Crimson Sins

by Madeline Pryce

  She was neither weak nor helpless.

  Wind blew her hair back, and Morgan’s arms grew heavy with the magic coursing through them. Ronan closed the distance and grabbed the exposed skin of her wrist. Skin to skin. It felt like spiders were crawling up her arm and trying to burrow into her flesh.

  Morgan let go of the tether anchoring her magic. As hard as she could, she shoved every ounce of her power into Ronan where they were connected, and wished he’d feel the same paralyzing nightmare, the same helplessness.

  She met his gaze straight on. “Feel your worst fucking fear, asshole.”

  Ronan’s eyes widened. He gasped with his half-formed mouth. He jerked away from her and stumbled back. His eyes glazed over, and he dropped to the ground, knees landing in the stream of blood that looked black in the dimness.

  The shimmer enveloped Ronan, and the first hints of horror crept into her subconscious. The place where he touched burned, but she didn’t rub it. She didn’t dare move. The backlash was coming—a side effect Bastian and Rory had warned her about when doing spells. There was nothing she could do except ride it out.

  The first shadowy image appeared through the haze. Then another. And another. She watched, unable to break away from the living nightmare she’d thrust Ronan into. She saw what he saw. Felt what he felt. Her heart shattered in the overwhelming pain and sorrow radiating from Ronan.

  His disjointed memories washed over her. She saw Auri, pale and lovely, ethereal. Blue streaks glinted in her chestnut hair and reflected the moonlight as he made love to her. Things changed. They stood in a field, towers of thick, dark smoke pluming into the air. Auri’s eyes, large and bright amber, glinted with rage. Hatred aimed at Ronan for slaughtering an innocent, for drawing attention to them.

  The smoke vanished, and the memories shifted forward. Her palms burned, agony searing her flesh where glowing red iron was pressed into Ronan’s hands to snuff out his necromancy. Screams echoed in her head, but they weren’t hers or Ronan’s. They were Auri’s. The council had branded her too.

  The fury manifesting in Ronan converged on her, and Morgan dropped to the ground, her hands landing in the puddle of blood. Ronan’s nightmare spun. The head of the necromancy council walked into the stone chamber they’d been held in. The man’s black cloak billowed around his tall, thin frame, a shadow coming to kill them, to kill his unborn daughter growing within his wife’s womb.

  “I love you, Auri. Always. Forever.”

  Auri turned her head and looked at him. Tears rolled down her face. “You did this, Ronan. You did this.”

  “No,” Morgan croaked out.

  She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The anguish. The guilt. The love. The hatred. The fucking pain squeezing her insides and ripping them in half. No. God, no. The blast of magic hit Auri’s chest and spread out in a layer of black ice across her brown smock.

  “Auri, NO!” she and Ronan screamed in tandem.

  Cloth melted under the potency of the death spell and exposed her stomach, swollen with child. Another blast of magic. Auri fell slack against the chains holding her hostage. Her hair fell forward and hid the glazed whites of her dead eyes.

  Dead. Dead because of Ronan. The only woman he’d ever loved, gone. The babe they’d tried to conceive for centuries no longer alive.

  The councilman sneered. “We cannot have another MacHallen infesting our legions, Ronan the Warlock. Your wife and your child have paid for your sins.”

  Sorrow unlike anything she’d ever felt had Morgan curling in on herself. Sobs tore from her throat. She struggled to pull free from the nightmare, to pull free from the utter devastation coursing through her veins. Ronan’s grief was too much. His sorrow was too vivid. His guilt stabbed through her with such sharp severity, Morgan thought she’d go mad.

  Ronan sobs drew her into the present where he stared at her as if she were someone else. “I killed you,” he whispered. “Oh sweet Auri. I killed you. I killed our child.”

  Ronan crawled across the dirty floor and gathered Morgan in his arms to hold her close. She struggled against him, her cries coming faster when he pressed his ruined lips, wet with tears, to her neck.

  He pulled back and stroked the hair from her face. When his gaze met hers, she saw…obsession. A twisted kind of love. A familiarity there where it should not have been. He wasn’t seeing at her, not at all.

  “I’m so sorry, Auri, my love. I failed you.” His voice was broken. His heart was bare. “I’ll fix this. I swear to you, I’ll fix it.”

  And then he was gone, sucked into shadow. The door behind her burst open, but she was too numb to flinch. She stared at the spot where Ronan had been and just collapsed.

  “Morgan!”

  “Jesus. Fuck.”

  “Where’s Ronan?”

  Thick, muscular arms wrapped around her trembling body and pulled her from the puddle of blood she lay in. She smelled sandalwood. The scent soothed and drew her closer. Bastian.

  “Are you hurt?” His hands moved over her in a frantic dance as if searching for the source of her pain.

  “Not my blood,” she uttered.

  She burrowed into Bastian. An onslaught of emotion raged through her. Why wouldn’t it go away? Gripping the lapels of Bastian’s jacket, she came apart. Ronan’s grief, his guilt, the sorrow all coalesced. Her screams echoed off the walls. She had made him feel all those horrible things. What kind of a person was she? Morgan kept screaming until her voice was raw, and her face was drenched in tears.

  Bastian held her tight. “What did Ronan do to you?”

  She shook her head and tried to curl closer into him. Her entire body vibrated with the chill snaking through her. The frost started in her toes and worked up through her legs and torso.

  He cupped her cheek and drew her face from where she’d buried it in his throat. His thumb swiped away the flowing tears. “Babe, talk to me. Are you hurt? Where is Ronan?”

  “Gone.” Her throat felt like she’d swallowed glass. “Shadows. So horrible. I can’t… I just can’t. There was a baby…”

  “Shush.”

  Her teeth chattered. The chill closed around her chest and made it hard to breath.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Rory asked.

  Nolan answered. “Magic. Some kind of backlash. She needs to release it, or it’s going to consume her.”

  Bastian grabbed her hand and pressed it to the hard wall of his chest. “Give it to me, baby. Release it.”

  She trembled. “No. Not this. I can’t, Bastian. I just can’t.”

  Bastian lifted her off the dirty ground. He gathered her closer and addressed his brothers. His voice, so strong and commanding, faded as the ice closed in around her. The last thing Bastian said was, “Fuck. We’ve gotta get her home…”

  Morgan woke to heat. Sweat gathered between her breasts and rolled down the back of her neck. Beneath her palm, someone’s heart beat steadily. Bastian. She pushed off his chest and struggled to free herself from the pile of blankets on top of them. At some point, he must have bathed her, because the sticky feel of blood and dirt no longer coated her skin.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “You got sucked into the backlash of your spell. You felt what Ronan felt and saw what he saw. When the ice invaded your veins, you didn’t have any strength to push it away.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “It took the three of us, Rory, Nolan, and me to pull the excess magic from you. We got pieces of the picture and put it together.”

  He smoothed the hair from her face and leaned in close to fit his lips against hers. Bastian rolled, taking her with him until he had her tucked beneath his body. He pushed up onto his elbow and gazed into her eyes as if searching for something.

  The weight of him pressed her into the mattress, and she realized they were naked. Where his skin touched her, heat thawed her insides. She swallowed and traced her hands up and down the smooth contours of his back.

  “I almost lost you,” he s
aid, his tone gruff and ragged.

  Her eyes stung. “What I did…it was inexcusable. Ronan might be a monster, but…”

  “No buts,” Bastian said savagely. “You did what you had to do in order to survive.”

  “Is that how you’ve survived all these years? God, Bastian, I can still feel his sorrow. He loved her.”

  He gripped her cheeks and held her head steady. His fierce gaze met hers. “Do not feel sorry for that man. He made his choices. Do you have any idea of the things he did to me? The things he made me do?”

  Morgan swallowed and looked up at him in earnest. “Tell me.”

  “I can’t.” He pushed away from her, and she grabbed on to his shoulders to keep him close.

  “Please.”

  Bastian shook his head. “You’ll never look at me the same. Hell, I can’t even look at me.”

  “The things Ronan did aren’t your fault.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” He drew in a deep breath. “Ronan has a way of controlling us. Remember earlier when you touched on that cold, dark pit inside me?”

  She nodded. Morgan also recalled how he’d shut her off from it.

  “That part is dead, and Ronan has complete control over it. He has the ability to make us into one of his blood slaves. While under his control…”

  Horror filled her. She finished for him. “As his blood slave, you’d have to do whatever he told you to do. Oh, God, Bastian.”

  “The first time I had sex, Ronan forced me to rape one of the village girls. I threw her into the haystack and… I can still feel her terror, still see her face. Ronan stood there and laughed the entire time. My brain was my own, but not my body.”

  She cupped his jaw and brought his gaze back to hers. “That wasn’t you.”

  “Wasn’t it, though? There’s more. So much more. So many more women. When we needed money, I was his whore. When he wanted retribution, I was his tool.”

  “It wasn’t you,” she repeated. Bastian was right; Ronan did deserve every ounce of pain she’d bestowed up him with her spell. “I love you, Bastian.”

  Morgan held him close and wished she could take away his pain. He pressed his mouth against hers in a desperate kiss she responded to instantly. Tongues tangling, she threaded her hand through his hair and held him close. Passion fused them together. This was real. This was the present. The past had no place here. Not anymore.

  Bastian pulled his lips from hers and looked deep into her eyes. “I love you. Jesus, fuck, I love you more than anything. I should have told you earlier.”

  Tears sprang from her eyes, and Bastian wiped them free.

  “Make love to me,” she whispered.

  Bastian kissed her mouth and cupped her breast. He used his thumb to tease the point of her nipple. She spread her legs, and he settled between her thighs. He rubbed the length of his erection along her pussy but didn’t enter her, not yet. His cock brushed her clit and drew a low sound from her throat.

  She writhed beneath him. “I want you inside me.”

  He lowered his hand from her breast to trail down her stomach and across her hip. The moist path of his tongue along her bottom lip had her opening to him. She held the back of his head to deepen their kiss.

  His fingers found her wet, and she surged against him when he pressed inside. She cried out, breaking the seal of their mouths. He pressed his hand to her cheek and held her gaze steady while he pumped deep inside to make sure she was ready for him.

  “Please, Bastian.”

  The large crown of his cock slid between her slick folds. He rested his forehead against hers, held her close, and pushed inside slowly. “I love you, Morgan.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Who knew Morgan would feel so horrible after a night of amazing, mind-numbing, slow, sweaty sex. Had she mentioned amazing? She and Bastian had engaged in lots of sex over the past two weeks, but last night was… Wow.

  She groaned face-first into the pillow. Her head throbbed. Her skin was tight and sticky. Her joints were stiff, and muscles she hadn’t known were there screamed in protest. The roiling in her stomach told her she’d slept too little and eaten even less.

  Dizzy and disoriented, she struggled to untangle herself from the sheets woven through her legs. Every shift rubbed her thighs together. Heat moved through her aching sex and into her lower belly.

  She pressed a hand to the center of her forehead and wondered if there was such a thing as a sex hangover. If so, would chasing the hair of the dog, or whatever they called it, ease her symptoms?

  Grinning, she smoothed her hand across the sheets and found nothing but a cool, empty space where Bastian had been. Her smile faded, and she sat up to look around the darkened room.

  She glanced at the clock and struggled to bring the iridescent numbers into focus. Eleven in the morning. Had it only been three hours since she and Bastian had fallen into an exhausted sleep? No wonder she felt like crap.

  Or maybe she felt like crap because of her fight with Ronan. Goose bumps puckered her skin as a chill stole over her. The scent of death wafted beneath her nose. For a moment she wondered if she was having a flashback. No. That wasn’t it. She brought her knees to her chest and turned her head hesitantly to the side.

  A man, not Bastian, smiled at her. He might have been attractive if he weren’t dead, missing his left eye, and if he didn’t have a portion of his nose ripped off. Shit. Were the wards down again? She scrambled out of bed and picked up the first thing she found on the floor. Bastian’s shirt slipped over her head and fell to midthigh.

  “No need to get dressed on my account. I’ve seen it all already. You are very lovely when you sleep,” the dead man said with a wistful sigh.

  “Ah, thanks. How’d you get around the wards?”

  “Dunno. I was floating by, minding my own business, and then wham, here I ended up.” He grinned. “Must be heaven.”

  Morgan rolled her eyes. “The man who was sleeping where you’re sitting, when did he get up?”

  The ghost shrugged, and the motion sent a trickle of gray blood dribbling down his chin. His flickering image faded in and out like a bad holographic picture. “About thirty minutes ago. Grabbed pants, a shirt, and snuck out. One-night stand gone bad?”

  As if. She crossed her arms over her chest. “You can go away now.”

  “Nah. I like it here. Feels so warm and you smell good.”

  She remembered what Rory had taught her about ghosts, and called a little of her magic to life. Ice crawled slowly to her command. Right, she’d probably tapped herself out yesterday.

  “Come here,” she ordered.

  The man hovered out of bed and floated an inch off the ground in front of her. She touched his chest. Under her palm, his skin solidified. “Be at rest.” She pressed power into him and grinned at his one widening eye.

  He faded away, and the chill in the air vanished. She looked at the empty, rumpled bed and contemplated going back to sleep. Except now that the dead guy was gone she could smell the lingering fragrance of coffee in the air. Sounds of movement came from the kitchen, and she decided caffeine with Bastian was better than sleep.

  The moment she entered the living room and saw who sat at the kitchen table, Morgan stopped in her tracks. “Nolan.”

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  “Um.” She looked around the empty apartment for Bastian and didn’t see him. “Sure. Where’s Bastian?”

  Nolan rose from his chair to pour her a cup of coffee. He set the mug on the table and gestured for her to sit opposite him. “He’s meeting with Ramirez in my office downstairs.”

  She sat. They stared at each other. The mounting awkwardness left her fidgety.

  “Bastian told me you helped pull out the magic yesterday. Thank you.”

  He shrugged. “Couldn’t let you die.”

  Right. Okay. She took a sip of heavenly coffee. “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?”

  Nolan slid a large manila envelope across the table
until it nudged her elbow. Her pulse sped. Why did it feel as if he were firing her?

  “Look,” he started. “I know you love my brother. And he loves you. I’ve never seen him come apart the way he did when Ronan took you.”

  Morgan eyed the yellow packet with trepidation. “Save the speech.”

  “Fine. Inside the envelope is a check for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. You’ll find a passport, birth certificate, social security card, and a driver’s license, all under a new alias. I did some research, and I have the names of two necromancers in France who may be willing to help you.”

  Anger rose to the surface. Her face stretched tight with a smile that she hoped hid the baring of her teeth. “I don’t want your money.” Did the asshole think just because she’d grown up with money that she had a price tag on her?

  Nolan went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “With help from the contacts I’ve provided, there is a good chance they can help you find out who your birth parents were. Your mother is dead, but maybe your father isn’t. Perhaps you have siblings, although I doubt it considering how rare immortal children are.”

  “Why are you doing this?” She forced herself to take a sip of coffee she didn’t taste.

  “He’s better off without you.”

  She slammed her cup onto the table. “Bullshit.” Hot liquid splashed on her hands. She could not have cared less. Under her anger lay a thin layer of fear that once again she was being rejected. Would Bastian choose his brothers over her?

  A muscle in his jaw ticked. The rigid set to his shoulders and pinched mouth radiated anger, but deep in his eyes she saw fear. “I know what you almost did yesterday when you were putting the ghouls to rest. Imagine your magic as an arrow. Now picture a big fucking bull’s-eye on Bastian’s chest. Put two and two together. You’re a necromancer. Bastian and us, we’re half-dead. We don’t mix.”

  Was he comparing her to Ronan? Her jaw drew taught. “I would never use him, anyone, the way Ronan did.”