Page 5 of Sinner's End

“Who is our hamster today?” I flick the handles on the panneled, polished doors, soaking in the cold air let into the space by the open windows opposite my hardwood desk.

If I can’t have a sunny beach and fake tits in my face, I’ll damn well experience a cold, fresh breeze sharp enough to freeze the clit off a sorority slut. My brand of torture differs from my kind, as does my peculiar humor, or so I’ve been told.

“Reporting for hamster duty, sir.” A tall Arayan looking man towers over me. Crystal pale eyes the color of pristine snow stare at me from within a chiseled, tanned face. This asshole clearly gets plenty of sunlight, and I instantly hate the fucker.

“Jesus Christ.” I look up at him, unused to feeling short on this plane. At over six feet tall—not under—that doesn’t happen very often. “I thought hamsters were tiny.”

“Maybe you can dissect me for the purpose,” he suggests softly without a single frisson of fear.

I watch him with the sort of care one eyes prey they aren’t sure won’t turn about and latch onto them with rabies-infected fangs. “Perhaps we can. Seat.”

“I thought it wassit.” He arranges himself in a perfectly still “L” shape on the hard wooden chair designed to make the average person uncomfortable. He looks right at home.

“So they do.” I wait, expecting him to try to fill the silence, but he stays as still as before. It’s fucking unnerving, and I suspect the tanned asshole isn’t even trying. I sit opposite him in a leather gamer chair that fits my ass to perfection. “Do you have a name?”

He mumbles something under his breath, but before I can call him out on the shitty habit, he fixes his gaze over my shoulder. “Lethe.”

“Lethe.” I turn the name over in my head. “Got a firstname, Mister Lethe?”

“No.”

“Last name?” I raise my eyebrows, my patience redlining.

“Just Lethe.” His gaze never wavers, and he never looks directly at me.

If this isn’t the strangest conversation I’ve had in this place, then I don’t know what is.

“All right, Just Lethe. Why do you want to try my drug? It’s powerful, and you won’t remember anything afterward. What is it you’re trying to forget?” I watch his eyes as they oh-so-fucking slowly slide to meet mine.

“I’ve already forgotten,” he says simply.

Pain is etched behind those crystaline, inhuman eyes that sees everything, a curse in itself, but he doesn’t know why.

I do, and Alonzo was right. Lethe is like me, and he does indeed bat for the other team. Well, hedid.

Because fuck my life if I haven’t found myself a fallen angel who doesn’t even know he is one.

Chapter Three

Fuck My Life

Adreana

Don’t you dare fucking judge me!

Yes, I am outside Harken, dressed more like my sister than myself. Even though I want to protest and lie, saying I don’t know how I ended up here, I can’t. As per her usual methods, my sister has manipulated me into doing something and being somewhere I never would have chosen on my own.

I can honestly say this is the last straw. She has dragged me from my home out to an abandoned asylum on the wrong side of the tracks, literally.

Standing outside the imposing building, I stare up at the disheveled red brick facade.

Harken.

To Listen.

What kind of name is that? Why the hell would I want to go inside? The Gothic building looks like it may crumble at the slightest gust of wind. I can’t think that I want to hear anything a single soul there has to say.

Emma grabs my hand and tugs me past the ridiculously long line of people waiting to gain entrance. “We don’t wait in line!”

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