Crimson Sins

by Madeline Pryce

  Through the chaos and pain, she felt Bastian and the thin, barely there connection between them. He’d gotten her blood. The sharper she felt the fear of what Ronan would do to them if they didn’t survive and the pain of his attack, the more ice channeled through her.

  Ronan flipped her onto her stomach, and her cheek slammed against the hard, marble floor. An insignificant pain compared to the rest. He kicked her legs apart and tore at her dress. The roiling energy inside her gathered tighter and tighter. Morgan bucked and fought when he grabbed her panties and ripped them off.

  “I’ll show you what a whore you are. Be a good girl and squeal for Bastian when I shove my cock inside you.” He grunted behind her, fingers rough and bruising where he tried to spread her open.

  Not on her fucking life. She slapped her hand onto the ground and shoved all the pain, suffering, horror, torture, and teeth-chattering cold into it.

  Agony called.

  Death answered.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Bastian reared back from the deafening sonic boom. Morgan’s magic exploded from the ground and shook the crypt. Under Bastian’s feet, the granite cracked. Above him, the arched ceiling rained crumbling stone. Ronan’s energy weakened under the surge, and Bastian found the strength to break free.

  He lunged at Ronan with a snarling howl of uncompromised rage. Bone crunched when his fist connected with Ronan’s face, effectively knocking his father off Morgan. He and Ronan hit the ground in a tangle, rolling and punching to get the upper hand. Bastian came out on top, fitted his hands around Ronan’s neck—gritted his teeth—and squeezed.

  Ronan clawed, kicked, and cursed much as Morgan had when her panties were ripped from her body. Finally the fucker knew how it felt to be the victim. Nothing on this earth would make Bastian let go. Nothing except the glowing hand Ronan pressed to the center of Bastian’s chest. Flesh sizzled. Paralyzing red ice crawled over him like thousands of slithering snakes trying to burrow under his skin. Inch by inch, his blood froze and his limbs hardened. The hand around Ronan’s neck loosened. Ronan shoved him, and Bastian tipped back.

  Bastian hit the ground. On impact, the ice covering his skin shattered. Morgan scrambled to his side. Pain haunted her eyes. Despite the fact she could barely stand, she tried to help him up. Her face was battered, bruised, and bleeding. She cradled her mangled hand against her torn, dirty dress. The sight broke his heart.

  Bastian pushed Morgan in the direction of the door. He’d never forget her screams, how he’d held her while Ronan tortured her. He’d never forget how much he loved her or their child, if there still was one after her trauma.

  His gaze found hers. “This place isn’t gonna last much longer. Go. I’ll hold him off. I love you.”

  She shook her head. Tears trailed down her face. “Not without you.”

  Three simple words had never meant more to him in his entire life. In front of them, Ronan staggered to his feet with a laugh. The fists he held at his side dripped with magic. Ronan lifted his hands, and at his silent command, the air whipped around the room like a gathering storm. Broken glass tinkled along the floor. The room trembled, and chunks of stone fell from the rapidly crumbling ceiling.

  “Damn it, Morgan, go! Now.”

  The runes on Ronan’s chest glowed red. Black mist rose from the cracks in the ground to join in the chaos. Slabs of rock stopped their descent, and everything stilled. The awful noise of shifting earth above them grew louder, waiting for the right moment to cave in as if Ronan controlled it.

  “She isn’t going anywhere,” Ronan said in a low, feral voice.

  Something, or someone, cackled. The inky shadow filling the room gathered into the outline of a person. Two piercing flames of red emerged where eyes would have been.

  “Your souls belong to me,” a hollow voice cooed, and Bastian got the impression that whatever spoke was talking to everyone in the room.

  The ground trembled and roared. Whatever antigravity trick Ronan pulled came crashing down, and they had mere moments before two tons of concrete buried them alive. Bastian had a split second to watch the shock on his father’s face take root before Ronan vanished. He hooked an arm around Morgan and pulled her to the tunnel as the dirt poured in.

  Not wasting a second, he lifted her into his arms and sprinted down the dark, long channel. Behind them, the crypt collapsed one chamber at a time in billowing clouds of dust. Faster, harder, with everything he had, he sprinted to the flickering light of the anteroom where blooms choked the air.

  Bastian emerged from the tunnel and skidded to a halt when the candles lighting the open room snuffed out. The deafening roar faded, and when the fog of debris settled, a large shadow approached. He set Morgan down beside him and stepped in front of her.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Something scratched at the ground, the echoing sound wrong for footsteps. Not Ronan. An animal maybe? Glowing red eyes emerged, and he caught a gleam of gold. A bull separated from the haze and solidified. Bleached, orange-mottled fur covered the animal. Chunks of flesh were missing, exposing half-rotted muscle. The stench permeated, drowning out the rich scent of soil and flowers.

  The animal lowered its gigantic head and pawed the ground. Magic unfurled from deep inside Bastian and gathered in the glowing blue palms of his hands. He drew in the cold chill of death and let it build until the ice burned his skin.

  “You with me, babe?” he asked and felt more than saw Morgan ready her magic.

  “Now!” she yelled.

  He let go, and together their bolts of energy hit the bull between its eyes. Unaffected, the damn thing charged with a snort. Morgan grabbed his hand, and the second he felt her magic, he knew what to do. Pulling the ice from her, he gathered it close and sent it out.

  Purple ice hit the beast, and instead of freezing, it exploded under their combined power. The skull shattered in a shower of brains, blood, and bone. What remained of the bull pitched to the side and hit the ground with a thud.

  At that very moment, Ronan walked out of thin air and threw a bright, spiraling bolt of magic at Bastian. Fuck. He dived for the ground and sheltered Morgan as best he could from the fall. The blast of ice hit the ground, and Bastian rolled.

  Something hard pressed into his shoulder, and he reached for it. A gun. Jodi’s gun. Beside him, Morgan sent out a stream of magic that Ronan batted to the side with a flick of his wrist.

  Ronan rushed forward, sent out a crimson ball of raw power. Bastian took the blow. Ice crawled over his skin as he flew back against the wall. The air whooshed out of his lungs, and for an awful moment Ronan’s magic invaded him, searched, burrowed. Not this time. Anger mounted. Bastian thought of Morgan, their child, and fought twice as hard.

  Bastian drew from the very deepest well of his magic—the power that lay in the part of him that was dead. He pictured Ronan’s crimson energy raging through his veins and coming up against his opposing army of blue. The magics battled, fought for control. Bastian’s need to survive, to protect, surpassed Ronan’s. He gathered his necromancy, combined it with his father’s, and shoved it out of his body.

  The purple stream burst from his fingers in a roiling, icy mass. The blast hit Ronan in the chest before throwing him across the room and into the stone wall. Bastian struggled to his feet and then swayed. Morgan crawled across the floor, smearing the blood and guts of the bull. Pain shadowed her dirty face, yet she still inched closer.

  Cinnamon filled the cavern, stronger than any of the other scents. She wrapped her hand around Ronan’s ankle and released her magic. Morgan’s spell crawled up his body and encased him a block of red glistening ice, freezing the shock on Ronan’s face.

  “I can’t hold it.” Morgan’s teeth chattered.

  “I got you, Morgan. Let go,” Nolan said from behind him.

  Bastian didn’t have time to question the hows or the whys. His brother stalked forward, mouth curved in a snarl as he let loose a barrage of magic. Purple ice streamed through the ai
r, hit Ronan’s immobile chest, and created a new layer of ice around him. And then Rory was there at Bastian’s side, yellow magic dancing from his palm.

  Bastian closed the distance between him and his target, touched the barrel of his gun between Ronan’s eyes, and pulled the trigger. Bang. The wall behind Ronan splattered with brain and blood. Ronan’s eyes rolled back before he fell to the ground in a lifeless heap.

  Jesus.

  Morgan threw herself into his arms. He dug his fingers into her hair and clutched her against him.

  Bang. Another shot rang out, but it wasn’t from his weapon. Rory fired at Ronan’s head twice more. Nolan threw his gun to the ground, gripped either side of their father’s head, and said, “This is for Mari, you fucking prick,” before he twisted until head no longer connected to body.

  Bastian pressed his lips against Morgan’s ear, repeated the same two sentences as he rocked her trembling body. “He’s dead. It’s over.”

  Not willing to let her go but not willing to look at Ronan for another second, Bastian held Morgan close and climbed the stairs hidden among the white flowers that led topside. Behind him, his brothers followed.

  Above ground, he stepped from the last stair into another stone room. The stench rolled out, choking him. Rotted flesh. He coughed, put his hand over his nose, and entered hell.

  Through the darkness, he caught the shadows of movement, something swinging to and fro. A lot of somethings. His vision adjusted to the change in light, and he almost wished he could have gone through blind.

  Affixed to the ceiling, bodies swung from lengths of thick rope tied around their necks. “Jesus. Don’t look, Morgan.”

  Morgan made a pained sound in the back of her throat and buried her face in his neck. There was a time when he and his brothers had been the ones hanging from a ceiling, rotting zombies stuck in a never-ending cycle of ravenous hunger that clawed at the skin. They’d swung back and forth, able to see the bound, helpless farmers beneath them but unable to feast upon their blood.

  Bastian shook himself out of the memory. Never again. Ronan was dead now, and the things hanging from this ceiling weren’t zombies. They were nothing more than corpses strung up like sides of beef at the butcher’s.

  “Almost at the door,” he choked out and maneuvered a path through the swinging pendulums.

  He tried not to think about the blood he stepped in. Didn’t think about the shit and flesh he tried to avoid. Some of the bodies were fresh, only days old; some were decades old. The dead spoke to him, reaching out with invisible hands to pull him in. Each body he passed held a different, violent story he forcefully blocked out.

  Bastian slid the cement door to the side, and his skin tingled. The overwhelming presence of death wasn’t a comfort. The graveyard he walked into wasn’t a place of peace. Not while black-cloaked wraiths patrolled the grounds, and ghouls feasted on the bones of anything that crossed into their territory.

  Of the two hundred corpses once laid to rest in this cemetery, he could only sense a dozen or so that remained untouched. Spells and curses wrapped those souls in a protective shield not even Ronan had been able to defile.

  “What is this place?” Morgan asked, her words coming out in puffs of white condensation.

  “The devil’s playground,” Nolan murmured.

  Nolan took off his jacket and placed it over Morgan’s shoulders before kicking off his boots. He removed his socks, and as if she was a child, he pulled off her one ruined sneaker to dress her feet in warmth.

  “We heard, felt the ground cave in, and thought for sure we were too late.” Rory threw himself into Bastian’s arms with enough force to send them both sprawling into the snow. Ice cut into the bare skin of his back, but he couldn’t have cared less.

  Rory touched their foreheads together and clutched the back of Bastian’s neck. “Never been so fucking terrified in my entire life. Do not do that shit to me again.”

  Bastian nodded. “Not planning on it.”

  He gently pried Rory off him and helped him to his feet.

  “Hey, Morgan,” Rory said with a sheepish smile.

  Morgan sniffled, wiped the crystallizing moisture off her cheeks, and laughed a little. “Hey, Rory.”

  With much more care, Rory pulled Morgan into his arms for a gentle hug. “Sweet baby Jesus, look at you, darlin’.”

  She melted into him. “It’s all over now.”

  Nolan, who stood back from them all, pulled something from his pocket. “This belongs to you.” He handed her the raven pendant.

  New tears filled her eyes as her uninjured palm closed over the necklace. She looked up to meet Nolan’s gaze. “Thank you.”

  “I know words don’t mean much, but I’m truly sorry for what I did to you and Bastian. I’ve got shit to work through, and I took it out on you. Not cool, not by a long shot.”

  Bastian closed the distance between him and Nolan before clapping his brother on the shoulder. Fuck that. He pulled Nolan into a hug and slapped his back twice before stepping away.

  “We gotta get Morgan out of the cold and get her checked out. Ronan beat the shit out of her.”

  Rory’s expression grew pensive, and his gaze dropped to her stomach. “Any cramps, bleeding?”

  The baby. Bastian curved his hand around her waist, cupped her tummy, and hoped like hell Ronan hadn’t caused her to miscarry.

  “Everything hurts, but I’m not bleeding. Not like that.” She covered his hand with hers.

  They started in the direction of the woods. Two steps in, he asked, “Not that I’m not happy to see you guys, but what in the hell are you doing here? Where is here, anyways?” Bastian looked around the snowy graveyard and nearby forest.

  “It’s kind of a long story,” Rory said. “Nolan felt like a shitty asshole for what he’d done and how you two left things, so he did a GPS locate on my cell. Found me, patched me up. Since Bastian didn’t have his phone, he called upon the Dracoi for a favor to pinpoint where you were.”

  “Who are the Dracoi?” Morgan asked.

  “Witches who supposedly got their mystical abilities from drinking dragon’s blood. They gain immortality by stealing the souls of shape-shifters and entrapping their animal spirits in jewels they wear like badges of honor. Nolan’s wife, Maribel, was a Dracoi,” Bastian answered, his gaze never straying from Nolan’s. “You called Abigail?”

  The lingering anger Bastian harbored against his brother faded in the face of everything they’d just gone through. Calling his dead wife’s twin sister probably hadn’t been easy, especially considering Abby’s need to blame someone had put Nolan on the powerful witch’s eternal shit list.

  “He sure as shit did.” Rory held out a hand and helped Bastian get Morgan under and through the skewed barbed-wire fence. “And yes, before you ask, she still blames him. He got his ass chewed out, and then—and this is where the story gets good—we met this scary chick, a blonde Dracoi if you can believe it, named Allison. She had these two big-ass snow leopards on leashes. Damn, she was hot.”

  “Shut up, Rory,” Nolan said.

  Rory did no such thing. “Morgan, did anyone ever tell you what Nolan is afraid of?”

  “No, I don’t think they did,” Morgan said with the first real smile he’d seen on her face since all this shit went down. The sight loosened the tight ball of dread in his chest. Crap wasn’t perfect, and they all had a lot of healing to do, but they were together.

  Bastian pulled Morgan close and kissed the side of her head. “He’s afraid of cats.”

  “That’s enough,” Nolan growled.

  “So this chick, Allison, strolls out of this big-ass barn with her two felines snarling beside her. Did I mention Ally’s sexy-as-all-hell blonde hair and blue eyes? Anyways, Nolan about shit his pants when he caught sight of those cats. Do you know what Allison said?”`

  Bastian shook his head and helped Morgan over a fallen log. “No, but I bet you’re about to tell us.” Several feet ahead, he spotted a barely paved road an
d Nolan’s car.

  Rory grinned. “She said, ‘What’s the matter, Nathaniel, afraid of pussy?’”

  Morgan burst into laughter, which turned into a groan of pain. She gripped her side. “Why did she call you Nathaniel?”

  “It’s the name I used to go by,” Nolan said with a twitching smile.

  Bastian tugged on her hand and brought them to a stop. His brothers went on without them. “You okay?” he asked.

  She nodded and pulled her lower lip between her teeth. “It hurts, but I’ll be fine. Before I pass out at your feet, I wanted to tell you that I’ll agree to marry you on one condition.”

  His heart beat double time in his chest. “Anything.”

  “Tell me what you’re scared of.”

  He leaned down so he could press his lips against her ice-cold ear. “I’m afraid of losing you. I helped him hurt you…”

  She wrapped her arms around him. Back and forth, she rubbed her nose across his chest, over the symbol Ronan had branded him with. “I cracked you in the nose and tried to dislocate your kneecap. We’re even.” She looked up in order to meet his gaze. “I love you, Bastian.”

  “I love you too. Always, forever.” He grabbed her hand and pulled until she started walking again. “And, just so you know”—his smile stretched his face—“forever is a really fucking long time, and I can’t wait to spend every second of it with you by my side.”

  Epilogue

  Seven months later

  “Damn it, woman, will you put that box down?” Bastian crossed the room and plucked the small brown box of shot glasses from her hands.

  He set the package with the rest of the neatly marked boxes on the brand-new, never before used bar. The entire time he glared at her.

  Morgan sighed and looked to the one person in the room who had any sense. “Rory, will you please tell your brother that I’m pregnant, not an invalid. This box weighs like two pounds!”

  Rory glanced over at her. He held a nail securely between his teeth and a hammer in his hand. He plucked the metal out of his mouth, shook his head. “Leave me out of it.”