Bound By Sin (A Cin Craven Novel)

by Jenna Maclaine

  “Because none of the vampires we’ve executed have done what they did in service to the greater good. Your guilt can twist the past around however it likes, but the truth is that the world is a better place than it would have been had you not done these things.”

  “Perhaps,” I agreed, thinking how many innocent people would have died if Edmund Gage had lived, or if that pack of rogues had succeeded in taking the city of Edinburgh. “But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. What truly bothers me is that the more frightening my magic becomes, the happier it makes Morrigan. She says I’m to be some great warrior but what if I don’t like the person she’s making me into, Michael?”

  “Mo chridhe,” Michael chided. “Even Morrigan doesn’t have that power. Our experiences lead us to where we are, they don’t make us who we are. Only you can decide who it is you want to be.”

  I sighed and relaxed against him. “Have I told you yet today how much I love you?” I asked.

  “Sleep now, lass. When you wake up you can show me.”

  CHAPTER 10

  I woke to whiskers tickling my face. Opening my eyes, all I could see was gray fur and a pink nose coming directly at my face.

  “Meow,” Harriette said, and bumped her nose against mine.

  “Do you have to go out?” I asked sleepily.

  She made a happy cat sound and hopped off the bed. I got up and crossed the room to open the door, which she walked through without so much as a backward glance. Cats, I thought. A dog would have said thank you.

  I leaned against the door and looked around the room. This was the bedroom I’d grown up in as a human. Fiona and I had played with our dolls in this room. We’d had tea parties and talked about the men we’d marry and what our lives would be like. I walked to the dressing table and absently ran my fingers over the back of the chair as I looked in the mirror. Fiona was gone now, yet my own reflection hadn’t changed much at all from the day I’d stood right here, staring into this same mirror as I watched her lace me into my first corset.

  Turning away, I looked at my bed and the man lying in it. This was the same bed where Fiona’s mother had sung me to sleep as a child. It was the same bed where I had cried myself unconscious on the night my parents had died. This was where I had lost my virginity, and my life.

  I closed my eyes. Now that Fiona was gone, the things about this house that had brought me so much comfort over the years only made me sad. I looked back at the bed, my gaze latching on to the one thing that was constant in my life. Michael. No matter how the world changed around me, he would always be there, and he would always love me.

  He was stretched out on his back with one arm flung over his head. Ever so slowly, I slid the covers off of him. I didn’t believe for a moment that he was still asleep, but he laid there with his eyes closed and let me enjoy the view. My gaze moved up and down the practically perfect lines of his naked body, wondering where to start. I smiled wickedly as one particular part of his anatomy stood up and volunteered.

  I crawled gently across the bed, watching to see how long Michael was going to feign sleep. Propping myself on one elbow, I reached out and ran my fingertips up and down the length of his manhood. It leaped at my touch and I glanced back up at his face but his eyes were still closed, his features still as peaceful as a sleeping angel.

  Devilishly, I arched one brow and smiled. I leaned over him, my breath hot on his sensitive skin, my lips so close but never touching him. Slowly I moved up the impressively hard length of him until my lips hovered just at the tip. I rolled my eyes up and watched his face as my tongue darted out to swirl several times around the head of his shaft before I drew him into my mouth.

  With a low growl his eyes flew open and his hand shot out, gently grasping the back of my head, tangling his fingers in my scarlet curls. I moaned in satisfaction at the look on his face as I brought him pleasure with my mouth. I could do this for hours on end but Michael was rarely that patient. Indeed, within a few minutes he’d tossed me on my back and returned the favor until we were both wild with the need to finish.

  “Now, Michael,” I gasped. “Please now.”

  He spread my legs wide and plunged into me, throwing back his head with a groan of rapture. I slid my legs up until my ankles rested on his shoulders, and beckoned him to me. He leaned over and his lips met mine, his tongue moving with the rhythm of his body. At this angle the pleasure was so exquisite that if I hadn’t already been dead I might have expired from the overwhelming feel of him moving so deeply, so tightly, within me.

  Michael broke the kiss, his lips trailing across my cheek. “Come for me, lass,” he whispered raggedly.

  His words sent fresh shivers through me. “Not yet,” I begged, not wanting it to end.

  “Now,” he growled. “Do it for me now.”

  And then he bit me. His teeth sank into the vein in my neck and my blood flowed into his mouth as he exploded inside me. As with any bite from a vampire, for a moment I could feel what he felt—the indescribable pleasure of his release. It drove me over the edge and I screamed his name as I followed him into that wondrous place where time stops and the only thing in the world that matters is the throbbing ecstasy of our joined bodies.

  As he licked the blood from my skin, I eased my legs off his shoulders and wrapped them around his waist. Little tremors were still happily traveling through my body and I wasn’t about to let him move until they’d stopped. He looked down at me and smiled. By the gods, he was so impossibly handsome that I often still marveled that he was mine.

  “Have I told you yet today how much I love you?” he asked teasingly.

  I chuckled and squeezed my legs tighter around him, drawing him closer. “Give me a few minutes,” I said, “and you can show me. Again.”

  CHAPTER 11

  An hour after sunset I stood alone in my room, checking one last time to make sure I hadn’t left anything behind. Tonight we would go back to London and hope there was a Blood Cross ship in port that was willing to take us to America. The Blood Cross line was a shipping company owned and operated by a vampire named Sinclair. Back in ‘28 Sinclair’s wife, Belladonna, had left him and run off to Edinburgh, dragging with her a young and impressionable human necromancer named Tristan Mahone. Bel’s attempt to depose the vampire Queen of the Western Lands had resulted in banishment for them both: Bel to Sinclair’s island in the Ca ribbe an, and Tristan to Glen Gregor. And now here I stood, hoping that one of Sinclair’s ships would take me across an ocean to rescue Tristan’s daughter. I laughed softly at the irony of that.

  “Michael and Devlin are just loading the trunks onto the coach,” Janet said softly from the doorway.

  Looking up sharply from my reverie, I found her and Raina waiting patiently for me. I walked to Raina and took her hands in mine.

  “I will bring her back safely,” I said. “I promise.”

  She nodded as if she wanted to believe me, but her eyes told a different tale. “I’m afraid for her, Cin. I’m afraid of what he might have done to her. She has to be terrified. She’s only twenty-one and so fragile right now, especially where men are concerned.”

  “She’s a Macgregor woman,” I said. “When times are tough, we find the strength we need to survive.”

  Raina smiled sadly. “I guess we do at that.”

  “Will you be coming back in the summer, Cin?” Janet asked, referring to my yearly visits to Ravenworth.

  I looked at her and Raina, the two of them standing there looking so much like two other women I had loved and lost, and it was almost more than I could bear.

  “I honestly don’t know,” I answered, then walked over to Janet and hugged her tightly. “I love you, my girl. I have loved you and your brothers from the moment you came into this world, never forget that. But right now it hurts me to be here and I don’t know when that hurt will lessen.”

  “I understand,” she said softly. “I will miss you, Cin, but you know that this is your home and you’re always welcome here.”

&
nbsp; I turned and took one last look, soaking in the memories that had been made in this room. As a human, I had died here. Perhaps now it was time to let that girl rest and move on. Though it made my heart ache, I thought that it would probably be a very long time before I came to Ravenworth again.

  CHAPTER 12

  Luck was on our side and there was a Blood Cross ship in port when we arrived back in London. The Wraith was a long, low brig-rigged iron steamer. She was painted gray and carried fourteen guns. The guns made her a little heavy for blockade running, but I felt much safer for having them. The captain agreed to meet with us in our hotel but when he heard where we wanted to go, he staunchly refused. It took the rest of the night and part of the next morning (and several bottles of my whisky) for Devlin and Michael to persuade him otherwise. Finally, he agreed that for the profit he could make running supplies into Savannah it would be worth the small detour on his way to Jamaica.

  The only point the men could not get Captain Hines to budge on was the return trip. He would take us to America but he wouldn’t postpone his expected arrival in Jamaica while we concluded our business. Since we would have to find another ship to return us to Inverness, it was decided that Devlin would continue on to Jamaica with the Wraith. Rose Island, the headquarters of the Blood Cross fleet, was said to lie near those waters and there should be several Blood Cross ships docked at Port Royal. From there Devlin would find another vessel to take us out of America.

  Captain Hines insisted on departing the next morning, which meant there were many things to get done in a short amount of time. Devlin, who had seen more wars than he cared to remember in nearly five and a half centuries on this earth, had a list of items we would need to take with us, including a substantial amount of gold.

  “You never knew where you’re going to get stuck,” he said, “and for how long. Guns and gold are the only currency worth carrying in times of war.”

  That posed a bit of a problem in itself. The guns were easy enough to come by, but getting money out of the Bank of England during business hours is a lot harder than it sounds if you’re a vampire. Though we can move about during the day, we have to stay out of direct sunlight or we’ll burn. Since I had no wish for my husband to go up in a pillar of fire, this required some planning. Captain Hines loaned us a few men but the excursion required a closed carriage, the largest umbrella I’ve ever seen, and the cooperation of a darkly overcast winter’s day.

  With Michael and Devlin taking care of the details of our voyage, I had little to occupy my time until we set sail the following morning. I spent the afternoon thinking of Fiona, and of all the friends I had loved and lost. When darkness fell, I asked Justine for her company and hailed a carriage. There was one more thing I needed to do before we left England.

  We stopped on Panton Street and while Justine paid the driver I stood on the sidewalk, looking up at the sign over the small apothecary shop. Pendergrass & Company, it still read. Even though it was well after closing, the lights were on and there was a man at the counter mixing something with a mortar and pestle.

  He was tall, with dark hair, and he looked very much like the young apprentice who had often given me candies when I was a child. I smiled, remembering how handsome Archie had seemed to me then, and how he’d won the heart of a ten-year-old girl with a few peppermints. My mother had enjoyed old Mr. Pendergrass’s company when we visited London and I had spent many long hours in this shop. Even after Mama’s death—especially then—those two men had been my friends. If it hadn’t been for Archie and Mr. Pendergrass, I might truly be lying in that grave at Ravenworth.

  This young man had to be Archie’s son. In profile he had what might have once been Archie’s nose, before it had been broken several times during his misspent youth. Had Mr. Pendergrass not taken Archie in and given him an apprenticeship, there’s no telling where he might have ended up. I doubted that it would have been with a loving wife, a house full of children, and a thriving business to pass on to his son.

  I knocked on the door but, without even looking up, the man at the counter pointed to the closed sign hanging in the window. Not wishing to stand in the street all night, I placed my hand on the door lock and pushed a bit of magic into it, willing it to unlock. There was a soft click and I opened the door. The little bell rang and the man finally looked up. Yes, he did look quite a bit like Archie, though he was a much handsomer, more refined version of his father.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as Justine and I strolled into the shop. “We’re closed.”

  “What is your name, boy?” Justine asked.

  I would have gone with somewhat of a less blunt approach, but that wasn’t Justine’s way. The poor man looked shocked and mildly offended to be called a boy by a woman who appeared to be no older than twenty-five, but he answered anyway.

  “My name is John Little and this is my establishment. And it is closed. Come back tomorrow.”

  “John,” I said calmly. “My name is Cin Craven. This is Justine. We’re here to see your father.”

  He stood silently, looking from me to Justine and back again. I waited patiently for him to realize who we were. I knew he’d figured it out the moment the mortar and pestle hit the floor.

  “My God,” he whispered. “You’re them! Father used to tell me stories of vampires and demons, just as he now tells them to my son. He made all of you sound so very real, but I never actually believed you existed.”

  “So Archie is still alive?” I asked. “We’re not too late?”

  A shadow passed over John’s face. “Father is bedridden now. He has a cancer.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment. I’d known that if he was still alive he would be a very old man now. I had tried to prepare myself for anything, but the news that Archie was dying was still hard to take.

  “He’s in so much pain,” John said. “And I’m a coward. Every night he begs me to end his suffering, and every night I come down here and mix the poison he asks for, but I can’t bring myself to give it to him.”

  Archie had been so kind, so selfless. He had done whatever I needed him to do, without question. I hated to think of him as an old man, wasting away in his bed. For a moment I wished I’d never come here. But he’d been a good friend to me, to all of us, and letting him leave this world without saying goodbye—just because it might be easier for me—was wrong.

  “May we see him?” I asked softly.

  “Of course,” John replied, taking a lamp off the table to light our way. “Follow me.”

  We walked through the private parlor at the rear of the shop, the place where Mr. Pendergrass had sold anything a witch might desire. I was glad to see that Archie had kept it well stocked after Mr. Pendergrass’s death. Following John and Justine up the stairs, I glanced back once more at the room where I had spent so much time listening to my mother and Mr. Pendergrass talk of magic.

  “Please, come in,” John said, and motioned us into the upstairs hall.

  Justine and I both knew the apartment above the shop well. Without being told, Justine turned right at the top of the stairs. I started to follow her, but a movement in the dark hallway caught my eye. I turned sharply and the bright lamp John held momentarily destroyed my keen night vision. I motioned John forward and, with the light away from my eyes, I could see an open door down the hall and a young boy peeking out. I smiled and nodded to him and his eyes widened with curiosity. Archie’s grandson by the look of him, I thought.

  Turning, I followed John and Justine into Archie’s room. It was here that they’d brought me when I was turned. I’d woken as a vampire in this very room. Oddly, it seemed unsurprising that death still lingered here. And linger it did.

  Archie lay, pale and still, in his bed. Several thick blankets were pulled up over his flannel nightshirt to keep him warm. His hair, once black as soot, was now starkly white against his wrinkled, sickly gray skin. What shocked me the most was how small he seemed. Years ago he’d had a stocky pugilist’s frame. Though you couldn’t fault
the genteel manners Mr. Pendergrass had taught him, Archie had never looked like an apothecary. He’d always looked like what he’d started out as—a street tough who was ready and willing to use his fists, if necessary. Now he was thin and emaciated, a ghost of the man he once was.

  I made use of the small chair next to the bed while Justine gently sat down on the mattress, next to Archie’s hip. Tenderly, I took his frail hand between both of mine. His eyes fluttered open and he looked at us both for a long time, as if he wasn’t sure we were truly there.

  “I thought I’d die without ever seeing you again,” he said finally.

  “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to come, Archie,” I said. “You had a wife and children to provide for, and there are too many vampires in London. It wouldn’t have been safe for me to draw attention to you. Besides, I swore to myself that if we made it through that business with Kali, I would leave you and Mr. Pendergrass in peace.”

  He smiled, though his dark eyes were filled with pain. “Ah, we were fearless, were we not?” he asked.

  I chuckled. “I don’t know about you two, but I was scared witless through the whole thing.”

  “Aye, well, perhaps that’s true. Time has a way of whitewashing our memories. But mademoiselle,” he said to Justine, “you are every bit as beautiful as I remember.”

  Much to Devlin’s annoyance, Archie had always been just a little in love with Justine.

  “And you are every bit as gallant, my friend,” she replied graciously.

  He tried to laugh but it came out as racking coughs instead. There was nothing I could do but watch helplessly until he’d once again caught his breath. Archie looked at John, who was standing at the foot of the bed.

  “Have you brought it, Johnny?” he asked weakly. Glancing at Justine and me, he added, “I am truly ready to go now. It’s time.”

  John stared at his father, a tear running down his cheek. Without a word he turned and strode from the room.