When Sinners Kneel

by R. Scarlett

  I turned my head to the side and shrugged. I couldn’t tell him I was searching for a friend or he’d involve himself and that was the last thing he needed. Another thing to add to his full plate of responsibilities. I’d tell him part of the truth. “It felt good.”

  It did. The adrenaline of the danger, of the risk. I needed that edge, the feeling of my breath leaving my mouth, of the air being sucked out of my lungs after a punch, and not knowing if it would return.

  After my encounter with the hunters, I had this craving for the danger, for the pain, for the lack of control. I’d felt it during the fight, but when Beau had touched me earlier, I’d felt it again. The thrill, the rush, the excitement.

  Tensley’s jaw grew tight enough to snap and he ran his fingers through his hair. He shot a look at his brother.

  “Pulled her out before they slit her throat,” Beau added, his voice close to a growl.

  I rolled my eyes inwardly. He was being dramatic. Knives weren’t even allowed in fights.

  A flare of anger swarmed around Beau and I could taste the burn. Again, his grip tightened on my t-shirt and he didn’t look away from me, not as his eyes lowered to my chest, accented by his own wrath. The t-shirt hung loosely on me, but he had bunched the fabric so it clung to my breasts.

  His eyes rose to my face, but he didn’t loosen his grip.

  “I had it handled,” I hissed, jerking away from Beau with renewed force and he finally let go.

  Beau folded his arms and laughed bitterly, his entire body shaking, and I hadn’t expected him to laugh. I froze, staring at him. “You were dead as soon as you stepped into the Pit,” he said, his voice as rough as cracking thunder.

  My cheeks flushed, and I felt the wave of anger rising inside of me.

  “Lex,” Tensley cautioned. “Sit down.”

  I had no power here and I wanted to scream at Beau. He knew that. He knew I couldn’t argue or fight against Tensley or him. They were higher class demons and they somehow thought they could tell me how to live my life. I hollowed out my cheeks and looked down at my feet. I sighed into my hands.

  Tensley glanced back at his older brother. The heartless demon. So cold, so distant. I didn’t know what was going through his head then, but he was examining his brother.

  “Thank you,” Tensley said lowly to Beau.

  I paused, staring at the two of them. Both Beau and Tensley clearly thought he’d done the honorable thing and saved me, but I hadn’t needed his help. I could save myself.

  Beau shook his head in confusion, brows furrowed, but after a moment, he nodded roughly. He didn’t say another word before leaving, never once looking back at me.

  It seemed he wasn’t inclined to reveal the fact that he’d healed me.

  Good, I thought.

  Tensley ran a hand down his face before turning his attention to me.

  He didn’t speak as he sat on the edge of his desk and leaned over, taking my hand in his, his fingers on my bruises. Touches light enough to eliminate the black and blue from the usual paleness of my complexion. I smiled grimly at that.

  What was with these brothers and their need to heal me.

  “You can’t go to the Pit, Lex,” he whispered, massaging a bruise on my jaw.

  I groaned. “I’m fine.”

  “Why?” he whispered, trying to meet my eyes. “Why did you go there?”

  I toyed with my frayed jeans, littered with holes and stains of dirt and blood. I thought of the best lie to tell him, to ease his worry, to make him not concerned about my life. He had Molly, his fiancée, to look after. He had Scorpios to worry about now. He didn’t need me to add to the list.

  “Because.” I gritted my teeth. “I don’t ever want to be weak again.”

  That wasn’t completely a lie. But it wasn’t the truth either.

  I did want to learn how to fight, how to defend myself. There was a part of me that loved the adrenaline of the fight, but there was also a part of me that had stayed scared and weak after the kidnapping. After the torture.

  And I was done feeling that way.

  But there were also other reasons why I’d gone to the Pit. Reasons I could never discuss with Tensley, because he’d have me followed by some of his men if he knew what sort of plans I’d been thinking up.

  He sighed, and I avoided his eyes. I was good at lying to him, but I didn’t want to push my luck any further.

  He worked his jaw, sitting back as he looked down at me and I waited for him to call me out.

  But he didn’t.

  He let his arms drop and let out a long sigh. “Just don’t go again, Lex,” he said, and added after a beat, “Please.”

  My eyes watered, and I smiled weakly up at him, raising a shoulder. I knew demons weren’t allowed to love anyone, but I cared for Tensley. And I knew this was his way of showing me he cared, too. “Okay, Dad,” I said playfully.

  He paled, quickly cleared his throat and straightened.

  I laughed at his expression, my fingertips tracing the faint bruises left on my arm absentmindedly.

  I wasn’t done.

  I wouldn’t give up. Not until I found Dolores. Not until I could protect myself.

  I would survive the Pit and Beau Knight, the heartless bastard, and find Dolores.

  The belladonna sank into my gums—slowly, painfully slow, but I wanted that. After leaving Tensley’s office, I made my way back to the Pit. I needed the money I earned. As I waited, with a cool glass of whisky glass in my hand, I listened to the aftermath of the fights.

  “Two thousand,” Danny said, slamming the nyxes, demon currency, onto the bar counter. The golden thick coins spun and slowly balanced. “This is a warning, Savage. Don’t interfere in fights. Let them play out.”

  I clenched my jaw and ignored him.

  I grabbed the money and counted, then shoved it into my pocket.

  In the years I’d come here, I’d not once seen or heard of who actually owned the Pit. A fact that I found irritating, I usually preferred knowing who the fuck I was dealing with.

  But I needed the release the fight offered more than I needed answers.

  So I didn’t ask questions, ignored Danny as much as possible, beat the shit out of the motherfuckers who braved the Savage, and won good money.

  But no matter how much Danny loathed my presence here, he wouldn’t kick me out of the Pit, I attracted too many demons to this fucking hole.

  “So,” Danny’s voice prickled my scalp and I didn’t turn to face him as he sat down beside me at the bar. “That girl earlier, the one you took out of the Pit, looked like she meant something to you.”

  My jaw clenched, and I took another drag from the belladonna without answering. I needed the high, the feeling of ease and pleasure all wrapped in one drumming sensation through my bloodstream and bones.

  Danny tapped his fat fingers against the edge of the bar, irritation coating every movement of his body. He wanted me to lose it and he thought the tiny souleater was perhaps the answer.

  Alexandra was a thorn in my side. She was too tiny, too fragile and I fucking hated the way her big eyes watched me. I knew she had been through shit, but she was still too young and naïve for me. I didn’t need that kind of woman in my life who looked at men like me as protectors because I didn’t want the damn job.

  Alexandra was a thorn and part of me wanted to break her, I realized.

  The broken, unfeeling and unreasonable part of me.

  “She your whore?” Danny asked, leaning in so his hot breath hit the side of my face, rum thick on his breath.

  “She’s a kid,” I said, voice cold as I chugged back my drink and slammed it on the counter. I was done for the night.

  “Still fuckable,” Danny snapped back¸ shrugging as I stood.

  I shoved past him, ignoring as best as I could the need to pound his face into the concrete floor and split his fucking skull open. I didn’t want to talk about Alexandra. I especially didn’t want to talk about how she was a sexy, daring thing. I d
idn’t want to think about the fact that my dick had been painfully hard when healing her. She pissed me off because she turned me on.

  I pushed open the back door and marched past a few demons with their lips locked at each other’s throat, still getting off on the fighting and the sex and the belladonna. My fingers tightened around the roll, itching for more of that drug.

  Another drag, another hit. It was never enough.

  “Beau,” a voice hollered, and I didn’t stop until a hand clasped my shoulder. Tegan, dark hair sticking to her forehead and jaw, flared her dark eyes at me. “What the fuck was that earlier?”

  I stared back at her for a moment and then took another drag, the smoke of the drug burning my lungs in a calming sensation. “She was a minor.”

  Tegan cocked a dark brow at me. “So you know her?”

  I licked at my teeth. “I know of her.”

  Tegan’s gaze danced across my face and I could tell what she was trying to do. What most people tried to do. Read me. Understand me. I didn’t want them to though. I kept my life private and kept myself even more private. Tegan too tended to keep her distance from most people, which was why we worked so well when it came to sex. We didn’t pry into each other’s business because we didn’t want the other to pry in ours.

  For now, Tegan had everything I needed. A good, willing body and an eager touch.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” I told her, and her lips mashed together and didn’t say anything else. She knew to hold her tongue.

  I wasn’t fucking her tonight. Not with that damn souleater on my fucking mind.

  After Alexandra’s little show, now that the filth at the Pit had witnessed how I acted around her, they were suspicious. Everyone wanted to know what the tiny souleater meant to Savage. I had weighed the odds before I went into the ring for her, but I should have known people wouldn’t drop it so easily.

  I’d never publicly shown any interest for a woman. I’d never swooped in to play the white knight in shining fucking armor before.

  But they knew who I was, how I was, they knew what would happen to them if they started asking too many questions. So they wouldn’t. By tomorrow night, the gossip would be over. I would fight, claim another poor bastard’s soul and no one would speak of Alexandra again.

  I had missed another meeting with Scorpios to discuss Ares, our current enemy declaring war against us over my brother’s fiancée. A daemon that everyone wanted for themselves. Daemons were rare and powerful, with eyes blessed by gods that glowed and paralyzed others under their command. She would make my brother and my family powerful. A daemon that in the beginning was meant to be my future wife.

  A fact that always made me laugh. Molly and I never would’ve worked. She would’ve been miserable with a man like me and I would’ve grown to hate her with time.

  Fallen, had chosen to divide Earth into several territories and hand over control of them to victorious warlords, since he couldn’t rule over both Earth and his court at once.

  Our ancestors had earned the title of Dux through blood and glory, bringing pride and prestige to our name. At first, the Scorpios territory had been small, but we’d fought, stole, killed and won our way into more and more power, marching into our enemies’ territories, persistent and ruthless, until they’d fallen to their knees, admitting defeat.

  Now, we ruled over the entire state of New York as well as other parts of the continent.

  But there was one enemy, our biggest enemy on the East Coast, with whom we still raged wars constantly, trying to eliminate them before they could eliminate us.

  Ares.

  Rulers of Boston.

  The title of Dux had been passed down from father to first born son for generations of Knights.

  The Dux held all the power over his territory in both of his hands and controlled it with nothing but cold and brutal efficiency.

  To us Knights, it was our legacy, our pride, our treasure.

  And as first born son, the honor had been mine.

  I had been groomed into the perfect Dux. But I had lost it all.

  For a woman.

  Now, all that was left within me was darkness and chaos. Thunder and lightning. And a never-ending emptiness.

  I turned, leaving Tegan in the dimly lit street. The brownstone building where I lived wasn’t too far away and by the time I got there, it was three in the morning. I had to wake up at five to patrol the streets.

  That was my life.

  Fights, sex, belladonna, keeping the low-class demons in check and repeat.

  The apartment was dark—a bachelor style, with a bed in the middle of the room and a kitchen with granite countertops. It wasn’t as outdated or cheap as what the low-class demons lived in close by. Scorpios gave me a decent salary, but it was my money made from the Pit that let me live the way I wanted. Quiet, alone, with a decent apartment. I never fucked here. I used the bedrooms at the Pit when I needed the energy, needed the release only a warm body could provide. No one stepped foot into this space. It was my own and I wanted to keep it that way.

  I knew though as I sat down on the edge of my bed, kicking off my combat boots, that I wouldn’t sleep.

  The belladonna had curled itself into my stomach and I could feel the flutter of emotions I didn’t want to remember.

  My hands shook as I looked down at them. Smudged with dirt and grime and blood from both the man I’d fought and that souleater. I bit the edge of my hand.

  If I let myself, I could still feel her soft skin under my rough fingertips, I could still taste it on my lips. An urge battled inside of me and all the bones and muscles in my body tightened in dire pain.

  But there was an easy way to put a definite stop to it, to this need. All I had to think of was Valentina.

  Demons were not allowed to love or have a full heart. At the age of eighteen, I had committed the ultimate crime. I had fallen for Valentina, I’d grown a full heart and offered it to a human girl. I had met her in a club, watching her from across the room. It was a careless night of moans and laughter. I should have stopped after that, but I became addicted to her smiles, the dimple that formed when her lips curved. Soon, we were months into spending every night together in secret. She had been a bit scared when I explained to her what I was, but she had accepted me.

  I love you for your soul.

  Her voice—too soft for my own ears—echoed again in my head. Now that soul was dark and tainted and ugly.

  Unlovable.

  And then she told me she was pregnant.

  Blinded by a forbidden emotion and my ignorant youth, I told her we’d be safe.

  I’d been fucking foolish, thinking I could protect them both and hide our secret.

  But Fallen, the king of High Court, found out and we all paid the price for my sin.

  He had ripped her heart out in front of me, and being a human, it had killed her instantly. Her… and our unborn child.

  Then, he’d moved on to me. He’d ripped my own heart out, and fed on it, killing the man I’d once been and giving full reign to the beast within me.

  When I touched Alexandra, the rush of need that filled me, I hadn’t felt an urge like that before.

  Even with Valentina. With her, it had been nothing but sweet and innocent touches.

  But that man no longer existed and the sort of desire and need Alexandra sparked within me was very different. Rougher, colder… more desperate.

  An ache from the beast.

  Having her pressed to me, so close, hearing her rushed breaths, so panicked, so aroused, it spoke to the darker side of me. It was like a fine wine to my beast.

  A beast I had managed to keep on a leash for years. Or tried to as best as I could.

  I had given into primal desires and urges after Fallen ripped out my heart, but I had trained myself.

  Many people still thought of me as a monster. And I knew Alexandra thought the same thing. The way her eyes had widened at the sight of me in the ring, the nervous beat of her heart.


  I had scared her enough. And if not, then hopefully Tensley had terrified her into never setting foot in my world again.

  Because if I saw her again, I knew the beast in me would crave another taste of her soft, warm skin.

  Hell if he didn’t already.

  The apartment, dim and drafty, was my escape. I mean, it was my only option. It had been abandoned for a couple of years and since I had returned, I found it was the only option I could afford. Which… was a place I didn’t need to pay for at all.

  Dolores had found it and we had spent the nights huddled together, seeking warmth and peace. Dolores was a low-class demon, she had an abusive father who she had escaped from years ago and she kept to herself. I knew she used her body to make what little money she could to survive. When I told her I’d been thinking of doing the same, she refused with more force than I’d ever heard her use. Dolores had a gentle nature, but being a few years older than me, she’d become more like a substitute mother to me. Or a big sister. Every night when she returned, she slowly wiped her makeup off, staring into the small piece of a broken mirror. I saw her sadness, her pain hidden underneath the mascara and blush. She never said it, but she didn’t want me to become her. She didn’t want me to sell my body.

  And, I didn’t want to either. But money had always been hard to earn for low-class demons like us. So, you did whatever you could to feed yourself.

  I thought of our promise to each other. That we would never abandon one another, that we wouldn’t leave each other like everyone else had in our lives.

  My stomach twisted in pain. I couldn’t stop searching for her. I couldn’t give up and abandon her.

  Because deep in my bones, in the whole of my soul, I knew she hadn’t abandoned me. She hadn’t left of her own free will.

  I lit an old candle, the wax almost melted down to the base and wrapped my dad’s old wool sweater around my shoulders. I told myself I could still smell him in the wool; his warm peppermint scent invading my nose. I pulled it tighter and glanced at my worn backpack, one strap broken. It held everything I owned, everything I cherished. My life was squashed into a tiny, broken backpack. Some nights I wandered the streets, just to feel not alone. When I sat up here, in the darkness, memories crept in and held me hostage. Memories of my mother before she left us, memories of my father telling me to stay low and wait for him. Memories of the day he didn’t return.