The Sinner by Emma Scott

Ten

I kneel in front of Ashtaroth in the back room of Idle Hands. The lone black candle’s flame is pale white and doesn’t move. Under the settee, the huge serpent—also pale white—watches me warily. Lesser servitors creep underfoot, hoping for a drop of blood or lick of fear. But even in my weak human form, they scuttle back into the shadows at my snarl.

“Are Deber and Keeb on This Side?”

“Am I the twins’ keeper?” Ashtaroth muses, drawing his sword. “They are the girl’s demons.” He slices his sword across my arm, carving a new line into my skin, parallel to the first. “Perhaps they have come to play with her too.”

I search for a sign that Ashtaroth knows more than he is saying, but he turns his blade flat, and I shut my eyes with a grunt. The scent of my seared flesh almost overpowers the stench of his breath.

Almost.

“Go, Casziel,” he says when it’s done. “Hopeless infatuation and concern for that girl is writ all over you. It’s making me ill. If the twins plague her, they have my blessing. Begone.”

My hand itches for my own sword to slice the callous words out of his throat, but the game I’m playing is a long one and I can’t give up too early. I bow and head for the door.

“Oh, and Casziel,” Ashtaroth calls, idly stroking the head of his serpent.

“My lord?”

“Hmm, I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.” He wears a smile I don’t like, his black eyes glittering in the black candlelight. “No matter. I’m sure it will come to me.”

I go out and draw on the armor that is my demonic form. The tavern is full; every demon minding their own business. Behind the bar, Eistibus’s gaze is averted. Good. He should fear me. They all should.

Especially any who dare hurt Lucy.

I close my eyes at the memory of her terror, the flies swarming her—a nightmare come to life. The helpless anguish of watching her suffer brought back our last night in the ziggurat—her eyes full of tears and love, mutely begging me for help I could not give. The flash of a blade and then the hot wash of her blood… I succumbed to Ashtaroth’s servitude all those years ago because I never wanted to feel like this again—chest torn open, heart laid bare and at the mercy of that relentless agony called love.

Eistibus senses my mood and approaches slowly. “Wine, my lord?”

I nod and he sets a glass in front of me. I drain it, then hurl it at the shelf of bottles behind the djinn where it shatters.

“Ambri, to me!”

My call reverberates through Idle Hands, into the ether of This Side, across the Veil, and to the Other Side. Within moments, the tavern door opens, and my second-in-command saunters in wearing a lazy smile, black eyes set in a devilishly handsome face. His blood red jacket is as immaculate as always, his gold hair perfectly coiffed. He shows no weariness from Crossing Over; his wings—black feathered like mine—are high and arched as he stands at attention and gives me as sharp bow.

“Lord Casziel. How may I serve?”

“You’re on This Side,” I observe.

“Well…yes.” Ambri tugs at the cuff of his velvet jacket. “I was tending to my affairs here in the city, making sure my flat and finances are all in order—”

“You were fucking humans.”

He grins. “Maybe just one. Or two. Or…five.”

“It’s not an auction.” I gesture at the stool beside mine. “Sit.”

Ambri moves aside the sword strapped to his narrow waist and takes a seat with the grace of a hunting cat. Eistibus places two more glasses of wine on the bar and leaves us.

“I have a task for you,” I say to my second.

“You have only to name it and it is done.” Ambri’s voice still carries his human accent—he’d been a wealthy British lord some three hundred years ago and spent his brief life traipsing around Europe, spending money, bedding anything with a pulse, and generally being a living embodiment of lust, sloth, and gluttony.

Not much has changed.

I sip my wine; it tastes sour. Or perhaps it’s the words in my mouth. “I want information on a human. Guy Baker.”

Ambri arches a perfect brow. “Guy? Are the humans running out of names?”

I smirk despite myself. Ambri is my favorite of my servitors and the closest thing to a friend. If one can call a demon who’ll stab you in the back if it furthered his own ends a friend. But I can’t judge—I was once just like him. My path to the top of the hierarchy is littered with the bodies of those who stood in my way.

“I want a full report,” I say. “Who his demons are, his history, his natural weaknesses and vices, everything.”

“Consider it done. Anything else?”

“If there were anything else, I’d have named it.”

“Aye, my lord.” He watches me over his wine glass with onyx eyes.

“Speak your mind, Ambri,” I snap irritably.

“Are you not curious as to how your legions are faring on the Other Side? Maras is commanding them well in your absence, but they’re still your servitors, my lord.”

My servitors can go to Oblivion for all I care.

How much better would the world be without them? Without me?

But it’s futile—and pathetic—to think my departure will atone for my sins. Maras, or any number of other demons from the Brethren, will rise to take my place. War and strife will continue as it always has. So long as humans harbor a spark of malice for each other, there will always be demons to stoke it into an inferno.

Ambri’s shrewd, black gaze narrows on me.

“Very well,” I grit out. “Tell me.”

He relays news about conflicts in Myanmar, in Eritrea, in Sudan. I’m hardly listening, and he notices.

“You seem a tad distracted, Lord Casziel. Is everything well?”

They plagued her with flies…

I bite back an order for Ambri to send a battalion after Deber and Keeb, to rend the twins limb from rotted limb, then transport them back to the Other Side in pieces.

“Everything is well,” I mutter into my wine.

“I only inquire because you haven’t shared with me, your loyal second, why you’re on This Side, taking a leave from your command.” He nods at the door of the back room. “Lord Ashtaroth is here too, or so I smell. Did you get in a bad way with the old man—?”

My hand snakes out and closes around Ambri’s throat. I haul him close, my hard glare boring into his wide black eyes.

“Watch yourself, Ambri,” I hiss. “Control your wagging tongue or I’ll cut it out of your human mouth and leave your bedmates sorely disappointed.”

“F-forgive me, m-my lord,” he chokes out but knows better than to struggle.

I release him with a snarl and drain my wine. “Guy Baker. Tomorrow night. Go.”

Ambri straightens his collar. “Yes, my lord.”

He makes his way through the tavern and out into the night.

Eistibus is at one end of the bar, giving me a wide berth. Ba-Maguje is here again tonight, lying slumped at the other, working his influence. His wet lips move as if he’s talking in his sleep, cajoling his humans to have another drink. It won’t hurt anyone. Just one more…

Disgusted, I turn my gaze to the demons in the rest of the tavern. A motley collection of vile devils with misshapen bodies—talons, matted hair, scales—wallowing in their revolting fluids while having a drink or two. Taking a break from stoking their humans’ misery, apathy, or perversions.

I down the rest of my wine and give Eistibus a parting nod before storming out.

Just a little longer, I think as I take to the air in my raven form. A few more days and it will all be over.

And Lucy?

Hatred for my fellow demons is a joke. I’m no better than they. Worse, even. The world will not mourn me, and neither will Lucy. How could she? The man she knew is dead. He died in the bowels of the ziggurat nearly four thousand years ago, and everything she loved about him died too. Corrupted and ruined beyond redemption.

There is no love left in me.

Only a stubborn, lingering hope that she be cared for after I’m gone. That she finally finds the love and happiness that was stolen from her. From us.

Because she still has a chance, even if it’s too late for me.