Sin Eaters: Devotion Book One

by Kai Leakes

  “Indeed,” Eammon murmured as they glanced over the dark city streets quietly communing.

  Chapter 10

  “Talk to me.” Khamun quietly combed the room, pacing as he headed back to his charge.

  “We have an issue.”

  Khamun stopped in his tracks as he cracked his neck and gripped it, rubbing it to ease the tension. “Speak on it.”

  “The Nile building has been compromised. We cannot relocate your Vessel there. St. Louis is officially kill zone for her and her family.”

  “What!” Khamun’s voice dropped a thousand octaves as he listened on. “Explain to me how that . . . shit could happen. I thought you all had the streets on lock! Lenox.” He heard the subtle, simmering anger dancing against his best friend.

  “When the team secured your Vessel’s home, a Shroud-Eater was spotted a couple of days later in the same vicinity. Which you know means that we cannot hide her there anymore. They have her scent. We need to relocate and move the team, including your Vessel.”

  “Shit! I can’t believe this. We did everything to the code. Are we sure they are tracking her still?” He could see Lenox racking a hand through his raven hair as he stood near Sanna’s now burning home. Shit was an understatement. This had turned for the worse.

  “Do we want to risk it? We cleaned what we could. From the intel I’ve picked up, they are thirsty for her blood, and since other Guides have been hidden as well, they want the freshest pick they can find, and they found yours. Their Dark Witches and Warlocks managed to break through the barriers. We can’t keep her in her zone, we need to move to the central outpost. And it’s time. You know what that means.”

  Khamun inwardly cursed and then slammed a fist into a nearby wall. He had been avoiding going home for a decade now. He loved his family, but how could he go home with the changes that were going on with him? His mother would be the first to pick up the transformation in his body. She would see he wasn’t just a watcher anymore, he was something more.

  “A’ight, okay. You know what went down up here. So as—”

  Lenox smoothly cut Khamun off with his sudden appearance next to him and continued the conversation. He was dressed in a clean all-black suit, Italian leather black shoes, and he sported a pair of diamond cuffs in the shape of their House crest. You couldn’t see the weapons hidden throughout his athletic, built frame as he moved around. Like his clean-cut suit, you couldn’t tell that the man wearing it could kill you without moving from where he stood, or that he could kill you with just a tap of his hand on your shoulder.

  Lenox was in his business zone and ready to kill as he flashed a bright smile, “Sorry to cut you off. The rest of the crew is on their way, My Lord.”

  Khamun was about to respond when Lenox added, “Also, you know I got this. As you settle down and step back into your rank as Lord of the House of Vengeance, the Vessel will be told that her establishment will be moved here. Everything as was planned before is being taken care of as we speak, and we will move her here smoothly.”

  Standing shoulder to shoulder with Khamun, Lenox crossed his arms and stood wide-legged. “I’ve already sent the letter of acceptance into my law firm for your Vessel’s brother and his protector. Some of the Chi-town crew has moved down to our spot and is already holding down the region. Everything is going to work out fine.”

  “So you say. But you just don’t know how this shit is going to go. You really don’t.”

  “Look, My Lor—”

  Khamun shot Lenox an icy look that had him holding up his hands and sighing.

  “Okay, Khamun. We’ve been fighting side by side for generations. What you are, your mother will accept, and you know your dad is going to follow suit because he wants to still have his wife by his side. So. Chill. It is what it is. This is good. Our House has been working on limited resources as is. Hell, we’ve developed our own resources and made it better. Don’t you think the other Houses need our insight? So we can stop losing Guides and Vessels as is?”

  Turning to face one another, both men clasped hands and gave a shoulder bump. “I hear you, man. Between you and Calvin, I don’t know where I’d be right now. Probably running around killing everything I can touch with Marco. Thanks.”

  Lenox laughed and nodded. “It’s all good. Now let me get to my part of the game. As your conscience, I love inspirationally pissing you off with the cold, hard reality of various situations. Also, as your boy and the legal/financial head of our House, I love consciously toying with the bourgeois’ mental every time I present them with new legal documentation and House notaries. No one is as cold as I am with this.”

  Both men pounded each other’s fist.

  Lenox reached into his pocket and pulled out a bright green apple. He took a bite before speaking again. “So, okay, I’m heading to my offices in order to get your Vessel’s brother in check with a job, and you go do what you do, and I got the linguistics.”

  Khamun gave a quick nod and threw Lenox his SUV keys. He chuckled as he heard Lenox whistle low.

  “Damn. I get to drive the baby, huh? I’ll treat her right. Been wanting to see what Marco put under the hood.”

  That was his cue to head out. Fading through the streets, flying and using the shadows as his energy, Khamun tapped his Bluetooth and rang Marco. Nothing but screaming and varied huffs of annoyance hit his ear as he shook his head laughing.

  “Ey, woman! Now I told you, I got it! I know how to work this tech crap, a’ight! Coño! ’Sup, cuz. So you know about the move, huh?”

  Khamun couldn’t help but laugh at his cousin. “Yeah. So you and Kali are going at it again, huh?”

  “Of course. Same thing every day since we’ve been reinforcing the compound and laying down the packing stones. Every damn thing has to be tagged and bagged in her ‘computer,’ so we don’t lose anything.”

  Marco’s exaggeration of Kali’s voice when he stressed computer had Khamun rolling as he let his mind connect to the visual of the compound. Everything was in chaos. Kali was running around with a tagging gun, and Marco clicked away on the main computer.

  “She acts like I don’t know this shit. Expects me to be the typical acere and go play with my cars.”

  “Hey, hey, Marco, she just don’t know, huh?” Laughing, Khamun clutched his stomach as he listened to his cousin’s exasperated voice lighten up with humor.

  “Naw, cuz, she don’t. I like to sit back with my cup of coffee, listen to NPR, and catch up on my sports pages or Washington Post shit!”

  Both men started laughing hard as Khamun heard Kali scream at Marco in the background.

  “Look, you got me acting extra, mami. I’m talking to Khamun, giving him the update!”

  “Bet. Let me hang up. I see everything is in line and ready to go.”

  “Oh, yeah, we’ll be up in Chi as soon as you send us the signal. I figured it’ll be the old compound.”

  Khamun quietly exhaled. It had been years since he’d used his old haunt. Nestled in obscurity in the middle of Chicago, he knew Kali would love it for its ultimate security and the fact that it blended in perfectly with the city.

  “Yeah, you might want to head up there first, check if the power is on and all that good crap.”

  “I will, Marco. Just take care of home in STL for me, and I’ll handle that,” Khamun replied, walking through an opulent garden and punching in an access code.

  “Okay, fam, I got you. We’ll do that. Know this, though. I’m not ready to return either, cuz, but we gotta do this. I hate to even admit this shit, but Lenox is right. Ey! Bring that ass back here! You play too much, Kali! Let me roll out. We got it on lock here, cuz. Love ya, fam. One.”

  Khamun chuckled and hung up as he stood outside of his Chicago home nestled in Lincoln Park. He could see the lights on and knew his staff was keeping the place in line. He definitely wasn’t ready for this. He wasn’t ready to talk on his full role as a head of a Nephilim Society House, especially since it was a royal sector of the Light lines. W
ithin the Nephilim sect, there were no official Kings or Queens. That title was reserved to the Most High, who gave them the original task of protecting the innocent of the world. Even though the title Prince was thrown around, it was more of a de facto title. Those in high rank, and oftentimes with multiple rebirths, were given the title of Elder or Eldress. These privileged elite had central control of all the Nephilim in each part of the world, which was determined by global Houses and a council of dignitaries.

  The Elders watched over the community, while the young were allowed to serve within the dignitary council. As a youth in a Royal House, the first founding House within the Nephilim world, he had a right to being head of the dignitary council. But when Khamun turned twenty-five, which allowed him to join the DC, as he called it, he wasn’t ready, and it hit him and his father hard. Especially when his once silver wings began to darken, leaving him with silver feather highlights, and he gained a set of diamond-hard fangs, instead of the normal steel incisors. He also woke up with cravings with an ability to sniff out any demon he could find. Which he later learned allowed him to break bone with his fangs and cloak his area with ease. Yes, he could blend in with his people, but he was vastly different and he was alone.

  The day he woke up in a church in Detroit, covered in demon blood and their essence released to the heavens, he knew he had to come up with some reason to start his own house. A house which would later consist of others like himself, people in the middle, people who would be shunned by the Nephilim society.

  The memory of it all hit him as if it was yesterday.

  “You are serious about this, son? You want to start your own house and not have a dignitary seat in the council?” His father sat at his oak desk, looking at his computer screen. Papers, books, scrolls and other important documents lay in order around him while he clicked his mouse and saved whatever he was working on.

  “Yes, sir. I feel that is best for me right now. I-I just am not ready, Pops.” Khamun observed his father’s incisors crest. His eyes flashed white, and his body tensed. All of this always reminded Khamun that he was standing in front of a full-blooded Arch more powerful than he.

  “Ready? You are my seed! You carry the generations of Mi’kahl and Le’la, the founders of our Society, of one of the first houses in your DNA. Hell! You carry the very memories of your past life as a warrior, whoever you may be awakening too soon, and you say you are not ready?”

  He wanted to defend himself, but custom dictated listening to one’s Elders, and he was double bound to his silence because that Elder was also Head Elder, Region King.

  “Boy, you were created ready. Don’t give me that rubbish. What is going on with you?”

  Khamun could tell his father was fired up because, while he yelled, his Ethiopian-laced British accent thickened. So he did what any scolded child would do. He kept his gaze at his feet, his fists clenched, as he tried to hide his own dropping fangs. He slowly exhaled while his father’s booming voice slashed through his mind.

  “Nothing. This is just what I want. I’m at the place to pick what I want, and I want what I want. Which is to the start this House.”

  Khamun watched his father rise from his desk, his hands sliding behind his back as he kept his eyes on him. He sat bone-straight, chin held high, ready to go to battle for his choice in his life. He had been trained and educated since birth under his father’s hands, even through college, and here he sat trying not to make his father understand his choice, but to make The Elder understand that he couldn’t take his spot. He didn’t know what he was yet and did not want to be a threat to his people.

  His father leaned against the front of his desk. His arms crossed over his chest before he ran a large hand over the sparse salt-and-pepper hair on his crown. “An unrecognized House, consisting of you and Marco? A House of riffraff, of outcasts, of degenerates, because that is what the Dignitary Council and Region Elders will have you all believe, son. Are you ready for that shit?”

  Khamun’s nails gripped the arm of his chair. He couldn’t believe the shit pouring from his father’s mouth. He wasn’t degenerate, and neither was Marco. And they both could give a damn what others thought, but his father was speaking truth through it all. What he was doing would bring the Nephilim Society at his feet, ready to go in on what they feared the most.

  “Pops, either you give me your blessing, or I do me. Either way, if I don’t have it, I have it from Mom. Her House is ready to back me.”

  His father’s body language was next to impossible to read. The man stayed silent. His six eight muscular frame held tight, restrained frustration, as his eyes narrowed and flashed a warm sepia hue.

  “Do you?” His father held his hand up quickly to silence Khamun’s impending words. “Son, do you understand what you are asking? You are a Prince of this region. My own son, a Guardian more experienced than any at twenty-five years of age. Ready to be groomed by the Eastern, Central, Southern, and even Ambassador to the Mother Region Africa, and you are ready to walk away to form your own House?

  “I am ready to hand you the reins, son, and . . . and you do this?” His father’s hands spread out in front of him with his rhetorical question, his eyes pleadingd with him.

  But Khamun couldn’t do it. He wanted his father to understand him in this, but he knew it wouldn’t happen. “Pops—”

  “No, listen. I love you, son, and I want peace in my marriage, so for your mother I will do this. But understand, you will do all of this on your own. When you are ready to come home and take your place, you take it. I do not have time for this. Any funds you receive from your mother’s estate will be limited to an allowance, half of what she already controls.”

  Khamun didn’t want his mother’s money and had told her so, but like his father, she was stubborn and insisted, so he kept his game face on and knew he would move that money to another account never to be touched. He was proud that he was going to get to be his own man.

  His father continued his rant. “She will be pissed, but this is business. Marco will step in the role as your house’s Dignitary council member. Since he is of our Royal House, this will establish some stability in the Society, though not by much. It will amuse me to see the bastard’s feathers be ruffled by my nephew taking a seat, and my son working with what they feel is beneath their holy sensibilities.”

  Khamun was shocked to see a slight smile on his father’s stern face. It was common knowledge in the household that his father couldn’t stand those on his council, in the DC, and in Nephilim society who twisted everything that was founded and turned it into a bourgeois competition for status. He openly felt that they had lost sight of why their race was created to stay on Earth. Khamun couldn’t help but feel the same way, which was why he was doing what he was demanding, to protect his family, himself, and secretly find out what was going on with his DNA.

  “But know this, my son. When you hit thirty, if your house is still not established, you will take your place in the Dignitary council and take over as co-regent in the House of Vengeance. Do you understand? Because this is not a choice at this point. This is family law.”

  It ticked him off that he was being put in his place yet again, with stipulations, but he would take whatever he could. “Yes, sir.”

  “The paperwork is being drawn. Blessings of the Most High unto you, my son. You leave me as a man taking care of his own. I’ll see you again when you are thirty.”

  How his father just laid the law made him feel as if this was it. That their once fluid relationship was now officially over and strained. It hurt him.

  A part of him hated that his father just didn’t get him, and he couldn’t help himself asking as a means of closure, “Pops, so you are just turning your back on me? Disowning me?”

  He studied his father’s blank face as a warmth in his eyes shined. Khamun knew they were done with this chapter in his life.

  “No. I’m letting you come into your own right . . . although I am not amused.”

  After tha
t life-changing meeting, he and his father ceased to communicate as father and son. Whenever he had to give a report, he got nothing but The Elder. Which ultimately pissed him off to no end. His father’s behavior only resulted in Marco and Lenox being Khamun’s middlemen in communicating with the man.

  His mother, he could never shake. She stayed on him like glue, insisting she be used as his liaison House oracle since she was already the Region’s Oracle, due to the loss of so many. He loved his mother, and the nonjudgmental love she gave had him accepting. He had no other choice. Their House needed an oracle in order to stay in the circuit and function reliably; all Houses did.

  The founding of his House had been a challenge. At the start, it only consisted of him and his cousin Marco. Marco was the only one at the time who saw the difference in him and didn’t judge him. Hell, Marco saw the difference when they were children and never said a word. He was his right hand, and that would never change.

  Calvin, his left-hand man, came into the picture a month later while they were roaming Brooklyn. The brotha was something else with his mishmash Brooklyn swag accent and New Orleans brogue. Dressed in all-black, a military-style jacket with baggy black jeans, black Timbs, shades and a smirk, he made every chick in the spot damp. He took down a crew of demons at a local club he was deejaying and rapping at without breaking a sweat. Every word he spat tore throughout the spot, filling the air in swirling light that only those of Nephilim blood could see. He was down with Khamun the moment the music faded out.

  Of course, the tech of the team, Kali, effortlessly became a part of the team without any concern from the men. It hit them all in their DNA to protect her, and protect they did. Even as she equally cut demons into snack food while she crooned background vocals for her big brother, handing him weapons she materialized from her henna tattoos. She was unmatchable with her knives and martial arts skills. Khamun knew without a doubt that he would kill any man or demon who tried to touch his little sister.