The Sinner by Emma Scott

Fifteen

I slam open the door to the back room at Idle Hands. The gust of wind from my wings makes the black candlelight flicker but does nothing to lessen Ashtaroth’s stench.

“We had a deal,” I seethe.

“Watch yourself, boy,” the demon lord snarls, his hand resting on the sword strapped to his waist. The serpent coiled around the settee narrows its black eyes at me in warning. “You are to kneel before your master.”

I ignore the command. “Every night I pay you in blood and pain. Every night. And in return—”

“You dare defy me?”

The air shakes with Ashtaroth’s wrath. He rises off the couch, his own wings beating his foulness to me, his sword at the ready. Imps snicker and cower at his feet, hungry for my fear.

“Kneel, Casziel, or I’ll send a horde of my servitors to your pretty little Lucy, and you will spend your remaining days on This Side watching her descend into madness.”

Though he looks wasted and rotted, Ashtaroth is more powerful than I. A fact I will rely on in a few days’ time, but now I must watch myself.

I clench my teeth and it takes everything I have to force myself to one knee.

“Better.” Ashtaroth lowers his sword. “Your enduring regard for that human girl is disgraceful to our dark purpose.”

I raise my head. “Deber and Keeb.”

Ashtaroth smirks, a mockery of innocence. “What of them?”

“You and I made a pact. Lucy is not to be touched.”

“What the twins do is none of my concern.”

“You brought them to This Side.”

“Do they need my help Crossing Over? Besides, they’re the girl’sdemons. Our agreement, Casziel, is between you and me. But we can modify the conditions if you so desire.”

My jaw clenches. “What do you want?”

“You know me better than that, my sweet prince,” Ashtaroth’s words are carried on the currents of his foul breath. He taps the hilt of his sword. “There is only one thing I ever want.”

I transform into my human body, then roll up the sleeve of my shirt to reveal the four cauterized cuts on my inner arm that mark my time on This Side. Ashtaroth adds a fifth.

“It’s become obvious that this payment is not enough,” he says, still looming over me. “You have forgotten to whom you belong. If you wish to keep your Lucy safe, you’ll allow me to remind you.”

My frail human form trembles against my will. “I do this, and the twins don’t touch her.”

“I can arrange that.”

A demon’s promise…worthless. But there is no choice to be made. My pulse stutters as I strip out of the jacket and shirt and bow my head. I half-expect Ashtaroth’s sword to cleave it from my neck and send me into the nothingness of Oblivion.

Not yet. Not yet…

He exchanges his sword for a curved dagger. The room is dank, the air rancid and cold on my scarred flesh as Ashtaroth circles me, taking his time. Drawing out my fear. The imps slaver and mewl in the dancing shadows cast by the lone candle. The dagger begins to glow pale yellow. I feel the blade’s heat before Ashtaroth chooses his mark.

Then I know nothing but searing agony.

Again and again, he touches his dagger to my back, carving, cutting, burning. Ruining the flesh between my shoulder blades that hadn’t yet been scarred.

I don’t have to see what Ashtaroth does to know he’s branding me with his seal. A pentagram, bracketed with vertical lines that are tipped with circles and bisected with horizontal lines that curl at the ends. I keep the screams he hungers for locked behind my teeth until I can’t hold them back.

Then I surrender.

I give him my pain, throwing my head back and releasing it for him to drink down, to gorge on. The minutes drag and the torturous agony returns me to the night in the ziggurat, where I was beaten and burned to the brink of death. That pain I could take, but it’s married to the visions of my family dying, one by one.

And then it’s her turn.

She dies and then I scream for me. For what I’ve lost and will never get back.

When Ashtaroth is done, the agony seeps into my skin, into my heart. The blackened husk still has tender flesh left in it, even after all these years. A part of me that clings to the life she and I once had.

The love…

Ambri is waiting for me when I emerge from the back room. I’ve returned to my demonic form, sending the pain of Ashtaroth’s branding to sleep for now. It will wake with a fiery vengeance the moment I revert back to my human body and make the new cut on my arm feel like a kiss.

My second-in-command has intelligence enough to appear as if he hadn’t heard my screams. Every demon in the tavern, in fact, averts their eyes.

But for one.

A lesser duke is playing cards with another demon. He looks away but too slowly for my like. The cards in his hands drop from trembling fingers when he feels my attention.

“Good evening, Druj,” I say, leaning over the table. “Might I borrow your dagger?”

“My Lord Casziel, I-I did not mean to—”

“Your dagger, Druj.”

He withdraws it from his waist sash and hands it over. His friend tilts back in his chair and raises his fan of cards like a shield. Without a word, I take the dagger by the blade, flip it nimbly in my hand, then drive it into Druj’s lone eye. Brown and green ichor sprays over the table.

His companion tosses his cards down with a sigh. “Pity. T’was a good game, too.”

I lean in to Druj. “Do I make my point?”

The demon nods, the dagger nodding with him, and then he slumps dead over the table, driving the blade deeper into his head. Blood pools.

“Good.”

I head for the bar while behind me, a cloud of foul smoke plumes and roils. In moments, Druj’s chair will be empty, him having Crossed Over to the Other Side where he may consider his actions.

I put on a smirk to remind those gathered—including Ambri, watching everything with keen eyes—who I am. But disgust churns within.

“Good evenin’, my lord,” Eistibus says, placing a glass of wine in front of me and replacing Ambri’s with a fresh one. The djinn wisely backs away, leaving us to our business.

“You were merciful,” Ambri observes. “The Nightbringer would have burned this tavern to the ground and every demon in it.”

“I’m not in the mood for your commentary, Ambri. Make your report.”

“As you wish. Guy Baker. Age twenty-seven. Graduated from Columbia University with a degree in environmental science. Honors student, gives to charity, recycles…” Ambri smirks into his wine. “Flosses daily, calls his mother once a week, always tips twenty-percent—”

“Ambri.”

“He’s nauseatingly decent, is my point. A few minor demons on him. No one special.”

“Who?”

“Servitors of Belphegor and Rishk.”

I nod, thinking. “So he’s a little vain, has tendencies toward jealousy. But he’s a good man?”

“It would seem so.” Ambri heaves a sigh. “A pity.”

Guy’s light shines bright. And must, for her.

“Was there anything else, my lord?”

I sip my wine, debating. Confiding in a demon is never wise, but the turmoil in my mind and heart are distinctly human and Ambri spends an inordinate amount of time on This Side. Humans are his playthings, on the battlefield and in the bedroom. I’d never call him soft, but he’s not nearly as bloodthirsty as the rest of my Brethren. A romantic…if insatiable sexual appetite is romance.

I’d have to ask Lucy.

A small, soft smile touches my lips and Ambri sighs.

“So it’s the girl.”

There’s no point in refuting it. “Yes.”

“Who is she? Who is this human you’ve been following through her every lifetime for the last four millennia?”

Anger at his brazen question flares and then flames out. Denial dies on my lips. I haven’t the strength for either anymore.

“She is my wife.”

Speaking the word aloud is like releasing a burden and invoking a curse at the same time. It’s sweet on my tongue and burns like Ashtaroth’s blade.

Dam-gá. Ttsuma. Zhena.

The most beautiful word in any language because it describes her. She was mine for a handful of moments in the brief candle-flicker lives of humans. My eyes shut at a memory that roars up at me. Her pleading stare, her mouth gagged, and then the blade at her throat…

My hands flinch, the glass upends, and wine spills along the bar. Like blood.

Eistibus hurries over to clean the mess and refill my glass.

Ambri has gone silent. When the djinn is gone, he leans in. “And this Guy is your gift to her?”

“I’m paying a debt, that is all.” I hunch over the bar, twisting the glass stem in my fingers. “I watch her, Ambri. Lifetime after lifetime, always alone. She’s never loved another. Not once since Larsa.”

“Because she loves you.”

My chest tightens, my wings tense and fold close. “There is nothing left to love. I’m a moth, battering itself against a lamp, trying to get to her light. But it’s too late for me. The best I can hope for is to leave her with a chance to love someone else.”

Ambri’s perfect eyebrows rise. “Leave? As in…leave?”

I nod.

“How? Who…?” His eyes widen. He knows who. The only demon in our sphere powerful enough. He lowers his voice to a hissing whisper. “You’re going to get Ashtaroth to send you to Oblivion.”

I nod again.

Ambri clears his throat and says with a false smile, “Are you certain, my lord, this is the wisest course of action?”

“I’m certain.”

He shakes his head. “I’ve heard of our kind giving up immortality for the eternal sleep. I’ve just never met anyone who was willing to do it.”

“I’m not willing,” I say. “It’s the only tactic that satisfies my intentions.”

“Intentions that baffle me. What of your duty on the Other Side? Have you lost your taste for it?”

I’d begun to lose my taste for it years ago. The fire of my rage and pain was burning out, leaving nothing but ash and wasted years. Centuries of human misery that paid for my grief. I say none of this to Ambri. There is only so much weakness I can trust to relay in a single night or else he will betray me on general principle.

“I’m weary Ambri,” I say, one facet of the truth, at least. “When you’re as old as me, you might feel the same.”

He snorts. “So long as there exists cocks and cunts, I’ll exist to enjoy them. Because that’s all humans are to me. Toys. Playthings. Vessels.” A brow arches. “I wonder, my lord, if that’s something you’ve forgotten.”

“You forget, Ambri, my outrage at the murder of this particular vessel is why I’ve been laying waste to humankind for centuries.”

“Aye, and what a glorious run it’s been.” Ambri touches his glass to mine. “But I still fail to see the allure of Oblivion. Is there nothing holding you here?”

“No.”

His shoulders hunch, and then he looks almost angry. “I don’t believe you. The utter lack of consequences, of conscience, is what makes it fun. Perpetual irresponsibility…what could be better than that? To give it up for a mere girl…”

I shoot him a dangerous look and he holds up a hand.

“If you’re set in your course, I’ll not sway you,” he says, deflated. “Your secret is safe with me.”

I believe him. Not that I have a choice. Time will tell how foolish I am to bare my soul to a demon.

I drain my glass in one gulp and set it down hard. “Give me some money.”

Ambri frowns. “What for?”

My eyes widen.

“I meant, how much does my lord require?”

“All of it.”

He rummages in his coat and pulls out a wad of American money. I take the entire roll—several thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills by my cursory count—and stuff it in my trouser pocket.

He sighs dramatically. “I had plans with a lovely little tart this evening…”

I smirk; he’s a dramatic little tart himself. Ambri has collected enough wealth on This Side over the course of his three hundred years that he’ll not miss what’s in my pocket.

Sure enough, his cocky grin returns. “I can always plead that I’ve been mugged. Sympathy is a sure ticket to a human’s heart. And bed. They enjoy caring for the downtrodden…when they’re not busy killing each other, of course.”

I nod. Lucy cares for others. Even those scarce few lifetimes in which her despair drove her to sleep her way from one human to another or fill the emptiness with drugs or alcohol, her light has never dimmed.

But how she suffers…

I never dreamed her love for me was as bottomless as mine for her. I never imagined my corruption would condemn her to endless lifetimes of loneliness, searching for me without ever knowing whom she sought. I’m Forgotten, until she dies and Crosses Over. Then the memories rush back in, and she calls my name. But I’m not among the heavenly host; I’m in hell. Then she Forgets and begins a new lifetime with the same nameless hunger.

A vacancy in her heart where I once lived.

By the time I realized she hadn’t let me go, it was too late. My sins guarantee there will be no redemption for me. No second chance. Her best chance at freedom from this terrible cycle is my Oblivion. Perhaps then her soul will finally understand what she does not—that our love died in the bowels of the ziggurat.

And it’s never coming back.