Page 17 of Our Sins in Silver (Coven of Sin 3)

Eros’ fists flexed at his sides, squeezing open and shut again. “I’m working on it,” he replied in a rasped whisper. “You have thousands of murderers at your disposal. You come to me, I’ll do it right. But I’m going to do it at my own pace.”

My tongue went numb in my mouth at hearing the way Eros spoke to his master. Well shit. I’d thought the depraved vampire was the perfect match for a girl with my kind of raging daddy issues, and that was before I heard him sass the loathsome vampire king as if he were just another jackass on the street.

I wolfed up the ink-covered, brawny physique of my favorite torture master. He looked damn good with short hair. Hell, he looked good with long hair, too. Especially when I was plastered beneath all that muscle, with his golden tresses loose and falling in his eyes as he rocked inside me.

My fantasies of Deathwish’s body slipped away on the next hammer of my heart, and the familiar weight of anxiety pressed in when the man suspended from the ceiling stirred.

The universe seemed to have a vendetta against all vampires born of the Knight bloodline because at that moment, the man’s eyelids flickered open, and he gave a groggy moan as he lifted his head, only to see the familiar face of his old guild member.

Relief washed over the bound monster slayer, making my gut flip with unease. He wouldn’t know it, but his friend didn’t exist anymore.

Doused in sweat, shadows, and flamelight stood the vampire king’s grim reaper.

“Er–Eros? You’re alive? W–w–we thought you died.”

“He did,” Thomas Knight growled from the corner. The lilt to his voice suggested that he found this all very amusing. You’d think he was catching a family-friendly comedy special, not a torture session in a basement that would have the Spanish Inquisition green with envy.

All the pigment drained from the monster slayer’s face when his attention settled on what was basically the Helsing Guild’s boogeyman.

Before the slayer could take so much as another breath, Eros slashed the knife over the man’s throat in one fell flick of his wrist. Blood gushed from the gaping wound, splashing onto the executioner’s combat boots. By the next heartbeat, the light had left the man’s eyes, and he slumped over lifelessly, the rattle of the chain that still held him sounding like a single bell ringing at a funeral.

A merciful kill.

Despite the quick death Eros had dealt, the hit had taken a toll on him, just as if he’d teased it out over hours. The atmosphere grew fraught with grief, and I wanted nothing more than to wrap my arms around him and hold him close.

A deep V carved the space between Deathwish’s brows. He turned to face my father fully. My heart gave a dark dance of several off-kilter beats, seeing his rugged physiognomy flecked in blood. “We could have turned him.”

My father snorted. “I don’t turn monster slayers.”

Eros’ lips quirked, almost shattering the mask he’d slipped back into place. “You turned me.”

“You’re different. You didn’t come fitted with the insufferable love affair for the Helsing Guild that most of you slayers come saddled with.”

“You sure it had nothing to do with the fact that turning me was just a way of making Feral miserable?”

The vampire king clicked his tongue in a half-annoyed, half-amused sound. “Is that envy I’m detecting? Be happy that I find you a useful tool and not a primary source of my entertainment, Reaper.”

Eros scoffed. “And how long do you plan on keeping me as your tool? Don’t you kill all of your progeny eventually?”

“Only when they stop being of use to me.”

“So...what you’re saying is if I refuse to do what you ask, you’ll kill me?”

My father turned to leave with a knowing chuckle, waving his hand at Eros in dismissal. He didn’t bother glancing back at his progeny as he tossed his answer over his shoulder. “If you stop being useful, you’ll no longer be my reaper, and I’ll just have to use you as entertainment.”

As Thomas stomped up the basement stairs, chuckling softly to himself, the unnerving sound of his footsteps ebbed away with the rest of the memory.

When the next scene took form, my throat knotted. The first thing I recognized was black raven tattoos on pale skin.

A shirtless Vincent stood beside the king’s throne, bent at the waist and leaning down with his face pointed toward his master’s lap. The vampire king held the fae’s head at an angle, allowing him to latch on like the leech he was. The sight of my father feeding on his prized blood whore wouldn’t have been that bad if it wasn’t for the fact that they weren’t alone. A council meeting was in full swing, with every Elder present, along with a lot of coven members.

It was easy to tell which ones belonged to the Cape Cod Coven. Our people were the ones who kept their gazes averted while the others looked on in shameless curiosity.

A vampire feeding from another vampire was intimate business. Yet here was the king, suckling on one of the most dangerous vampires in the coven like he was no more than a common blood whore. Not a thought was lent to the fact that he was climbing higher and higher on the shit list of a hybrid male capable of mass destruction.

For a proud fae like Vincent, his shame hung heavy in the throne room, making all air within the space stagnant with the bitter taste of ozone and ash.

If you were dumb enough to try to make a pet out of a monster, you were going to get bit. That, or you were going to end up with liquid silver melting you from the inside out.

---