Crimson Sins

by Madeline Pryce

The words barely escaped her mouth before he lunged. His hand tangled through her hair, and he tugged her body against his. His growl reverberated out of his throat and through her petite frame. He ripped her head to the side before pressing his teeth to her flesh.

  Nails scored his face. Her legs kicked at his shins. Using the sharp point of her stiletto, she even tried to gouge his calves. The only sensation he registered was her ice-cold skin.

  He sank his blunt teeth into the tender flesh of her neck, and he fought the initial urge to tear out her throat. He slurped at the richness spilling into his mouth. Her blood stung his tongue. Her tiny fists pounded against the wall of his chest, striking where they could. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, not even when the punches stopped and her arms fell limply to her sides.

  A tremble of pleasure coursed through him. The constant ache inside went silent. Sated. His throat convulsed with each heady swallow. The black sea in his gut retreated, reformed from liquid to solid, and yet he still drank. Power surged from her body into his. He wanted more. He wanted it all.

  “Take it, Necromancer. Take it all.”

  The rush of blood in his mouth dwindled into little more than a trickle. He sucked harder, searching for the bottom of the well.

  His brain clicked into gear.

  Eyes wide, blood dripping from his chin, Bastian pulled back in disgust. His hands shook. He let go of the deadweight in his arms and watched his victim fall to the dirty pavement. Thud. There was no more blood left to leak from the hole in her neck onto the ground.

  “Fuck.”

  He backed away. A hypodermic needle crunched under his boot. Death magic frosted the air with sapphire crystals. A whisper of power rode the wind, wrapped around him, and made it difficult to retreat. Wavering gray ghosts streamed from between the buildings. They screamed at him, mouths open, eyes vacant.

  Footsteps sounded from the mouth of the alley. He whipped his head around, searched for the source. A cloaked shadow passed in front of the streetlight before disappearing into the rain much like the phantoms had.

  He looked at the corpse on the ground. He could raise her from the dead, force life back into her body with little more than a thought. His palms tingled as though readying to do just that. Ice filled him. The blood in his veins thickened, weighing down his limbs and slowing his heartbeat. His breath no longer made clouds in the air.

  Damn it, no. Bastian closed his eyes and turned away.

  He’d killed a woman tonight, and there was nothing he could do about it. Making her a zombie wouldn’t bring her back to life. It would only condemn her into slavery, into a life of hell.

  A hell he knew all too well.

  CONCEALED DEEP WITHIN the shadows of a nearby apartment building, Ronan MacHallen watched his eldest son. For the last hundred years or so the whelp had gone by Bastian Hale. A butchered variation of the name he’d been born with.

  Death lingered heavily in the air, whispered dark nothings into his ear like a lover. Delicious. Ronan closed his eyes and inhaled the perfume of oleander blooms. The floral scent was the unique calling card his magic left behind.

  Beautiful.

  Bastian emerged from the darkened alley he’d taken the whore into not more than fifteen minutes before. His hands visibly trembled before he tucked them into his bloodstained pockets, and his unnaturally bright blue eyes were cold with hatred.

  The whore no longer trotted after him.

  Good girl. She’d followed her orders magnificently. Not that Ronan expected anything less from one of his blood slaves.

  This entire setup had been too easy. Hardly any fun at all. Barely worth his time or trouble.

  Lost in self-disgust—how pathetic—Bastian stumbled right by him. The rancid stench of zombie blood drifting in his son’s wake dampened all other scents.

  A cruel smile curved the corner of Ronan’s mouth.

  Okay, so he’d had a little fun.

  With another lingering glance at Bastian, Ronan turned and readjusted the wrapped parcel tucked under his arm. He withdrew the box from his jacket to consider the black satin wrapping paper with the embossed sterling silver filigree.

  Was it too much?

  No, just perfect.

  Ronan pursed his lips and exhaled a soft stream of crystalline air. Crimson tendrils of magic writhed, wrapped around the box. The result was instantaneous. Thud-thud, thud-thud. The gift in his hand surged to life.

  Whistling an old Irish tune, he pressed a glowing red palm against the electronic lock on the gated door to the apartment building in front of him. Click. Shoving the door open, he strolled inside with an extra bounce in his step.

  He had a new bride to court. In three days he’d claim Morgan Cross as his own. It was just too bad Bastian would be too busy to stick around for the ceremony.

  Ronan always had liked an audience.

  Chapter Two

  “I’m sorry, Morgan, but you’re fired.”

  Somewhere in the stagnant one-minute silence that followed, the words “you’re fired” penetrated her perpetual, sleep-hazed fog.

  Fired.

  The door she was about to close stopped short when she paused. She stared blindly at the wall and struggled for composure. Normally she knew when she was about to be sacked. Morgan drew in a breath, focused. The ghost materialized out of nowhere. Pinned to the wall with rusted railroad spikes, a writhing, half-naked woman smiled at her. Blood oozed in monochrome globs from the bullet hole in her head. A small sound escaped Morgan’s lips, and she flinched at the sight before her.

  Her palm slipped from the doorknob. She turned away from the dead woman. After twenty-three years of seeing ghosts, spirits, and wandering souls, she didn’t know why things appearing suddenly startled her. Eyes to the ground, hands trembling, she pushed the door shut with her foot.

  Her gaze wandered from the brown shag carpet to lock on to the man fidgeting behind the chipped particleboard desk in the middle of the room. The calm facade she drew around herself came too easy. For once, she wished she could show an honest reaction. Scream and point at the mutilated apparition behind her, demand someone other than her see it. Punch her boss in the face—tell him what a lecherous bastard he was.

  In an absent gesture she’d taken to in the last couple of days, she rubbed the fading bruise on her wrist. Damn the blue-eyed stranger all to hell. He’d been rude to her. Called her a necromancer, something she knew almost nothing about. He’d hurt her. Despite that, the thought of him, the lingering imprint of his proximity filled her with comfort. Did that make her sick?

  Morgan pushed away the thought and let the upcoming deception settle over her. Her lies came quicker than the truth. A smile lifted one corner of her mouth when she addressed her boss. It was the same smile she’d used to get this crappy job in the first place.

  “Is this because I won’t sleep with you?”

  Behind her, the ghost let out a hollow, throaty laugh. “He sleeps with them all,” the dead woman purred. “His dick is tiny, just like his daddy’s. And the noises he makes…sounds like a squealing pig. Ironic, huh?”

  Morgan stared straight ahead, determined to block out the chattering. Lately, maintaining normal conversations with the living proved nearly impossible.

  Sampson sank down into the chair behind his desk. He held up a hand, and one by one, he ticked reasons off on his sausage-like fingers.

  “One—honey, you ain’t never on time. Two—you refuse to wear the company uniform. Three—you’re surly. Four—you walk around here like a damned zombie.” Oblivious to her full-body shudder, her boss continued. “Five—your customer service skills suck like a dried-up whore. ‘How in the hell should I know where the condoms are?’ is not the correct response to a question.”

  Fine, so she wasn’t the model employee. Screw him. The long-term effects of dead people prattling on insistently in her ear, combined with sleep deprivation, were a bitch. She blamed the latter on the former. Her attention span was nonexistent, and her social
skills… Well, she’d lost those around the time she hit puberty.

  Morgan forced a sexy sashay to her hips. She crossed the room and prayed she didn’t fall on her face. She hadn’t slept in three days, hadn’t eaten in two. Avoiding the various stacks of newspapers, folders, and old Chinese take-out boxes scattered across the floor proved to be a bigger challenge than it should have been.

  She passed the worn, orange plaid sofa and glanced at the dead men on it. They were engaged in a casual conversation about the first snowfall of the year. Both sported gaping wounds in the center of their foreheads. Gray rivulets of blood trailed down their cheeks, staining whatever colors their shirts had been when alive. One ghost shifted his face to the light and exposed the nonexistent back of his head. Chunks of brain leaked down the back of his neck. At the touch of her gaze, they stopped talking to grin at her. Each scooted over an inch, made a meager space between them for her to sit.

  “Join us?” the one on the left asked, patted a cushion. His hand disappeared through the fabric.

  Morgan grimaced, shook her head, and looked quickly away. She sat on the edge of Sampson’s desk. Slowly crossing her legs, she pressed her worn sneaker on the arm of his chair. If she’d been wearing a miniskirt and high heels, the required company uniform, her strategic body placement would have had more of an impact.

  Her smile pulled at the corners of her bloodshot eyes. She batted her lashes and forced a playful lilt into her voice. All she really wanted to do was crawl into a hole and sleep for a week without worrying about feeding herself or dying from the perpetual cold she couldn’t shake. She leaned close and then walked her fingers through the mat of orange hair on his clammy arm.

  “So this is because I won’t have sex with you.”

  Sampson grinned before patting her hand. The shell around her heart cracked at the tenderness in his eyes. Even with the one-size-too-small shirts, the riot of orange hair atop his head, and his lip-smacking chewing gum addiction, his pearly white smile transformed him into… Okay who was she kidding? He was still overweight and lecherous. But, he was also funny, and he’d been nice, relatively speaking, to her. Flirty pretense over, her feet fell from the chair, and she leaned away from him.

  “Look, you’re a good kid…” he started.

  She looked directly into his soft green eyes and shut down her emotions. “But…”

  The word hung between them for a few moments.

  “But.” Sampson picked up the metaphorical ax. “The customers come to Porky’s because they like the atmosphere and the pretty ladies.”

  Morgan hiked an eyebrow in speculation. “This is a grocery store, not a strip club.”

  “Believe me, if I could get y’all to take off your clothes while you bagged the groceries, I’d be all for it. We’d make a fortune.”

  For the first time in weeks, maybe years, she felt a genuine smile soften the lines of tension on her face. “Sounds like a health code violation to me. Anyone ever tell you, you went into the wrong profession?”

  Sampson’s bellowing laugh sent a blast of spearmint-flavored air her way. He slapped his knee. “What can I say? I got the short end of the stick when it came to running the family business.” His laughter faded. “I know how much you need this job; I ain’t heartless. If you’re interested, I can talk to my cousin. He owns a club on the west side of town.”

  His gaze roamed over her, stopped at the nonexistent cleavage in the open V of her long-sleeved pink Porky’s shirt. He shrugged. “With some bigger tits and a tan I think you’d make some decent tips. You got a pretty face. And, the hair thing works on you. The bright red highlights are very punk-rock rebellious teenager. Sexy as hell. Horny old men love shit like that.”

  Morgan fingered the chin-length strands of her crimson bangs, an aftereffect of cutting her hair herself. The length, not the color. Her highlights were natural, something she’d been born with. Hoping to hide the mismatched strands, she tucked them behind her ear. If she could have dyed her hair all one color, she would have. Lord knew her adoptive parents had tried enough times to make her look like all the other upper-crust society girls.

  Once, when she was seven and the dye job hadn’t lasted more than four hours, they’d resorted to shaving her head as a punishment for her “lies.” The wig she was forced to wear after, no matter how high quality it was, had itched and given her sores.

  “Thanks for the offer, I think.” She grimaced. “But I don’t tan, and I like my B-cup tits just the way they are.”

  “Suit yourself.” The drawer to his left screeched open, and he pulled out an envelope.

  Her final paycheck. A measly one hundred bucks.

  Sampson tapped the paper against his hand three times before holding it out. She reached for the check. When she pulled, he didn’t let go. His eyes crinkled at the corners, and a familiar look filled his gaze.

  Pity.

  Did he know? No, he couldn’t. Her juvenile records were sealed.

  Morgan snatched the envelope from his hand. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out.”

  Sampson struggled to his feet and shoved his hands into the pockets of his plaid shorts. “Yeah, me too. You really are a hot piece of ass. I think you would have come around eventually.”

  She eyed the three inches of hairy, bulbous stomach exposed between his tighty-whities and his pin-striped polo. “Yeah, I don’t think so.”

  As if she didn’t have a care in the world, she strolled out of the office and grabbed her threadbare coat from what was once the janitor’s closet and was now the break room. Morgan glanced around one last time. She wasn’t going to miss the grime-covered vending machine or the single hard plastic chair that never failed to make her ass numb. Navigating through the tight, dusty aisles of the grocery store, she walked out into the softly falling snow.

  Now what in the hell was she going to do? Maybe she should skip out on her rent, take the four hundred dollars cash hidden in the cushions of her sofa, and move. Somewhere warm. A place where the scent of death didn’t overwhelm, and the psycho who’d started harassing her a few nights ago couldn’t find her.

  She stood on the darkened, narrow street and wished she had somewhere to go other than home. The bars were closed—she had no friends and now no job. The thought she managed to avoid all night wormed inside. What would the psycho leave for her tonight?

  Screw running. She should use her money and buy a gun. Too bad the pawnshops were probably also closed.

  She looked up at the water towers and smokestacks in the cloudy gray skyline. Falling snow clung to her eyelashes. Her breaths came out in soft white puffs. The flashing Porky’s sign drew her attention. Once again, she imagined the dark-haired man from three nights ago. His height. The breadth of his shoulders. The cut line of his jaw. The muscles of his chest visible through the wet, see-through white T. The eerie way the blinking pink light had flashed over him.

  Why in the hell did his bright sapphire eyes haunt her? He’d been in so much pain, yet he’d looked at her with such hatred. What had she done? The sunken shadows ringing his eyes combined with corpse-like skin still made her wonder if he was real or another illusion.

  No, he hadn’t been dead. Despite his zombielike appearance, life had thrummed through him. And she’d seen him in color, seen his eyes were as blue as the streaks in his hair. He’d looked at her as if he could see into her soul. Too bad he didn’t like what he saw. For a few moments, the world had gone blank, and silence descended. There were no ghosts complaining at her, begging for things she didn’t know how to help them with.

  She had forced herself to let him walk away when all she wanted was to chase after him to confirm he wasn’t a figment of her imagination. Wasn’t that what the shrinks used to tell her? The dead she saw were a way to cope with the trauma of being abandoned and left to freeze to death when she was four. The problem, they said, stemmed from repressed memories of her time before the police had found her in the rusted, roach-infested Dumpster.

  Seve
re mental issues, they told her.

  “Issues” was an understatement.

  A sharp whistle cut through the night, and Morgan shook herself from her trance. In front of her a dented black-and-red car idled next to the curb. A man in his late twenties stuck his head out of the window. His face was slender and mottled with acne. His self-satisfied smirk twisted thin lips. Morgan sighed.

  “Hey, gorgeous, you need a ride?” he called out.

  From inside the car someone snickered. Great. Now she had to deal with jackasses. The guy in the passenger seat leaned across the driver and showed himself. “Yeah, a ride on his cock! Come on, baby. We’ll show you a real good time. We got some blow.” Black greasy hair hung in a curtain around his face.

  A ride on his cock, a “real good time,” and coke? What woman wouldn’t refuse? A smile curled the side of Morgan’s mouth. She swung her hips from side to side and crossed to the car. The stunned looks on their faces were worth the effort of braving the slick, freshly snow-covered sidewalk.

  “Hmmm…” she purred.

  She placed her hands on the open window and looked into the car. In the backseat, a flickering image of a young girl blinked in and out. Not alive. Goose bumps trailed up Morgan’s arms. The little girl shook her head back and forth. Her chin quivered. The outline of tears rolled down her cheeks, and the anger inside Morgan manifested into cold fury.

  “Mean boys. Don’t listen to them,” the ghost whispered, as if the men in the front seat could hear her.

  Morgan softened her smile and broke her policy about talking to the dead in front of the living. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “Name’s Dave, and fuckin’ is my game. You gettin’ in or what, babe? It’s cold as shit out there.”

  Too bad Morgan hadn’t been talking to him.

  “Lana,” the ghost finally answered. “Can you call my mommy? She must be awfully worried.”

  Morgan turned her attention to Dave. He drew back a little, the haze in his eyes clearing at the disgust she let fill her face. The feeling settled in the pit of her stomach as the girl in the backseat kept talking.