Deliverance from Sin: A Demonic Paranormal Romance (Sinners & Saints Book 5)

by Rosalie Stanton

  It didn’t occur to him until he reached the second floor that he didn’t know what he would do if Legion was still in that room. He hadn’t been handed the tools he needed to contain the demon yet, but even if he sauntered into Varina’s room with a collection box in hand, Legion was a crafty demon. It would know, and it wouldn’t be caught the same way twice.

  Campbell paused, eying Varina’s open door. From where he stood, the pulse of an energy signature hummed loud and proud—the same one that tagged Varina, only darker and infinitely more twisted.

  He blinked and saw black. Familiar black accented with familiar stars. The walls of the Colosseum surrounding him, the bodies of a thousand beasts raining down.

  No. Not now. Don’t do this now.

  But he couldn’t stop it. If anything, the realization that he was losing his grip made the panic hit harder. Seized any grasp of control he might have entertained and made the spiral burn. Breathing became painful in the span of a blink, his heart crashing so hard he thought his ribcage might crack. The edge leading of the bottomless pit inched nearer. Nearer.

  If he moved, he’d lose his balance. If he lost his balance, he’d never stop falling.

  But he had to move.

  Legion wasn’t an ordinary Hell Demon. Legion was a thousand demons in one. A thousand thousand. Legion was an entire siege of the Colosseum and then some.

  Campbell couldn’t go in there unarmed. He’d be torn apart.

  He inhaled and stretched out a hand, his mind blaring a series of warnings, the voice of his better judgment trying and failing to scream above the fray. It didn’t matter, in that moment, that what he was about to do was stupid. Acknowledging it made him feel better—gave him the sense that he’d at least considered he was a moron and that was good enough. The truly stupid thing would be to walk into enemy territory without means of defending himself.

  Campbell looked over his shoulder just to make sure Varina hadn’t followed him—see, I’m being cautious—before summoning a small ball of fire to his palm.

  What he would do with it should Legion attack, he didn’t know, but he felt better having it. The warmth of the flame bolstered his confidence, chased some of the cold away, and gave his legs the strength to move. One step, and another, until he made it to the threshold of Varina’s bedroom and…

  Campbell saw nothing at first—nothing he wouldn’t have expected. The broken window, a scattering of glass along the floor, some pieces smeared with darkening blood. He looked to the bed, the corners, but there were no shadows. No quick blurs of indistinguishable color or form, what he was accustomed to when it came to Legion. What he had learned to expect.

  But the signature was still there. Still in the room.

  Campbell held his breath, then met his reflection’s gaze in the mirror.

  Mirror-Campbell smiled at him. It parted its lips. “Hello, Campbell.”

  The voice of Legion was something that had taken years to forget, even before Campbell had become prone to sleepless nights and unplanned bouts of panic. It wasn’t a voice as most anyone would understand, but a collection of them—pitched to a tone so low it nearly hurt, a fluid, wet voice that swallowed its own echo.

  Campbell lowered his hand, sending the flame away in the same gesture. He reached for confidence he didn’t feel. “Varina’s off limits.”

  His reflection chuckled, the sound grating and terrible. “Is she now? If you don’t mind, I saw her first. I am not threatened by crippled Sins, Superbia.”

  Campbell fought for a spark of anger. He knew it was there somewhere, buried. He forced his feet forward, and was proud when they obeyed his command. “I mean it,” he said. “Varina—”

  “You are not in a position to bargain, little Sin,” Legion replied, the corners of the reflection’s mouth twisting into a grin. “I have seen your fear. The thing that terrifies everyone, but the immortal most of all. How did it taste, knowing you were about to die? All the things you were gone, lost to an eternal blink of time. I hear your screams, you know. So does she.”

  A creak in the floor behind him told Campbell they had an audience. He sucked in a breath, his cheeks burning, his hands shaking, and his body ignoring his brain’s commands to stop. Humiliation on top of his self-disgust and fear was a cocktail for disaster. His weakness was a private thing—a secret. She didn’t need to know.

  “The great Superbia, pitied by a human female.” Another one of those terrible chuckles. “How pedestrian. How laughably common.” A blade manifested in the reflection’s hand. “And that is what makes your fears so entertaining.”

  The blade cut a line across Mirror-Campbell’s throat, dragging a river of red behind it. A prickle hit his neck. He could feel it—the cut, the blood running down his skin, the lack of air in his lungs. He felt it all, and he couldn’t stop it.

  “Campbell, it’s not real.”

  A soft hand touched his shoulder, and he recoiled as though scalded. He whirled around, panting hard, and met Varina’s wide eyes.

  “It’s not real,” she said again. “It shows you—”

  He shook his head and brushed past her. He didn’t need her condescension. Not now. Now he needed space. Outside. He needed air. Just to prove he could still breathe, he needed air. He needed away. Away from the house. From her. From the thing in the mirror. From himself most of all.

  The laughter that followed him was in his head, he knew. Because it wasn’t Legion’s laugh. It was his own. And he supposed he could see the joke. It was funny.

  Big bad Sin of Pride scared of his own reflection.

  He had died that night in Rome. The thing that had been nursed back to health was not him.

  He didn’t know what he was anymore.

  12

  Campbell was a good-looking guy. The red-blooded female in Varina had noticed that right away.

  The thing in the mirror wearing his face had made it ugly. Black eyes, a toothy grin, the throat split open and blood running in ribbons down his chest. Varina couldn’t tear her gaze from it, though she desperately wanted to. She wanted to go after Campbell, whose heavy footsteps were growing more and more distant. She wanted to give him her strength, because she knew sometime in the near future, she might need his in turn.

  She didn’t know for whom Legion’s parlor trick had been, but it had done its job.

  “You think that scared little boy will protect you?” the reflection all but purred. A gush of red pulsed out of his throat with every word.

  That voice…

  If sound could have a texture, that voice would be liquid.

  “I think you are desperate,” she replied. “Fear doesn’t make us weak. It’s pretending that we’re not afraid that does.”

  Behind her, she heard Campbell come to a sudden, hard stop.

  Legion smirked with the reflection’s paling lips. “Are you so blind that you don’t see what he is?”

  The steps resumed—harsher now, and louder. Growing nearer.

  Legion’s black eyes danced. “He cannot—”

  And then Campbell burst into the room, a fury of motion. He pushed past her and stormed to the mirror, took it between his hands and sent it careening against the wall. The glass shattered into a bright flurry and scattered across the worn wooden floor with the beat of metallic rain.

  It happened so quickly Varina hadn’t had time to register what she was seeing until it was too late. Until Campbell stood surrounded by broken glass, his chest heaving, his face flushed, his eyes wild and unfocused.

  “Sorry about that,” he said at last, his voice deceptively casual, but the words spoken between pants. “I hope you didn’t like that mirror.”

  And without warning, a part of her broke too. For the first time in her adult life, Varina wasn’t sure what to do. She’d never been responsible for another person before, and while Campbell could take care of himself, she couldn’t help but feel liable.

  Legion was her demon, not his. Campbell might have faced the asshole in the past, but
Varina had felt it—felt its every thought and feeling, felt its wants and its intentions. It feasted on the fear of others, and Campbell had walked right in and handed himself over on a platter.

  “I’m sorry,” Campbell said again. He sounded less strained, more in control. “I… I shouldn’t have done that.”

  Varina’s gaze flickered to the mess on the floor. “Seven years bad luck.”

  He snickered. “Let’s just say the exchange rate seemed worth it at the time.” He glanced around him as though trying to determine the best way to navigate through the glass, but there wasn’t really a good one. Especially with the other pile of broken glass by the window.

  Varina turned into the hall. The broom and dustpan she’d brought up were where she’d left them, propped against the wall outside the door. She seized the broom handle and returned to the bedroom.

  “I came prepared,” she said, and started sweeping the pieces away from his feet. Once there was a clear enough path, he maneuvered out of the way and stood at her back as she scooped up the rest of the broken glass.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Varina shook her head. “You don’t ever have to apologize to me for that.”

  “For losing my shit and breaking your things?”

  “I don’t consider anything in this house that I didn’t bring in yesterday to be my things.” She completed the task and, for lack of a trash bin, balanced the pan on the bed. Then she turned to face Campbell in full. “I know something happened to you.”

  He tensed, and the light in his expression went dark again.

  “I… Whatever it was, Legion is going to use it. He knows it’s a weakness.”

  At that, his eye twitched, and a flare of something—anger or resentment—flashed across his face. Varina swallowed but refused to back down. Hitting nerves was one of those things that had to happen in order for the past to actually become the past. Something Campbell clearly hadn’t accepted yet.

  “All that to say…get it together. If you can’t, then you’re doing no good here.”

  His eye twitched again and he clenched his jaw. “I see,” he said.

  “I hope so. I was getting used to you being here.”

  A long, heavy silence stretched between them. He breathed out through his nostrils and took a step closer.

  Then another.

  Varina frowned but refused to recover the step back. Whatever else, this man did not intimidate her. No man did.

  But he did speak to her, on levels she had yet to understand.

  On levels some part of her body did.

  Campbell edged forward again, still glaring. Then his gaze dropped to her mouth.

  How it happened, she had no idea. There was no logical sense to it. He’d looked ready to go to war, and perhaps that was how he viewed her. Viewed all of this. Because the next second, he had engaged in battle. His hot, firm lips were on her, not nice and not questioning—hard and full of demand. And Varina’s body responded without her, jumping headfirst. A strange sense of relief hit her skin the second it came into contact with his, and she realized with a start how much she’d wanted to touch him.

  Varina swallowed a moan, but the second her lips parted, his tongue declared open season on her mouth. Each stroke seemed to send electric pulses through her veins. She pressed her thighs together, which only made the growing ache more pronounced.

  That helpless sense of falling consumed her, and she found herself slingshotted back to the place where need replaced control. Her hands found Campbell’s face, determined to keep him against her. She rubbed herself along his hard body, her legs parting for him, every inch of her falling soft and compliant. Her blood buzzed with frenzied celebration at having him like this again.

  Not even twenty-four hours had passed since he’d been inside her, but somehow it felt like forever. There was a cleansing power behind his touch. When he kissed her, now and earlier, everything else faded away. The clouds in her head parted and she stopped worrying. Stopped thinking. It was miraculous and beautiful, and she wanted more of it.

  More of him. Now.

  Varina made a sound in the back of her throat, her tongue darting out to meet his. He groaned and pushed back, back, back until she hit the bed. The distant chime of glass hitting glass tickled her ears—the dustpan—but then he had her lower lip caught between his teeth and all other thoughts faded. His hands found her ass, and then he was lifting her, perching her on the edge of the mattress so he could fit between her thighs. All the while his mouth remained on hers, his whiskers rubbing playful burns against her skin. He was a wall of solid muscle. Hard. Straining. And all hers.

  She could feel it—how very all hers he was.

  But then he was gone. With a hard gasp, he wrenched away from her, and she was smacked with cold, unwelcoming air.

  Varina frowned, barely registering her hard gulps, feeling stranded. Her skin burned, her clit ached, and her mouth tingled. Her brain, awash in confusion and resentment, fought to connect with the rest of her, but it seemed so distant.

  What the hell?

  Campbell faced the wall, his hands on his hips, his back drawn and tense. “Sorry,” he said, clipped.

  “Huh?”

  “No sex. I…” Campbell inhaled, then turned around. His expression was almost pained, though that might have had something to do with the erection behind his fly.

  Varina bit the inside of her cheek. Given what she recalled of his anatomy, that would be painful.

  “That’s right,” she said, sitting up on her elbows. “No sex.”

  Though at the moment she was having a hard time remembering why.

  “Yeah.” Campbell nodded and tore a hand through his sandy hair. “I…I knew that. It was a dick move. I’m sorry. I… There’s no excuse.” He paused. “Well, no there is. It’s just a bad one. The excuse is I…I liked fucking you. A lot. And I like you. A lot. But I told you that I’d be the good guy. Or the decent guy. I don’t push. What I just did was pushing. I just…lost myself for a moment.”

  Varina leaned forward. The area they had entered was one she had never mapped before. At the moment, it didn’t seem possible to get to a point where the sensation in her gut felt normal, where the emptiness between her legs would feel anything but foreign. It wasn’t that the sex she’d had before Campbell had been bad, just not good enough to make the list of things she couldn’t live without.

  Her body’s reaction to Campbell was one of the reasons she’d put a moratorium on any more sex.

  Though right now, that seemed like a dumb idea.

  Until she remembered the other reason. Unless he had a condom in his wallet—and she wasn’t going to ask, because she didn’t want him to know how badly he’d affected her—she wasn’t going to take any more chances with her health.

  In a world filled with demons, her health was precious.

  None of that explained how she let, “I’m not used to thinking of myself as sexual,” past her internal filters.

  Campbell’s eyebrows winged upward. “Huh?”

  Heat flushed Varina’s cheeks. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  “Too late. What do you mean?”

  “I mean I…” She looked away, trying to ward off the painful awareness creeping over her body. It didn’t work. Shame was something she hadn’t felt in full in a goddamn long time. She didn’t want to revisit it now. “Forget it.”

  She hopped off the bed and made to move past him, but he grabbed her arm before she could get very far.

  “Not likely,” he said. “Varina…how can you not think of yourself as sexual?”

  She drew in a deep breath and squared her shoulders. “I don’t want to do this now,” she said. “I didn’t mean to say it and I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Varina—”

  She turned and collected the dustpan. “It’s moot anyway.”

  “It doesn’t feel very moot to me.”

  “Well, that’s your problem.” Without looking back at him, she headed
for the door, not breathing again until she was in the hallway.

  The second she had some distance from him, the hot sensation returned—the dominating burn in her chest and abdomen. Her legs shook as she walked, making the trip downstairs its own version of the Olympics.

  Varina had learned a long time ago that the human brain existed to avoid discomfort. Physical discomfort was a given—the brain would send signals to identify potential areas of concern, and the rest of the body would act accordingly. Mental and emotional discomfort were different beasts. Almost always more painful, and infinitely more difficult to avoid, because no matter how far you traveled, the discomfort followed.

  For a long time after she’d left Mount Zion, Varina had been a master of neglecting her mental discomfort. She had always been aware of it, but hadn’t addressed it. Addressing it seemed to give it power—focusing on it made it real.

  It had only been after her first and only post-Legion near death experience that she’d realized ignoring her past was what gave it strength. Instead of letting her fear dictate her choices, her choices dictated her fear.

  Yet for all the mental fortitude she’d built for herself over the years, she was woefully unpracticed when it came to something like intimacy.

  Probably because she’d never been intimate. Not really.

  And the prospect scared the shit out of her.

  Thus, as she strode toward the kitchen to toss out the pieces of glass, Varina put her mental digression on hold. She knew she needed to address it, no matter how on edge it made her. Campbell wasn’t going anywhere, and apparently neither was the pull she felt toward him. For her sake, it was best to address it.

  If not with him, then with herself.

  Varina dumped the dustpan and returned it to its place under the sink. Then she turned and pressed herself against the counter and released a long, shaky breath.

  She looked up at the sound of footsteps in the hall, not flinching when Campbell came into the kitchen, carrying the broom she’d left upstairs. He placed it against the island, waited a beat, then looked at her.