Darkest Sinner

by Van Dyken, Rachel

  I quickly jerked out of my button-down black shirt and threw it to the ground.

  “Weeellll…” Mason gulped, his skin growing pale. “At least we know it’s growing at a more rapid rate now.”

  I opened my mouth again and gave Cassius a helpless stare. He moved Ethan out of the way and approached while I put my hands up to stop him. I didn’t want to hurt him, and I had no control over my body, I could just stand there and exist.

  “Speak!” Cassius’ voice thundered so loud that my ears rang. “Now!”

  I shook my head no, because I truly couldn’t.

  And then he touched my face. Ice pressed against my cheeks as his eyes went completely white and then shockingly red. My red.

  “Keeper of souls… guide them,” a voice rasped. “Trapped.”

  Was that me or inside me?

  Cassius swayed and then all of his feathers erupted in a frenzy from his back pointing like razors in my direction. It was his version of a kill shot and he wouldn’t let me go.

  I was a threat.

  Somehow.

  I was bad.

  I’d always known that, though, hadn’t I?

  This was on me.

  I was worthless; it’s why I wanted a soul in the first place.

  His feathers slowly descended and pressed against my chest. They drew no blood. They didn’t even scratch me.

  “You protect this body… why?” Cassius demanded another answer.

  The voice erupted from within. “Because it has always been mine… loved, I risked…”

  Cassius released me in disgust. I’d never realized a demon could feel shame until that moment.

  “Greedy fool,” Cassius muttered. “You are split in half!”

  I looked down.

  He muttered a curse. “Not literally!”

  I felt a swirl of power behind me. Alex. They were surrounding me because I was the bad guy—again. Hell, and things had been going so well, hadn’t they?

  I would walk away from them. From this.

  This was beyond them. This was bad if it was beyond Cassius.

  “Release!” Cassius yelled, shaking the foundation of the earth beneath my feet.

  Suddenly I could talk again, even though it felt like I’d been choked from within. “I’ll leave.”

  “Not so fast.” Cassius held his massive hand out. “There’s an ancient text… older than—well as old as Sariel. You need to read it.”

  Oh good, we were taking orders from his dead archangel father now. Perfect.

  “So reading it is going to magically cure me from this?” I pointed at my winking tattoo, at the way it pulsed on my arm. And then I just lost it as frustration raged through me. I let out a roar and fell to my knees.

  The sun disappeared, immediately followed by the appearance of clouds of darkness and then a shadowy mist wrapped itself around me.

  “Stop calling the shadows!” Cassius gripped me by the arm, then cursed and yanked his hand back. A wicked burn had formed across his palm.

  “What the hell did you do, demon?” Alex roared. “Sell your soul to the devil himself?”

  “No.” Everything felt heavy as I stayed on my knees. “I never had one to begin with.”

  Cassius’s eyes turned silver white as he tasted the air and whispered, “Lie. Try again.”

  “I don’t remember!” I yelled. “Is that what you want to hear? I remember nothing past that day!”

  “What day?” This time Mason stepped forward, and repeated himself, “What day?”

  My eyes searched Cassius’s for help. “I don’t know. I just remember begging for it to stop, and she said it would. She said she would make me whole, I was the last of the first, the last of the first,” I couldn’t stop saying it, “The last of the first.”

  “Good,” Ethan said calmly. “Gibberish from a demon, I don’t think any of us signed up for this. Cassius, can’t you just mind read him?”

  “I… could,” Cassius said slowly. “But what if I can’t get out, what if it’s beyond my power? What if this is something deeper, older, stronger?”

  “Can’t you find out?” Alex.

  Cassius stared us down and then reached for Mason’s hand. The apple dropped and rolled toward me and then turned brown and shriveled up to its core.

  Power surged between them and hit me square in the chest as I fell backward, my last thought.

  Sunshine.

  KYRA

  You know those dreams that feel so real that you’re upset you’ve woken up? That’s the exact sort of dream that haunted me the entire night, and even when I showed up to work, I couldn’t look away from his bright red eyes. They should be terrifying—instead, they just seemed powerful, all knowing. They also seemed… burdened, and I wanted to reach out and grab the face that the eyes belonged to, I wanted to hold it close. Every hard inch of him was godlike in beauty, so much so that I was impressed my imagination could even conjure it up.

  I’d been wearing a crown. It was black with enormous rubies. And we danced in a magnificent, colossal ballroom surrounded by so many people, glowing people, people who looked like they belonged on that ridiculous Hercules movie from Disney.

  Not that I was comparing myself to a Disney princess, because there was something dark and sinister—not bad—but also no longer good about the way people stared at us like they were expecting death to follow.

  He was altered in a way that could not be fixed.

  I only wished I was a writer so I could pen the story, because it was incredible, and when he pulled me into his arms to kiss me, it felt real.

  “I gave my soul for you, sunshine, my everything to have you here with me, in this place. Tell me you don’t regret it,” he whispered against my mouth. He tasted like darkness, and I soaked in my fill.

  “Worth it,” I’d promised. Even though I knew our match was cursed before it began, there were rules—we broke them. What was the reason for that? Love? Obsession?

  “My beautiful wife—my queen, my sunshine.” He bowed before me, earning gasps amongst the crowd. I knew in my soul he never did that—he was the prince of the— prince of the—I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember his title.

  “Whoa, there!” Tarek slammed into me, his grip on both of my arms. “Any reason you’re closing your eyes and attempting to walk at the same time?”

  “Uhhh,” I gave him a weak smile, “Sorry I just had the craziest dream or vision, I don’t even know.”

  He licked his lips, his glance darted toward the bar and back at me. “Oh?”

  “Yeah, I mean it was so vivid, do you ever have those?”

  His smile was sad. “I don’t really dream.”

  “What?” I gave him a playful shove. “Everyone dreams. You probably just don’t remember them.”

  He just shrugged and ran a hand through his mop of hair. Huh, he had it down today, it was long, down his back, silky, thick, how did he get away with that and not look ridiculous? “How is that possible?”

  “Some of us are born…” He sighed. “Different. Besides, they say that dreams are eight percent reality.”

  At that, I burst out laughing. “Riiiight, so I married royalty about a billion years ago and here I am, just waiting for my prince to come. Okay.”

  He clenched his teeth. “You never know, maybe this is your second life. Maybe this is your first and you’ve just been roaming the world searching for your other half and every time you think you die you just wake up with a new life.”

  I frowned. “That has to be the craziest and most depressing thing I’ve ever heard.”

  He let out a snort. “You’re telling me.”

  “Hey! Can we get some service?” A rude college punk snapped his fingers at me. I instantly wanted to break them off.

  “Do it,” a voice inside my chest urged.

  Um… I looked around and shook it off, reined in my anger, and walked over to the sad preppy kid with his UW hoody on. “What can I get you?”

  “You on the menu?
” He high fived his buddy in an identical sweatshirt. Ah great, it was asshole day, lucky me.

  “Sorry, I’m married with ten kids. But if you want to be my new baby daddy I’ll just need you to pee in a cup and we can go out on our first date with all ten of them. I mean when you marry the mom you marry the kids, am I right?” I fake laughed.

  He gave me a horrified look and then grumbled, “Er, yeah, just two Coronas.”

  I flashed him a purposefully ditzy smile. “Thought so.”

  The rest of my day was almost identical to that: get hit on, make up a story about kids, and watch the college students rush off toward the other women in the bar who were only too happy to let them make out for hours on end.

  Who did that in public?

  “Human men,” came the answer behind me scaring the crap out of me again as Tarek flashed me a grin. “And some people just like stupid easy prey. Not me though,” He leaned in until I could smell his spicy scent. “I like the hunt, live for it, actually.”

  There was something magnetic about him. I couldn’t help but sniff the air—he felt so safe.

  The minute I thought it, his face fell. “I ugh, should get back to work.”

  And then he was gone, leaving me more confused than ever.

  “You hurt the pup’s feelings.” Timber was lurking in the shadows.

  “How long have you been standing there?” I crossed my arms, my simple black tank suddenly felt too tight, my jean skirt indecently short as he eyed me up and down slowly only to settle his gaze on my mouth.

  He pushed away from the wall and in one graceful stride was right in front of me. “Long enough to know that you have ten kids… or is it seven? You really like to sell numbers to certain guys whereas others you know will give up easy if you just act stupid which you aren’t for the record. What I don’t understand is why don’t you just make up a fake boyfriend? Husband? Why the kids?”

  My throat swelled up a bit as I looked down and shrugged. “Kids seem to be the thing that people are too selfish to have. People rarely sacrifice their lives, their love, for someone else and even if they say they will—most wouldn’t do it for a complete stranger who works part time at a bar.”

  He nodded slowly. “That’s quite a heavy answer. I was expecting you to say something more along the lines of ‘because it works.’”

  I smiled at that, “Yeah well, it’s been a long day.”

  “That it has.” He suddenly looked exhausted as he reached for my hand. “Shall we?”

  “Ah so proper, you taking me into your office to fire me?”

  “You should be so lucky to stay away from me, should have run when you had the chance, right out that door, screaming about myths and monsters.” His voice lowered and almost snapped as he said it.

  I jumped a bit when he opened the door to his office and ushered me inside only to close it with finality and lean against it, once again watching me.

  “You smell like sunshine.” He said it again like it was irritating him.

  I sniffed the air. Smelling nothing but the smell of wood burning and those damn lotus flowers. “Do you need me to change perfumes? Am I getting written up?”

  His smile had my knees buckling. “No. And it’s not your perfume, it’s you.”

  “Oh awesome, my natural musk smells like sunshine, lucky me!”

  “Not so lucky.” He said it under his breath as he shrugged out of a black leather jacket revealing a short sleeved black shirt and a tattoo that took over his entire arm.

  “Did you just get a sleeve?”

  He barked out a laugh. “Yes, and you know what my choices were? A rose and a tree. I just couldn’t decide which, soooo why not combine it into a fruit tree with so many branches my eyes get dizzy…”

  “Er…” I winced at the unreal black ink. “It’s intricate.”

  “It’s a pain in my ass.” He shook his head. “Anything peculiar today or are you ready to go home?”

  “Home?” I repeated and then checked my watch. “No way! I didn’t realize I worked overtime, I’m so sorry. I can—”

  He shook his head. I stopped talking.

  With a gulp, I pointed behind me. “I’ll just be leaving, see you tomorrow.”

  He stood. “I’ll drive, just let me grab my keys.”

  And that was how for the second night in a row, my very sexy and peculiar boss took me to my apartment, only this time in a jet black Tesla with red seats.

  Oddly, it fit him.

  I wasn’t sure how I knew that, just that it made sense.

  We were at my apartment within minutes. I was just about to say thank you when he parked, got out of the car, opened my door, and then escorted me to the front door.

  We were silent. My apartment was on the second floor, so we took the stairs, and all the time I wondered what his end game was, my safety or curiosity, or worse, something else?

  I finally made it to my door, ready to shove my key in the lock, and nearly passed out when I noticed the door was ajar.

  “Son of a bitch.” He kept cursing as he shoved the door open, revealing several red eyes staring right back at both of us, all of them belonging to men with gorgeous model like faces, which honestly seemed more out of place then the red eyes.

  Maybe they had the wrong apartment?

  Maybe they weren’t here to…

  “Massster.” The blond one fell to his knees. “We are at your service.”

  What. The. Hell.

  “We did not know!” Another eyed me nervously, then focused on Timber. “We apologize, we could no longer smell the mark of—”

  Timber held up his hand; it was shaking, he clenched it into a fist and then lost his ever-loving shit as he charged the one bowing, kneeing him in the face, kicking him backward and slamming his fist into his jaw. I heard a crack, and then I closed my eyes and plugged my ears—not that it helped, I heard every scream of pain, every broken bone, and then I was surrounded by Timber’s scent as he picked me up into his arms and carried me back down the stairs and deposited me into the waiting Tesla.

  I was shaking uncontrollably as he pulled out his cell. “Tarek, go to her apartment, let the council know about the bodies.” He shot me an apologetic glance. “Have Alex incinerate them—I don’t care that they have no souls, they made their choice when they walked in!” He growled out something in another language. “Just do it! I’m taking her to my place, grab her a bag, whatever has her scent on it the most, you take that—” He covered the phone with his hand. “Any valuables you need? Things from your childhood you have stored that you don’t want destroyed?”

  I opened my mouth, closed it, and then gripped my silver sunshine necklace. “I’m w-wearing it.”

  “Smart girl,” he muttered then barked more orders at Tarek.

  He hung up and turned on the heat, then reached across the console and placed his hand on my left thigh, it was bare. I almost jumped anticipating the icy cold of his fingertips, instead they felt warm, they felt soft.

  I relaxed a bit, still panicking on the inside.

  Still wondering what he meant about incinerate.

  After ten minutes, I finally found my voice. “Who were those men?”

  Timber wiped a hand down his face and kept driving and then slammed his hands against the steering wheel. “Not human.”

  Hysterical laughter bubbled up inside me. “Yeah, okay, and you’re the abominable snowman!”

  The light turned red. He pulled to a stop and gave me such a menacing look that I leaned back against my door, and then his eyes matched the stoplight, flashing so red that it was impossible to hold the scream in. “No, sweetheart, I’m way worse than that. I am the damned.”

  I reached for the door handle only to have him squeeze my thigh and hit the accelerator through the rest of the red light. “Struggle and you could die, they have your scent, they want you because you feel warm to them, alive, and if there were that many, it means you’ve been watched, marked for dead. You stay or you die.”

/>   “You, your eyes match theirs.” I couldn’t take the trembling from my voice or the way my body kept shivering. “They called you ‘master.’”

  He bit out a curse and turned down a dirt road where I would most likely be killed. Right?

  His body convulsed a bit and then he said in a booming voice that caused the car to shake. “I am the last of the first!”

  And everything faded to black.

  TIMBER

  I paced in front of the couch while Tarek and Mason ate me out of house and home and Cassius stood by the fire deep in thoughts that he refused to share. All I knew? They were bad because his ice kept dousing the fire regardless of what Stephanie did to calm him down.

  Genesis and Ethan had been on a rare date night, which I’d interrupted and now I was the focus of both of their glares.

  Hope and Alex were seated on the other couch watching Netflix while Serenity stood guard by the door just in case.

  It was a complete shit show.

  Demons never attacked without my command.

  And yet there they’d been, in her apartment, actually hunting a human outside of the clubs.

  I wondered if they felt what I did when they touched her. Did they taste colors? Did things finally feel at peace? Or was she just so good they wanted her soul regardless of the laws that were intact—if you wanted yours restored, you could have it, but demons were a selfish race, they wanted what they wanted and they wanted more than one.

  We were split down the middle.

  I’d like to think I was keeping the peace, and now I was questioning everything.

  “Sooooo…” Mason chomped on a piece of raw celery and made a face, “Are we gonna talk about the elephant in the room.”

  “He means Kyra,” Tarek explained, always the helpful one.

  “I just want to know what the hell you said to her that made a star actually fall from the sky.” Alex grinned at the TV without looking at me.

  “Stop exaggerating.” I rolled my eyes. “A shooting star bigger than anything in history flew across the skyline toward Egypt, shit happens.”