Blood and Sin (The Infernari Book 1)

by Laura Thalassa

  Instead it had all come to this.

  I fell to my knees at her side. An ominous buzzing rang in my ears, the sound of time stretching out like a taut cord. My body gave a violent shudder, as if resisting every second that took me further away from her, from my Lana, from my fateful decision, from that brief, blissful time when she had been mine. I gathered her in my arms and, head bowed over her body, I wept.

  Oh God, what have I done?

  I had just murdered the girl I loved.

  My sobs began to echo around the cave.

  “My, my, I cursed you good,” cackled a voice behind me.

  The skin all down my back broke out in prickles. I set Lana down and swiveled around.

  I found myself face to face with the two cloudy glass eyes of Grandmaddox.

  “Oops—” She pricked my shoulder with a needle, emptying the contents of the syringe in an instant. “A little dose of your own medicine, Mr. Asher.”

  I slapped my shoulder and scrambled backward, my heart’s thunderous beats already slowing under the influence of the venom she’d injected. “No, you’re . . . you’re dead,” I croaked.

  Then I realized.

  Because she was half human, she wasn’t connected to Lana’s blood network. The venom hadn’t spread to her.

  I hadn’t even considered.

  I reached for my holster, but my holster was lying in the bones ten feet away. Might as well have been a mile. My limbs grew heavy within seconds, my eyes drooped. My elbows buckled and I slumped against the wall.

  “Didn’t think of that, did you?” she said, answering my thoughts.

  Stooping over Lana, Grandmaddox produced another syringe, which she pierced through Lana’s unmoving breastplate. A moment later, Lana gasped for breath and rolled over to vomit. Seeing her alive made my heart flutter with relief, like it could breathe again. All around the cave, the rest of the demons groaned and staggered to their feet.

  The antivenom.

  Grandmaddox had brought the antivenom.

  I knew there was one, but I hadn’t thought to worry about it.

  At the sight of them waking, I rejoiced inside, even as my plan fell to pieces. It had all been undone, my treachery erased, like it was no more than a bad dream. Lana would live. The woman I’d fallen for. My . . . mate.

  She blinked at the ground, coughing, her chest rising and falling frantically even as my own breath began to still.

  She faced me slowly, her hair hanging in limp cords down her sweaty face. In her feral eyes, I saw something harsh, something that blended with the pain already in them. Something I’d seen in my own eyes every time I looked in the mirror these last two years.

  Hatred.

  I couldn’t react, I couldn’t even move my facial muscles. But oh God, I felt that look like a kick to the gut.

  A blurry face loomed in front of me, blocking her from view, and it took all my willpower to focus. When I did, I wanted to scream. But I couldn’t.

  Azazel crouched over me, a slow smirk creeping across his slickly handsome features. “A trickster to his last, dying breath,” he mused, waving his hand in front of my eyes. “A pity to see him finally fall.”

  Up close, his suit pulsated like a living thing, and his ashy, rippling scent rolled over me like poison.

  “He’s your mate, Lana,” he said. “You say the word and I’ll torch him.”

  “I don’t care what you do,” she said weakly. “Just get him out of my sight.”

  Azazel cocked his head, his gaze thinning. “No,” he said, recanting his earlier words, “death is a mercy he doesn’t deserve,” he said. “I’m going to take him back to Abyssos and cut out his tongue and then impale him on a spit and roast him slowly, so he screams in agony for all the days of his life. That is how we will honor you, Jame Asher . . . as you have honored us.” His smirk widened.

  If Lana disagreed, she didn’t voice it.

  Azazel lifted me off the ground and carried me into the portal, where the air opened up and swallowed us.

  Then, in the arms of a demon, I plummeted into the deep, dark abyss of hell . . . where I belonged.

  Lana

  I was no longer dying, and yet I was. I was drowning in pain, suffocating on my emotions. I forced myself not to call out to Azazel and stop him from literally carrying out the justice my people deserved.

  Jame Asher was a monster. My heart burned for retribution.

  But it was also dying.

  Ah, gods, but everything hurt. I pressed my palms to my forehead and rocked where I sat. This must be a nightmare, a terrible reverie that I would wake from soon.

  I didn’t almost die, I wasn’t nearly killed by my lover.

  Grandmaddox’s withered hand touched my shoulder. She gave it a squeeze. “He almost got you, child, didn’t he?”

  He did get me. That was a terrible truth I had to live with.

  “He will be dealt with. You both will,” she said ominously.

  At this point, I didn’t care what my fate was. Death had to be better than this.

  Around me, the last of the affected Infernari began to stand. Several of them glared at me. A few wore spooked expressions. Never had something like this happened to us, never had we all been incapacitated so thoroughly and completely.

  Of course a clever human would stumble upon this secret: that through my connection I had the power to kill every last Infernari.

  I was shaken to my core. I had never imagined anyone would do anything quite this cruel, and by my mate, no less.

  And even now, in spite of my terrible, terrible anger, my body trembled as I fought the urge to protect Asher, the very man who’d tried to kill me minutes ago.

  I moaned as I rocked. I would go mad with grief, I was sure of it.

  The worst agony, though, came from the few Infernari who stared down at me with pity. It shamed me. I’d nearly killed them all, and they felt pity for me.

  Yes, death would be kinder than this.

  As my kin helped each other to their feet, someone crouched at my side. I saw his hooves and heard the jangle of his bone necklace right before his deep, resonating voice spoke. “Don’t hide your face from me, Lana Malesuis. You are an Infernarus, the very magic of the world runs through your veins.”

  My body trembled all over as my connection with Asher burned deep beneath my chest. I swear it was growing still, despite everything.

  Slowly, I dropped my hands, my shoulders slumping forward. I could barely look at Clades; I’d almost killed him because I’d been too naïve, too gullible.

  “Don’t let them see you weak,” he said. “You are the princeps of Abyssos. This doesn’t change that.”

  Seeing pity in my comrades’ eyes had cut like a knife, but Clades’ words . . . they broke me altogether.

  I let out a choked sob and, on instinct, I reached for the Infernarus, embracing him as I’d so often seen the natives here do. I buried my face in his chest and I sobbed. And I didn’t care that this sort of closeness was far too intimate for our kind, especially under these circumstances. Somewhere along the way I’d become a bit selfish, a bit fickle, a bit clever.

  A bit human.

  Clades’ arms hung at his sides until he realized that I wasn’t letting go. And then, reluctantly, I felt him loosely clasp me back. I heard him chuff through his nose, his hot breath stirring my hair.

  “We need to leave, Lana. The primus will want to see you. There will be a formal inquisition. You will take responsibility for all that has happened.”

  I stiffened in his arms. He was right, of course. I would have to answer for everything I had so carelessly let happen.

  I began to nod, pulling away from Clades.

  “I will do all that I can for you,” he said, his voice echoing off the wall
s.

  I dusted myself off and stood, wiping away my tears as I pulled myself together. I straightened my back. “You have always been kind to me, my friend,” I said to him. “But I won’t involve you in this.” I would just bring him down with me. “I am not afraid of the primus’s justice.”

  By the look on Clades’ face, he was. He rose, his giant frame towering over me, and one of his hands fell heavy on my shoulder. I glanced from him to it.

  His eyes looked apologetic. “I will have to escort you.”

  I swallowed. “I understand,” I said hoarsely.

  Prisoner. I might be the closest thing to royalty where we came from, but even I wasn’t absolved from justice.

  Clades didn’t try to bind my wrists, and I appreciated that.

  We began to walk, following the others toward the portal. I lifted my chin as Infernari stared. Clades was right—even if I didn’t feel strong, I needed to act like I did. My comrades could sense weakness, and the weak never lasted long in Abyssos.

  My boots crushed old skeletons as I strode across the cavern, pulverizing the bone to dust. It had never bothered me before, the sacrifices humans made for my kind, but now—but now . . .

  Out of nowhere, a sound like the crack of thunder deafened my ears, rolling through my body. My knees buckled. The sound came from within me.

  I gasped, doubling over, my hand going to my chest.

  No no no no no.

  “Lana?” Clades’ voice filtered in from somewhere far away.

  Distantly I realized he was all that was holding me up, that my hair shielded me from the prying gazes of every other Infernari in the room. But my eyes had turned inward, inward toward my web of connections, where a new essence had formed.

  One that tasted like honeyed liquor, that sounded like stone striking steel, like innovation. An essence that looked like the ancient castles of my homeland come to life. In my mind’s eye, I reached out and touched that essence, and it brushed back against me like a cool breeze.

  I recoiled because I felt it—him—on the other end.

  A new bond had been forged, a connection that had no business existing.

  And as it finished snapping into place, a cold sweat broke out along my skin.

  I was now fully mated to the betrayer of my species.

  Jame Asher.

  To be continued…

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