Crimson Sins
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
Loose Id Titles by Madeline Pryce
Madeline Pryce
CRIMSON SINS
Madeline Pryce
www.loose-id.com
Crimson Sins
Copyright © May 2014 by Madeline Pryce
All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this e-book ONLY. No part of this e-book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from Loose Id LLC. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Image/art disclaimer: Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.
eISBN 9781623008086
Editor: Kierstin Cherry
Cover Artist: Syneca Featherstone
Published in the United States of America
Loose Id LLC
PO Box 806
San Francisco CA 94104-0806
www.loose-id.com
This e-book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing locations, the names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning
This e-book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language and may be considered offensive to some readers. Loose Id LLC’s e-books are for sale to adults ONLY, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by under-aged readers.
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Dedication
Qwillia Rain—Best. Critique. Partner. Ever. You pushed me and demanded that I write the best possible book.
Dawn Montgomery—My partner in crime. Through the years you’ve stuck by me, supported me, and encouraged me. You make my life, my writing, and my world a better place. <3
Laurren—My idea and go-to girl. You listened to me whine, cry, bitch, and obsess over every word. Thank you for loving these characters as much as I do.
Kristin & April—Thank you for all your help in getting this novel ready. You went out of your comfort zones with this one and forged on through the blood, guts, and tears. *smooches*
Kierstin Cherry—My editor. Thank you for believing in my book.
“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”
~ Edgar Allen Poe
Chapter One
Bastian Hale shuffled down the rough brick sidewalk, blindly searching for an escape. More acidic than the bile stinging the back of his throat was the sickeningly sweet aroma of death drifting from the alleyway. Pain twisted through his stomach and doubled him over. He struggled for breath in the whipping, raw winter wind.
Dust and trash from the narrow roadside danced in the air. He forced himself to keep moving, one foot and then the other. To a passerby he must have looked drunk or strung out. He must have appeared barely alive. They didn’t know the half of it.
He stepped on an empty beer bottle, stumbled, and fell to the side. Glass rolled, clinking over the sidewalk and into the gutter. All two hundred pounds of him crashed into the boarded display window of an abandoned store.
He didn’t try to push away.
Chills ran down his arms and coaxed tendrils of necromancy magic from deep within. The air glittered as the veil between the living and the dead vanished. Ghosts drifted up from the pavement. They seeped from the brick buildings all around him. He clenched his teeth and fought to pull back the icy power spreading through his veins.
It was no use. The mental shields he kept in place at all times shattered. Phantom noises tunneled through the wind to batter his eardrums. Death hung in the air. Magic allowed him to see the dead, to capture souls, and reanimate corpses. His control vanished, and his necromancy seeped out until it touched the apparitions around him.
They screamed, moaned, and cried, replaying their last horrific moments in life. The pain of their deaths ripped him apart from the inside out. He turned his cheek into the wood, desperate to get away, and closed his eyes. Splinters clawed at his skin. Against the board, his fists clenched, unclenched. He struggled to summon the energy to rein in his magic before he raised an army of dead.
Fuck. He wasn’t going to make it.
The change had never come on this sudden. His gut knotted in crippling spasms. The pain meant his intestines were rotting into thick, black sludge. He knew because this wasn’t the first time. Stage one of the deterioration complete.
Necromancy couldn’t be blamed for his ailment. He’d been careful, always so damned careful. He shouldn’t have to feed for another three days. Some outside source had to be the cause. But what?
With uncoordinated hands, he struggled to reach into his back pocket. He brushed clumsy fingers across the cool metal of a GLOCK 22, then a pair of cuffs. Neither would do him any good. The moment he grasped his cell phone and pulled it free, a full-body shudder racked his body. His link to the outside world crashed to the pavement and shattered.
An anguished moan tore from Bastian’s throat as he tightened his useless fists. Damn it. He needed a diversion, a different kind of hurt so he could focus on regaining control. Pulling his head back, he slammed his forehead into the barricade. Wood splintered and bowed.
“Gaah,” he cried out, clutching his head.
Thick, cold blood coated his hand and rolled down the side of his face. Drops fell to the ground in splatters. Against the grimy sidewalk, he could pretend the dark, almost black color of his blood was an illusion. In reality, it was another symptom of the change.
The sharp throb of his wound distracted him enough to shut out the screams of the dead. It wasn’t enough, however, to save him from a fate worse than hell. Once begun, his deterioration spread quickly and effectively. The entrails were the first to go. Next, his liver and kidneys would rot, and soon everything in his abdomen would melt into a gathering sea of muck.
If he were human, he’d die.
Too bad he wasn’t human.
He pushed away from the window and wiped the slick blood from his face onto the sleeve of his leather jacket. By strength of will alone, he kept walking. Instead of dwelling on the pain and the reason for it, he concen
trated on his surroundings. The low-level hum the dead gave off brought comfort to necromancers, even half-breeds like him. Their energies were especially strong here, as though this place called to him on a personal level.
How had he ended up on the wrong side of town?
One minute he’d been doing ninety through the rain on his way home from the station, the next he was out of his car and puking on the side of the road. An unseen force had lifted him out of the gutter and onto his feet. Lured by the pull of death, he’d walked blindly.
To orient himself, Bastian turned to the skyline dominated by towering water tanks and smokestacks. His gaze lowered to the abandoned buildings, broken asphalt roads, and brownstones decorated with brightly colored graffiti. Sandwiched between buildings in empty, overgrown lots were junkyards heaped with the rusted skeletons of cars and other rubbish.
Imprisoned behind small fences, white-limbed trees uprooted the sidewalk every ten feet. Flaking paint chips fell from stoops that led to bowed wooden apartment doors.
He’d wandered into the bowels of the city where the down-on-their-luck and criminal types lived. Rough neighborhood or not, every living soul he stumbled past recoiled as if they sensed the evil festering out of his pores. He couldn’t blame them. Maybe they saw the half-crazed gleam in his sapphire eyes. Maybe they saw the blackened blood staining his face and hands.
Perhaps they too knew he was moments away from becoming a mindless, flesh-eating nightmare.
Icy wind tunneled down the narrow road and drowned out the persistent buzz of electricity. The first drops of rain swirled in the gusts, eventually splattering to the ground. His skin tightened where the oozing blood froze. Ducking his chin into his chest, he ignored the tremble in his fingers and struggled to keep moving.
Light flashed in his periphery. He turned his head to study the blinking neon pig in the grimy window. Porky’s Grocery. Bastian never saw the person in front of him, only felt the collision of their bodies within the depths of his soul.
“Watch it,” a feminine voice growled.
His attention snapped to her. She sounded familiar, yet he couldn’t place who this person was. Did he know her? The moment his gaze met hers, his world fell away at the sight of her bright, sun-fire amber eyes. He tried to look away and found he couldn’t. Her eyes were the same damning shade his mother’s had been.
The pain in his stomach vanished. The wavering outline of the dead faded into nothing. The cold and the rain ceased to exist. His chest constricted in what was sure to be his last breath. Nothing but the woman with the remarkable eyes and the defiant strand of crimson hair brushing across her delicate forehead existed.
She wasn’t beautiful. No, she was captivating. Her oval face was pale and just a tad too slender for her feminine nose and full lips. Her high cheekbones shone in the blinking light. The slight concave to her cheeks was…sexy. He moved his gaze down the length of her neck to the name tag affixed to her shirt. A miniature pig, a replica of the sign in the window, sat prominently next to her name—Morgan.
She shuffled closer, and his heart sped. Her head tilted as she studied him, a frown curling her sensual mouth.
“What are you?” she uttered in a confused whisper.
Right. Like she couldn’t sense the death seeping from his pores.
In slow motion her hand lifted. She moved to touch him. Closer still. Air crackled between them. Frozen, he stood there and watched, too caught up in her spell to even breathe. A spark of necromancy magic danced from her fingers. Crimson. Just like the streaks in her hair. Just like his father. Necromancer. Death. No fucking way was he climbing into her sticky web so she could trap him with her magic.
With reflexes that finally roused to life, he caught her approaching wrist and squeezed until her lips parted with pain. “Don’t touch me, Necromancer.”
She stuttered something that sounded like What? He wasn’t sure if her sudden apprehension was from the look in his cold eyes or from the way he applied more pressure where he held her arm.
“Your blood…it’s black. I don’t understand,” she said and struggled to free herself from his too-tight grasp.
The potent, penetrating ice of her magic vanished and then reappeared from one blink of an eye to the next. She was either too young to control it or untrained. Either way he didn’t have time for this. Not now. Not when he was going to lose it any moment.
Bastian let go and shoved past her, not bothering to check if she followed or continued on her way. Time rushed ahead, and the havoc inside his body redoubled its effort to turn him into a writhing mass on the sidewalk. He wiped the blood from his face and rounded the street corner. His gaze narrowed in on the whore who stood alone on the opposite corner.
Salvation.
Damnation.
One in the same.
His prey huddled under a broken awning, barely out of the rain. Clad in a short black dress, she was soaked—the sodden fabric outlined the protruding bones of her ribs. Her long arms wrapped around her torso. Goose bumps pebbled the exposed skin of her chest. He wasn’t sure if the darkness under her right eye was mascara or a bruise.
Wind whipped down the street, and the debris at her feet stirred to life. Wet and torn, an empty box of cigarettes scratched along the ground before dragging across her ankle. The trash didn’t stop her from jutting out her hip and flashing a sultry smile.
Bingo.
Unhalted by his appearance, she sauntered closer. Guilt surged through him for what he was about to do. He banished the feeling and waited. When she approached, her short dress showed off slim thighs and the fact that she wasn’t wearing panties.
Not that it mattered. He wasn’t looking for sex.
Advancing, she planted one stiletto heel firmly in front of the other. She cocked her head to the side, and a tangle of dripping blonde hair stuck to her shoulder. Her smile curled the corner of her mouth. He had eyes only for her throat.
The reverberation of her pulse deafened. Her mouth moved, signaling she was speaking. He couldn’t hear over the thud-thud of surging blood. His breath sawed through him, each inhale and exhale painful. He moved closer, drawn to her against his will.
The sudden lust for this woman was too much.
Lust? The emotion gave him a moment of lucidity. He’d found women attractive in the past, but he hadn’t truly lusted after anything in over a century. Not money, not sex, and surely not blood. He fed because he didn’t want to turn into a mindless monster. He shook his head and struggled for answers. Something wasn’t right.
There was only one thing—one person, rather—in the world who could create this false reaction within him.
Ronan MacHallen had found him. Fuck.
Sweat dripped down the nape of Bastian’s neck. Moisture pooled in the palms of his hands. Nothing on this planet reigned terror greater than his father. If only he had the strength to turn and leave. Alone he was no match for his creator. Shit, even with his brothers, Nolan and Rory, at his back they only stood half a chance.
Instinct had his police training kicking in. He scanned each side of the street, searching. Was Ronan watching him? If so, where was he hiding? Shadows moved within soggy cardboard shelters. Phantoms hovered in alcoves. The vagrants he made eye contact with curled farther into themselves as if they could disappear.
“Drink, Necromancer.” The words howled on the wind, ripped into his stomach, and settled deep.
“You lookin’ for a date?” The prostitute’s honey-sweet drawl overrode the pain of fighting the whispered command.
Unease swam through the sludge in his gut. He ignored it and, after a moment, looked away from the street. He felt his head bob up and down in a nod without his approval. As she neared, her head tilted back to accommodate the difference in their height. At six-foot-two most women looked up at him. When she met his blue gaze, her eyes widened with desire.
He knew what the hooker saw when she looked at him, and it wasn’t his black hair highlighted in sapphire streaks. The c
olor of his eyes, the angle of his jaw—hell, even the slant of his nose meant nothing. His bad-boy charm was the last thing on this woman’s mind. She took in his attire, blue jeans, fitted white T now see-through from the rain, and zeroed in on his expensive leather coat. The blackened blood had been washed away by the rain. The greedy gleam in her eyes said it all.
“Not here.” His voice was a deep rumble.
He jerked his head in the direction of an alley up ahead where busted-out streetlamps provided no light. Shadows cloaked the crevasse. He needed privacy, and not because he was bashful. If she were going to suck his cock, she could have dropped to her knees right there on the cracked sidewalk for all he cared. But that wasn’t what he was looking for.
The change was too far along for him to leech the blood from her skin with a touch like he did with all his other feedings. Tonight, he’d have to use his teeth. Tonight he would drink. Tonight he’d become the monster his father had always wanted him to be.
“You ain’t a cop, are you?” she asked.
“No,” he lied smoothly.
She led the way, no hesitance in her stride. Blue lightning flared above, an ominous warning. Below, the ground trembled. The scent of rancid garbage stung his nose. The spine-tingling energy lifting the hairs on his arms had less to do with the electricity in the air and more to do with the proximity of the man who had returned to control him like a puppet. Rage uncoiled from the pit of his stomach.
A mangy black cat yowled and twined between his legs. Based on the foul, oddly sweet odor, he knew the feline was dead. Someone, himself, his father, or maybe even Morgan, had called the creature from its grave. Bastian pressed deeper into the alley. Once fully concealed between the two buildings, his quarry leaned her back against the redbrick building and looked up at him. She pushed out her breasts and ran a hand down the center of her body.
“I’ll suck your dick for a hundred bucks. If you wanna fuck, that’ll be an extra hundred and fifty. I ain’t cheap.”