that I couldn’t prepare myself.
I stood there like an idiot while her warmth filled me from the inside out. Every part of her body that touched mine was on fire, the good kind, the slow burn that makes you willing to do anything, say anything, swear anything for more.
And then she was gone, skipping back through the crowd and finding her place behind the bar pouring beer.
“Still think she’s just
like every other woman?” Tarek put a hand on my shoulder.
I was irritated that he put a hand where she’d touched.
He stole her warmth, damn it!
My eyes narrowed. “She’s… there’s something…” I squeezed my hands and then looked down at my palm.
The black seed tattoo.
Had sprouted a green branch.
Toward my thumb.
KYRA
If he didn’t want me breaking glasses he needed to leave. I tried not to stare, but he was making it difficult. For one thing, he was completely massive. Then again, so was Tarek.
I frowned.
“What’s his name?” I asked once Tarek came back behind the bar with an easy grin on his face and a wink in my direction. Surrounded by beautiful men, what a hardship.
“Who?” Tarek popped the caps off two Bud Lights and set napkins down for the customers in front of us, the ones who kept staring at me like I was on the menu. Bastards. I glared, then Tarek’s eyes did this creepy thing that almost made me want to look away before both guys got up and left.
“What did you just do?”
“Nothing,” he said quickly. “What were we talking about?”
“The guy that was ready to fire me for breaking glasses.”
And as if I’d conjured him, he walked near the bar and held up two fingers. Tarek nodded and sent two bottles of jack sailing down the table. The guy picked them both up and walked off.
“The owner,” Tarek said. “His name's Timber, he has a shit ton of money and needs a friend.”
Goosebumps erupted across my skin at the word friend. I didn’t have friends, and what family I did have just moved overseas. In fact, the last thing my mom said to me was that she had a good feeling about this bar. What mom says that? Specifically, about a bar named Soul? I took a deep breath and asked. “Say what?”
Tarek pointed at himself, “I’m the friend. He just doesn’t know it yet. He likes to isolate himself, darkness and all that.” He shot me a wink.
“So you just offered yourself up as his friend and he said ‘sure thing, I’d like one of those!’” I laughed.
“Not exactly.” Tarek joined in with me. “But it’s important. He’s going to need people around him.”
“Going to?”
Tarek swallowed and then shrugged. “Let’s just say I know things.”
“Ohhhhhh,” I tapped my temple with a black fingernail. “So you’re like one of those clairvoyant people?” That at least explained the goosebumps and weird feeling I’d had ever since walking in that place. A bar shouldn’t feel warm and homey—and yet the minute I stepped over the threshold it did.
He flashed me a perfect white smile and leaned in until our mouths almost touched. “Why? Is that the sort of thing that does it for you?”
I shoved him playfully away, the last thing I needed was to get involved with a guy who reminded me of my parents. They thought they were clairvoyant too. “Didn’t you say you had a girlfriend?”
“Yup! I’m safe.” Another flashy grin before he sauntered off toward a table full of college students that looked ready to flash him if he so much as flinched.
I gave my head a shake and wiped off the bar with a wet rag when I smelled it. It was a pine scent that reminded me of frankincense mixed with something heady. My tongue felt thick in my mouth.
“Are you going to rub a hole into my bar too?” came the raspy voice.
Slowly, I turned.
Up, up, up I looked into ocean blue eyes and blond, almost white hair. A jaw so sharp I almost reached up to touch it, full lips that couldn’t be real, and a body that seemed like it had stepped right off the cover of some magazine.
“Timber.” I said his name out loud, testing it on my tongue. Great, more goosebumps erupted as the heat in my chest seemed to expand out toward my arms until my fingertips tingled.
He went completely rigid, his jaw clenched. “Well? You must need something if you’re saying my name.” He stepped forward, nearly pinning me against the bar. “So? What is it? Kyra?”
I blinked.
Was it my imagination or did he say my name with an accent?
His black pupils bled into the blue of his iris’s and then I saw a pinpoint of red before he closed his eyes, turned around, and left, slamming the door to the bar behind him.
“What was that about?” Tarek asked making me jump a foot before pressing a hand to my chest. “He looked ready to either kill you or eat you.”
“Hah.” My heart fluttered, and then my entire body went on high alert. He was dangerous.
Very, very, dangerous.
And as I looked around the bar at the grinding bodies, at the beautiful people who watched others dance only to beckon them to their laps and toy with them like they were trying to put them under a spell, I had to wonder… why?
Just why?
Something felt… off.
Why had my mom suggested this bar of all places as a break after college?
“Tarek…” I licked my lips. “Why aren’t any of the men dancing?”
He shrugged. “Probably because it’s more fun watching women move their hips. Besides, not many men can dance, and men usually want sex so… clapping and snapping between beats typically means a hard no by any girl watching.”
“You clap when you dance?” I laughed behind my hand.
He bowed. “And my point is made!”
I forgot about Timber the rest of the night.
And when I let myself in my small apartment down the street. The one I could barely afford.
I could have sworn I saw his face when I closed my eyes.
What was more disconcerting…
It felt like he was still watching me.
Even then.
Something was hot against my face.
The darkness wrapped itself around me like a blanket. Thankfully, it didn’t scare me, the darkness. It was just the opposite of light, and that didn’t mean it was bad.
Dark was just the absence of light.
I’d always preferred it. Always. As if it was my savior. Most little girls are afraid of the dark—I embraced it because it provided comfort.
But the light always came.
Sadly, in the morning, things would look the same.
I’d be the same.
I was safe in the shadows and in the light.
I closed my eyes as a heaviness settled on my chest.
And when I blinked them open, there he was, standing there.
I blinked again.
Gone.
I jolted up. “Timber?”
Nothing.
With a shiver, I lay back down and could have sworn I heard someone chuckle in the darkness like this was the best entertainment they’d ever had.
And I was exhibit A.
TIMBER
“It grew?” Ethan gave me an odd look, his green eyes flashing as his fangs descended like they were in danger and he needed to attack anyone and everyone. Then again, I was the one who was at the vampire’s house with his wife Genesis and kids. “What do you mean it grew?”
But Ethan was the historian of the group. Next to Cassius, he was the only one who would know something, he wasn’t as old as me, but it was close, plus who truly kept track when you’d been alive so long?
I let out a long sigh then showed Ethan my palm. A black seed tattoo was still in the middle like always, moving, pulsing like it was a living breathing thing. And then the small green branch had strained toward my thumb and was now wrapped like a ring around the base.
The door slammed open, Mason stomped in looking every inch the weird werewolf Watcher that he was.
A werewolf king with the blood of the Watchers running through his veins making him powerful as hell, who could keep track of all the supernatural shit going on in that place?
Dark hair hung past Mason’s bare shoulders as he walked barefoot into the house, his wife Serenity, a relative goddess, close by.
I tensed.
Any
thing to do with goddesses made me want to run in the opposite direction. Mainly because it was my one weakness.
Or had been.
Her.
A daughter of Danu.
Twice a year she was allowed into this realm, twice a year I would touch her, and now… now the twelve goddesses of old were here permanently.
Because times were a changing.
Lovely.
Humans were no longer safe from the supernatural. And I had a sick feeling that it was only a matter of time before myth became reality.
“Serenity.” I bowed my head in respect, but didn’t stand. It pissed her off, which I loved more than she would ever know. She still had human blood in her body, but she was wholly goddess, wasn’t she? You could tell by the softness of her skin, the way she smiled, the sizzle of power that erupted from that same smile.
She skipped over to me and pulled me in for a hug. “I missed you.”
Mason growled.
“Sheath your claws.” I rolled my eyes, returning her hug. “I missed you too, I’ve been busy at the bar and with… whatever the hell this is…”
She released me and looked down at my palm. “Wait, did you add to the tattoo?”
“If I wanted to add to any of the tattoos on my body do you think I would go for a tree branch? I mean honestly…”
She gave me a shove and then reached out and pressed a finger to the middle of my palm, pressing the seed as if it were a button.
A groan escaped my lips as the pulsing and itching got worse. The color faded from the green only to return brighter.
“I tried.” She gave me a forlorn look. “I mean if none of us can remove it, your only hope is Cassius, but it’s kind of cute, you know? It builds character for the big bad Demon King to have a fruit plant on his palm.”
I wiped my hands down my face. “Call it a fruit plant again…”
“FRUIT PLANT!” Alex came barreling into the room and then spread his arms wide. “I’ve been waiting for this day my whole existence, the day you go soft.”
“Does he have to be here? Right now?” I asked Ethan.
“He lives here.” Ethan sounded as horrified as I felt, that a male siren would be anywhere near any living breathing thing.
“Uncle Alex, Uncle Alex!” Ethan’s twins stumbled into the kitchen, for being half vampire they were growing at alarming speed, already walking and talking like three-year-old’s at only a year. Frightening to say the least. “Come jumpy with us!”
Darkest Sinner Page 2
