Sealed in Sin

by Juliette Cross

  Tucking my head into the crook beneath his chin, I hugged him with all my might. Dad and I had a standing date every first Saturday of December to decorate the house and the tree for Christmas.

  “You’re a bit early. I haven’t pulled the tree down from the attic yet.”

  “I just missed you,” I mumbled into his sweater.

  “I missed you too, sweetie.” He rocked me back and forth in that gentle way dads did. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I lied. “Just upset about that terrorist bombing.”

  “I know, baby,” he said, hugging me closer. “I remember when we went there together. So terrible what’s happening out there.”

  More terrible than he could possibly understand. “Enough of all that,” I said, pulling from his arms and surveying the three large bins labeled ornaments. “Why don’t you get the tree, and I’ll get all of us some hot cocoa.”

  “That’s a plan.”

  Dad grinned like a schoolboy and rocketed up the stairs toward the attic. Erik snickered and went back to his duty of checking bulbs on the colored lights. I didn’t know anyone who had more Christmas spirit than my dad. He still insisted that Santa Claus was real and set out gifts on Christmas Eve, pretending they were from Santa. I didn’t mind. Reality could suck the life right out of a person. Especially lately. What was wrong with living a fantasy every once in a while?

  I popped three mugs of water in the microwave. By the time I’d stirred in the cocoa mix and mini-marshmallows, the distinct sound of holiday music filled the house, coming from the living room. Bing Crosby crooned about roasted chestnuts on an open fire as I balanced the three mugs in my arms and carried them back into the living room. Dad had found and donned his Santa hat as he assembled our nine-foot faux fir Christmas tree with Erik’s help.

  My heart lightened, a genuine smile creasing my face. My heart still ached, but seeing my fun-loving dad diving into the ornaments box to pull out a pink ceramic ballerina with my name painted on it somehow made all the bad things go away. Life really was about the little things, wasn’t it? The small joys that could soothe away the big bad heartbreaks.

  Dad and Erik took their mugs. Dad sipped a big gulp, cocoa and marshmallow foam lining his upper lip. “Delicious.” I giggled as he set the mug down. “Why don’t you put up the knickknacks while Erik and I get these lights on first. We’ll save the ornaments for last.”

  “Sure, Dad.” We did the same thing every year, and every year, he explained the process. I can’t quite remember when the tradition went from a father-daughter tradition to a father-daughter-adopted-son tradition. I didn’t mind. Erik never spoke of his family up north, always veering away from the subject when it came up. When Erik’s parents died a few years back in a car accident, Dad swept him into our family, insisting he consider himself part of our own.

  The rest of the afternoon was filled with displaying snow globes, greenery, the five-foot Saints nutcracker, as well as the hanging stockings, glass balls and ornaments. By the time we’d finished off a second round of hot cocoa and eaten takeout greasy burgers and fries, we were pooped. Well, I was. Dad couldn’t help but to string the lights around the back patio while I watched the two of them and drank an Abita Amber. “I’ll get to the front of the house tomorrow. How do these new icicle lights look?”

  “They look great, Dad.” Erik looked totally beat, but he would never let my dad work alone. “I’m sure you and Erik could handle the front today, too.”

  “Yeah? It’s not dark yet. What do you say, Erik?”

  “Sure.”

  Erik rolled his eyes at me, holding the string of lights behind Dad as he hooked them in place on the cornice. He took the string and pretended to strangle himself.

  I laughed and took another swig. I watched them diligently make their way around the corner where I couldn’t see them anymore.

  An owl called from the wooded area lining the back of our house. The afternoon sun peeked through the near-naked trees, a beam lighting the footpath leading to my mother’s old studio. We’d relegated it to a shed a few years after she died. Well, that’s not entirely true. Dad had sectioned off a portion where she used to work, leaving her easel, stool and unused canvases where she’d left them. I hadn’t been inside in about three years, not since I’d left home and gone to college. But now, a yearning compelled me down that path.

  I left the bottle on the deck railing and crossed the yard to the patchy dirt leading through a line of thick oaks and elms. An eerie tingle raised goose bumps on my arms. My VS didn’t signal danger, but I was cautious nonetheless.

  The closer I stepped to the dilapidated wooden building with white paint chipping off, the stronger the sensation grew. A sensation I knew all too well—winter woods, windswept snow, crystalline breath in the crisp air. I pushed open the door. One of the glass panes was cracked from long ago. As it was well lit from the sun shining through the skylight and surrounding windows as an artist’s studio should be, I wasn’t surprised to find him leaning against the wall, one knee bent, arms casually crossed as if he’d been waiting a while.

  “Thomas,” I whispered. My heart tripped a beat. I hadn’t seen him since the night I’d kissed him, since the night I’d let him kiss me, since the night I’d rejected him. My feelings were unchanged, yet I still felt…something. A pull. A tug. A cloaked need.

  “It is good to see you, Genevieve.” Bitter and sweet, like honeyed wine, his voice drew me closer.

  I closed the door and wrapped my arms around myself. The chill I felt had more to do with the icy aura surrounding my wayward guardian angel than the air itself. “I’m surprised to see you.”

  “You thought I’d abandon you altogether after you rejected me?” Cool blue-green eyes glinted with a supernatural glow, reminding me this was not simply a protector but one with great power. Even now, a vibration exuded from his still figure.

  “I don’t know what I thought.”

  He shoved off the wall, coming to stand a foot in front of me. No threat in his eyes. Only pain, subdued with an edge of anger. “I told you I love you. That doesn’t simply vanish just because you’ve chosen another.” He glanced at the band on my left hand I curled across my arm. “So you’ve given yourself to him. I sensed something different.”

  A grip of fear shoved my heart in my throat, remembering the Vessel creed to remain pure. “I’m not…tainted in any way, am I?”

  A sad smile creased his face. “Not at all. The aura I see surrounding you now glows golden.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “A maturity. In your power. And that you’re no longer a virgin.”

  I flinched, unprepared for him to speak of it so boldly.

  “So Jude, the undeserving, black-hearted hunter, wins you.” He scoffed and shook his head in disbelief.

  “He’s not black-hearted. Why would you say such a thing?”

  He lifted a hand to my face. I started to pull away, but he gripped me quickly, placing a hand on the slope between my neck and shoulder. “I’ll show you.”

  My body trembled as my VS spiked, feeling the onslaught of a vision somersaulting me into the distant past.

  Night in the wilderness. I stood in a grove of trees behind a line of warriors bearing torches and sharp weapons. I realized Thomas witnessed this event and I was experiencing the vision through his eyes, just like I did with George’s visions—a symptom of sharing power. Yet, this wasn’t a random vision thrust into my mind. Thomas was forcing me to witness something I knew I didn’t want to see. For directly in front of me stood Jude. I’d know the line of his back anywhere. He looked left. Definitely him, a younger Jude, wearing blue woad on his face and war braids hanging in his long hair. This was the vision I’d witnessed once in my apartment when he’d held me close.

  The fierce-looking warrior standing next to him, the one I remembered having the scar across his face turned to Jude who’d fixed his line of sight forward again to a Roman village with buildings made of white sto
ne. The man said to Jude, “Tá anseo cinniúint, mo dheartháir.” The Gaelic I couldn’t understand the first time I’d seen this vision sounded like a second language to me now, perhaps because I was seeing this through Thomas’s eyes, not my own.

  This is fate, my brother, the scarred one had said.

  Trembling with rage, Jude replied with hatred and menace lacing one word: “Aye.”

  Raising a broadsword, he sliced it silently through the night, signaling to the line of warriors to move forward. I witnessed the army of men moving into the sleeping village from behind. Thomas followed Jude as I watched through his eyes. Jude gestured to the scarred one that he was moving ahead as men slipped into homes undetected, a dark force guiding them all.

  Jude moved down the dirt road with determination and stealth. A man stepped from an alley, throwing his hands up at the sight of Jude bearing down on him. Without pause, Jude sliced across his throat and down his chest, killing the man in an instant. I recoiled inwardly. Jude had murdered an unarmed man. Even so, I knew the worst was yet to come.

  Glancing over his shoulder at the scarred one who stood on the verge of entering another silent home, Jude said, voice glacial, “Kill them all.”

  With a stiff nod, the scarred one gripped his battle ax tighter, and crept into the darkened villa. Jude moved swiftly up the path, as if he knew his destination. By now, screams echoed, filling the night with terror and blood.

  Slowing his stride as he approached the largest of the villas, Greek Doric columns lining the entrance, Jude shoved open the door. A brawny slave snoozed against the wall near the entrance, jumping awake at the sudden intrusion. Jude cut him down before he took one step, his dying cry echoing through the atrium beyond the entrance. Jude marched with purpose past the rectangular atrium filled with green flora and a gurgling fountain, toward what must be sleeping quarters. Candles burned in sconces on the walls, lighting the brightly painted murals of lush landscapes and gods and goddesses. Passing a scene where Diana walked through a field of wheat, Jude entered a chamber. A female slave jolted from a pallet near the door, screaming “Domina! Domina!” Jude backhanded her into the wall, where her head hit with a resounding crack, silencing her for good.

  Within a curtained bed of sheer silk, someone moved. Jude ripped the silky fabric away, revealing a beautiful brunette wearing a blue stola slipping off one delicate, pale shoulder. She sat up straight, eyes wide with terror before they narrowed with recognition of the hate-filled beast looming over her bed. “Judas has finally come to pay his debts,” she said with unnatural calm.

  “Yes.” I didn’t recognize the man who spoke. He wasn’t my Jude, but one I’d never known—a beast of revenge and hate determined to sate his hunger till there was nothing left but blood.

  The woman tilted her chin up, offering him what he came for. He bore his thick broadsword horizontally. Cocking back, he severed her head with one swing. In my mind, I screamed at the ghastly sight, her head rolling to the floor, body slumping, painting the white sheets crimson. Jude moved on.

  Thomas seemed to be following him, and I wondered why he hadn’t stopped him, why he’d witnessed this horror without stepping in to prevent it. Anger burned deep inside me at both Jude and the angel showing me this dreadful vision.

  “Mater?” came the soft voice of a child in the corridor, surely having heard the disturbance from his mother’s chamber.

  Jude, with Thomas following, slipped from the dead mother’s chamber, finding a young boy, perhaps nine or ten, standing there in a tunic holding a torch aloft. His blue-gray eyes and the contours of his face, though rounded rather than sharp, reminded me of someone I knew too well. The boy stared at death bearing down on him in the form of a Celtic warrior, the black-hearted beast Thomas had described. Without hesitation, he impaled the boy through the chest, yanking his sword out with such force the boy was flung by the momentum, then hit the floor with a thud. The man I married stepped over him as if the bleeding boy were nothing more than a dog and moved down the hall in long strides.

  By the time he’d made his way into the largest bedchamber, he’d killed two more women in silk stolas—both helpless and unarmed—as well as another child. I wanted out of this vision. The sickening reality of what Jude had done to become a Dominus Daemonum was too much for me to bear. Still stuck in this nightmare, I followed the man I loved into a room with a wide balcony. The person he sought was not in the bed but standing in his Roman tunic, sword in hand, waiting with a chilling smile on his face.

  I recognized the beautiful blond demon prince even from this distance in the dark, torchlight glinting off his gray eyes. Danté.

  Jude stepped onto the balcony, sword dripping crimson on the white stone pavement. “I’ve come as I said I would, Ru’um.” He used his old name, his true name.

  Behind Danté, billowing smoke and orange flames licked up from the smoldering village, completing Jude’s revenge on the people he blamed for the death of his parents. The conflagration could’ve been hell itself, filling the night with the screams of burning souls.

  “I never doubted that you would,” replied Danté, unmoved by the horror unfolding behind him. He glanced over Jude’s shoulder directly at me. I shivered. No, he looked at Thomas, not me. He broke through Thomas’s cast of illusion, seeing the angel hovering, who did nothing to guide Jude toward the light. Danté’s gaze shifted back to Jude. “Shall we begin?”

  Jude’s reply was the wide swing of his sword, arcing through the air, meeting Danté’s raised steel with a resounding clang.

  I was yanked from the vision, finding myself clinging to Thomas, my head buried in his shoulder as I shook and shook and shook. The darkness of that place where Jude had damned his soul was burned in my mind. I could still smell cinders and smoke. Thomas said nothing, holding me close, letting the traumatic reality sink in and my shuddering to ebb away.

  I shoved out of his arms. “How could you! You stood by and watched. How could—”

  “A guardian’s duties are to influence when we can. Sometimes, the Dark sinks his talons in a soul, and no amount of persuasion toward the Light can help. I tried with Jude, but he built a wall around his heart, barring me from his thoughts. We can’t interfere if our subject rejects us.”

  “Oh really? Well, what the fuck do you call this?” I gestured between us. “You seem to be interfering in my life any time you damn well please.”

  “I’ve broken a rule or two…where you’re concerned.”

  Jude’s hate-filled expression, hard-edged malice etched into every line of his face, filled my mind again. I crumpled to my knees, acid churning in my stomach, my shoulders shaking. “Jude,” I whispered, unable to believe it, even though I knew what I saw was a true memory.

  Thomas knelt on the studio floor but didn’t reach out to touch me. “I know this is hard, but you had to know what he’s capable of, what he’s done.”

  “That was in the past,” I snapped. Even as I defended him, I hated him for what he’d done. Now I knew the damning sin he’d committed to become the leading master of demons, roaming the earth for centuries to pay his penance.

  “And what about hiding your mother’s identity?” asked Thomas.

  I shot him a scathing look. “You knew too?”

  “I told you I’ve been guarding you all your life. Of course I knew.”

  “And never told me. Just like Jude.”

  “How would it have helped you? It would only have hurt. My duty is to guard you—body and soul.”

  “Now you sound like him. Full of excuses.” I rose to my feet, rubbing my palms on my jeans. “I’m going back home, and I want you to leave.” I turned toward the door.

  “But I have a wedding gift for you.”

  I scoffed. “Whatever it is, you can keep it.” I opened the door.

  “It’s the lost prophecy, Genevieve.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Pulse pounding in my throat, I stood in the doorway, the dusky twilight coloring the room laven
der-pink. “You have the prophecy? The lost one?”

  A firm nod. “I know where it is. It cannot be removed, but I can take you there.”

  “I should tell Jude.” I reached for my phone by habit, then realized I didn’t have it.

  Thomas moved close, cupping my cheek with his hand. Cool winter wind flushed through my body, tantalizing my VS to come awake. My underlight glowed of its own accord, perhaps sensing the powerful Flamma in my presence. Though Thomas often kept his power tamped down, there was no denying he harnessed serious energy in his angelic frame.

  “I’m bringing this as a gift to you. I will do anything you ask, for my feelings remain as they were, but I cannot suffer the hunter’s presence. Not the one who stole your heart.” His hungry gaze traced my lips, making my pulse pick up speed. I didn’t love Thomas, not in the way he wanted, but I also couldn’t suppress the basic attraction I felt when he stood close to me, when he touched me. “Besides,” he continued, “there is no guarantee it will be there long. I believe the Flamma of Dark move it often in the underworld.”

  “The underworld… So it’s in hell.”

  “Yes.” He dropped his hand. “I cannot remove it, but you can. Powerful wards against angels keep it in place. I can take you there right now.”

  I considered. Going to the underworld without Jude or Kat was dangerous, and perhaps stupid. Still, I’d have Thomas with me. And after that vision, I wasn’t ready to confront Jude. I had no idea how to tell him I’d seen what he’d done. I had no idea how not to tell him, sure my feelings of repulsion would show on my face.

  “If you sense danger,” said Thomas, interrupting my internal debate, “you can sift out at once.”

  Oh yeah. And there was that. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  Rather than simply take my hand, he wrapped me in his arms, pulling me tight against his chest. I suppose I couldn’t blame the man for using every opportunity to his advantage. But after this, I’d need to clarify in no uncertain terms that I would not leave Jude for him. Even with the painful memory of Jude being swallowed by revenge, committing murder after murder, the man I knew now was no longer that tortured human being I’d seen wielding a sword on innocents. No man—supernatural or human—could ever match Jude.