Page 48 of Sinner's End

Kaleb’s cum lands on my chest as Mana shoves Lethe out of the way, my fallen angel landing on his ass. A harsh slap lands on my pussy and my body convulses, my back arching off the bed. My scream rends the air. Mana repeats the action three more times before a second, more powerful orgasm seizes me. My legs shake as wetness seeps into the mattress below me.

“Did she just squirt?” Lethe asks in awe.

“Open your mouth, hell kitten,” Mana says, not answering Lethe’s question.

I comply immediately as Mana climbs over my chest and shoves his cock into my throat before coming with a roar.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Sins of Us All

Lethe

Harken’s walls drip with silence and death.

The wake of the succubus is worse than any of us could have imagined. Gore of every description sprays the stones that no longer speak. Their tears have been covered with the stench of ultimate, unhinged indulgence—and not just that of the creature we let roam the halls while we hid away and defiled the most beautiful sacrifice offered to us.

What I gave to her, before Mana shoved his way between us.

I could have sworn I saw something precious that stirred in the soul-deep pools of her eyes before he cut into our peace, something that wrapped itself around us. I love her, and for a moment, just a brief space in time, I thought perhaps she recognized the link between our souls long enough to love me back.

Now that connection has shattered, and all I was is … lesser. What I was meant to be for herisn’tanymore. Yet here I kneel on the blood-drenched stones that refuse to chatter, drowned in their silence, scrubbing away at the souls of others that are too shell-shocked to recognize their own demise just yet.

Perhaps that is my penance in this place. To be the shepherd to these lost, pithy creatures and guide them into whatever afterlife they have earned for themselves when I can’t remember the fate I created for myself.

“Wallowing gets you nowhere,” Bowen coos from his place above me where he scrubs lightly at the walls. His work does little but spray extra goop across the floor and at me, diluted by pink foamy suds.

Gray matter and glistening entrail remnants drip onto my filthy sleeves. I shake them off or try to, muttering to myself, but the color sticks. Soon enough I’ll look like him, another tarnished, vagrant soul endlessly wandering this plane.

“What do you want?” I don’t look up, unwilling to allow him to decorate my face with the same decrepit offering in a parody of Mana’s playtime with our mutual obsession last night.

“Why do you let Mana treat you like you’re worth less than a shit stain on his floor?” Bowen asks, dropping his darkly playful manner.

I blink at him. “Why do you suck his cock and let him treat you like his bitch?”

Bowen stares at me for a moment before his head tips back. He lets out a barking laugh that echoes along the corridor that should remain silent in this time of mourning. “Touche, little cherubin. It’s good to know you have heart. You’ll need it.”

My eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

His crooked smile comes too easy and sits far too wrong on his filthy face. “She’s not safe with him. With either of them.”

I scoff. “I suppose you think she is with you.”

That smile sharpens, along with fangs that extend to dent his plush, bruised lips. “Oh no, broken one. She is most definitely not safe with me.”

“What, then?” I swallow, unsure where he’s leading with this line. That he called me “broken” hits too close to home, though I don’t claim one of those, either. “What do you want?”

Bowen watches me for a long moment before he drops to his knees at my side, his head bowed with grief, or at least the facade of it.

With him, I never know what to believe, and with his next words, I can’t accept the risk, only the responsibility he places at my dirty, worthless feet.

“You must take her away. Because here, she’ll die.”

****

The eerie silence that follows my muted footsteps annoys me in ways I can’t fathom as I stalk the lower halls. After hours of ruminating on Bowen’s well-laid comment—no doubt as the man designed—and scrubbing every stone that refuses to give me its secrets, I follow my sense of unease to Harken’s underbelly. Not in search of the woman who consumed me, but toward the demon I despise but cannot escape.

I find him strapped to the chair he hates almost as much as he hates himself, his mortal flesh already sagging as his life force drains away into glowing beakers lining the bench beside him. Tubes stick out at all angles from his body like something out of one of Kaleb’s beloved horror movies.

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