Page 11 of Our Sins in Silver (Coven of Sin 3)

He reached for Elijah’s remains and picked up a severed hand. The demon slipped his own fingers into it like a glove, then reached for a piece of silver on the shelf. It was as if he couldn’t handle the silver without protection of some sort.

He held before him a single silver spoon.

“You may never see Jesus Christ, but you are right about one thing. The last thing you’ll ever see is your Lord and Savior. Now, tell me your name, Priest.”

I could barely speak. My fevered brain was trying to process all he was saying, but I couldn’t seem to parse the words.

What did he mean that I’d walk this world for eternity? No one could live forever. And what in the world was a vampire? The only thing that made sense was when he asked for my name.

“Julian Godfrey.”

The demon smiled. “Julian Godfrey. My name is Thomas, as you know. But from this moment forward, you’ll refer to me as Master. And from now on,Iam your Lord and Savior.”

Without a word more, he pressed the silver spoon into my eyelids. The agonized bellow of a man in pain split my ears, and it was a few moments before I realized they were my own screams.

The silver burnt like a brand’s kiss.

Darkness once again swallowed me.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that this time, there’d be no venturing back to the light.

Chapter five

An Enemy Inside

ThomasKnightisbackfrom the dead.

Vincent only stood a few inches from me, yet when he spoke the single most harrowing sentence I’d ever heard, his voice came out garbled and distant. I felt like I’d been plunged underwater, into the frozen darkness.

Suddenly, I was drowning.

The cruel and loathsome vampire king—my own father—had been resurrected by my half-brother. Dagon’s batshit plan to steal my throne out from under me was in motion.

I didn’t know shit about necromancy, but I knew one thing for certain: Dagon bit off more than he could chew. Back at the Boston Coven headquarters, the necromancer hadn’t been able to maintain his hold over Vincent. So where in the fuck did the egotistical psychopath get off thinking he could leash the world’s oldest vampire?

Even if, by some dark miracle, Dagon managed to keep our monster of a father bridled, he wouldn’t be able to hold the spell for long. Lavinia had said as much. This level of magic was way over Dagon’s head.

The question was, how had he pulled it off?

They needed my blood for the ritual.

I’d spilled a lot of blood in Boston, though none of it had been my own. I’d fed Eros in the cell when we’d been locked in the basement of the BC’s skyscraper, but he’d sucked down every drop of me...and then some.

So who had they used? Somebody with potent blood, seeing as he’d managed to pull off the spell before All Hallows’ Eve as originally planned. Or maybe that had been a ruse to distract us, instilling the false illusion that we had time.

The back of my throat burned with bile. I’d been messing around with my princes, allowing myself to get lost in the comfort they offered. I’d let down my guard. We all had.

My brother was a cruel and arrogant piece of shit. And he’d gone and earned himself the stamp of “moron” in my book, too, for thinking this plan could possibly work out in his favor.

That aside, one thing had the potential to play out in the way he’d intended.

With my bond still incomplete with Sterling and Vincent, I carried neither of their marks. But it didn’t matter. All four of them now carried my claim.

The mating mark exchanged by vampires during a coupling was serious business. It was a statement of ownership.

I recalled the story Sterling told me in the attic when I’d stumbled upon my father’s den and discovered the dark secret the silver prince had been hiding. Sterling met his master one thousand years ago when a demon claiming to be Satan himself ravaged an entire abbey because one of the monks was a Helsing. That ancestor of mine hadn’t succeeded in slaying the vampire king, but he had managed to kill the monster’s human mate.

The lesson from that story? My father was woefully possessive of any being he felt he owned. And when scorned, every poor soul unfortunate enough to be in the nearby radius would feel the heat of his wrath. That went for all his progeny, especially the one he’d mated. He’d gone as far as to order Sterling’s death just so he could have his precious mate beside him for the rest of eternity.

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