Sinful

by Jenica Saren

  I sighed. "Because," I began. "You are all immortal. Only one thing is known to be able to kill you, right? So you have a better shot at finding out what's going on."

  "Plus you all have the better eyesight," I pointed out as an afterthought.

  Kellan made an appreciative sound behind me and I knew that he was aching to find out what was going on as much as the rest of us - he just seemed to be the only one enthusiastic about my plan.

  "We still feel pain, Ria," Beck grumbled. It sounded like he was pouting and I almost wanted to take my eyes off the subject of my focus just to see it.

  "Look," I said as I pointed to the weak point in the barrier. "Every couple of minutes, that spot closes up and no more come out."

  "That gives us the break we need to sneak past and get a lead," Eliam agreed. "Alright, Gat, Gray, and Kel - you're with me."

  As I turned around, the guys nodded and stood, putting their game faces on.

  "We should be back by dawn. In the meantime, you two," he said, looking pointedly at Rafe and Beck. "Get her home and make sure she gets some rest."

  I grinned at him and made a heart shape with my hands. "Awww, you do care," I crooned, making a kissy face.

  "I don't, actually. You're just getting bags under your eyes," he replied with a smirk.

  I gasped and pressed my fingers under my eyes, feeling the puffiness. So much under eye cream would be sacrificed in the name of beauty that night, that was for sure. Call me vain all you want, but I loved how I looked and was going to keep it that way for as long as I possibly could.

  Trying not to glare, lest I got wrinkles in the same night, I turned my attention to my two chaperones. "Let's get back to the house, then. I need some food, anyway," I huffed, grabbing each of their arms and trying to ignore the thrilling zing of electricity that ran through me.

  Whenever I could successfully think about threesomes with these two, I was going to be taking a lot of cold showers.

  We all said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. As I felt the stones fill my gut again, I tried to convince myself that the feeling was just from travelling, even though I knew otherwise. Something horrible was brewing and I just hoped that we would be ready when it came.

  Ria...

  My name carried on a breeze that brushed past my ear and I shivered.

  I hoped that I would be ready when it came.

  13 Beck

  By the time we arrived back at our house, Ria looked beat. It was understandable, given how much crazy shit had happened over the course of just one day. Hell, I felt like I needed a nap after all of that, too. If I were her, I would have just dropped and slept for twenty-four hours as soon as the damned monkey started talking.

  She was a trooper, though.

  I didn't understand how she did it, how she kept getting up and tackling each day, no matter how hard she got knocked down, over and over again. Resilient didn't seem like a fair word, because she was much more than that, more of a warrior than any other samurai, gladiator, or knight I had ever encountered.

  It took a lot more strength to fight the demons inside your head and battle your own past than to throw up a weapon and declare a war.

  Her eyes started to droop, so before she could protest, I scooped her up in my arms like the first night I'd laid eyes on her, and I carried her up to her bed.

  The silly woman had even forgotten to put on shoes before we left and her feet were so dirty, but in an adorable way. In another, happier life, she may have had dirt on her feet from running joyfully through fields and soaking up the feeling of the sun kissing her skin. In that other life, she may not have had those horrifying scars over her back that made me want to cry.

  If I ever got the chance to meet the worthless pieces of shit that marred that ivory skin of hers, I was going to flay theirs from their body.

  Grabbing a washcloth from the bathroom and wetting it with warm water, I returned to the bedroom, where my girl lay completely unconscious. It made me inexplicably happy to see her resting.

  On more than one occasion, I had come into her room just to make sure she was sleeping deeply. On the nights when her sleep was disrupted by whatever torturous memories plagued her, I would bring Gray in and he would soothe her mind. The others soon followed suit, all of us taking turns checking in on her. It sounded creepier than it was.

  We all just wanted the best for our girl.

  After I had wiped her feet clean and gotten her tucked under the crimson comforter she loved so much, I hesitated to leave. She was snoring softly, though I would never tell her so. She called me The Dick, which I supposed was fitting, but I could never actually be mean to her.

  All I ever tried to do was bring some laughter and mischief into those glittering green eyes, just a little late to chase away the darkness. If she had to think of me as a perv or a clown to achieve that, then so be it. There was almost nothing I wouldn't do for her, of that much I was certain.

  With her unconscious and unable to get hurt at the contact, I pressed a soft kiss to her temple before I turned and left the room, switching off the light as I went. The next time I kissed her, it wouldn't be on her head and she would be awake. I'd give anything for her to look at me the way I looked at her.

  Downstairs, Rafe was pacing the length of the living room while talking to someone on the phone. His voice was low and when he saw me, he waved me over, continuing his conversation.

  "No, thank you," he was saying. "I'm happy to help. Have a good night."

  He ended the call and shoved his phone into his pocket as he turned to me, face grim.

  "The police just picked up the body?" I guessed.

  My brother nodded. "I called with an anonymous tip when we found him," he told me. "He's been missing for two weeks."

  The reason for his expression clicked then. "Since the night of the fight," I deduced. That was as fucked up as fucked up got. We should have known better than to think that there wouldn't have been more casualties than we already knew about. The poor guy probably didn't stand a chance.

  At least it explained the sludge.

  I fell back onto one of the sofas and kicked my feet up, letting the weight of my exhaustion take me over for a few minutes. Rafe did the same on the couch opposite of me.

  Rafe and I were closer to each other than we were to the rest of our brothers, and after a few centuries, it started to make sense. Greed, Gluttony, and Envy were often used interchangeably, the three being close enough in similarity of nature. We were both pretty close to Kellan, too, but that dude was as good for conversation as a locked steel door.

  Gluttony was more about wanting more than you needed and was more closely associated with things like addiction. It was a simple Sin to bear, if there ever was one.

  Greed was about wanting what you already had, what was already yours or could be yours, and defending it fiercely. Hoarders and thieves were good examples of Greed.

  Envy was all about wanting more than what you had, wanting something someone else had. Envy, if left unchecked, more often led to dangerous obsessions that ultimately would end in someone getting hurt.

  It was a fine line between our Sins and most of our jobs that involved purging a soul of one sin usually resulted in having to purge all three. The line was blurrier to humans.

  "Was she okay?" Rafe asked, pulling me from my thoughts as I dozed off.

  I tried not to smile as I glanced at him, appreciating just how much we both cared about her. "She's okay, just fucking trashed," I reassured him.

  He nodded thoughtfully. "I would be, too. I don't know how she does it" He echoed my very own thoughts. I figured it was pretty obvious to everyone but her that a normal person would not still be standing tall and sassing everything in sight after everything she'd gone through in just the past few weeks.

  I couldn't even begin to imagine how bad her life must have been before if she hadn't even felt the desire to take off and run for the hills the first time her life was put in danger. Or the second time.
By the third go-round, the most recent, one would think she'd have come to her senses and packed her things.

  But she was still here. Upstairs, sleeping soundly after a complete shitstorm of a day.

  I liked to think that she stayed because of us.

  We stayed silent for a long while, each of us stuck in our own thoughts, before we decided to turn on the TV and play one of Gatlin's fighting games. Then, we just waited for the others to get home.

  Being the powerful beings that we were, our bodies didn't require a lot of rest. Our magic typically kept us replenished for extended periods of time.

  That being said, I'd already devoured six bags of chips, three cans of bean dip, and two pints of ice cream by the time the peaked up over the horizon and started spilling light through the windows.

  I was exhausted.

  After getting my ass kicked several times by Rafe, we called a truce and ended up picking up a first-person shooter game that we could work together on. Even that barely kept my eyes open. I kept slouching over sideways, little by little, bit by bit, until I was laying down and trying to convince myself that I could still play the game with my eyes closed.

  When I heard the front door open, I had no will to move. "In here," I called lazily.

  "Yeah, in here," Rafe parroted, his voice sounding equally as drowsy.

  Four sets of footsteps came marching toward us, the sound echoing off the hardwood floors and making me regret telling them where we were in the first place. As if they wouldn't have figured it out in seconds.

  "What are you two doing?" Eliam demanded.

  "Trying to sleep," Rafe replied groggily.

  "Trying not to sleep," I corrected, throwing an arm over my eyes to block out the increasingly bright sunlight.

  I could feel the tension rolling off Eliam and if I'd had the strength to throw a pillow at him, I would have.

  "You're tired? Both of you?" He asked with a strange tone in his voice.

  Rafe and I grumbled affirmatively.

  "Fucking hell," Eliam growled.

  The next thing I knew, I could hear him thundering up the stairs. "Ria!" He yelled. "Ria, wake the fuck up!"

  I moved my arm and cracked my eyes open, looking and my three brothers standing awkwardly in the entryway to the living room. They all looked equally as confused as I felt.

  "Go the fuck away," I heard Ria whine. Oh hell, talk about waking the demon.

  Arguing could be heard from her room upstairs, but the words were muffled. Whatever had been being said, it ended with a crashing sound and Eliam's footsteps coming back down the stairs.

  A little more awake, I sat up and stared at him, appalled. "What the hell did you do, E?" I demanded.

  He rolled his eyes at me in response and I wanted to throttle him.

  Examining him, I noticed that his hair was tousled and his navy dress shirt was a bit off kilter. Knowing that we couldn't exactly do anything with Ria, I couldn't help but wonder why.

  "What happened?" I asked cautiously, giving my oldest brother the stink eye.

  "I'm going to go make two cups of coffee," he grumbled, sulking off to the kitchen.

  Gray gave me the signal to wait a minute and then made his way upstairs. I had gotten to forty-eight Mississippi's by the time he made it back into the living room with an evil, shit-eating grin plastered on his face.

  "Wait, what the hell is going on here?" I shouted, getting really sick of nobody saying anything.

  "She threw a lamp at him," he stated simply. My mouth dropped open and I stared at him in shock. "Actually, she threw two at him. He caught the first and couldn't dodge the second." He sounded entirely too gleeful about the transpired events and I couldn't say I blamed him.

  No wonder the poor bastard was making coffee. I’d be apologizing, too, if I’d been the one to awaken our favourite creature of the night.

  "This isn't going to be pretty," Rafe snickered, also more awake now.

  "No," I corrected with a slow, sadistic grin. "It's going to be beautiful."

  14 Ria

  "I. Am. Going. To. Kill him!" I screamed into the pillow covering my face.

  The sun had been up for all of five seconds when that British prick barged into my room, shouting at me to wake up as though he had any right to tell me what the hell to do. I had an alarm clock and I intentionally never set it. I woke when my body wanted to be woken. My body had never wanted to be woken up at the damn asscrack of fucking dawn.

  Calm down, sailor.

  I took several calming breaths before I even considered moving the pillow from my face. I squinted as I took in my room and the shattered lamp on the floor. Well, at least one had survived. I wasn't normally a violent person in the mornings, but I also hated being shouted at and bossed around.

  As I seethed, I also came up with a brilliant plan to get my revenge.

  Feeling a renewed sense of purpose, I crawled out of bed and stared in disgust at my clothes from the day before that clung to my body. Gross. First, new clothes, then world domination.

  Sliding into a workout outfit that consisted of galaxy printed leggings and matching sports bra, I pulled my hair into a ponytail and put on a pair of running shoes.

  Of course, I didn't actually plan on doing any exercising at the moment, but I felt like it would distract the guys and piss of Eliam by association. Win-win.

  I skipped down the stairs, following my nose to the sensual aroma of coffee. When I got into the kitchen I immediately went to the counter and picked up an already prepared mug of Eliam's magical chocolate coffee. It was obviously an apology coffee, a peace offering, but if he wanted peace, he wouldn't have woke me like that in the first place.

  I turned around and pretended that I was just noticing the guys at the table for the first time. "Oh hey, guys," I said cheerfully. The perkiness in my voice annoyed me, but I wasn't going to let it show. I was Vengeance Barbie at the moment.

  When no one responded, I sashayed past Eliam, who was standing over the stove and avoiding eye contact at all costs. This was going to be so much fun.

  Sliding my chair back, I also gave it a couple of affectionate pats. My chair symbolised my forced integration into the fold. I had put it there, at the other head of the table, and no one had moved it. That meant not only was the chair mine, but so was the spot. It was symbolic.

  Sitting down, I grabbed a couple pieces of cantaloupe from the bowl of fruit in the middle of the table. One of my favourite parts about living here was that every breakfast was like a feast. The rest of the meals were less so, but breakfast was always grand and everyone was always present for it.

  It was like a family tradition with really good food.

  "Nice outfit," Beck finally commented with a wink.

  I had so many things to say to him and couldn't without more pain. I'd had to spend about twenty minutes gritting my teeth to force myself to go back to sleep after he...

  After that kiss. I thought dreamily, ignoring the small pang in my stomach. Small victories.

  Instead of saying any of the things I'd wanted to, I sent him a dazzling smile. "Yeah? You like it?" I asked as I spread my arms to showcase the design. Actually. I was showcasing my boobs, but that was the entire point.

  Eliam made a choking sound from the stove and I sipped at my coffee, letting the silky texture and naturally sweet taste roll over my tongue like heaven in my mouth.

  "Put those weapons away and eat your pancakes, Ria," he said as he sat a plate down in front of me. I couldn't believe I got choked up, but I totally did.

  On top of the pancakes was a heart made out of whipped cream with "sorry" spelt out in chocolate chips. I turned to stare at him in wonder, but he wasn't even looking at me. He was back to facing the stove, focused on making more pancakes.

  "Eliam..." I choked out. There went my vengeance plan. The one time he decided to be super sweet and shit had to be the day that he also pissed me off. What was I even supposed to do with this now?

  "Don't think too hard
about it," he grumbled irritably, answering my thoughts like the psychic weirdo he was. “I just had to wake you, I wasn’t thinking about the best way to do it.”

  “You apologized.”

  “E apologised?” Beck exclaimed in surprise.

  Had to? "Did something bad happen last night? On the recon mission?" I asked, worry making my voice waver.

  "No, you were seeping magic and were putting these two," he said, pointing at Rafe and Beck with his spatula. "To sleep."

  Beck and Rafe glanced at each other in surprise. "Oh," they said in unison.

  "Seeping magic? That's a thing?" I asked incredulously. So my superpowers or whatever had returned? Or was it like a glitch in the matrix or something?

  He nodded and finally turned to look at me. "Yes, it's a thing. Well, it is now, apparently." He flipped one last pancake onto a plate loaded with them and turned off the stove. "Now could you please put something else on?"

  I wanted to snort. "No, I will not. I'm going running today," I announced before I could think. Stupid mouth always saying stupid shit.

  "Oh really?" Gatlin queried, one eyebrow raised sceptically. Or sadistically. The two were very interchangeable with him. He was totally planning on insisting on going with me and torturing me. I felt it in my gut.

  No! No, not really!

  "Yep!" I said in my annoying perky voice. "Totes. I love sweating and physical exertion that benefits my life in literally no way."

  "You're not going running," Eliam commented sarcastically as he set the pile of pancakes on the table and took his seat completely opposite me. "Now be quiet so we can fill everyone in."

  I shot him a salute and then stuffed a forkful of pancakes into my mouth while I waited patiently for him to get the ball rolling.

  Once he was situated and I was a third of the way through the "sorry" on my stack of pancakes, he finally spoke. "Nothing of real consequence really happened, which is strange in itself," he began. He said strange, I said unnerving. "To be honest, I'm not entirely sure what the Pawns were doing."