Page 34 of Sinner's End

The Chemist is my designer, me his creation. He walks around me, tweaking and hissing when the venom in my veins fills tube after tube, each paler than the next. Until my usefulness wanes. A fog hangs over me, weighing me down as I sink in the chair he tethers me to, with leather straps that dig into the skin of an old man.

I remain in that state, wrinkled and used up, until he removes the needles, letting my blood drip onto the bare, cracked cement floor. My mortal life ebbs away with blood that refills my depleted meat sack of a form until my legs shake when I try to rise. The Chemist’s fingers trace over the leather bands that hold me in place, knowing I have no strength left to fight him.

A stolen glance at the angel seated at my feet by that point leaves me wondering if he intends to leave me in the chair for another round against my will.

Free will. The greatest joke of mortal existence.

Lethe remains, though he reaches out at one point to touch my leg. Offer reassurance, perhaps, that I didn’t die and was reborn alone? A gargled objection from me and the offer is retracted, though he remains, still and silent, a sentinel in the underbelly of this heinous place. Neither of us speaks or acknowledges the other until I attempt to rise, and fucking fall on my demon-spawned ass.

Then Lethe reaches out a hand, one I batted away and pretended didn’t sting me with the touch of his pristine skin. Not that he’d remain so unscathed if he resided at Harken, or anywhere near her.

“Don’t touch me, choir boy,” I spit, swiping claws at him.

The sinless fucker simply leans out of my way and watches me climb the stairs, boring twin holes into the back of my head. The pressure releases as I reach the ground floor, emerging from the space beneath the asylum, and I know he’s gone.

No bonus points for guessing where my little angel might go, as he leaves the asylum every night. He thinks he’s sneaky, or perhaps he has no control over the urge. That measure of obsession is something I understand intimately.

The club is alive when I force myself to set foot on the main floor, letting those craving an easy death, or a night of forgotten sin touch me like I’m their inverse Messiah. My lips turn up as I feed off their desires, their twisted needs, some so dark they barely acknowledge them inside the silence of their own minds.

And with my drug circulating the floor and the mezzanine balcony above, how silent the cacophonous crowd is. Screaming on the outside, and dead within. More than one face as blank as Lethe’s turns my way, hands reaching, drawn to their deliverer. As though some part of each of their vacant minds recognizes the mercy I offer their burning, worthless souls.

A mercy I might call to collect on in future, should I have a need of an army who crave my attention, a secret lodged within the deepest, most shadowy part of their hearts.

Breaking through the crowd, I slide behind the bar, tapping Kaleb’s replacement on the shoulder and claiming a bottle of tequila. If I’m going to forget fucking Adreana the way I plan with no true contact to her blemishless skin, I will earn a mortal level hangover to go alongside it in the morning.

It seems self-sabotage is the order of the day—or night, as it were.

“Are you going to claim her as yours in front of all of them?” Kaleb appears at my shoulder like the fucking wraith of a hellspawn he is.

“Creepy fuck,” I grunt. The fucking place is full of them. “You finish her like a good little pet?”

“Do you mean did I finishinher?” he snaps back and sluices a hand through his wet hair, spraying droplets of water scented like her across my face. “No. I fucking painted her with my lust, nearly tore her with my fury, took her home, cleaned her up, and tucked her into bed with a good-night kiss.”

“And then you’ll beg for her forgiveness like you can take it all back and be her date again,” I mock him, not looking at the man in case I end him on the spot.

He still thinks he’s mortal. I know better.

“Unlike you, I can offer her a life. A real one,” he says quietly in that way of his designed to convict me of my sins.

I laugh in his face. “You can try, hellspawn. But that girl has more claims on her than you know.”

“No one else fucking well touches her,” he snarls at me, spitting in my face.

I let his spittle drip along my cheek before I swipe the liquid off and clean my fingers gently against his shoulder, stepping into his space until we share a heady breath. “There’s aforce at play you don’t understand, child,” I murmur, tracing the curve of his cheek with my fingertips. “You can’t take her from her fate, and you can’t save her. Only follow, if that’s what she’ll allow. For any of us,” I muse in the silence between songs before the club is relit in a strobing black light and a beat that shifts the foundations and the souls captured in these hideous walls. “Did you fuck her alone?”

His teeth bare. “No.”

I nod, understanding. “Bowen?”

“Fuck you,” he hisses, his jaw clenched. Tendons stand out on the man’s neck, their sharp silhouette mangled with the twisted inked fingers that wind along his throat.

“I warned you, but you didn’t listen. She is ours.”

“Shegets her own choice.” The white devil appears between us.

Kaleb jerks back. “Fucker.”

“Indeed.” Bowen smiles, a dead thing that rattles these mortal bones. “I believe your friend downstairs needs more. It’s not enough.” His facade drops and he frowns. “Would you like me to source a replacement?” His gaze wanders over me and for a moment I wonder if he cares, or if there’s something bigger at play here.

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