40. Sin

40

Sin

I don't have the answer. Ask her

Adrenaline courses through me as Emil’s security busts through the door, Lesenia’s on their tail, weapons drawn, expressions wild with shock and fear.

I push off the floor and launch into Nat, knocking her clear off the chair and throwing us both down hard, my bigger body shielding hers.

Everything is going wrong.

The ichor swimming in our whiskey.

Lesenia’s body.

Fucking Emil, offering to experiment on Nat.

Nat. Agreeing.

They’re rushing me.

“ Deal ?” I snarl in Nat’s face as shouts call for us to put our hands up, and bullets bleed into the back of the couch behind us. I wrestle Emil’s knife from her hand, winning it through shell shock, and rise to my knees and chuck it at our host.

It drives straight into his skull, packed so tight, no blood leaks out until he topples over.

The gunfire stops.

I spring to my feet, ready to make lemonade out of bloodshed. The bigger of Lesenia’s guards, the one who hit Nat, is frozen with his gun raised, the other has hands behind his head. They’ve spotted her body. Emil’s own security exchanges matching confused looks.

Slowly, as if realizing their bosses are unable to issue commands, four guns center on me.

My heart pounds incessantly as I raise my hands in a gesture of surrender.

Lemon fracks into me, separating atoms and forcing me to crack.

Nat can be pissed all she wants.

Throwing herself on the pyre. Again. Agreeing to chains, sedation, obedience.

Nat in chains.

The idea scorches. The fury inside me becomes a living, breathing thing, fueled by the betrayal and manipulation that surrounds us.

Nat stirs on the floor, cautious.

Surprised that I’m alive?

Did she really think I’d fall for the poison trap without her as a distraction?

I can’t look at her right now, can’t face the burden of her decision to agree to Emil’s twisted experiments.

Instead, I focus on the guns trained on me.

“Now, now, gentleman,” I say, driving a wave of compliance toward them. “Isn’t losing your jobs a sad enough ending for today?”

They shift on their feet, indecision a crack in their armor.

A single wrong move, a single twitch of a finger, and this whole place will erupt in gunfire. But I’ve been in tighter spots before.

I infuse agreeableness and exhaustion into the room in thick drowning waves. “Here’s what will happen. We’re all going to lay down our—”

My watch beeps. Blasts an ear grating alarm.

A finger slips. A gun fires. I twist to suffer the hit in the meat of my upper arm. Brace.

Fast as the Gods, Nat rams me out of the way with a crash of her body into mine.

I wrench a knife from my belt, launch it at the shooter, and reach for another as I slam into the bar, ribs cracking, shattering a decent red.

Without pausing, Nat leaps into the fray, retrieving my knife from the shooter’s arm to jab it into the top of his shoulder, and slice across his throat. A splatter of pink.

I’d thought …

Humiliation and pride war in my chest. She’s been taking it easy on me.

Even then, she was a formidable opponent.

This . She is a weapon.

She works furiously, frantically, red leather bending easily, silky straight hair wrapped around her neck. She dodges blows and delivers death. Doesn’t pause as she hamstrings one assailant, severs the jugular of another, never slows.

The rest of us catch up slowly, too slowly.

A baton cracks over Nat’s back.

It’s should be nothing more than a kiss to a Fury, except it sends her sprawling onto the floor, collapsing.

The sight of her, my Fury brought low eclipses all reason.

I throw myself at the remaining assailants, a snarl slashing up my throat. My fists connect with flesh and bone. The agony of any blows gets drowned out by the pounding of blood in my ears.

The last male falls, face a ruined mess of blood and shattered teeth.

I stand over him, heaving, knuckles torn. My knives are dug into every major artery of his body.

The room smells like carnage. Tastes like lemons.

Nat’s on her knees, a lone hand braced against the floor, the other clutching her neck. Pink paints her olive skin with a shimmer, wades along her bent legs.

Silver leaks from under her palm. Pure silver.

Her eyes meet mine. A strange, low sound leaks from her mouth.

Pain .

Such pain, my chest wrenches.

She sways.

I’m there, cradling her into me, ichor blistering my hands as I push against the gash in her neck to stem the flow.

A deep grisly cut is torn across her throat. She took the bullet for me. Even after everything.

My limbs lock up like a statue. My eyes refuse to blink.

“ You .” My voice is like sandpaper. “You are the most fucking infuriating creature in the world.” I haul her closer to me, careful not to cause discomfort. “Why would you do this to me?”

Her eyelids flutter as if struggling to remain open.

Ichor bubbles at the corner of her mouth.

My hand is slick with it, skin peeling apart, slow caustic drips corroding my arm.

I apply more pressure against the wound, yank her closer.

“Turn …” She squints. Then her hand fumbles over me, searching, grabbing. She slams my watch.

The beeping stops.

The quiet calms her. She eases into me, relaxing more of her weight on my lap.

Rage surges through me. “ No ,” I hiss. She is not a creature that goes quietly into the night. “I’ll turn it back on, swear to Zeus, I will. Wake up. Godsdammit stay here with me, love.”

She tries to speak again, but only a gurgle of ichor spills from her lips. I brush it away with a trembling thumb, ignoring the searing pain as it eats away at my flesh.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, a sob trapped in my lungs. “I never meant to hurt you. You’re so strong, love. Strong and stubborn and I never thought I could affect you. I didn’t mean to force it. If you weren’t such a fucking hero, it wouldn’t matter.”

Boots pound the open door, fling it back, and a fresh set of males in fatigues, armed and dangerous, tear inside.

Power overwhelms my veins, ancient and cruel. The power of the Gods, the power of the Blackguard. Of my king.

I sling everything I feel into them. Desperation and fear, I pelt self-loathing.

I don’t throw it, I smother them in it, choking out any other emotion, wrecking them.

They stumble to a halt, expressions slackening, weapons falling from limp fingers in a discordant clatter.

Nat grows heavier in my arms.

“ Pain ,“ I growl, pushing harder, driving them to their knees.

I concentrate my emotions on them, bombarding relentlessly, stripping them of self. Overriding their autonomy with brutal efficiency.

I’m panting, clinging to Nat, sweat rolling down my face.

“Kill yourselves,” I croak, my voice echoing with unnatural resonance. “Rid this realm of your worthless existence.”

Together, muzzles meet temples, and the shots ring out one after the after, followed by collapsing bodies.

Nat peels her eyes open and makes a noise that comes out garbled.

This time I do sob. “Gotta survive if you wish to insult me, love.”

I check her neck, ignoring the exposed bones of my fingers, and find that her skin is slowly knitting together.

She’s fine. She’s going to be fine.

I want to scream at her, shake her.

I kiss her. Angry. Mean. Tongue passing over her teeth to tempt her to bite. “I’m going to kill you for that. What were you thinking?”

I scoop her into my arms, her form limp, head lolling against my shoulder. Ichor drips down my arms and chest, leaving trails of fire in its wake.

I can handle pain.

For her, I can take it all.

Stepping over bodies to identify survivors so I can put them down, I hesitate. Lesenia died with hate in her eyes, and I feel no remorse, only grim satisfaction.

I don’t set Nat down as I retrieve my knives from the corpses. I’m too desperate to keep her close, to feel her chest rise and fall against me.

The minute hand on my watch circles six times before she stiffens.

Lemon strikes.

With a pained grunt, she struggles against my chest, the ragged wound at her throat sealing closed before my eyes. “We …” She clears her throat. “We needed Emil.”

“We don’t,” I lie.

A fucking liar. Always lying.

Emil was never taking a step out of this building after he offered so politely to cage her.

I drag us into the hallway where alarms blare. Red lights flash. Security’s probably regrouping.

We’re out of time.

“I—”

“I have followed your plan, Bloodspiller. I sat while they cuffed you to a chair. I watched you be hurt by the monster I made. I let you make a deal with the devil. I have expressed more restraint in the past hour than I have in the last century, and I’m done. You’re finished hurting yourself for others, you’re done being the sacrifice. I don’t care if I have to shove the most self-serving feelings down your throat. You will survive this. You walk out of here.”

Frustration and fury builds within me as I carry Nat down the hall. Her weight should be a comfort, a reassurance that she’s alive, but all I can think about is how close I came to losing her.

“You can’t,” she croaks, voice like gravel.

Humorless, I laugh, bitter and nasty. “The fuck I can’t. The martyr boat has sailed.”

Nat struggles weakly in my grip, her brows furrowed in determination despite her injuries. “No. You can’t control my emotions.”

I shift her to smack the elevator call button. “I already have.”

She falls silent, her soft brown eyes searching mine.

Realizing I betrayed her.

I swallow past the lump in my throat to whisper, “I promised I wouldn’t. I promised, but I will. I’ll do it again. I’ll force you. I don’t care how you feel. You will live.”

“I won’t let you.”

Stubborn. Even in this. “Natasa, you cannot help it. You feel what I make you feel, you’ve seen it. You know how it works. You think you want to pant over me like you’re a drugged up Diakonos? The glory of the Underworld hungering for a mutt? You wouldn’t embarrass yourself like that.”

“I’m not embarrassed.”

“You told me no last night. You didn’t want me and I …” I swallow tightly, hitting the elevator button again. “Everything you’re feeling right now, I forced it onto you. You’ve never liked me. I just couldn’t take a hint.”