Page 56 of Sinner's End

I sink against the stone wall at my back, trying to ignore the souls singing out to me for their eternal salvation—or damnation, whichever comes first—through its cracks, and raise a hand. “What do you mean, earn?”

Kaleb throws me a disgusted look. “Of course, you have no idea what it means to work for something,” he spits at me.

A flash of red lances across his liquid-brown eyes before his fist lifts a second time. Something cracks in my ear. I duck belatedly, a second behind his action, to find his flesh planted in the stone beside my head.

“Bet that’s worth it.” I nod at his hand, relieved my noggin is still intact. Reinflating my head might be a touch more difficult than the rest of me under the Chemist’s watch.

He grimaces. “Pity I have morals, or you’d be pureed demon.” He shakes his hand out.

I stare at his unmarked flesh, then the deep rent in the stone. A coldness seeps through, tendrils of dead things reaching for me. A shiver wracks my frame as I push away from the wall and stumble forward under his watchful eye.

“Stop smirking. Once they taste your power, they’ll be after you next,” I mutter.

Kaleb examines his fist, testing the flex of his knuckles. “And if I put my hand through your head?”

I snort. “You’ll be the first asshole I haunt. Earn?” I fix Lethe with a hard stare, motioning them out of the crypt.

Where the ancient site beyond Sinner’s End drains me, it seems to give Kaleb power. An unsettling sensation leaks into my gut. There’s a limit of sires in hell who attract the dead, and imbibe their souls like power. I doubt the fledgling hellspawn before me has any idea he’s feeding from the crypt’s cohort, but I have no intention of letting him absorb more of what he needs when I’m so weakened.

The angel watches us both with a brooding air more suited to the other Fallen whose significant absence does not escape me.

“Come on,” he murmurs, offering his arm to me like a suitor of a bygone era.

I blink at him. “They say chivalry died a hideous death sometime around the sixties.” Taking his arm, I limp out of the mausoleum.

“Is that how that quote goes?” Kaleb literally yanks at his hair until it stands on end at my side. The power charge takes its toll on him, overextending his capacity.

“A different flavor from Harken, isn’t it?” I mutter for his ears alone, answering his question with a question, knowing the angel beneath my shoulder misses nothing.

“What?” Kaleb snaps irritably.

I shake my head, torn between the amusement of seeinghim high on demon lust for the first time, and worried for the toll it will exact on us all before the sun rises anew. “Should we adjourn to a safer haven?”

I offer my services and my home, as per fucking usual. I might as well open the asylum up to every stray who crosses my path, seeing as no one else seems to have one.

“We stay here,” Lethe says simply as we breach fresh air.

I suck it in like life-giving brimstone while Kaleb deflates visibly at my side. Lethe says nothing, observing us with a fixed stare. Apparently, we both acquired a broader understanding of our unintended kin in the last hour. But my learning curve is far from over.

While Kaleb sags against a tombstone that refuses to speak to him, its residual soul long sucked dry by some preternatural creature, I find a patch of grass in the motherfucking sunshine.

“I’ll be hugging a tree next.” Lethe raises an eyebrow in a magnificent imitation of myself, and I concede a laugh. “Talk to me about Addi. What do we need to do to help her?”

His faint smile burgeons something warm within my chest cavity. “That’s a fine start, demon,” he murmurs, naming me for the first time.

The heat I crave extinguishes in an instant. I wince. “Did you have to do that?”

“Always good to remind us of our origins.”

“But not of our current state,” I counter.

I’m unsure why I’m hosting a college level philosophy debate in a graveyard that’s better suited to a frat house conversation that lacks the required copious amounts of alcohol for such a venture. Next, he’ll be quotingThe Screwtape Lettersto me.

I shake my head. “Back on point,” I encourage gently.

Kaleb glares at me and puts his fist through the dirt,rather than cracking headstones this time.

“I thought zombies came up from underneath.” Lethe watches the interaction with interest, then clears his throat when I drum my fingers lightly on my knee. “Addi needs to see that she is the most important part of your lives. Mine also,” he clarifies when Kaleb’s glare intensifies.

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