Crimson Sins

by Madeline Pryce

  “I’ve got a better idea.” She pressed her palm against the man’s clammy forehead to push him farther inside the car, and took a measured step back. “Lana tells me what low-life piles of shit you two are. Why don’t you two take turns fucking each other instead of raping innocent girls? I think I’ll call the cops, tell them where you stashed the body, where they can find a pair of pink-and-yellow unicorn panties with your DNA all over it.”

  Dave’s eyes widened, and he choked on his spit. His face lost all color. He opened and closed his mouth as if searching for a breath that wouldn’t come. Where he gripped the eight-ball gear shifter, his hand shook. Beside him, his friend hugged his chest and rocked.

  “You don’t know shit, you crazy cunt,” Dave finally sputtered.

  The car sped from the curb in a squeal of tires. Morgan watched with narrowed eyes and memorized the license plate. She looked from the retreating taillights to the pay phone across the street and thought of only one person to call.

  Detective Bastian Hale. She didn’t know him, not personally. She’d picked him from a newspaper article. The fact that he’d turned out to be a good cop, one who didn’t ask too many questions about how she got the information she sometimes fed him, was a bonus. There was something about his low, sexy voice. Something he had in common with the blue-eyed man she’d run into a few days ago. Maybe one day she’d get enough balls to meet the detective in person and tell him who she was. Probably not. She trusted cops less than she trusted doctors.

  Careful of the ice-slick road, she crossed the street and reached into her pocket for the spare change she kept there. She took a deep breath and dialed his direct number at the station. Several weeks ago, he’d given her his cell, a number she hadn’t bothered to write down or memorize. She valued her anonymity.

  She leaned her shoulder against the pay phone and listened to the insistent ringing before the deep baritone of his voice announced he wasn’t currently available. After the beep, she gave him as much information as she could remember about the car, the license plate, Dave, and where Lana said they’d taken her. Hopefully it would be enough.

  The remaining ten-minute walk to her apartment was dark, cold, and, as the snow melted in her hair, wet. Despite the drug dealers, vagrants, and trail of ghosts zipping around her, isolation gnawed. Snow coated the sidewalk, and more than a few times her worn sneakers lost traction on the ice. She followed the streetcar track embedded into the pavement and lost herself with each concentrated tiptoe.

  By the time she got home, her teeth chattered. The chill was rooted so deeply she didn’t think a hot bath would thaw her. Regardless of the discomfort, she wasn’t in a hurry to enter her building. She took the slick stone steps one at a time. Would there be another package on her doorstep?

  Closing her eyes, she let the night seep in and tried to taste the air. Her chest expanded with her inhalation. What she discovered didn’t reassure. The lingering scent of flowers strangled the air and coated her tongue with perfume. Her stomach tightened and churned.

  Death was near. She looked down one side of the street, then the other.

  In between the neighboring buildings a group of homeless men dressed in dirty rags huddled next to overflowing shopping carts with garbage bags their only shelter. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Across the street in the darkened alleyway, low feral growls sounded. In front of a dented blue Dumpster two emaciated dogs lunged at each other, fighting over a maggot-covered bone on the ground.

  Morgan turned away from the pitiful sights and moved to punch in her security code. The door swung open. She sighed and remembered the lock had been broken three days ago, the night she’d gotten the first “package.” The same night she’d met her stranger. Coincidence?

  A week ago, she would have jogged up the three flights of stairs to her floor. Tonight, like the stairs out front, she took them one hesitant step at a time.

  Spiders crawled down her spine. A shiver chased the sensation. The spot deep inside her, the one she’d desperately tried to ignore her whole life, roused. Unease sped her heart into a thunderous din.

  Walking out of the stairwell and onto her floor, she looked left and then right down the darkened corridor. Empty. Silent. Still.

  At three o’clock in the morning, should she expect anything else? In this neighborhood anything was possible.

  All was as it should have been except for the immaculately wrapped parcel sitting in front of her door. From twenty feet away the black satin paper gleamed with flashes of silver. Her trepidation morphed into panic.

  “Fucking psycho stalker,” she muttered.

  She strode the few feet to her front door and used the toe of her soggy sneaker to nudge the present to the side. The cold metal of her keys cut into her palm when she pulled them from her pocket. She looked from the doorknob to the box.

  Why couldn’t she look away from the damn thing? Could she leave it here in the hallway and let the rats have it? Did rodents eat rotten flesh?

  Only, whatever was in that box wasn’t rotted. Disgust curled her stomach into a roiling mess. She might vomit just thinking about it. She had puked two nights ago when she’d opened her package to find a bloody, beating heart inside. The next night she’d come home to another present, its contents even more gruesome.

  Against her better judgment, she’d unwrapped that package. Morbid curiosity was a bitch. Before she could change her mind, a half-decomposed arm with the hand still attached clawed through the inky tissue paper. On the bony ring finger shone a bloodred ruby. After she’d tossed the body part to the ground with a shriek, the bloody stump had crawled back to her like an obedient dog. Getting rid of it had been an even bigger challenge.

  She would not open another box.

  If she were smart, she would pick up the package, walk to the broken window at the end of the hall where a pile of snow lay, and pitch it into the alley. Maybe she should talk to Detective Hale about it.

  No, she couldn’t.

  Anonymous tips were one thing. This was something else. This was too similar to what had happened last time she called the police. Instead of helping her, she’d been the one arrested and locked up. Never again.

  She stared at the box and contemplated whatever unseen macabre contents it held. Who would send her reanimated body parts? Better yet, how had they done it? Pressure built inside her chest. The sensation filled her with an all too familiar rush of cold energy. Increased emotion brought on the freakish heebie-jeebies that made her skin crawl. She hated this feeling, hated what happened when she could no longer contain the power.

  Under her scrutiny, the package began to wiggle. Although some part of her expected the movement, her scream was automatic. Hand pressed over her mouth, she looked around in desperation. Stupid! What she was looking for? Help? An ax?

  The creak of rusty hinges echoed down the corridor. Light streamed from the open door and illuminated the hallway. A flurry of roaches skittered into shadows. Gwen Petterson, Morgan’s eighty-year-old neighbor, stepped into the hall. Using both hands, she wielded a shotgun in a rather formidable way. The cotton lapels of her pink robe hung open to expose her flowered ankle-length gown.

  “What are you shrieking about, girl?” Her raspy voice creaked with age and prolonged cigarette usage.

  Gwen’s too-small eyes were wide and alert despite the fact it was nearing dawn. Her pinched nose wrinkled with concentration. It matched the craggy lines framing her cheeks and narrow slant of a mouth. She looked ready to strike down Satan himself.

  God bless the nosy old bat.

  Morgan forced a smile. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Petterson. I saw a rat. Startled me is all.”

  The lies were as automatic, as necessary as breathing.

  Her neighbor raked a suspicious gaze over first her, then the present that had blessedly stopped crawling to Morgan’s door.

  Using the butt of the gun to point at the box, Gwen approached. “You’ve got an admirer.” Her smile showed that she’d taken out her de
ntures. “Handsome young thing he is. Polite too. They just don’t make men with manners these days.”

  Morgan sobered instantly. She looked around as if the perpetrator were still there in the hall. “You’ve seen him? Talked to him?”

  One of Gwen’s bushy gray eyebrows rose in question. “You haven’t? He said you two were old friends. He went on and on about you. He seemed quite smitten.”

  Morgan didn’t have any friends.

  “There wasn’t a note with the boxes. Did he tell you his name by chance? What color were his eyes?”

  Please don’t say blue. Please don’t say blue.

  The pink plastic curlers in Gwen’s snow-white hair clinked together as she stepped close. “No name. He had a heavy accent. Irish. His eyes were green, kinda unusual now that I think about it. Bright, like yours. And his hair, youngsters these days, was dyed like yours with the red what-do-you-call-its. Highlights? What’d he leave you, anyway? I’ve been dying to know. Something expensive, I imagine. He was dressed too nice, and the paper is too pretty for anything cheap. I bet he’s lookin’ for sex. You might want to consider taking him up on it. Masturbation is a poor substitute for the real thing, you know.”

  Heat rushed to Morgan’s cheeks. Could the old bat hear the electric hum of her vibrator through the paper-thin walls? Gross. For a moment, she contemplated telling Gwen what was inside the boxes, if only to snuff out the twinkle in her eyes.

  “Thanks for the advice,” Morgan said instead. “I’ll take it under consideration. I’m going to go inside now…” And shove sticks into my ears.

  Morgan had the key in the lock, knob twisted, door half open when Gwen spoke again.

  “Morgan.”

  Grimacing, she turned. “Yes?”

  Gwen smiled and pointed at the box. “Don’t forget your present.”

  Right. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Fighting back the encroaching vomit, she bent and picked up the box. It was heavy. And…breathing. Heat consumed her. Saliva pooled in her mouth. Beads of sweat gathered between her breasts.

  She swallowed convulsively. “Good night, Mrs. Petterson. Why don’t you shut off your hearing aid for a bit and try to get some sleep.” Morgan forced the words out, entered her apartment, and slammed the door shut behind her.

  With her back pressed against the door, she flung the present to the scuffed floor. The box jumped. Rattled. Inched in her direction.

  The deep soothing breaths she took didn’t help.

  “Tsk. Tsk. Now is that any way to treat a gift, Ms. Cross?” The voice was masculine, thick with an Irish brogue.

  From the shadows of her living room combo bedroom, a tall, lanky figure rose from the couch. Morgan shrieked, and like in the hallway, she slapped a hand over her mouth to shut herself up. Her heart hammered. It beat hard enough to pound in each pulse point. Each one of his heavy footsteps punctuated the air and stole her breath. Fear paralyzed her. Any self-defense training she’d learned over the years fled as the panic took hold.

  The cloying scent of flowers invaded her nose. Overpowering the floral aromas were the heady notes of spices. Evil. How had she not choked on the scent the moment she walked inside her apartment? Her eyes adjusted to the dimness, and the first thing she saw was the piercing, unnatural emerald shade of the intruder’s eyes.

  Familiarity washed over her. They were eyes she’d spent four years looking into. They were the eyes of a friend. Or so she’d once thought. His lies had kept her inside the god-awful asylum that had sucked the life from her.

  “Dr. MacHallen, is that you? What…what are you doing in my apartment?” Her voice cracked, and she pressed farther into the door.

  She reached to her left and flicked on the light switch. Hopefully he didn’t notice how badly her hands trembled. The battered lamp next to the worn sofa bed flared to life.

  A young version of her former doctor stopped two feet in front of her. Head tilting back, she assessed him in one quick glance and tried to compare the man in front of her to the man she remembered. Twenty pounds lighter and at least thirty years younger, but there was no doubt in her mind it was the same man. How in the hell was that possible?

  Instead of the neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper hair, crimson streaks gleamed within the jet-black strands. His skin was paler. The shade made the jewels of his eyes a brighter contrast. A short, well-groomed goatee accented the powerful angle of his jaw and framed his lips.

  The man in front of her smiled, and through the facial hair, a dimple dented his cheek. In place of the white doctor’s coat, he wore an inky cloak. Black pants and a bloodred silk shirt replaced the khaki and oxford button-up combo she’d come to expect from her psychiatrist. He would have been devastatingly handsome if not for the crazed, half-lucid shimmer in his eyes.

  “Now, lass,” he said in a gentle murmur. “Call me Ronan.”

  Chapter Three

  Bastian rested his cheek against the open toilet seat and groaned. His seventy-two hour vigil of praying to the porcelain god had long ago numbed his arm, bruised his knees, and put a permanent kink in his spine. He kept as still as possible, afraid any movement would set off the stomach-to-mouth explosions again. Not for the first time in the last three days, he was grateful for the fact he pissed with the rim up.

  He reached for the handle and flushed away what he hoped were the last remnants of the poison. His bastard father with the black heart and even blacker soul had played him. Deceit and mind games were all that his sojourn into the slums had been. An elaborate trick for the sole purpose of amusing his father.

  Bastian cursed himself.

  The only excuse for not noticing the cold touch of death on the prostitute’s skin or the rancid taste of zombie blood on his tongue had been how far gone to the change he’d been. When his recessed genes emerged, sensations stopped registering as sharply. The dead felt nothing but the cold—tasted only the rot in their mouths. He hadn’t realized the lie until he’d gotten home.

  Between the warm bottle of scotch and peeling off his shirt—ruined from the congealed blood—sanity had returned. He’d first noticed the black rot staining his clothes. Then there was the taste in his mouth. Last was the churning in his stomach. From there, the rest wasn’t hard to figure out.

  The prostitute had already been dead when he’d bitten her.

  Based on how perfectly alive she’d looked, the zombie was probably a longtime blood slave, a creature bound to a necromancer and forced to do their bidding.

  Guilt faded, and rage bubbled to the forefront.

  Bastian had willingly ingested a shitload of zombie blood. He hadn’t sensed the thrall-like noose his father had slipped over his throat. The knot had slowly tightened until he’d done exactly what Ronan had wanted him to do. The entire thing had been a prank. One Bastian had walked into.

  Over the gurgle and swish of the toilet flushing, noises in the hall outside his apartment caught Bastian’s attention. The locked doorknob jiggled. Someone cursed. Laughter rang out. The front door opened and then shut.

  Footsteps echoed through the living room and into his bedroom. Each thumping step sent a hammer to the side of his head. Silence descended as the two men who’d just entered his apartment uninvited stopped in front of the bathroom door. The snow-laden breeze streaming through the open window in the adjacent bedroom disappeared. Beads of sweat popped immediately to the surface of his skin. One by one, they rolled down his temple and dampened the arm where his forehead now rested.

  “Hey, fuckface,” one of them called out.

  Bastian would know that gruff, forever playful voice anywhere. Rory, his youngest brother by almost five years, didn’t take anything serious. Not zombie poisoning. Not the reappearance of their father, Ronan, and his fucking games. “You gonna stop puking anytime soon? It’s been three days, and we’ve got shit to do tonight.”

  Not bothering to open his eyes, Bastian lifted his hand and held up his middle finger in greeting.

  Deep, booming laughter
ricocheted off the black and gray tiled walls. The throbbing in Bastian’s head pounded through his forehead and into his brain. An ice pick to the eye socket would have felt better.

  He licked chapped lips and cleared his throat. His voice was raspy. “What in the fuck are you laughing at?”

  Bastian let go of the toilet to drop back onto the floor. His sweat-slicked shoulders hit the tile with a slap. As best he could in the cramped confines between the sink and the glass-enclosed shower stall, he sprawled on the bathroom floor. Naked as the day he was born, he stretched out his arms and legs. The cold black ceramic underneath him did little to ease the feverish heat radiating from his pores.

  A lesser man might have grabbed a towel or used a hand to conceal post-vomit shrinkage. Bastian didn’t move a single goddamned muscle. He blinked his eyes open. The untamable black-tipped spikes of his brother’s blond hair were the first thing to come into focus.

  Some might call the hairstyle trendy. In reality, the strands were a mark of necromancy. The excess magic running through their veins leeched out into the hair in what mortals saw as highlights. Unlike Bastian’s blue-streaked hair, Rory’s magic was pale yellow and “bleached” all but the tips of his jet-black strands blond.

  Rory’s bright emerald eyes, the same damning shade as their father’s, stared down at him. A shit-eating grin split his brother’s face in half. “I can’t get over the fact that you willingly drank zombie blood. A lot of zombie blood. On the bright side, at least you didn’t fuck her. She did offer, right? In fifty years, you’ll laugh about this.”

  Bastian threw his arm across his face. A hard, steel-tipped boot nudged his hand away. Rory’s eyes twinkled at him. In a normal family, Bastian might have seen concern. Compassion. He and his brothers were so fucking far from normal it made sense that he saw nothing but amusement.

  Bastian narrowed his eyes. “You’re a real asshole, you know that?”

  Rory’s dimples flashed through two-day-old stubble. “But, you love me.”