Page 61 of Sinner's End

Some day I’ma gonna punch that fucker in the face hole for his holy-as-righteous-fuckerness.

Mana’s jaw clicks in place. “Our fourth has gone on a little spree,” he murmurs, trailing his fingertips through the glistening stream that drenches the walls of his home. I watch with a sort of morbid fascination as he brings those fingers to his lips and tastes them, a shudder wringing through him that seems to wick energy from his tall frame rather than give it as this place has always done for its master. “I’m not sure redemption is in his future.”

Lethe shoots him a look, dropping one of my shoulders.“You did less for me, and here I stand beside you.”

My knees hit the flagstone floor, soaking my leather pants in someone else’s blood for the second time in two days. Pain reverberates along my thigh bones as they object to being dropped like twin sacks of shit.

“Ow.” I roll my shoulders and try not to face-plant in the excess of goop as the angel and the demon host a silent, too-calm conversation over my head. “Someone wanna fill me in on what’s happened here?”

Mana finally hoists me back to his level—ha—as still-cooling fluids pool around my ankles. “Bowen might have turned,” he says delicately, striding through the carnage and dragging me with him as we head for the stairs.

“Turned … which way?” My brow crinkles as I stare upward to where his office waits on the third floor and pray that’s not where we are headed. My legs aren’t gonna make it. He tsks, and hits me with an unforgiving glare. “What?” I defend. “I’m fucking tired, all right?”

“Down.” He shakes his head at me and places my hands on the slippery railing, tapping my shoulder with no little degree of condensation. “Catch up when you can.”

He takes the stairs two at a time, though even I can see his legs shake through my double vision.

“Asshat,” I mutter to them both as Lethe passes me, his tunnel-vision-focus single-minded as per freaking usual. At least he might keep Mana out of trouble by the time I make it to the basement.

Two and a half flights of stairs later, I know my assessment of the levels is wrong. Heading up might have been easier. I skid a few steps in the opposite direction, land on my ass, and try not to tumble headfirst onto the dirt floor imbibed with enough of Mana’s spilled blood over his strange lifetime to host an army of demonic ghosts.

Spitting out some of my own saliva that mingles with the tang of metal, I sprawl beside the carcass of a familiar, albeit hated, form. The Chemist’s face is caved in. His stretched, cruel features that always creeped me the fuck out are folded in on themselves like a flattened, origami figure. Even his body is sunken like whatever inhabited him has gotten … out.

My shitty humor dissipates in a matter of seconds.

“The fuck happened here?” I mutter, crab-scuttling my freaked-out ass away from the horrific sight laid out like a preordained sacrifice at the base of the stairs.

“I’m not entirely sure.” Mana crouches beside the Chemist’s head. His hand hovers above the creature’s—to call him a man is an insult to an entire species—face in a sort of benediction, though his forehead creases. “This work is something older than…”

“Me?” Bowen’s thin, high-pitched voice turns both our heads.

Lethe steps up to flank us, a crossbow I don’t recognize in his hands. I’d ask where he got the ancient weapon, but by the time my head turns to fix on Bowen’s creepy ass, I no longer care.

The fallen angel—how many freaking critters are there in this place?—lounges sideways across Mana’s torture chair like it’s his personal playground. His bare feet are stained red to the ankles where they disappear into his equally filthy, once pristine gray leather trousers. The matching leather vest hangs in tatters, darker at the bottom like the inevitable sin he’s indulged in for too long creeps from his waist up toward his heart where the original color of the tanned flesh still shows faintly through.

Pale skin flecked with dark splotches exposes an emaciated frame. Bones poke out at odd angles giving him a monstrous look. I have no idea what Bowen eats, but it’s clearly been a long time since anything he’s consumed has providedhim with sustenance. His hand settles on the inside of his thigh, rubbing lightly just below his bulging crotch in an undeniably sexual manner.

Any sense of the purity he once held close no longer exists. If the being before us ever wore a halo, he’d find it a shit fit today.

“What are you doing?” Mana rises slowly, suppressing a wince though we all see it, as though the simple action pains him at bone-deep level.

I don’t think our extended beat-on-each-other session is the reason for his anguish. Nor the death of the man who used to drain him for the dubious pleasure of his willing essence. His words register as I throw my legs in front of me and attempt to haul my rear off the floor, stumbling to a standing position. My first question might have been, “what have you done?”But that’s not what Mana asked.

I spare him a sideways glance before returning my attention to the angel sprawled across his twisted throne. His fingers drift over his cock and he gives himself a hard tug, a sensual moan breaking free from his red-stained lips that lifts every hair on my body on end.

Bile rises along my throat to burn the back of my tongue. Addi’sno sexrule suddenly seems that much more paramount. My fists clench but it’s the dull flash between Mana’s fingers of the damned black blade of his that stills me.He means to end this.

I’m not sure if Addi will forgive him for taking the angel’s mortal life, or if he’s beyond saving, but I can’t let it happen this fast. Mana might, his wretched fucking soul doesn’t need the clarity of my earthbound one. But I do.

“Why?” My voice thunders around the room, tinged with the desperation to save a life.

One single life as I realize just how silent Harken is.

The halls are quiet, except for the drips that echo alone each vacant corridor. The giant rooms, always filled with partygoers, last night’s sluts, or staff, lay still.

Even the walls no longer speak. I had no idea I could hear them until I can’t anymore.

Bowen did that. A single killing spree, and he’s ended Mana’s domain. My heart shatters fresh, and I know the answer to my unasked question as Lethe steps between us, forward and beyond.

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