Sealed in Sin

by Juliette Cross

  Jude dropped my wrist and wrapped his fingers around my nape, his thumb brushing my pulse point.

  “With Vessels of the past, sin has begotten sin. Once any of them took a step down the path of darkness, it was so easy to take another. And another. Until she ran toward the open arms of her possessor.” His thumb moved up the column of my throat. “Or she ended the inevitable before it began.” Suicide. “Not you, my heart.” He’d moved within inches, tilting my head at an angle. “You took one step, looked into the eyes of that fucking demon prince, fought him like hell, then fled from the dark.” And into the arms of the haunted man before me with dark secrets of his own. By now his lips were against mine. My heart raced for him. “My lovely moon in the darkness.”

  He possessed my mouth with ravenous speed, plundering, taking my breath away. Before my knees buckled, he wrapped my waist. He always knew the power he had over me. At the moment, I was quite thrilled with the power I had over him, feeling the hard ridge of his arousal pressed against my stomach. I clenched my hands into his hair, willing him to kiss me deeper. He did. For a long time. Invisible flames licked around us both, caging us in a shell of heat.

  Releasing my mouth, he nipped down my neck—hard—scraping his stubble along the sensitive skin of my throat. I wondered how delicious his rough jaw would feel against other sensitive areas.

  “You will be the death of me.”

  I grinned, neck arched, head back, glimpsing the starry sky through slitted eyes.

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “Because it’s true.”

  “Beginning to get a little redundant, aren’t you?” I teased.

  He bit my earlobe.

  “Ouch!”

  Dragging in a serrated breath, he loosened his hold, keeping me in a gentler embrace, though his fingers curled against my hips, the tension taut and palpable.

  “Ready?”

  My one-track mind went straight to the bedroom. Eyes widening, I croaked, “For what?”

  He laughed, chest rumbling against mine. He checked his watch. “For the sift. George will be there by now, waiting for us.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Damn it.

  “This is a long one. Hang on.”

  “Great.”

  Tumbling down the rabbit hole of the Void, I squeezed my eyes shut, but it did no good. These long sifts made me queasy. When we snapped onto steady ground, the temperature was markedly cooler, the sky cloudy gray, the air thick with fog. The night waned here, edging toward dawn, an ethereal blue haze promising morning would be here soon though dark still reigned.

  Jude gripped my hand, leading me into the mist-shrouded ruins of Glastonbury Abbey. We both knew to keep silent. I felt a presence the second we zapped into this place.

  Flamma. Lots of them. Yet all was silent and still.

  A broken arch towered above us, remnants of this ruined beauty. Jude led me through the shattered stone entrance, what must have been magnificent beyond belief before Henry VIII destroyed it in his cruel rage against a faith that defied him.

  Like dragon’s breath, the mist parted and swirled as we moved into the fractured Cathedral. No ceiling above us. Only the wide, vast night. We crossed through what would have been the nave toward the altar.

  My VS dimmed, as if the Flamma retreated. I squeezed Jude’s hand, giving him a questioning look.

  “Sacred ground,” he whispered.

  I glanced down at my feet, though the dark and mist kept me from seeing the grassy, earthen floor.

  “Still?”

  I couldn’t see his shadowed features, but I sensed his smile all the same.

  “Always.”

  What a beautiful thought. No manner of fire and brimstone could erase the hallowed splendor of this place. Not a king’s tyrannical will or mighty decree, not the evil that besmirched these grounds, destroying the artistry of divine inspiration. Nothing could strip away the light. Still, after all the centuries, the damned could not walk here.

  As we neared the broken wall, a shadow moved. I jumped. George materialized from the gloom, charming smile in place as if he’d walked into a cocktail party.

  “I didn’t sense you there,” I said, clutching my chest.

  “Sorry to frighten you, darling.” He winked. “Stealth is one of my many gifts.”

  “I’m sure.” I bet Kat knew quite a few others.

  Unlike Kat and Jude, whose accents mingled and morphed over the ages, George sounded as if he’d stepped from the set of Downton Abbey. He dripped with British charm, even on a demon hunt at midnight in the ruins of an old abbey.

  Jude unsheathed his sword. A slow zing of steel sliding free made my underlight shine anew. “If you two are finished flirting, I’d say we make our grand entrance.”

  “You’re right.” George slid his own sword from its scabbard. “It’s rude to keep our guests waiting, though I do enjoy flirting with Genevieve.”

  Shaking my head with a smile, I withdrew my dagger and followed them out of the cathedral’s walls to open ground. George froze, turning his head as if listening for something off to the left. He pointed. We both nodded, then he walked in the other direction, melding with the shadows.

  The clouds shifted, breaking open for the crescent moon to beam its pale light. Remnants of stone structures stood humped and silent, rising out of the cold mist, like malformed beasts frozen in time. The stillness of the night didn’t deceive me. My VS pulsed with the sharp, prickling sensation of lower demons prowling nearer. But we weren’t easy prey.

  “Stay at my back, Genevieve.”

  No need to tell me twice.

  The attack fell upon us the moment he spoke my name. Two demons flung themselves toward Jude. Jumping clear out of the way, I pushed back against the outside wall of the fallen abbey, dagger ready.

  Swinging his sword, Jude missed his target. The demons lunged, then dodged, evading every maneuver. They seemed to be playing with Jude more than fighting him, jabbing with knives and slipping away, one of them cackling like a hyena.

  Somewhere on our left, a monstrous roar echoed into the fog-filled air. I jumped in my skin, arching my neck to see what had made that ghastly sound. A sinister beast loomed large in a clearing behind rocky ruins. George swung his sword high, bellowing a war cry as he launched himself at the creature. From the beast’s roar and size, it could only be one of the fabled titans. George’s sword glowed silver in the dark. The multi-limbed titan, darker than shadow, towered two stories high and huffed smoke into the air. The hellish beast evaded George’s thrusts, hauling up one of its long limbs and smashing directly on top of George, vibrating the earth with its force. I screamed, thinking George had been crushed, but he reappeared a few yards away, safe and sound. He bellowed an incantation into the air, his steel shining silver-white as he slashed the creature with vehement thrusts. A high-pitched cry echoed from the titan, inching back away from George where I could see them no more.

  Jude still fought within a circle of lower demons. They backed away as he stalked closer, his sword arm swinging and ready for blood. They slunk farther back the moment another hulking demon, easily six and a half feet tall, emerged from the fog.

  No. Not a demon I’d ever encountered before. He was something other.

  Eyes black as pitch, no spark of light glinting under the moon. Skin ashen gray, dark veins snaking along bare arms, his neck and face. His bulging frame moved with surprising stealth and sinuous grace, like a great cat stalking his prey in an open field, like one who’s hunted and slain a thousand victims before, like…Jude.

  But he was no Dominus Daemonum. And he was no demon. What was he? A soul collector? No, he couldn’t be. In the presence of soul collectors, sound sucked into a vacuum, and an aura of hatred or sorrow or whatever the lost souls festering in the collector’s bowels felt rippled out in a crippling wave. This creature emanated dark power, but he wasn’t one of the soul eaters.

  My VS stuttered, rippling through my frame. A pulse of achi
ng emptiness billowed around us, snaking through the air, sucking out all life and light. It was the monster’s signature—the essence of darkness itself—wiping all that is clean and good from the vicinity. While my breathing labored and pulse quickened, Jude’s gaze never wavered from his mark. The two circled one another. Lower demons appeared out of the shadows, red eyes glowing, watching the two center stage.

  Jude froze, facing his opponent, feet wide, sword gripped in both hands, tip pointing down. “Finding quarry scarce, Bellock?”

  The gray humanlike Flamma stood his ground, stance fixed and ready. “Yes, Jude. But now I’ve found you.” His ebony gaze flicked to me. “And her.”

  That was enough. Jude swung into action, and the clang of steel on steel echoed into the night. More demons slunk out of the shadows toward the circle, three of them straying toward me.

  I called to my VS, willing it to burn. Instantly, a pearlescent glow beamed from my body, preparing for strike. Dagger aloft, I watched the three approach. Typical lower demons—jaunty gait, sneer in place, dumb-ass expression. One thing I’d learned to do was differentiate between lower demons, the newly possessed and the ones fused with their hosts. Fused demons had a certain directness in their gaze and purpose in their walk, having fully taken control of their foreign body and host’s mind. Just like the three forming a semicircle around me.

  Jude cursed. More steel on steel. His opponent roared. Neither of them seemed to be gaining ground. But their battle was lost to me. I had to focus on my own stalking closer.

  I scooted along the wall, venturing toward the Gothic window opening into the cathedral ruins, thinking it might be best to sit this one out. If I could make it within the cathedral walls, they couldn’t follow. My underlight shined bright white as Flamma after Flamma descended on the clearing. This wasn’t normal. It was like they knew we were coming. I’d never seen so many of them at one time. Another roar in the near distance from the beast George fought.

  “She thinks she can get away,” said a demon with lanky hair and scruffy face. Not the attractive kind of scruff. His English accent rolled along quickly, more mumble than coherent words. Definitely not the kind I admired so much from my BBC shows and James Bond movies.

  “You can run, poppet, but you can’t hide.” The second sounded no better, though he was well kempt.

  How original. The condescending, all-powerful-demon attitude always pissed me off. I stopped moving along the wall. The third circled to cut me off, blocking my advance toward the window. I didn’t care, no longer wanting to escape.

  I looked at Lanky-hair. No. I mean really looked at him. My VS pulsed of its own accord, rippling out like a tidal wave. When the wave washed over them, they froze, eyes wide. Lanky-hair screeched in pain.

  A potent essence stirred in my chest, around my heart, whirring to life like fire. I gasped as a need I couldn’t explain possessed me to reach out my hand toward the demon standing there stupefied in an enthralled state, unable to turn away.

  “Adeo mihi.” Power laced my words, vibrating in an echo toward the demon whose face contorted in agony. I’d called to him in Latin, not knowing why.

  Come to me. My spirit whispered the definition even now, reaching out to him.

  The other two demons fled as if I’d burned them, fading back into the vaporous shadows beyond the ruins.

  “Adeo mihi,” I called again, my voice rippling in the dark.

  The demon couldn’t move as I drew closer.

  “You cannot cast me out, Vessel. I’m rooted too deep,” the demon growled. Yet, still, he didn’t move away.

  “I’m not trying to cast you out. I don’t care about you.” The words came unbidden, from some other place, from a knowing, a source of Light greater than I’d ever felt. “I’m calling to the human.”

  Hisses echoed from surrounding demons. I felt more than saw the battle between Jude and the gray creature pause in wonder.

  I’d stepped within inches of the demon. Red eyes glared with venomous hatred. I pressed my palm to his forehead, my hand glowing full white.

  “Adeo mihi,” I commanded.

  The air shuddered. Energy crackled. The creature crumbled to his knees. I kept my palm fixed on him. Other Flamma disappeared, fleeing toward the shadows, their terror so thick and bitter I tasted it on my tongue. The sickening prickly sensation vanished, leaving only my VS pulsing brighter, spreading light outward in an ethereal halo.

  With my hand on the man’s head, I willed the human to come forth, refusing to let go. His eyes rolled white, and something burst from his chest, falling into a slimy mass of skin and bones. It whimpered and oozed, crawling away with one skinny, twisted arm. Letting go of the man, I raised my dagger and muttered another innate cast I’d never used before, stabbing the thing as I whispered the words, “Mors liberabit vos.”

  Death will free you.

  The putrid mass deflated and incinerated into white ash with a faint hiss, the flakes rising into the air like snow falling upward. The demon presence faded to nothing, its spirit and body dissolving into ether.

  I sheathed my dagger and knelt in front of the human, my own knees buckling as I did. Whatever power I’d used had drained me. Kat had told me she’d teach me the cast to destroy spawn, but this was different. And my VS knew how, instinctually; I didn’t need a teacher. A giddiness trembled in my chest. I could feel my VS strengthening, stretching and growing to the point of awakening. Kat had said I’d know it when I was fully awakened. It was like falling in love. You just knew. This wasn’t the moment of awakening, but a slow building within promised me I was close.

  I examined the stupefied man kneeling in front of me with a mile-long stare. No damage to his chest. The demon had evaporated straight through his skin. Not rooted so deep after all. Red glare gone, a normal man gazed at me in confusion.

  “What…what happened?”

  The demon’s menacing lilt had vanished.

  “Who are you?” he managed to ask, hands shaking in his lap.

  He seemed to have no recollection of where he was. A shadow loomed above us. I jumped. But Jude squatted to eye level, his shirt torn at the shoulder. I glanced around, catching no sign of the monster he’d fought or any of the other demons.

  “Tell me your name,” he commanded.

  “My name?” He stared at Jude, blinking quickly. “My name…it’s…Simon. Yes. Simon.”

  “Your last name.”

  “Bell, sir. I’m a stableman at Harrow House. In Dorcester.”

  I frowned. Something was off with him. George appeared at our side, panting and frowning, both of which were out of character for the dapper commander of demon hunters.

  “Simon,” said Jude, more calmly than before, “what year is this?”

  The man’s startled gaze flicked from Jude to me to George then to Jude again. “It’s 1818, of course.”

  “Holy shit.” I clamped my hand over my mouth.

  The man flinched. Oops. I doubt he heard any women curse in the early 1800s. But how did he not know where he was? I thought all fused demons were like partners in crime with their human host.

  “Jude, what—”

  “Not now,” he cut me off. “George, I need to take him somewhere safe. I have a friend who lives in a monastery close by.”

  “Go. I’ll stay with Genevieve.”

  Jude gripped Simon’s arm and sifted with blinding speed. George stared at me, expression hooded in the dark.

  “What?”

  “Have you been hiding that little talent or is this new to you as well?”

  “New to me. I don’t know how or where the words came from. They just did. I just knew what to say.” My underlight still pulsed bright white, as if it wanted to go again. My VS sometimes had a mind of its own. And while I’d felt drained from the exertion of calling the human soul from out of the possession, a comforting pulse beat within me, reminding me that I was all right, that I’d done well.

  “Beautiful.” His smile gleamed under the moonl
ight. A patch of dark wet glistened on his arm.

  “Your arm!”

  I grabbed his sleeve, energy coursing like lightning through my veins, tumbling me into a vision. Night vanished.

  I stood—no, I was George, not myself, standing on a wharf at sunset, overlooking a whirling, muddy river. Not the Mississippi. The wind wafted off the water, pushing a rank smell unlike any I’d ever known. The crushing pain in my chest threatened to cripple me into a heap where I stood. Pain not from a physical blow. Heartache. An ache so intense, my nerves quivered with anticipation for action. A bell tower chimed. I glanced over my shoulder at the formidable landmark of London, Big Ben, chiming. Six times the bell tolled. Six o’clock in the evening from the look of the pink-orange light settling over the water.

  Jude stepped forward, dressed in the garb of a Victorian gentleman, his waistcoat dusty, no hat upon his head. “She’s lost, George. Best to let her go. Forget.”

  Another gentleman strolled toward us from the right side of the pier, chuckling low, silver-tipped cane in hand. In full evening attire, including top hat and tails, he exuded an aura of power, not money. The sun glinted behind him, casting his silhouette in pure gold. I knew him at once. Uriel.

  “Something humorous?” asked Jude, his tone grave.

  “You.” He gestured his cane toward Jude. “You would advise him to let her go.”

  Jude shrugged. “She is lost to us now. There is no way to get her back.”

  “He would as soon cut out his own heart,” said the archangel, stepping in front of the sun’s light, his shadowed face shining clearly. Remarkable power radiated from this being.

  “And this is humorous to you why?” Jude’s expression darkened to one I knew well, his shoulders stiff, posture tight.

  “Because, my friend, one day you will willingly fall into darkness for a woman.” The angel’s eyes glinted an unnatural green, holding secrets untold. “Without a thought, without a care, you will leap into death’s arms and give up your very soul. Because you deem her life worth more than yours, you will not allow her to become lost. You will never simply ‘let her go’.”