Page 106 of Our Sins in Blood (Coven of Sin 1)

Or Vincent, in the backseat of his car.

Corry was right. I belonged to all of them.

How could I ever pick just one?

Something deep in my being stirred, making my stomach tighten and my head swirl. I hated seeing them fight over me. Vincent and Eros was one thing, but I couldn’t handle watching Sterling and Corry duke it out.

Before I even fully realized what I was doing, my feet were carrying me out of the library. I ran hard, practically flying up the main staircase and down the hallway toward my room.

I came to a screeching halt when I rounded the corner to see two figures standing just a few feet from my door, making out against the wall.

If I had been feeling shitty before, seeing Vincent basically swallowing Lexi’s face was enough to push me over the edge into a dark place where I saw red.

Maleficent urges took root in my mind like weeds, intent on overrunning everything else good inside me. I realized the monster inside was imagining ripping off both their heads so they could both fuck each other in Hell, far away from me. And damn it, I hated how much I liked the idea.

New levels of exhaustion sapped my energy. Between Sterling and Corry, I didn’t have the energy to deal with Vincent on top of it.

I couldn’t even scrape together the willpower to walk past them to get to my room. Even if Vincent couldn’t pry his lips from his cold bitch for two seconds to throw something snide in my direction, I doubted I could even handle his scent right now. Not in my current state of arousal, brought on by this damn heat cycle I never asked for.

Turning around, I made my way down the hall in the opposite direction in search of a spare room I could crash in for the day. Most of the doors were locked, probably because dawn was coming.

I climbed up to the third floor and found a door at the end of the corridor that was unlocked. Inside was a narrow staircase leading to yet another floor.

Curiosity wound through me, pushing me upward. The stairs creaked dangerously beneath my feet, wispy tendrils of ancient cobwebs brushed my face, and the air, heavy with dust, tickled my nose.

Whatever room I’d just stumbled on, no one had been here in a while. When I came to the door at the top of the stairs and pushed it open, it felt like stepping into a crypt. But it wasn’t a crypt at all. I had found the coven’s attic. It was stuffed full of an endless assortment of items, but all of it was organized in a way that made it feel more like a museum than a storage space.

The singular circular window at the far end of the room was boarded up, making it hard to make out the collection of antiquities. Noticing an old-fashioned candle holder with a half-burned candle mounted in the pewter dish and a box of matches, I lit it, creating a dim orange glow to illuminate the attic.

What I saw took my breath away.

It was a lifetime—several lifetimes—of antiques that could only belong to an ancient vampire coven. Moving around the room with the candle holder in hand, I took my time examining each item with a mixture of horror and fascination.

There were shelves of books, all older than the country they sat in and all bound in leather. But something told me it wasn’t animal hide.

There was a stack of centuries-old maps that weren’t even close to accurate, slumped over a globe. I spotted elephant tusks, human skulls, and an old box that looked like a vampire hunter kit from the late nineteenth century. Scanning further, I saw a collection of swords and guns from blunderbusses and crude maces all the way to mid-century revolvers and ornamental weapons fromThe Lord of the Ringsmovies.

There was a chess set with pieces that looked to be made from vampire fangs and next to that a display case of bones with a nameplate probably proclaiming what poor bastard was in the case. I stopped to read it, rubbing the layer of dust away but was disappointed to find it in Latin.

Moving on, I paused in front of two suits of armor. One of them was ebony with an old velvet doublet over it, its once rich colors long since faded. The other was silver, with no doublet. It was carved with elegant little flourishes, masculine but feminine at the same time.

I reached to touch the visor of the silver set’s helm when my eye slipped past it to see an alcove.

The alcove was small, with nothing in it save for a black coffin and a painting mounted on the wall above it.

A sheet hung over the painting, hiding whatever was behind it.

A chill swept through me, cold and harsh like a winter wind. The hairs on the back of my neck straightened with the feeling someone was watching me. It was as if whoever was in the painting on the wall could see me through the sheet.

This wasn’t just the coven’s storage. I was pretty sure I had found someone’s personal collection of possessions, along with their den. The question was, who?

Once again, my human survival instincts and my vampire instincts went to war. Part of me said to run because I had found someplace evil, while the other part was filled with a dark curiosity that held me in place.

I took a step forward and then another until I stood beside the coffin. It was beautiful, luxuriously ominous with its Gothic touches. The lid had dainty gold filigree embellishments etched into the surface. It was like ancient Mesopotamian melded with Victorian style. It was awesome, like a relic right out ofIndiana Jones,had he stumbled upon a tomb containing a vampire.

I don’t know what came over me. It was a strange urge—no—apull. Something had taken hold of me, and the next thing I knew, I was pushing the lid off the coffin to reveal what lay inside.

In the first second, the little ball of anticipation that had begun to build in my stomach suddenly dissipated like ash in the wind when I was met with nothing but ruby red velvet lining. Then it hit me like a meteor to the gut.

---