Bound By Sin (A Cin Craven Novel)

by Jenna Maclaine

  Ginny whooped in a very unladylike manner and dashed from the house. Pandora shook her head and followed the girl out. I watched Pandora go, thinking what a paradox she was. She seemed to genuinely care for Lizzie and her daughter; she even seemed to like Claire. But there was a cloud of dark magic around her that made me very nervous, especially since I didn’t know whether or not she might use that magic to help Adrien Boucher. I found myself wanting to like her, and yet at the same time I fully expected her to do something awful. I popped one of the strawberries into my mouth and chewed thoughtfully.

  Claire laughed. “I hope I have a little girl just like Ginny.”

  “Speaking of children, where might the father of yours be?” Michael asked.

  Claire frowned down at her jam-covered biscuit. “Ares had to go back,” she said sadly. “I can summon him, but I can’t control how long he gets to stay. Sometimes it’s only an hour, sometimes it’s a whole night. You never can tell.”

  “Can’t you just call him back out again?” I asked.

  “It only works once a day,” she replied. “Twenty-four hours from the time he goes back into the urn I can try again.”

  “Do you love him?” Evangeline asked.

  “Yes,” Claire said softly. “With all my heart.”

  “Oh, Lord help you, girl,” the ghost muttered before she got up and disappeared again.

  I tended to agree with her. I couldn’t imagine how such a relationship was ever going to work. Then again, I’d fallen in love with a vampire, so who was I to judge?

  CHAPTER 27

  It was a lovely night. The spring air was cool and perfumed with the scents of honeysuckle, pine, and jasmine. As I stepped off the back porch, I heard a loud thump and curse from inside the house and laughed softly to myself. Claire had coerced Michael into bringing down several more trunks full of Evangeline’s dresses from the attic. My poor husband always did have a hard time saying no to a Macgregor woman. He would catch up with me as soon as he could, but for the moment I was enjoying the relative quiet of a solitary stroll.

  I walked around the detached kitchen, following a stone path that led to a stand of trees behind the house. Ginny’s tinkling laughter spilled from the open windows of the kitchen and I smiled as I passed. From inside I could hear Lizzie McCready’s soft southern drawl as she explained the intricacies of canning preserves to her daughter. I continued along the stone path, through the trees, and out into a meadow bisected by a wide dirt road. Assuming that somewhere in the darkness ahead this road would meet up with the main road that ran from the docks to the house and would continue on to the slave village, I turned and followed it.

  After several yards I was surprised to come upon a lovely white cottage with a beautiful garden planted out front. A young slave girl of about twelve or thirteen sat in a rocking chair on the front porch, holding a baby that I recognized as Robert and Lizzie McCready’s youngest child. The girl eyed me cautiously. Perhaps it was because I was a stranger, or perhaps it was the fact that I was wearing boots and breeches that unnerved her. She herself was wearing a pretty beige dress printed with blue flowers.

  “Good evening,” I called to her with a smile. “That’s a lovely dress.”

  She flushed and glanced down, a shy smile on her face. And then both of us nearly jumped out of our skin when the front door slammed open and Robert McCready strode out onto the porch. He was wearing work boots and beige pants held up over his portly belly by suspenders. The white cotton shirt under them was stained with sweat. I eyed the pistol holstered at his waist and wondered why he would feel the need to wear such a thing in his own home.

  “Cassandra,” McCready said in his big booming voice. “Why don’t you take the baby inside?”

  He laid his hand lightly on her shoulder as he said this and I did not like the way she flinched from his touch, or the fear that was suddenly quite obvious in her eyes. Cassandra clutched the baby to her chest and scurried past him into the house. I stood at the base of the steps and looked up at Robert McCready, not liking him any better tonight than I had last night.

  “Mrs. Craven,” he said, raking one hand through his halo of carrot-colored curls. “I think perhaps we got off on the wrong foot, you and me.”

  “Perhaps we did, Mr. McCready,” I conceded. “But I think not. If you’ll come up to the house after supper tomorrow night, we can discuss the future of your employment on this plantation.”

  Which is going to be very limited, I thought as I turned and walked away.

  I could feel two sets of eyes on me as I continued down the road. One was Robert McCready’s and the other belonged to a slave boy, perhaps a few years older than Cassandra, who was hiding in the trees near the cottage. I had no idea what he was doing there but, since I wasn’t willing to call McCready’s attention to him in order to find out, I passed him by without acknowledging his presence.

  When I reached the end of the meadow the road continued on for another hundred yards or so through the woods, spilling out into a large clearing ahead. About halfway there I felt a small prickling of dark magic move within me and I glanced to the left. The trees had been cut back here, for what reason I couldn’t guess. There was something supernatural at work out there, though. While my curiosity was piqued, my good sense got the better of me this time. Pandora, and perhaps this very island, made my dark magic hard enough to control. I did not need to go searching for further ways to tempt it.

  The road eventually emptied into a long, narrow meadow. Two rows of cabins stretched down its length, lining the drive. The slave village was quiet and dark tonight; the only sign of life was a wizened old woman who sat on the front porch of one of the cabins. She glanced quickly over her shoulder toward the edge of the field behind her cabin. I followed her gaze and found myself drawn to another path leading into the woods, this one not made of stone or packed earth but carved into the forest by the treading of many feet.

  I was perhaps twenty yards in when I first heard the beating of the drums. They called to me with almost as much strength as Raina’s summoning spell, drawing me deeper into the woods. I could see a clearing up ahead, a large bonfire burning in the center of it. When I stepped from the trees my eyes widened at the sight in front of me.

  The drums were beating and it appeared as though most of the village was dancing around the great fire. In various stages of undress, they twirled and gyrated in wild abandon, singing and calling out to the heavens as they moved. I walked forward, enthralled by the sight, and something deep inside me stirred to life with the rhythm of the drums. The dark magic that I’d always felt from Pandora was here—almost a living, breathing thing in the meadow.

  A large man was the first to notice my presence. He caught Pandora against his chest as she danced past him and pointed in my direction. I’d never seen her like this. The omnipresent turban was gone and her hair hung loose down her back. She looked like some sort of pagan goddess, her body glistening with sweat. Pandora and I stared at each other across the clearing, then she picked up her blouse from the grass where she’d discarded it, pulling it on as she walked toward me. Every instinct I possessed screamed for her not to come any closer, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to move. With each passing moment the darkness inside me built, looking for a way out. It suddenly occurred to me that I was hungry. It was hungry, and I wasn’t strong enough to hold it back. The rhythm of the drums picked up and I watched the dancers, lost in the ecstasy of their movements. All those bodies, filled with blood. Not in some far-off city, but right here a few feet away.

  And then Pandora was in front of me, her dark eyes filled with an understanding she couldn’t possibly have. I looked at the smooth skin, the veins pulsing just below the surface. But Pandora was filled with black magic. I couldn’t take her blood. Drinking from a dark mage was what had gotten me in this trouble to begin with.

  “I can’t be here,” I said breathlessly and with every ounce of strength I had left, I turned and fled.

  �
�Miz Craven!” Pandora called after me and I could hear her running to catch up with me.

  Please don’t. I said to myself over and over. Please don’t follow me.

  I skidded to a halt when I reached the slave village. Through the pounding in my head I could hear a pounding of a different sort—footsteps running on the packed earth of the road. For a moment I thought that Michael had somehow sensed my distress and come for me, but the sound wasn’t heavy enough for a grown man. Moments later the boy I’d seen hiding outside the McCreadys’ cottage burst into the clearing. Pandora came up beside me, grabbing the boy’s shoulders as he skidded breathlessly to a stop in front of us.

  “What is it, Hector?” she asked urgently.

  “My sister . . .” the boy gasped. “Mr. McCready . . . you said to tell you if . . .”

  Pandora spat a particularly violent curse and took off running in the direction of the overseer’s cottage. I stood there staring at the boy, his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. In mythology, Hector’s sister was Cassandra. I thought of the way Robert McCready’s eyes had roamed over Claire’s body the first night I’d met him, the way Cassandra had flinched at his touch tonight.

  “Oh, bloody hell,” I cursed, and took off after Pandora.

  CHAPTER 28

  It didn’t take me long to overtake her. My vampire speed was no match for a human and I arrived at the cottage in a fraction of the time it would take Pandora to get there. I stopped and listened, not wanting to frighten the entire household just in case the boy had been mistaken. At the sound of a muffled cry from inside the house I gained the porch in one leap and kicked in the front door. Unfortunately for Robert McCready, I now owned Kenneway Plantation and every building on it. It meant that I could enter his house without an invitation, and enter it I did.

  McCready jumped up from his crouched position over the sofa. In one glance I took in Cassandra’s tearstained face and her pretty flowered dress, which was now torn at the shoulder. The girl jerked the hem of her dress down and scooted backward until she was wedged against the arm of the sofa, as far away from us as she could get. Her large, dark eyes darted from McCready to me and back again. Robert McCready held his hands up in front of him, his ruddy face flushed with exertion or embarrassment, I wasn’t certain which.

  “This ain’t what it looks like,” he said.

  With a growl of outrage I sprang forward and grabbed the front of his shirt, throwing him bodily through the front door. He flew through the air, landing on his back in the front yard. I turned to Cassandra.

  “Did he hurt you?” I asked, barely able to contain my anger long enough to not frighten her further.

  She shook her head. “No, miss,” she replied softly. “Not this time.”

  Not this time. By the gods, she was only a child and a slave girl completely under his power, as well. In that moment whatever control I had over my temper and my black magic snapped. I felt the darkness rise up inside me, turning my brown eyes to black with its power. I stalked to the edge of the porch and looked down at Mr. McCready as he picked himself up off the ground.

  “You bitch!” he spat. “What I do in my own house ain’t none of your damned business!”

  “What you do with my people is entirely my business, Mr. McCready,” I replied coldly.

  I’m not sure what he saw in my eyes, but whatever it was it made him reach for the pistol at his hip. I smiled and sprang from the porch. The darkness inside me swirled jubilantly at the sound of his screams. It fed on blood and death, growing stronger as I tapped the vein in McCready’s neck and his hot blood spilled into my mouth. I could have killed him with black magic alone. For a moment I let the darkness travel across my skin. It would be so easy to simply hold him down and allow the magic to suck the life from him, leaving nothing more behind than bone and ashes. But tonight the darkness wanted blood and just this once I wasn’t adverse to playing with my food. Several times I let him up, let him fight me as well as he was able. I never even felt any blows he managed to land.

  From all directions around me I began to hear voices and somewhere deep inside I realized that a situation which should have been over quickly and quietly was beginning to draw a crowd.

  “She’s gonna kill him.”

  “Don’t reckon that’d be a bad thing, do you?”

  “Should we try to stop her?”

  “How you think we gonna do that?”

  Dark hands reached for me but my magic pushed them back, scattering bodies in several directions. The sheer force of it made me pause and I glanced up from Robert McCready’s struggling body. I saw Pandora standing on the porch, watching me with speculative interest. Cassandra stood wide-eyed next to her, her ripped dress hanging drunkenly off one shoulder. I saw Lizzie rushing up the steps, herding Ginny into the safety of the house. The guilt I felt at mauling that child’s father right in front of her pushed the darkness down, giving me a brief moment of sanity. And in that moment Michael hit me like a locomotive. We tumbled backward and the feel of his body against mine quelled the darkness inside me like water being thrown on a fire.

  “Jesus Christ, Cin,” he yelled. “You could have killed him. What were you thinking?”

  I pushed him off of me. “He was molesting a child, Michael. I didn’t think. I just . . . I lost control and I couldn’t have stopped it even if I’d wanted to.”

  The anger that radiated from my husband shifted its focus from me to McCready. We both stood and I grasped Michael’s wrist, afraid he might be tempted to finish what I’d started.

  “Spawn of Satan!” McCready said raggedly as he struggled to his feet, one hand pressed to the wound on his neck.

  I hadn’t been gentle. Instead of two puncture marks, it looks as though a rabid dog had gnawed on his flesh. Breathing harshly, he pulled his hand away and looked at the blood. Then he looked back up at me with indignant fury in his eyes. With shaking hands he jerked the pistol from the holster at his hip. Someone screamed as Michael instinctively placed his body in front of mine.

  “I’ll send you back to hell, where you belong!” McCready shouted and raised the gun.

  I flinched as a loud report filed the meadow. A look of shocked crossed Robert McCready’s face before he pitched forward and fell dead at our feet. We all stared in disbelief at Lizzie McCready, who stood on the front porch of her cottage, a Henry rifle pressed to her shoulder. For a few quiet moments she looked dispassionately down at the body of her husband. Then without a word she numbly turned, took Cassandra by the hand, and led her back into the house, closing the door behind them.

  CHAPTER 29

  Michael and I stood silently with half a dozen slaves, unsure of how to proceed.

  “They ain’t gonna bring the law down on Miss Lizzie, are they?” Hector asked, glancing nervously back at the cottage.

  Michael looked down at the boy. “No,” he said firmly. “I’ll take his body out to sea and get rid of it.”

  “Why can’t we just bury him here?” I asked, not liking the idea of Michael out in open waters where he could be spotted by Union patrols, especially with a murder victim in his boat.

  “Because,” Michael said, “eventually someone will wonder what became of him. It’s best if his body is not found on this island with a gunshot wound in his chest. This way he just disappears and, should anyone ask, we can truthfully say we don’t know where he is.”

  “All right,” I agreed. “Do you want me to go with you?”

  “No,” he replied. “You go back to the house and stay with Claire. I’ll handle it.”

  He effortlessly slung McCready’s body over his shoulder and headed off toward the dock. With the excitement over, the slaves began to disperse, melting quietly into the shadows. I stood, watching Michael’s retreating figure until I could no longer see him. I’ll handle it, he’d said. Only it had sounded more like I’ll clean up your mess. A frisson of dread went through me at the conversation that I knew was coming when he returned. Wearily, I sat down on
the steps of Lizzie’s porch. Looking down at my blood-stained shirt, I grimly wondered what my face must look like. Pandora moved silently from the shadows of the porch to come and stand in front of me.

  “How long you been pretendin’ that black magic ain’t inside you?” she asked.

  I opened my eyes and looked up at her. “Since 1818,” I replied honestly, too tired to argue that it was none of her business.

  She whistled and shook her head. “You must be one strong woman to deny half of who you are for that long.”

  “The dark magic is nothing more than an infection,” I said. “It is not who I am.”

  “ ’Course it is,” she insisted. “You’re a powerful bokor. You serve the loa with both hands.” She reached down and grasped my wrists, turning my hands over in hers, palms up, to illustrate her point. “One is for the darkness and one is for the light. Together you find balance and harmony. Take one away, and you tip the scales.”

  I pulled my hands from hers. “There is nothing harmonious about what’s inside me.”

  She laughed. “You’re some arrogant vampire, you know that? You think you’re the only one in the world got demons? Unless you’re God Almighty, we all got some darkness inside us, Miss Cin. You can’t walk through this world without it. Now, you got two choices: you can get you a big ol’ shovel and bury it deep . . . but it’s gonna rot inside you and taint everything you touch. Or you can accept what you are, put it on like a coat, and wear it proudly.”

  I looked up at her dubiously. “You don’t understand what the magic can do when I lose control of it.”

  “Oh, I understand the black magic a whole lot better than you do right now,” she said. “It ain’t nothin’ to be scared of. Let me explain it a different way. That darkness is like a hungry, stray dog. You get scared of it and you kick it away, well, it’s likely to bite you. But you bring it inside and feed it, make a friend of it, and it’ll be yours forever.” Pandora looked down at me and shook her head sadly. “You got to feed that black dog, Miss Cin, before it turns nasty and bites you.”