I’d seen this years ago. Entire villages massacred in an instant so that an army could cull their power. Only, I’d seen this in another world, my world. Then it had been Infernari who were victims of such wholesale slaughter.
The practice had been outlawed.
Against my will, I began to move forward. I approached the nearest woman, her hair gray with age, her body pale and shriveled—sucked dry of every last drop of blood. She lay on her back, her glassy eyes staring up at nothing, her mouth open in a silent scream.
She had not died cleanly, that was plain from her expression.
I fell to my knees next to her, my hands hovering over her still form. Cuts lined her body, the deepest gash slashed across her neck. The skin around it was burned, as though the Infernarus that culled her blood couldn’t wait until it spilled from her body.
“It’s just like Abyssos,” I whispered, another tear dripping out.
Even though I didn’t carry the souls of humans inside of me, a phantom ache took root.
Asher stepped up behind me, his presence ominous.
“What is this, Lana?” he said, his voice low and angry.
“They came,” I said softly, half looking over my shoulder. “The primus’s soldiers. This is their work.”
Savage, cruel work.
Asher’s hand wrapped around my upper arm and he jerked me up. “They slaughtered these people.”
“It’s forbidden,” I said. “They used to do this in the war. But the magic, it’s bastardized, it’s unclean. And culling it like this—the method is excessively cruel. It kills its victims from the inside out.”
His eyes searched mine, his lips curling back in anger and anguish. “And they did this to these people?”
I swallowed down bile. Another tear slipped out. “I think so,” I breathed.
Asher released my arm roughly, running both his hands—gun and all—through his hair.
Out of nowhere he let out an animalistic cry, kicking over a stand of religious votives.
“This is forbidden,” I reiterated. We weren’t all like this.
And this . . . I couldn’t even contemplate this kind of cold-blooded killing. All for power. Right after I had defended my people to Asher.
“You think your beloved primus gives a shit about what’s forbidden? Because it looks to me like he doesn’t fucking care.”
Bereft. Betrayed. The ache grew in me. “I don’t understand this.” My eyes moved over the other victims, their skin flayed and burned where they were cut open and culled of their blood.
For the primus, a lifebreather, to do something so cruel, something he himself had forbid . . .
It was one of the worst taboos to commit. A man without honor.
That thought was followed by another, one that had me hugging my arms close.
The same affinity that ran through the primus’s veins ran through mine.
It made me feel dirty by association.
“How many?” Asher asked, his back to me.
“How many what?” I asked.
“In the past, when they did this, how many did they kill?”
I swallowed, my throat dry. “Everyone.”
Asher
I gripped the steering wheel with renewed fury, navigating us higher into the mountains, up twisting, barely paved roads that skirted precipitous cliffs.
They’d drained an entire village. Killed everybody. We’d walked into building after building only to find more dead bodies.
No one was spared. Not the elderly. Not the children. No one.
The images of all those people were burned into my retinas. My own personal tragedies replayed in my mind alongside these new victims. This was what demons did, Lana excepted.
No doubt, they were fueling up. Arming themselves. Preparing for war.
Culling enough blood magic to wipe Jame Asher off the face of the Earth.
They knew my plan, and they were taking no chances. They would hold the portal at Pico de Orizaba.
With that much blood, the misfortune would spread beyond the victims, it would seep down their bloodlines, curse their families for generations. The blight would hang over the land like a shadow for a thousand years.
Lana had said as much earlier. She could still sense the curses that draped over the land from millennia ago, when the people here worshipped her kind and bled for them. Died for them.
That was the legacy of demons.
Death and curses and misfortune.
Lana sat in stunned silence, staring straight ahead and knotting her fingers in her lap. She was an innocent amongst monsters. Monsters with no moral compass.
I pitied her. But that wasn’t what was carving up my insides.
I had let her into my heart somewhere along the way, and I knew she’d let me into hers. I could see it in her eyes every time she looked at me.
I lusted after her, too. It didn’t hurt to admit these things. Not anymore. But this was bigger than that, bigger than me, bigger than her.
And I was no less a monster than the demons that had massacred the town we just left.
She was an innocent pawn in this game.
And sometimes, pawns had to be sacrificed for the bigger game plan.
I chewed the inside of my cheek, wishing I could forgive her people’s sins like Lana could forgive mine. But I couldn’t. They had killed a part of me when they killed my family. A part of my soul.
And that village . . .
The need for revenge burned through my blood like acid.
I looked over at Lana, pressure stinging my sinuses. I wanted so badly to let her save me, to let her change my mind, to let her replace my broken heart with hers.
But it was too late.
The idea had already sunk its claws into my brain.
It was simple.
Genocidal, but simple.
She would have to be induced to open her blood connection, either through coercion or trickery. A lethal toxin, injected into her heart, would then spread from her, down her connection, into the blood of the thousand remaining Infernari.
Every last demon would fall.
Paralyzed, unable to wield magic, their bodies would rot from the inside out.
All would die.
This was no longer about the portal. I could no longer hope to pull off a full-frontal attack against one this heavily defended, not without an arsenal, not without the element of surprise.
Nor would I try.
Attacking the portal would be the decoy, the feint, the misdirection.
An all-or-nothing crapshoot.
If I succeeded, the Infernari would go extinct.
Including Lana.
The nausea I’d felt at the sight of so many dead bodies resurfaced at the thought of innocent Lana dead.
Killed by my own hand.
“What are you thinking about?” Lana whispered.
I shook my head, jaw clenched.
“Infernari don’t normally cull that aggressively,” she said. “It’s because they feel threatened . . . by us. If we turned around right now, this would all stop. We could run away together,” she suggested quietly. “We could disappear, become someone else.”
She had forsaken her people to uphold her oath to me, and in so doing had become fiercely loyal. She had to know Earth would kill her. She’d sicken again or waste away without the necessary blood she needed. And without her, her people might very well die.
Surely she knew this. And still she offered.
In another life I’d have given a kingdom for a woman like this.
Star-crossed. That’s what poets would call us.
Because in return for her loyalty and sacrifice, I would betray her. And it would kil
l every last good thing in me to do it.
I swallowed the dry knot in my throat. “Together?” I had to breathe through my nose to control the terrible emotions taking hold. The self-loathing. The guilt. The premature remorse.
“I’ll never be welcomed by Infernari again. You’re the closest thing I have to family now.”
I couldn’t look at her. I squeezed my jaw. “I thought you wanted to show me Abyssos?”
“I wanted you to see my home,” she said, looking down, frowning. “But you’ve taken my home from me, and now you’re all I have left to protect. I can’t lose you, too.”
As she spoke, my heart felt like it was being slowly crushed.
To betray her when she felt this way about me . . . the very thought had my stomach kinking up.
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t do it.
She was too precious. She had bared all of herself to me—her good side, her brave side, her wicked side, her dark side—and instead of loathing her, I had fallen for her. All of her.
I had fallen for the sinful, exotic creature she was.
I couldn’t do it. And I didn’t know if that made me a worse person or a better one.
Just utterly fucked.
I would have to find another way to destroy demonkind without killing Lana . . . or run, like she said. Run away.
Put this all behind me and start fresh. She might get sick again, but modern medicine could combat most illnesses. And that blood magic of hers . . . we’d deal with that when it came.
Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t too late.
Maybe she could still save me.
I felt something right then I hadn’t felt in years . . . hope.
Lana
When our car finally came to a stop in front of our villa, I took in the large building.
“Are you sure this is it?”
“It’s it,” Asher said as he stepped out of the car, grabbing a bag of groceries in the backseat that we’d picked up on our way.
I stared at the white stucco house, a row of columns holding up the second story. Some sort of flowering vine grew up the sides of it, the deep pink petals bright against its lush green leaves.
It was . . . beautiful. Exceedingly so.
I followed Asher out of the car, my eyes drinking in our surroundings. Everywhere grew green plants with waxy leaves, some with strange, brightly colored flowers. The air was thick with moisture and the sounds of birds and other creatures.
Another pang of homesickness hit me. Many aspects of this place reminded me of Abyssos.
This entire time I’d been counting on going through the portal, talking with the primus, and figuring out a way for me to fulfill all my oaths.
That no longer appeared to be a possibility. Not now that my people had slaughtered an entire village, a village that likely contained more people than our entire population. Not now that they were taking the threat of Asher—and me—this seriously.
I’d hoped that the primus would understand, but those lifted memories of mine and his most recent orders left me angry, confused. I had admired the man; I didn’t know what to think of him now.
Ahead of me I heard Asher whistle from inside the house.
And then there was Jame Asher. An enemy-turned-ally. But Grandmaddox had been right. He was more than that to me.
A lot more.
He might have regretted the kiss, but I didn’t.
I followed him into the house, my eyes going wide as I took in the high ceiling and the carved wooden beams that held it up. A wrought iron chandelier hung in the spacious living room, and a staircase wrapped around the side of the room.
Asher was watching me avidly. The intensity of his stare made my cheeks flush.
He prowled toward me slowly, and Mother above, I couldn’t figure out whether that was anger or longing that sharpened his features. I backed up against a side table, jostling a lamp that sat on it.
Asher didn’t stop until he was nearly touching me. He braced a hand on either side of the table, caging me in. I looked up and up at him. His shoulders were impossibly broad, thick bans of muscle curving around them.
This close I could see the golden tan of his skin and a couple faint freckles that dotted his straight nose. That strong jaw, those serious eyes. I felt like prey beneath his stare.
He dipped his head, a lock of his hair sliding in front of his brow.
“We need a drink, and then we need to talk.”
Asher pulled the cork out of the wine bottle, his arm muscles bunching as he did so, his hair sliding in front of his face.
My mouth went dry.
He glanced up from his work, catching me staring at him like he was my next meal. Very un-Infernari of me.
My cheeks heated again. Even my hair swayed around my shoulders as though it were flustered.
Asher took it all in, his face giving away nothing. He turned his back to me to pour the wine, and I sagged against the counter I’d been leaning on.
You would’ve thought I’d learned, but my damn eyes now moved to his broad, muscular back and the T-shirt that stretched over it.
Infernari didn’t do this—lust after people. Or, rather, they only did this when they wanted to mate with the person in question.
I felt myself pale.
Gods above . . .
No.
Please, no.
The Book of the Lovers, one of our holiest tomes, said that the heart finds its mate first. The body follows its lead, then, lastly, the mind.
I pinched my eyes shut. Mother of gods, that was what was happening.
I didn’t want this. I couldn’t want this. To yearn for a human . . . for my heart to choose him—
I breathed deeply through my nose.
But I did want him, didn’t I? I had wanted him for a while, and now my life was inexorably tied to his through the oaths I’d made.
“You alright?”
I blinked several times. Asher stood in front of me, extending a wine glass.
I nodded far too quickly, taking the drink from him and swallowing a huge gulp of it.
“Cheers,” he said belatedly, clinking his glass against mine.
My heart has chosen him. He doesn’t even like me. And we’re likely a day away from dying in some grisly death.
The gods had made a tragedy of my life.
Infernari mated for life. If I denied the pull, would my heart choose another? Ever?
I clutched my drink tightly to me, my hands trembling.
“So, about the portal,” Asher said, moving away from me to look out the window.
I released a long breath. The portal. Right.
“They’re going to be there tomorrow, aren’t they?” He glanced over his shoulder. “All the demons that culled that town.”
“Yes.” I took another gulp of my wine. It tasted like water on my tongue.
“So they know that we’re here. And now they’re waiting for us.”
My eyes lost focus. Distantly, I noticed Asher swivel around.
I nodded.
He pressed a thumb into his lower lip, mulling over our situation. “So what do we do?” he asked aloud.
I squared my jaw. My entire life I had fought to save my kind. All of my kind. Perhaps I had been topside for too long, but I was beginning to see the unfairness of my fate when I had given so much.
“We meet them.”
“Lana, they have an entire city’s worth of power amongst them. We have a single gun and a half-empty clip.” He said this all gently, like I was naïve.
I gave him a deep look. “I’m not planning on fighting them.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“Death isn’t our only option,” I continued. “I
f we can convince them you’re no longer a threat, they’ll stop hunting us, and they’ll stop culling so aggressively, and we can all stay alive.”
Asher rubbed his forehead. “But I am still a threat. As long as I live, I’m still a threat. They know that.”
“Not if you formally surrender to them. When Clades attacked us with the swarm, he told me the only way for us both to live was if you surrendered, but he didn’t think you would at the time, ever. Prove him wrong. Tomorrow in the cave, lay down your guns.”
“My gun,” he corrected. “I’m down to just my Glock and . . .” He unholstered the gun and ejected the magazine. “Eleven bullets. It’s a wonder they’re still scared of me.” He snapped it back into place, the corner of his lip twitching.
“In exchange for your sworn surrender,” I said, “we make them swear an oath that they won’t hurt us.”
“Please. They’ll blow me out of the water before I even get close.”
“I can reach out to them through my affinity,” I said, “I can ask them to hear us out, like I did with Clades.”
“Who I then shot. They learned their lesson, Lana. They don’t trust me anymore to swear oaths.”
I hesitated, then continued. “There is one way. One way to bind a human to an oath . . . which you won’t like.”
His eyebrows pinched together. “How?”
“We’ve done it before, sort of. You give them your blood, enough for them to curse you with. So you can’t renege.”
He stared at me incredulously. “Should I cut off my own head while I’m at it?”
“Have I not proven that you can trust Infernari to keep an oath, no matter what? Alive, dead, it doesn’t matter to them. They just want you to stop killing our kind. I want you to stop killing our kind . . . and I want you to live past tomorrow.”
“And rot in a dungeon for the rest of my life?”
“I’m a lifebreather, I’m the princeps of Abyssos, I’m the primus’s daughter. Even deathmarked, I still have some sway.”
He studied my expression, and I waited, and waited.
Blood and Sin (The Infernari Book 1) Page 25