Grave Sins

by Jenna Maclaine

  “That’s just it, Michael,” I whispered. “It wasn’t difficult. It was … so very easy. Taking someone’s life shouldn’t be that easy. I can close my eyes and see the face of every vampire whose head I’ve taken. I know when I execute someone that I am taking their life and I feel the burden of it. Tonight, and a decade ago with Gage and his coven, all I felt was the power, the thrill of the kill. When I was taking those lives, it meant nothing to me, Michael, and it should. Every life we take, no matter how deserved the execution is, should mean something. Am I evil, Michael? That I could do something as horrible as that, and feel nothing?”

  “Of course you’re not, lass. You feel the loss of every life we take more keenly than any of us. Your tender heart is one of the things that I love about you. Evil knows no guilt, no remorse. You are not evil, the black magic is. I just don’t understand how you came to be in possession of so much of it.”

  I sighed and told him everything, starting with the first time I’d realized that Morrigan hadn’t gotten all of Gage’s magic when she’d done the cleansing. I nearly faltered when I saw the look on his face as he realized that tonight’s fireworks had not been some sort of spell gone wrong, but the result of magic that I’d been secretly carrying for a decade. Surprise, disbelief, hurt, anger, they all warred with one another as I told my tale. When I was finished he said nothing for several minutes. Then he stood abruptly and began pacing the room, never looking directly at me.

  “Why would you hide this from me? What have you been thinking all these years? That I would love you less because of something that you had no control over? Because of something that happened to you while you were trying to save my life, and the lives of our friends? Is that the kind of man you think I am?”

  “No, of course not. Will you let me explain?”

  He continued pacing, but now he was running one hand through his hair. It was a nervous gesture he’d picked up from Devlin over the years. “If you could possibly have a rational explanation for this, I’d love to hear it.”

  In as calm a voice as I could muster I said, “It wasn’t because I doubted your love for me that I kept this from you, Michael. I know you love me, and I knew that this would worry you. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to spend the last ten years with you looking at me the way you did tonight.”

  “And how was that?” he asked with a bitter edge to his voice.

  “Like you hurt for me,” I said softly. “And I heard Devlin and Justine whispering to each other tonight. They’re afraid of me now. I could hear it in their voices. I kept this from the three of you because I didn’t want them to be afraid, and because I didn’t want you to worry about something you can do absolutely nothing about. Was it so wrong of me to have saved us all a decade of hurt and worry by not telling you?”

  He stared down at me and shook his head sadly. “I wish we’d never come here.”

  I felt a moment of panic as he crossed the room to the door. “Where are you going?” I asked.

  He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “I have to tell Devlin and Justine about this.”

  “I should be the one to tell them.”

  “I think it would be better coming from me right now,” he replied. “You stay here and rest.”

  “Michael? Will you be back?”

  He turned. “I’ll be here when you wake up,” he said, but there was such a look of defeat in his eyes that I almost didn’t believe him.

  When the door clicked shut I lay back and closed my eyes, listening to the rain that had begun to fall gently on the roof. I’d been wrong to have kept such a secret from Michael, but in the beginning I’d been so afraid that it would change things between us, and by the time the initial panic had subsided … well, there hadn’t seemed to be a proper time and place to confess. I’d just wanted to move forward and pretend that none of it had ever happened.

  Deep down I’d known that I couldn’t hide the black magic forever, and I’d envisioned having this conversation with him a thousand times over the years. This was not how I’d thought it would go. I’d imagined that one day I would tell him the truth. He would be hurt and angry. I would cry and beg his forgiveness, and because he loves me he would give it. And if it hadn’t been for Drake and Bel that’s how it probably would have happened.

  I felt a tear roll down my cheek and brushed it away. When Michael had caught me in Drake’s arms I had told him that I’d never given him a reason not to trust me. Now I had … and I wondered if things would ever be the same between us again.

  Chapter 27

  Perhaps it was the cold that woke me. Shivering, I sat up and noticed that the fire had gone out. The clock on the mantel chimed softly and I realized that Michael had been gone for over an hour. Surely it didn’t take that long to explain what I’d done to Devlin and Justine. I got out of bed, still wearing the clothes I’d had on earlier, and walked downstairs. The house was dark and quiet except for a light coming from the library. I could hear Justine’s voice as I crossed the foyer.

  “You know I’m right, Michael,” she said.

  Michael sighed. “I know.”

  “Then why don’t you go upstairs to her?”

  There was a moment of silence and finally he said, “Because I don’t know how I can face her now.”

  My breath seized and fresh tears gathered in my eyes. Has it come to this? I thought. This man who once loved me to the depths of his soul now can’t even stand to be in the same room with me? The walls seemed to close in as panic overtook me. Someone had discarded a cloak on the hall table, and I snatched it up and ran out the front door.

  The rain had stopped and the sidewalks were wet and shiny under the fall of light from the gas lamps. Dawn was still an hour or so away, and the sky was a moonless inky black. I walked aimlessly, my mind racing with dark thoughts. Michael and I had been together for thirteen years, and before tonight it had honestly never occurred to me that I might lose him one day.

  Time moves differently for vampires. When you don’t see the effects of each passing year every time you look in a mirror, when you don’t have to worry about growing old or dying, it’s easy to lose track of the years. With the possibility of eternity stretched out before me, thirteen years was nothing. We were still like newlyweds, and something tightened in my chest at the realization that it might not always be so. For the first time I thought, What if I lose him? What if he no longer loves me? It was more than I could bear.

  If I had still been human I would have married someone I liked and respected, but I probably would not have been in love with him. I would have done my duty in the marriage bed, but I didn’t imagine that my husband would have made love to me every night until I begged him to stop and let me rest. He would have been handsome, perhaps, but I doubt he would have inspired the wild lustful images that flashed through my mind every time Michael walked into a room. The most excitement my life would have had to offer would have been attending a grand ball, or an appearance at court—not the thrill of hunting down a rogue vampire, or the rush of the fight that followed.

  I glanced up at the rows of darkened houses as I passed. The people in those houses, their lives had always seemed so mundane to me, so unexciting, even back when that had been my life as well. I had chosen to become a vampire and I had never regretted the decision, even in the face of all of the things I truly did miss about being human. I had always felt incredibly lucky to have been given the gift that Michael had given me when he turned me. I watched a carriage pass on the street and wondered for the first time if these people with their dull, ordinary lives hadn’t gotten the better deal. To have been given everything that I had, and then to think that it might one day be taken from me … it would have been better to have not known, to have blithely gone about my life in society, thinking that money and a good marriage match and a grand title were the best the world had to offer.

  And what would become of me if he left me? I didn’t even know who I was anymore without him and The Righteous, a
nd the work that we did. That fact probably should have bothered me more, but it didn’t. All I seemed to be able to think of was the gut-clenching prospect of one day not having him in my arms and my heart and my bed.

  As I glanced to my right before crossing Queen Street I caught sight of a woman standing under one of the gaslights on the opposite corner, watching me. Her black dress proclaimed her a widow, but she was young and quite strikingly beautiful. I wondered what she was doing out here alone in the middle of the night. It was an affluent neighborhood, but still …

  As I gained the opposite sidewalk I froze. I suddenly realized that I had seen her before, thirteen years ago in London. The night that I had faced Kali and Sebastian for the first time as a vampire, I had seen that woman standing across the street from my cousin Thomas’s townhouse. She had been just standing there, watching me. I’d thought it was odd at the time, but then again at the time I’d had other things to worry about, and I hadn’t thought of it again. It was her, though. I could still see her in my mind, so incredibly lovely. I hadn’t forgotten the glossy black hair, the high cheekbones, or the full lips on her almost aggressively beautiful face. And she hadn’t aged a day in thirteen years.

  I whirled around but, just as before, the woman was gone. The light from the lamp fell in an empty pool on the sidewalk. I scanned the street in both directions, but she had vanished.

  “Damn,” I muttered and turned.

  And then I screamed.

  There she was, right in front of me. She had disappeared from the opposite street corner and materialized behind me in the time it had taken me to turn around. Even vampires don’t move that fast. What are you almost came out of my mouth, but before I could speak the words I noticed her hair. It was pulled up high on her head, accentuating her sharp cheekbones, and falling in glossy waves across her shoulders to her waist. Up close it wasn’t just black, it was the shiny black of a raven’s wing, shimmering with purple and green highlights. I had seen that before, too, in Venice. I looked up to meet her black eyes.

  “Morrigan,” I said.

  She inclined her head and without a word turned and walked off down the street, back toward MacLeod’s townhouse. I stared after her for a moment, then ran to catch up. Morrigan, the Great Phantom Queen, was a goddess of war, life, and death. Vampires, werewolves, things that hunt the night—we were all her creatures. And she seemed to have a particular interest in me. She had once informed me that she had created me to be one of her greatest weapons. A weapon against what, I had no clue and she wouldn’t say. Back then her cloak had hidden her features from me, but I recognized her now. She had been watching me almost since the moment of my turning, if not before.

  “You must remedy this,” Morrigan said. “You’ve become so consumed with it that you’ve lost sight of why you came here in the first place. You do not see what is right in front of you.”

  “I know that,” I replied. “Marrakesh needs our help, I have not forgotten. I just … I cannot concentrate on anything else when all that fills my head is the fear that I’ve lost his love.”

  “Did I not tell you once that I had handpicked Michael to be your mate?” she asked, impatiently. “Did I not tell you that I created all of you with the capacity to love one person for centuries? Do not let what’s happened make you doubt that. He’s a man, so he’ll bollocks it up from time to time.” She shrugged. “Then again, so will you.” She stopped walking and turned to me. Her hand reached out to me, and I eyed her long, shiny black fingernails with caution. She cupped my cheek, very much as my mother had when I was a child, and said, “It’s a precious gift I’ve given you, Cin, but what you do with it is up to you. Look at the larger picture. If you were staked tomorrow, would any of these troubles truly matter?”

  Chills went through me. Morrigan was a harbinger of death. She was the Washer at the Ford who decided which warriors lived, and which died.

  “Am I going to get staked tomorrow?” I asked in a small voice that sounded frightened even to my own ears.

  She snorted. “If you did, I would be very put out. I’ve invested a lot in you, more than you know.”

  “Is that why you’re here now?”

  “Let’s just say I’m interested to see how things will turn out.”

  I glanced at her. “I don’t suppose you’d like to tell me who’s behind the attacks on the queen?”

  She arched a brow at me. “My dear, if I had the time to do your job I wouldn’t need you, now would I? I will tell you this: No one in that house is truly as they seem to you now.”

  Well, that was … vastly unhelpful.

  “I saw you tonight, up on the roof,” I stated.

  “I know you did,” she replied and continued walking, never looking back to see whether I followed or not.

  “So you saw what happened, what I did?”

  She nodded.

  “The cleansing you performed on me in Venice didn’t work, Morrigan, not entirely. Perhaps if you tried again—”

  “No,” she said tersely.

  I blinked. “What do you mean no?”

  She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Truly, you are the most exhausting of all my creatures. Did it never occur to you that I did not make a mistake by leaving a bit of the darkness within you?”

  “Well … no, actually it didn’t. Why would you do that?”

  “Because you are now, potentially, everything I need you to be.”

  “But that’s not who I am,” I pleaded. “The dark magic, it’s not the sort of witch that I am.”

  “You’re young, child. You don’t yet understand what you are.”

  I opened my mouth to argue with her but before I could get the first word out she simply vanished, leaving me staring at an empty street. I sank down on the steps of a darkened townhouse and put my head in my hands.

  She was partially right. I didn’t understand what she wanted me to become … but I did know who I was. Quite suddenly everything seemed very clear to me, and I stood and continued down the sidewalk, my stride long and determined.

  Yes, by the gods, I knew exactly who I was.

  Chapter 28

  I strode into the house as dawn was breaking and took the stairs two at a time. When I opened the door to our bedroom Michael was pacing in front of the fire, a haggard expression on his face. He crossed the room to stand before me, looking me over for any signs of injury.

  “Where the devil have you been?” he demanded. “It’s dawn and I was worried that you’d—”

  I grabbed the front of his shirt and spun him around, slamming his back into the door. “I’m yours,” I said fiercely.

  He blinked down at me. “What?”

  “I am yours,” I reiterated, slowly and emphatically. “You knew I was a witch when you turned me and I will not let you leave me now just because my magic has gotten a little frightening. You promised to love me until we were both dust and bones and I fully intend to make you live up to that bargain.”

  “Cin, I am not going to leave you,” he said softly.

  “I heard you talking to Justine in the library. You told her you couldn’t even face me now. I’m sorry I lied to you, Michael, but I was scared and our love was still so new. I did what I thought was best at the time.”

  “I know,” he said, looking down at me with tenderness and understanding in his eyes. It was an expression I hadn’t seen on his face in weeks.

  I released my hold on his shirt, confused. “You do?”

  He smiled at me. “You obviously didn’t hear all of the conversation while you were eavesdropping. Justine made me realize that, at that time, you were so young and we’d thrown you into a world you weren’t prepared to deal with on your own. I understand if you were frightened that I—that we—might leave you alone in the world with no home you could go back to. That would never have happened, Cin, and I wish you’d trusted more in my love for you.”

  “I did, Michael. I do. What Justine said, that may have been part of it, but it wasn’t th
e only reason. That night … you all looked at me as though I’d been damaged beyond repair, and I wanted more than anything for you to believe that I was exactly as I had been before we’d come to Venice. And perhaps I thought that if I didn’t say it out loud I could believe it, too.”

  “I understand the reasons you didn’t want to tell me, Cin, but the fact that you’ve borne this burden alone all these years hurts me far worse than anything you were trying to spare me. I love you more than my life, and I wish you hadn’t hidden this from me.”

  “I was wrong and I’m sorry, Michael, more sorry than you know.” I looked at him with all the regret I felt showing in my eyes. “Can you possibly forgive me?”

  He took my face in his hands and tilted my lips up to meet his. “You are my heart and my soul. I think I could forgive you almost anything. If you can forgive me as well.”

  I looked down, unable to meet his eyes. “I know in my heart that nothing happened between you and Bel,” I said, “but it would be nice to hear you say it when you’re sober.”

  “Nothing happened,” he assured me. “I was sitting in a tavern, drinking and feeling sorry for myself, and she just showed up. I tried to politely get rid of her but you know how she is. The bottles of gin and whiskey kept appearing on the table and the next thing I knew it was nearly dawn and we were both spectacularly drunk.”

  “Did she try to seduce you?” I asked, my imagination running wild.

  “No. In fact, she told me I was behaving like an ass.”

  I laughed at that. “As long as we’re confessing all of our sins tonight, do you want to tell me what bothers you so much about Drake?”

  Michael glanced away. “Oh, hell, Cin, I don’t think the queen is the only one going crazy in this house.”

  “That’s a distinct possibility,” I replied. “But it’s not an answer. Michael, I’d be lying if I said that Drake wasn’t appealing in a dark and dangerous sort of way, but then most vampires are. I’ve had more than my share of admirers over the years, but none of them has ever sparked this sort of jealousy in you, not the way Drake has, and I’ve come to realize that this really has nothing to do with me at all. What is it about that man that disturbs you so?”