Page 23 of Sinner's End

“You gonna let me take you out again, Addi?” I sling an arm across the seat back and her shoulders, squeezing her arm, and pull her a little closer.

“Only if there’s bacon. And coffee.”

I laugh, but beneath her bratty response lies the need awoken in us both that goes well beyond the physical. One date, and I’ve fallen for this girl like an angel tumbling from grace.

Except I am no angel, and she holds all the grace.

I peel away from our place of solitude, heading back to her house. I leave the window down just enough to flip the bird to the stalkering ass in the trees beyond who watched the whole fucking show from a front row seat.

“You know, I think I will take you out. At least a few more times. Then, you’re coming to my place for dinner.”

She swallows and leans into my arm slung across her back. “What happens then?”

Then I’ll fucking beg you to marry me before someone else does.I clear my throat and mind of the heady image of her in a white dress I get to peel from her body layer by layer andworship her for the next decade and more.

“Then we’ll find out if that mouth of yours is as good at kissing other things as it is at sucking my tongue.”

That pretty blush of hers lasts the whole trip home.

Am I proud of that last? Damn right I am.

I smirk at the road, and pull her an inch closer. I’ll do anything to make sure this girl is mine, and make sure she stays that way.

Chapter Ten

A Line of Sinners

Bowen

I turn away from Kaleb’s little make-out session at my hidden position behind the wayward fallen tree with a raging hard-on that shouldn’t be possible. I don’t like women. Fuck, I don’t like anyone. The only reason I get Mana off to the point of agony is because he thinks he deserves punishment, and I fucking well know he does.

The fluids I prefer are the sort black with sin, or red, glistening and running.

Which means there was only one place I could go to get myself off beforeKitten’slittle meating with Mana. And meant that way—he’ll take his pound of flesh from her one way or the other. Either Kaleb will watch, or he’ll join in.

I know his sort. Perfectionist, determined. Thinks his shit doesn’t stink like the rest of us. I do, and I fucking well know the stink of sin and the stain an inflated ego leaves on a person’s soul. Kaleb will fall, just like the rest of us. And it will be fucking Candyland when he does. Souls like his ‘n’ hers make a pretty collector’s set for a being as powerful as Mana.

I snort as I wind my way into town, to the room beneath the high school where, during daylight hours, the kids play and get their education. Fascist bullshittery, if you ask me, but funnily enough, no one ever does.

No, the gaping hole beneath the school was once a place of ritual where blood was sacrificed across an altar. The place itself holds no power, though the act did. And unbeknownst to the cage-fighting crew who set up there two years prior, they now offer fresh blood in their own sort of ritual.

Same shit, different day.

All one and the same, each sunset running into each other until my existence is all about mother-loving sunshine stained with the tinge of blood. Fuck, I’ll coat the place in it if it means I can go home. But I couldn’t and I can’t, so none of it matters.

Thus, sunrise to sunset, I stalk my newest little obsession, wondering why pretty lips, perky tits, and a cunt I can scent from across town even fucking matter. It shouldn’t.Sheshouldn’t.

But she does.

My existence’s current great mystery, until she ages into dust and I find a new obsession. Something tells me she will keep me going for a millennia or more. Long enough to see Mana’s return to the underworld, and I’ll be left alone.

Except for maybe Lethe. He’s … interesting. Strong, has no idea who or what the fuck he is. But interesting, nonetheless. I wonder if he would like to sample the pleasures of my painful tongue. After all, he is the sort to self-flagellate with a dark joy, just to get up and do it again.

Same shit…

I slink down the stairs, my white, grit-covered clothes stained their usual gray. I’m not above a little mood-based symbolism, but after tonight my clothes will bear a new color, one I won’t be able to wash away with a few punches and their saliva that flows across the floor.

Tonight, I intend to end a life and secure my small rein on earth with a little death.

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