by Heidi Lowe
Sinning Forever
(Beautiful Sin Saga, Book 3)
by Heidi Lowe
Published by Heidi Lowe Books, 2017.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
SINNING FOREVER
First edition. May 13, 2017
Copyright © 2017 Heidi Lowe
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CONTENTS
TITLE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
EPILOGUE
BOOKS BY HEIDI LOWE
BLURB
ONE
"I'm sorry."
Her words were swallowed up by the sobbing that filled the room. This wasn't just any kind of sobbing, because this wasn't just any kind of night. Jean had never, in all her years, heard someone cry so hard for so long. She felt it to the core; it clawed at her soul, at her flesh. It ran deep. And she could do nothing to stop it.
"I'm so sorry," she said again, for the hundredth time, as her own tears fell. Every time she stroked Lissa's back she stopped herself, wrenching her hand away as though by touching her she would do even more damage. But that was impossible. She couldn't hurt her more than she already had.
A large patch of blood had formed on the pillow beneath Lissa's face. When she lifted her head and saw what had happened, a look of pure horror settled on her face, and she threw the pillow across the room before bawling harder.
"I don't want this." She was barely intelligible. Blood-tears coursed down her cheeks, clung to her long lashes. "I don't want to be dead."
The look she shot Jean was more heartbreaking than the hopeless sobbing. It was a look of pleading, as though she expected her to fix this, come to the rescue like she always did. All the more heartbreaking because Jean knew, this time, she couldn't save her; she couldn't play the heroine when she'd assumed the role of villain.
How would they ever get past this?
"I know, baby." She went to brush the hair out of Lissa's face, but drew her hand back. Inside, a voice raged at her, telling her to stay away. You don't have the right to touch her. You did this to her.
The girl's words didn't escape her. Dead, she'd said. Lissa had never considered her dead in the past. In anger she'd used it as an insult, sure, but who didn't say hurtful things in anger? Did this mean that, deep down, she had thought of her as her dead lover?
"I didn't have a choice, Lissa," Jean said, and despite it being a barefaced lie, she actually believed it. To her, there had been no choice. Letting that sickness claim Lissa's body, turning her into a beast, a dog, slave to the moonlight, wasn't an option. They would have been forced to be apart, to live wholly separate lives, to hate each other.
No, there was no choice. Although she'd wept as she bit into her own flesh and watched her tainted blood drip down Lissa's throat, she'd known it was the only way. She would have done the same again if given the chance. Lissa's pain now would have been far worse had she woken from her slumber covered in fur and howling at the moon. Jean had to believe that.
Still, it didn't make any of this easier to bear.
Lissa wiped the red tears from her face, gave her the most hopeless look, then said, "You should have let me die."
Nothing could have prepared Jean for those words – for the certainty in Lissa's face, in her voice. She held it together only long enough to kiss Lissa on the forehead and leave the room.
In the hallway, she gripped the wall for support, her body shaking as she sobbed quietly to herself. Robyn appeared, but kept her distance. There was a time when Robyn would have tried to comfort her, to hold her, say all the right things to make her feel better. Jean wasn't surprised when her closest friend didn't rush to her side, offering soothing words and making Lissa out to be the bad guy.
"She would have chosen death over this," Jean said, pressed against the wall, all the life and energy gone from her.
"I would have chosen death over this..." Robyn said, folding her arms across her chest, as if it wasn't already clear how she felt about Jean's decision. "Except it wasn't a choice between life and death. We both know that."
Jean closed her eyes, flopped her head lazily against the wall. "She'll never forgive me. Not for any of it." And just when she thought she was done with the tears, they came flooding out again. "She's just crying, and crying, and crying, and I can't do anything to stop it."
Robyn said nothing, just kept her judgmental, slightly contemptuous look on Jean.
"Say something!" Jean screamed at her. "Tell me what I should do."
Robyn swallowed. Sometimes it frightened her to see Jean lose herself like this, like she was capable of anything. Only when it came to Lissa did she ever lose control. And yet another part of her – one that, since finding love herself, understood how completely unsound love could make a person – couldn't help appreciating the human weakness in her boss.
"You didn't listen to me when I told you what to do. I can't help you."
"God." Jean pressed her palms to her forehead. Just like Lissa, she'd been looking for someone else to fix this. Robyn, in many ways, had been her savior. Legally, financially, emotionally. But even she couldn't work miracles.
"You need to tell her the truth. If you keep it from her and she finds out another way, you'll lose her forever."
Jean shook her head over and over. "I can't. She wouldn't understand why I did it. She would think like you, that I did it for purely selfish reasons. But that's not true. I did it because...because..." She couldn't finish her sentence. Partly because it made her too sad to talk about it, but also because she hated the sound of her lies. The truth was, she'd been thinking more about herself than Lissa when she'd made the decision. Navigating the world alone as a werewolf would have been tough for Lissa, no doubt, but she would have found a place for herself. It wouldn't have been hopeless, and she, Jean, still could have helped her from afar. But it was the thought of all the things they could no longer do together that had driven her. Her reason for breathing, for being, revolved around Lissa's kiss, touch, and love. Imagining a world without them made her want to die. Despite surviving most of her life without it, she'd come to depend on Lissa's affection so deeply, so quickly.
"I did what I had to do."
"No, Jean, you did what you wanted to do. Lissa be damned."
"What the hell do you know about it?" Jean spat, suddenly so overcome with rage that it took every ounce of strength in her not to charge at Robyn. The smugness, the arrogance, made her blood boil. But more than anything, she hated how right Robyn was. "You've never had a good word to say about her, and now look at you. Wha
t is it, Robyn, you've found someone to love you and now you've grown a conscience? Now you know how feelings work? You would have loved that, wouldn't you? If she were a wolf, we would be apart, and you'd have me all to yourself."
This, too, was a new side to Jean. An ugly side – frantic and unpredictable. She barely resembled the woman Robyn had known, served and loved. The grief was talking, Robyn knew that, but it still hurt to hear.
She shook her head, shooting Jean a pitying look, which she knew her boss would hate. "You still don't get it. After all of this, you still don't see what you did wrong. It wasn't your choice to make, Jean. And you should ask yourself why someone like me, who, as you put it, has never said a good word about that girl, can see that and you can't."
Her boss's muffled sobs followed her as she walked away, leaving the house. Insulted, guilt-ridden, sad. But ultimately relieved. Relieved that, for the first time since meeting Jean, she could finally see her flaws.
TWO
I'd seen Jean cry so many times, watched those scarlet tears trickle down her cheeks, and it never once occurred to me that crying blood would sting. Had I known, I might have been nicer to her in order to quell them.
I frantically wiped at my eyes with the backs of my hands, tried to blink away the burning sensation, but the more it stung, and the more the room became a watery red haze, the more the tears came flooding out. Then after a while, the burning didn't matter. It was the least of my worries.
I was dead. There had been no warning, no passing through purgatory on my way to this forbidden realm between life and death. I'd opened my eyes in our bed, and felt it immediately. Felt an emptiness, like the life had truly left me. But Jean's tears confirmed any doubts I'd had about whether or not I'd survived the attack.
She wasn't smiling, and her dark eyes were filled with sorrow. She couldn't open her mouth to utter the words.
"What's going on?" My voice had come out in a choked whisper. It sounded distant, as though it was coming from across the room.
"I'm sorry, Lissa," was all she said before covering her face with her hands and weeping into them.
I'm sorry. Over and over again, without explaining what had happened. She couldn't say it, and I couldn't hear it.
The tingling began so suddenly, and I gawked at my hands and arms in horror. It felt as though my veins were dancing.
"I didn't survive, did I?" Those words, too, came out choked. I was terrified of the answer, though deep down I knew it.
She could only shake her head before erupting into tears once more. And that's when my own began to fall. I screamed when I noticed that they weren't the clear, watery kind I was used to shedding. I didn't even take much notice of the burning at first.
"It's okay," Jean had said, but she didn't believe that, and neither did I.
I didn't know how much time had passed when I'd stopped crying. Jean had left me alone on my insistence. When I climbed off the bed, I felt a tingling in my legs when my feet touched the floor. My whole body suddenly felt light, as though it weighed nothing. I thought that I would float away at any moment. A lightness and a nothingness. I felt around my face and head to check if everything was still there, then rushed over to the mirror. Despite knowing that the whole missing reflection thing was a myth, I was relieved to see myself. Relieved to see that nothing had changed.
Maybe she's wrong. Maybe I'm still alive. I look fine.
The blood tears could be explained away, couldn't they? And the tingling sensation, nothing more than pins and needles. This could all have been one very bad dream.
I told myself anything I could, no matter how nonsensical. Anything so I wouldn't have to face my new and heinous reality. Because I wasn't ready for that life. I'd never wanted it.
"Oh God," I cried, suddenly tearful again. "Please let this not be real." I was ready to become a believer in just about any god, from any religion, if it meant sparing myself this agony.
I noticed something then. Or rather, I noticed the absence of something. I stroked the area where Dallas had bitten me, felt around for any sign that a bite had once been there, but there was nothing. Clear, unusually pale flesh, blemish-free. It took only a moment to realize that wasn't the only wound missing. The scars from the wolf attack in the woods had also vanished.
Every check I did, in search of every scar I'd ever gained throughout my twenty-four years, came up trumps. The cut on my knee I'd gotten after falling off my bike at six. The burn on my elbow when I rested on the cooker at eleven. And, oh God, the piercings in my ears! All gone.
Scar-less, wound-less, lifeless.
Yet I still clung to the hope that I would wake up from this nightmare, wake up in Jean's arms, alive. I was nothing if not hopeful. I'd been through the worst of everything and come out smiling. Death was no match for me.
I needed to eat. There was bread and lunch meats in the refrigerator. A huge sandwich with all the trimmings, that would do the trick. Then I'd wash it down with cranberry juice. Diane and Camille had been raving about the stuff for weeks, and I'd finally given in and put it on the shopping list for Sandra to buy.
"It tastes foul, but it's good for you. The foul-tasting stuff usually is," Diane had said.
I'd never wanted to try anything so badly in all my life.
I crept out of the room, made my way quietly down the stairs and into the kitchen, all the while the hunger pangs played my stomach like an instrument. I would make the biggest sandwich anyone had ever seen, and I'd eat it in one sitting. I'd eat everything in the refrigerator, even the stuff I didn't like. Maybe even the stuff that was past its use-by date.
I grabbed as much as I could and tossed it onto the counter, then got to work making my super-sandwich. Every second, the hunger raged on. Four slices turned into six, which then turned into eight. I piled on tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, onions, squirted generous helpings of English mustard.
"Lissa, what are you doing?"
I looked up to find Jean in the doorway. She didn't seem at all impressed with my gargantuan sandwich.
"What does it look like? I'm making myself a sandwich."
"You can't eat that," she said. I hated that pitying look in her eyes, like she thought I was some stupid child who didn't know what she was doing.
"Watch me."
"Lissa!" she shouted, and tried to stop me as I brought the sandwich to my mouth. I twisted away just in time to take a big bite. I was going to enjoy it.
She just stared at me, eyes sad and heavy.
I chomped and chomped and couldn't taste anything. Not the three different kinds of meat, not the salad, not the sauce. Nothing at all. Was I eating it wrong? I could feel the food, but I couldn't taste it.
I swallowed it down and took another bite, chewing like I'd never chewed before. Determined to taste my goddamn sandwich that I'd spent so long preparing.
"Baby, you can't eat food anymore. Our bodies aren't equipped to process it."
I opened my mouth to take another bite – in defiance more than anything, because this food wasn't satiating my hunger – when I felt my stomach rumble. It took only a second for the rumbling to escalate in severity, and before I knew it I was gripping onto the counter, keeled over, my other hand clutching at my stomach in agony. The pain was so severe I thought I would pass out. The sensation was like being stabbed multiple times in the abdomen.
And then, without warning, everything I'd just eaten came pouring right back up, all over the kitchen counter, the floor, my clothes.
"This is really happening," I wailed, letting the reality sink in. "I'm really dead."
Jean shredded off some paper towels and wiped my mouth and top, then wrapped her arms around me. She didn't care that I had vomit stuck to me. She held me tightly as I wept into her shoulder, and she didn't pull away as her top became soaked with blood; ruined.
"It's okay, my darling. We'll get through this together."
"I don't want to be dead. I don't want to be a vampire. I want to eat food, I want to see t
he sun rise again."
"I know, but those things aren't possible now. I'm sorry."
There were those words again. So meaningless, so worthless.
"I'll get Sandra to clean this up, all right? Let's get you to bed."
Upstairs, I let her change me, remove my sodden clothes and put on a clean T-shirt and pants. I was like a doll, motionless and lifeless.
"Do you want me to tell you what happened now?" she asked, once we were both changed. She sat on the bed beside me, took my hand in hers. Her touch, which had always been chilly to me, was no longer cold. I guess in death everyone is the same temperature.
I shook my head but said nothing. Words didn't matter anymore; nothing mattered.
"Are you hungry?"
At any other time, such a question wouldn't have forced tears from my eyes. But hunger in my new condition meant only one thing, and it was the very thing that made me what I was. I would never drink that stuff, no matter how hungry I got.
"I'm not drinking blood," I said.
She sighed, squeezed my hand tighter. "Lissa, you have to drink something, otherwise you'll be too weak."
"Then I'll be weak."
"Honey, that craving you just had, it isn't going away. It will grow more fierce, more all-consuming, until you end up doing something you'll regret."
I knew what she was talking about. That's what had happened to her. She woke up a vampire, woke hungry, and took the life of the first human she saw – my mother.
"I'd never let that happen," I said, shooting her a callous look. "I won't be that weak."
"I didn't think I would be that weak, either, until I was. And that's something you can't take back. You have a duty not to put other people's lives at risk."
"I don't care about anyone else!" I screamed at her. "Why do I have to suffer when everyone else can go on living a normal life? It's not fair!"
"Honey, I know. You're the last person who deserves this curse. You've been through so much. And I know it's hard right now, but we'll get through it. And I'll be right there with you every step of the way."
