Blood and Sin (The Infernari Book 1)

by Laura Thalassa

  “It’s a flashlight,” I growled.

  “That also fires a bullet, perhaps? We know your tricks, Asher.” She cracked it in half and dumped out the batteries, then dusted the plastic bits off her hands.

  “He’s telling the truth,” Lana blurted out. “He had one of those when I first met him . . . and without it, he was as blind as a bat.”

  “I’m not going to kill you guys with the flashlight,” I added.

  “Blind as a bat . . . hmm, I like that,” Azazel said, picking at his fingernail. “Why don’t we gouge out his eyes? Then we’ll accept his surrender.”

  I twitched.

  “No,” Clades said. “He offered blood with his surrender, we will take the blood—if we decide to let him live.” He turned back to me. “Why should we accept this exchange, Jame Asher?”

  Clades’ calm impressed me, considering I’d shot him in cold blood.

  Of all the demons I’d met, him I respected the most.

  That would make this harder.

  “Why should we spare your life,” he continued, “when you have shown such contempt for ours? When you have killed so many of our brothers and sisters? Why should we not execute you on the spot?”

  You should . . .

  I opened my mouth, but Lana silenced me with a shake of her head. She rose to her feet and spoke for me.

  “I hated him,” she began softly, “I hated him just as much as you did, as all of you did. Jame Asher was once our enemy, but he isn’t anymore. He hunted us because our magic killed his wife and daughter. Would you not be angry if a human killed your family? Your mate? Your daughter? Would you not seek vengeance? He fought us, because he was loyal to his family, because he was a good father, a good mate . . .”

  I closed my eyes while she was talking, each word a successive blow to my heart

  My eyes stung behind my eyelids, and I shook my head as she spoke, trying to negate every word. I wasn’t good, I wasn’t loyal, I wasn’t honorable. I was wretched and deceitful and treacherous.

  I didn’t deserve to have her defending me.

  I didn’t deserve her. Period.

  “. . . but he’s changed,” she went on. “He’s a different man now. He saved my life. Clades, brother, he spared your life when he could have killed you, and Aecora, sister, yours too. Today, he came to offer peace, not to fight. I know you want vengeance, we all do, but hasn’t there been enough killing? Enough oathbound deaths? Wasn’t it our need for vengeance that caused the war in the first place? We will never stop dying unless we stop killing, unless we break the cycle, unless we forgive . . . if we are to survive, we must learn to forgive.”

  She paused, and a cave full of demons that wanted us dead now hesitated. They looked halfway swayed by her words.

  She continued in a softer voice, “Please honor this man as he has honored me, as he has protected me, as he has cared for me, and please forgive him, for I know he is good, I know he is good . . .” She lowered her head and in a whisper, said, “And he is my mate.”

  Demons gasped and hissed around the cavern.

  It was too much.

  I fell to my knees, shaking my head and staring at her in desperation, once again feeling like a drowning, dying man who’s seen his salvation. As I beheld her, a girl not of my species who had risked everything—everything—to save my life, my chest felt too small to hold my heart.

  I couldn’t go through with it.

  I couldn’t betray her.

  Not after that.

  Her words had crushed me more effectively than any weapon.

  She smiled weakly at me, and I knew then.

  I would not betray Lana Malesuis.

  I would love her, and cherish her, and somehow let go of my hatred of Infernari. I would do it all and more . . .

  For she was my mate.

  I couldn’t breathe as I felt the beginnings of something, something—

  Clades turned from us to look over the gathered Infernari. When he swiveled back to us, he gave a curt nod. “Very well,” he said, pulling out a blade. “Jame Asher, you are hereby sworn—as it is writ in your blood, which you give to us willingly—to be guardians to the Infernari and never bring us harm . . .”

  Aecora lifted her palms and formed a glass sphere the size of a grapefruit—the quantity of blood needed to curse me to death, should I break my oath—leaving a quarter-sized hole in the top. She handed the container to Clades.

  I offered my arm, and this didn’t feel like defeat. It felt like hope. Hope that I might be freed from the vendetta that had ridden me for two years, the hate that had shackled my mind and my heart.

  Holding the sphere, Clades touched the cold blade to a vein in my forearm, still chanting, “. . . and in return, we are sworn to you, Jame Asher, as is witnessed here at the ninth portal, to never bring you harm, and so henceforth shall we be allies, bound by your blood and our oaths, for the rest of our days—”

  “I will not make that oath,” spat a voice from the far side of the cavern.

  Clades backed off the blade, looking up to see who had spoken.

  A demon rushed out of the crowd with superhuman speed, bloodred eyes blazing like embers.

  The creature moved so swiftly I never even had time to react. I only had a split-second to make out his face—the portal master, Fidel—before he plunged a dagger into my abdomen.

  I felt the blade part skin, heard the wet, slick sound of it meeting flesh.

  And then came the pain.

  I grunted and doubled over around the burning agony.

  The demon held me close, his hand still wrapped around the hilt of his weapon as he hissed in my ear, “I will never make that oath.”

  Payback for cutting off his hands and head, torturing him, and vaporizing him with bullets.

  I heard screaming. The most beautiful voice in the world screaming. It sounded as though she were the one dying.

  Fidel yanked the dagger from the wound. Immediately, blood began to flow from it, oozing between my fingers. He drove it again into my neck.

  I choked on my own blood, my eyes sightless for a second.

  Lana’s screams turned into a war cry and she tackled Fidel to the ground. They landed in a heap, grappling and spraying up bone fragments.

  “Lana . . .” I toppled sideways, wincing and stemming the blood flow with my palm.

  We’d almost had peace. Almost. And then the demons had to go and do that.

  For two years, I’d been hunting Infernari. Creatures that when fueled by their lethal magic, were strong as tanks and nearly unkillable. For two years, I’d outsmarted them off sheer wit alone.

  I’d almost started to think I was invincible.

  But in the end, all it took was a nick to the carotid artery. In the end, when you stripped away our machines, our will to fight, our cunning, our insatiable hunger, we humans were fragile, fragile things.

  I would bleed out in two minutes.

  Hell, I deserved it.

  Other demons joined the fray and wrestled Fidel away from me. The brawl quickly turned violent, as some defended the portal master and others defended Lana, and then others defended those defending the first ones.

  Lana crawled free and knelt over me, tears streaming down her cheeks. “No, no, no,” she moaned, cupping my face. One of her tears hit my cheek. “Wait, let me try to heal you . . . I can heal you.”

  “Lana, no—” Blood bubbled into my throat, and I coughed it up, felt it slip down my chin. More of it pumped out of my neck with each beat of my heart.

  Messy way to go.

  As I watched, I saw her lock her panic away until she was nothing more than a war medic.

  “Stop moving,” she ordered.

  “Don’t,” I sputtered, trying to pu
sh her away.

  Don’t give me that chance. Don’t tempt me.

  “Shh.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her hair shimmered a deep blue and floated up around her. Watching her brought calm to my own body. When she opened her eyes, they flickered crimson.

  She had just accessed her healing power, which meant she’d culled blood. She would always cull blood. That’s what demons did.

  And now, as her eyes glowed red and she looked so beautiful and wicked, I knew she’d opened her blood connection to the Infernari. All thousand of them.

  I stilled, and time seemed to slow to a halt.

  The moment was upon me.

  With Fidel’s dagger, she cut a slash in her palm and pressed it over my neck, mixing our blood. A buzzing, golden warmth poured into me. Her spirit.

  Under her palm, the skin tightened and stopped throbbing, the blood tapered off, the wound healed. Our temporary blood connection ebbed away, leaving my flesh feeling strangely lonely.

  I saw her sag with relief. “It worked,” she whispered, breathless, and now another tear of hers leaked out. She cupped my face, and while demons wrestled and rolled past us, she leaned down to kiss me, her hair falling around us in an aqua-colored tent.

  But it was too late. For us. For peace. For escape—for any type of happy ending.

  Redemption had been robbed from me.

  “I’m sorry, Lana,” I whispered into her mouth, savoring the taste of her lips one last time. “I’m so, so sorry . . .”

  She pulled away a little. “For what?” she breathed, her brows pinching together.

  “For this.” In one swift motion, I clamped onto her like a vice, whipped her onto her back, and pinned her to the ground. Her eyes widened, no longer a pretty shade of blue-violet, but lava red. Staring into those eyes, I no longer saw my Lana. I saw the blood of all demons, to which she was now connected. My nostrils flared.

  Panting, I dug into my boot and pulled out the syringe.

  It was filled with venom from the Inland Taipan, the most poisonous snake in the world. A dose potent enough to kill two thousand humans. The toxin so deadly it paralyzed the victim instantly and, if left untreated, led to death within forty-five minutes. Against the demons’ weaker immune systems, it would be more than enough to kill every last one of them.

  This was what I’d spent the morning acquiring while Lana slept in.

  I stabbed the syringe into her heart and emptied the barrel.

  The look in her crimson eyes . . . it shamed me. It broke me.

  Nothing, nothing, could have prepared me for the absolute devastation, the betrayal, in Lana’s eyes, in the eyes of the woman I’d fallen for.

  Her body jerked, and she sucked in a sharp breath, her back arching. A tear slipped out.

  At this very moment, her heart would be pumping the venom through her veins, and with her connection wide open, it would pass down her connection and into the veins of the last thousand Infernari.

  Around the cavern, the warring demons faltered, sensing something wrong. They glanced around, they helped up their fallen brothers, they apologized and hugged.

  Then, one by one, they fell to the ground, convulsing.

  “Why?” was all Lana could mouth, her body twitching now.

  “Because you,” I said, pulling out the syringe, “are a demon.” I had to drag the words out between ragged breaths. “And I . . . am a human.”

  I didn’t mean to shed a tear of my own. Now wasn’t the time for remorse. But I felt it. God, how I felt it.

  “Asher . . .” Whatever she intended to say, it died on her parted lips.

  My name was the last thing she said. Her eyes glazed over and her body went still. She stopped breathing. Still conscious, she was now trapped inside her paralyzed body, suffocating in agonized silence.

  All across Abyssos, demons would be dropping like flies.

  I wrenched my gaze from Lana’s glassy, doll-like face—Christ, it hurt to look at her—and my own lungs heaved under the weight of what I’d just done. Without a single bullet fired, I had just eradicated a thousand demons.

  I had exterminated a race.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, and another tear slashed on my cheek. It was wrong.

  But it was done.

  The demon scourge had been eliminated from the Earth.

  Someone had to do it.

  This was why they feared me.

  Chapter 21

  Lana

  My heart was a dying thing. Crushing, shattering, obliterating into a thousand pieces.

  I stared up at Asher as my limbs froze. He’d wanted me dead this whole time. He had done the deed himself, all while staring me in the eye, holding me close, and now I had to endure this slow death.

  Everything was a lie. Asher’s touch, his kisses—the man had been inside me. He’d made me believe he cared for me, and now he was imprinted on my bones. I made him my mate.

  If I could cry, I would.

  I’d fallen for a human. I hadn’t known what I was doing, and I’d fallen for him.

  All that time . . . a lie.

  I could feel it—my world falling apart. How huge my hubris had become, to think I could tame this man’s anger.

  To think he could love me.

  And how terrible to feel love for him—not the fickle human love that grew and then decayed with time, but an Infernarus’s love. Something that was woven into my very spirit, something without meaning, without beginning or end. Something that grew with every passing second—even now. Something that was loyal, everlasting.

  While I had been plotting how to save Asher, he been plotting my murder. No, he been plotting my species’ extinction.

  It wasn’t enough to be betrayed by a mate—something that no other Infernari had ever experienced. No, the horror didn’t end there. Because I could feel a thousand different lives inside me all dying, their flames dimming and dimming. All those wondrous essences that I cherished my entire life. Eventually they’d all snuff out, and I would feel each and every death alongside mine.

  All that would be left of any of us would be smoke and ash.

  Asher had betrayed me, but I’d committed the ultimate betrayal

  I wanted to sob. I wanted to scream and lash out at the man above me. But I couldn’t move—not even my eyes. They stayed fixed on the cavern ceiling. My lungs had seized up, and I could feel my organs slowing down—dying.

  Asher leaned over me, brushing a kiss against my forehead, his hair tickling my skin.

  How dare he touch me! Kiss me!

  I wanted to shriek at him, I wanted to shred his skin from his bones.

  There was no justice to this. This was what happened when hate won out. And the irony of it all! Because even now I felt my connection to him growing. Could the sadist above me feel it? Could he feel anything?

  “Lana,” he said softly, “if anyone could’ve changed me, it would’ve been you.” He began to rise, but then he paused. “It was real, what I felt for you. It just . . . it was too late.”

  Can’t breathe. Can’t breathe can’t breathe can’t breathe.

  He stood and moved away from my body, his footsteps fading.

  And now my anger and soul-destroying betrayal meant nothing because he was leaving—he was leaving.

  He killed me, and then he walked away, that’s how little he valued this. Us. Me.

  And I had given him everything.

  My vision was fading, fading . . .

  For the best. The pain would all be over soon. Perhaps then my broken soul and shattered heart would be at peace.

  But a new, strange feeling blossomed inside me.

  I hunger for vengeance.

  Foreign, this desire to hurt another. Unnatural this wish to h
arm a mate. But Mother above, I clutched the emotion close to me, savored it. I swear I felt the brush of the primus’s dying essence, heard an echo of his laughter.

  And then the darkness swallowed me up, and I felt nothing at all.

  Asher

  I wove through the demons’ fallen bodies, the cave now eerily silent, and climbed the stairs back to the surface. My soul stayed down there with Lana. My heart. My conscience. I was too numb to feel anymore, too hollow.

  Back at the car, I wadded up a sock and ducttaped it across the stab wounds along my abs, my hands shaking violently. More than once I had to grip the car frame to steady myself, more than once my face contorted in a silent sob . . . but no more tears came.

  It was too monstrous to shed tears. Too soulless.

  The stomach wounds weren’t lethal. I wished they were.

  To die, that would be merciful.

  Rather than live with what I’d done.

  The job wasn’t finished. From the trunk, I pocketed the Bic lighter I’d bought and hauled out the gasoline container I’d filled at the gas station this morning. Breathing heavily, I heaved it back down to the cave.

  The venom alone should kill them, but I’d learned not to take chances.

  I only trusted a demon to stay dead once it was a pile of ash.

  I descended the cavern steps, the smell of sulfur thick in my nostrils. Once more I passed over bodies, not giving any of them a second look—none of them but one.

  I dropped the container down on the bone-littered floor next to Lana, then paused to catch my breath. Of their own will, my eyes found her face.

  I thought I’d feel some sort of bitter satisfaction at the end of it all, but even that had been robbed from me somewhere along the way.

  Her body lay at my feet, all but discarded. As though her life wasn’t important, wasn’t cherished . . . wasn’t beloved. Her sightless eyes were still open, her body contorted. That beautiful face of hers didn’t look like it conceded to death without a fight.

  I’d held this woman last night, and she’d felt so right beneath me. How badly I’d wanted more nights like that with her.