2. Sin

2

Sin

feather cuffs

Over the centuries, I’ve cultivated a list of humanities’ worst destinations. Places worthy of comparison with the Fields of Punishment, where the foulest of mankind, the truly, deviously wicked, suffer eternal torture custom fit to their most delinquent crimes.

Sisyphus chasing his rock.

Tantalus freezing his balls off.

Atlas with the world’s worst back problems.

What would the Underworld deal me? Where will I land?

I always return to the same three places.

Those perpetually open Taco Bell-KFC combos, members only gentlemen’s clubs, and dreamcatcher mall kiosks.

They all reek of the same dead-end desolation, a Nietzsche level disappointment.

The entrenched sadness ruins my appetite for a week. And, in the case of the former two, the lingering pungent tang of halfhearted sex obliterates my best efforts at drinking the problem away.

This place tops it.

Once a creature’s only bar. More than that now.

Worse.

My tastebuds burn.

Hands folded over his enormous gut, Ephesus Oberlin’s arousal tastes like bitter cardamom and a salt lick soaked in deer piss.

Worst of all, every time I smile, the effect thickens, and short of requesting a tankard of gasoline with a curly straw, there’s nothing I can do about it.

Not all jobs are created equal.

Mine involves scraping my tongue out.

Tastes emotions . That’s how I sell my special skill. Sensual, a little corrupt, as if my lips hover over a ticking pulse, inhaling wafts of fresh beignet and maple whiskey, and suddenly I know everything there is to know about a person.

Fuck, if only.

The seedy underbelly of the realm is not stocked with happy, sugary feelings. It’s poisonous jealousy. It’s disgust. It’s tattered self-consciousness and hurt.

And that’s just the mortals, whose emotions are dirty aperitifs poured over my tongue.

The creatures, those hailed from the loins of Titans and Olympians, those with thick, silver ichor flowing in their veins, their emotions ram down my throat until I choke.

The upside? I can alter emotions too.

Oberlin’s foul taste shoves past my teeth easily and churns into my gut as I drag my gaze across Blitz. The premiere creature club of east Atlanta. A brothel, for all intents and purposes.

I spread my lips in a smile, scanning from the checkered tile floors to the pair of crystal glasses on our wobbly table. “You’ve done well in such a short time.”

Pepper thwacks my senses and I interpret it as pride as Oberlin beams.

“All me, of course. Pondy stifled me. You know how he was. Never saw the big picture. I had ideas he’d never have thought of.”

Pondy. AKA Youssef Pondileria. An Oceanid who’d lived more than three centuries before making the mistake of inviting Oberlin into his exclusive fold.

When I first met Pondileria, he was watering down wine at an orgy in Thessaly and skimming the extra for resale.

I’d been half drunk, naked save for a dying laurel and planning on charging the Nymph for my silence when I stumbled upon him delivering it to the holy Vestals, pouring a river of red out in the name of Hestia and her accepting hearth.

I wish he’d honored Ares instead, picked up a sword like the centurions.

Maybe he’d be alive, maybe he’d be here with me and we’d be discussing grapes instead of bodies.

Oberlin had changed Pondy’s respectable creature haven into spinning metal poles and high as hell Nymphs gyrating to the symphonies of old.

I smile at him. “You’re a visionary.”

Lucky for me, Oberlin doesn’t grasp sarcasm.

He nods, the gold chain on his neck catching on thick, bristly chest hair and tugging his skin. “The key to such success is having an extremely fine product. Quality over quantity doubles your money.”

“You clearly specialize in fine product.”

“I have an eye for the earners.” His legs spread on the chair, forgetting the spiel he gave me at the door about how busy he was, how he couldn’t spare valued time to ensure me and my brothers played nice. “I keep a constant sell list, you know? Just to make them work harder for me.”

Pepper.

Rotten, thick, sneeze inducing pepper.

I pour on charm. “Rarely does a male possess both business acumen and foresight. I’d not be surprised if you were direct from Prometheus himself.”

His mustache flaps in delight. He loves being complimented.

I imagine it’s not a frequent occurrence when you’re a fucking despicable Scylla who buys and sells creatures to those vile and rich enough to desire them.

Lowering my chin to the stage, I soak in the backdrop, the pageantry. A spray of aqua feathers for the upcoming Pierides dancer, who has her chin pressed to her sternum in the wings of the stage, her hands up in prayer.

She’s pussy to tits in bubblegum latex, and I’d bet anything Artemis, Goddess of Chastity, has tuned her out.

The Gods think getting captured and sold is your fault, not theirs. As if it’s a decision you’ve made to unwillingly sell your body.

In this realm, they’re called Daikonos, which means servants, but I’m more familiar with the ancient language than most, and I call them Doulos.

Slaves .

“Pretty,” I muse, acid burning the back of my throat.

I know without inquiring what he uses the Daikonos for. Crying in a dark room, body shuddering as he begs for a kind word.

It’s probably easier for them to fuck him than compliment him. The male who traded them like coins, who profits on their suffering.

Glittery rose curtains draw aside in a brilliant wave of material, and I hear a bottle crack near the edge of the stage.

Drake Cosgrave.

Seated in the shadows.

My brother's power, in this place, is worse than mine.

The dancer’s chains rattle around her ankles as she waddles to a sweat smudged pole.

Behind me, Lev Mikhailov asks the raven-haired Oread tending bar to dim the lights. As if it’ll help. The Russian has tasted of rotted pumpkin and burned basil since we walked in. Disgust .

Say what you will about the inventor of organized crime, he never sold people.

Pretty sure he beheaded those who suggested it.

“I’ll tell you right now.” Oberlin knows this song. He’s tapping his fingers ahead of the beat. “I’m surprised you came. Last I heard, you and your little band were on the outs. How you manage to survive under the realm's hate is a stunning feat.”

“When the opponent goes low, we go lower.” I toss him a slow smile, leaching into my words how utterly, fantastically impressed I am with him, how I hate the inferiority of lesser creatures, and think they deserve to be traded and worked like mindless, branded cattle.

One bushy eyebrow hits his hairline. “So it’s true. You killed the beloved prince?”

Beloved .

I mask a derisive snort with a long drink.

Word travels fast, even under the shroud of the Blackguard’s spymaster.

“His bitch killed him, and we get blamed for it, but what’s new?” Pouring disdain into my words makes my teeth ache. “We’re hunting her down, and we’ll throw her onto Queen Vinia’s pretty skirts for punishment once we nail her.”

“That’s the Blackguard I know.”

He’s chuckling.

We’re old friends suddenly.

A few compliments, a kitschy sexist story. Me .

He knows nothing about us.

He knows our names and rumors. Half of which were started by me.

Then again, everyone thinks they know the Blackguard, the boogeymen who murder and steal. Who vowed allegiance to the promised King Kadmos and stood by as he died.

The Fallen Kingsguard, the Cursed Guard, the soldiers who decimate, leave no witnesses, and only deal in blood and death. We’re ruthless and mindless.

They don’t know that we tried to protect King Kadmos, Last of his Blood, Final in the Line of Hope, the last true good of the Divine, with our very souls.

They don’t know we strive tirelessly to avenge him and destroy those who torched his vision of equality and unity.

They don’t know that Queen Vinia’s son, the dead prince, was a sadist and that his fiancé killed him in a blaze of white-hot flames to save us from taking the blame.

Again.

They don’t know his fiancé is now under our protection.

They know nothing.

The truth? We keep that tight to the chest.

Oberlin only knows that we used to be regaled, used to shut a place as sick as this down with a look and hang males for muttering half the shit he says.

Now we’re nothing more than garbage he steps on.

He likes that.

Feeling big and powerful.

“I have someone who’d be a prime match for your boy,” Oberlin offers, eyeing Drake. “Enjoys pain, doesn’t he?”

It takes me a moment to hear him, to pry my eyes off the females being led down the steel staircase in a tight line.

They’re chained together.

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” he goes on, “Between us, I know the girls like it too, what with the way they scream.”

He snaps pudgy fingers to one of his bouncers, accepting a black rod the length of my forearm with metal teeth at the end into his possession.

An electric baton.

I press my feet so hard into the bottom of my boots, I think I might punch through the soles. “Drake prefers to watch.”

Actually, the Blackguard’s torturer prefers to never take off his gloves, wash in bleach and live in solitude, but Oberlin could never imagine the torment of facing his demons.

Oberlin nods, standing as the females line up in front of us like they’ve done it a hundred times.

“No one puts on a show like a Dryad,” he says, examining the creatures like overused playing cards. “Those hands go wandering and you can’t tell where the pleasure starts. Good for your Russian. What will you need?”

Bare feet, skimpy, skintight clothes.

I try not to stare at the bright makeup and coiffed hair, the exposed skin. Their expressions range from defeated to infuriated.

Nymphs. The lot of them. Beautiful and kind creatures of the rivers and woodlands, of streams and forests.

There’s too many deep, volatile emotions for me to taste, so I refocus on Oberlin, rising from my seat, stopping short of my full height by keeping a hip leaned on the table. I don’t want to scare him. I share a cocky smile. “I’m in the mood for something off menu tonight.”

“Spoken like a male who eats well.”

“Spoken to a male who knows the finest delicacies are not those offered on a platter.” I push charm and kinship into him like gentle waves gliding up a sandy shore. “I don’t know about you—”

“Not even in your fucking dreams!”

The vicious shout comes with the rattle of chains and a stomp.

Drake’s bottle breaks across the floor. Lev lurches to his feet. But Oberlin, the sick fuck, is too accustomed to the noise, too natural with the electric prod. Without a pause, he jabs it at the speaker near the end of the row.

She crumbles, knees and palms and elbows smacking unforgivably loud on the hard floor. Her dark, straight hair drapes like a curtain around her face, hiding bravery I desperately want to taste.

Her clothes don’t match the rest.

No cheap silks or sequins, no elaborate bow ties or pinned curls. Her tight black dress cuts high on her long legs and tangles and knots over her arms and chest.

It looks wrong, odd, like she’s been caught in a net.

They’re holes, I realize as I watch a pocket of her olive skin peel where Oberlin struck her. Holes he burned into her.

Hundreds of them.

“Up,” he snarls. “Back on your feet and smiling or you’ll get more of it, whore.”

A dark laugh trickles from her lips and splats onto the floor.

Two of the bouncers, males with dumb, glazed looks and matching bald heads, close in, unchaining her from the group, adding metal restraints to her waist, across her neck.

She bites at a hand that creeps too close to her breast.

A new hole singes into her ribs.

I swallow.

She’s no Nymph.

Nymphs are docile creatures, those of nature and empathy.

Shackled in the halls of Oberlin’s trafficking den, the Nymphs taste of despair and icy desolation. Burned cypress and muddied waters.

This female is different. Fingers curling against the chains like talons begging to puncture, spine in a rigid straight line, thick thighs braced as if expecting attacks.

She’s a lick of the sourest lemon, fresh and bursting and acidic enough to burn, make your lips bleed and your throat throb.

She is pure, undiluted, vicious hatred.

Delicious .