Blood and Sin (The Infernari Book 1) (18 page)

Down my web, I felt their life forces pulse, then flicker.

I was young, still unskilled at healing through my connection . . . I needed to see them, touch them for my affinity to work.

I forced my legs faster, even as I took another arrow in the gut. And then I was limping as I shoved magic at the wound, ordering it to purge the weapon and heal the flesh. Then I turned my power on my burning lungs. My hair whipped about me, snapping at the air.

I leaped over fallen bodies. Any other time I would’ve stopped to heal those that could be saved. But my parents . . .

In the next breath, my mother’s life force snuffed out. I shrieked out of anger and pain. Five steps later, my father’s joined hers.

Horror—such immense horror. It choked me from the inside out. My lungs heaved but I couldn’t catch my breath. I stumbled, falling to one knee.

Far worse than death, this feeling.

I pushed myself up, refusing to listen to the truth inside me. Refusing to accept it.

By the time I reached my parents’ tent, a tent I’d so recently moved out of, there was nothing left of them but charred bones.

I collapsed in front of their skeletons, uncaring that the fire burned me. All I wanted was to die with them; I felt like I was dying as the web of souls shrank and shrank.

I crouched in front of their remains, and I could smell my hair smoldering and my flesh cooking.

But my powers wouldn’t let me die. Like a parasite, it culled from the fallen soldiers nearest the tent, using the blood magic to continuously regenerate my flesh.

The tent had long since burned away, most of my clothes incinerated along with it, when they found me.

The primus’s men.

The rest of the memory was an afterthought. How I was dragged, naked, to the soldiers and the other Infernari. How I was called
slave
. How Clades, when he saw me, cut his pelt in half to fashion it into some sort of covering. His comrades had laughed at him, but he didn’t spare them a glance as he roughly covered me.

I didn’t even thank him, so lost was I in my grief.

After that, they tested our affinities and sorted us by them. And once they found I shared the primus’s, I was handed over to a special unit.

That was the first time I saw Azazael, the flames dancing in his eyes. He burned me on purpose when I was handed over to him. I knew then what a curse it was to love your people even when they didn’t deserve it.

And then I was taken to the capitol. There I met the primus. There he spared me when he had no reason to. There I began my life, in earnest, as the primus dominus’s healer.

The memory was ten years old.

Someone made me forget it. The details of how the primus and I first met.

Why had that memory been taken from me? What did it matter how I’d come to be the primus’s beloved? War was war.

I opened my eyes, unaware that I’d closed them to begin with. Grandmaddox’s rotted floor was stained with my tears.

I could still feel those lost lives in me, the ache so acute. And my parents . . . my parents . . .

They would not wish for me to linger on that memory.

I cleared my throat and wiped the tears away with the back of my hand. The cut I had made on my arm had reopened and started to bleed again. I liked the feeling of the open wound, the way my magic felt raw and exposed.

Enough of this sadness for one night. Enough of the questions that burrowed under my skin the longer I was here.

Rising to my feet, I brushed myself off. The last vestiges of my headache disappeared along with the effects of the spell. I left the potions room quickly, making sure to lock the door behind me.

The stairs creaked as I descended down from the attic. It was only as I stepped off of them and into the hallway that I caught sight of Grandmaddox. She closed the door to Asher’s room behind her, her eyes finding mine a moment later.

Her surprised face must’ve mirrored my own. We each surveyed the other, her milky, sightless eyes moving from me to the staircase at my back. My own gaze bounced between her and the door.

What had she been doing in Asher’s room?

I forced my feet to move forward, down the hallway.

We eyed each other warily as I passed her, neither of us sure whether to be suspicious of the other.

I reached my door. “Night,” I finally said over my shoulder, brushing off a centipede from the knob. I didn’t wait for her to respond before heading inside.

I collapsed on the bed, not bothering to take off my boots before I hastily slipped under the covers. Sleep took me within minutes, and I welcomed it.

I was done with this gods-forsaken day.

Asher

I woke up
to a numb tingling on my chest, my bare torso soaked in a cold sweat as my body tried to purge all the alcohol through my pores. The moth-eaten sheets of the twin bed tangled around my limbs. I kicked them off, disgusted with the filth of this house.

And that’s when I felt something slimy slither along my rib cage.

I jolted up, breathing faster.

My eyelids blinked against the darkness.

Then I felt it again, as something detached itself from my side and rolled into the sheets.
The hell?

Panicking, I shuffled backward, propping myself on my elbows.

The city lights fell across my abs and pecs, and I sucked in a sharp breath.

A dozen black worms adhered to my skin.

Leeches.

Oh,
hell
no.

I scrambled out of bed and yanked them off, flinging each one away. I patted down the rest of my body in a panicky flurry, ripping two more off my neck. Then I ran my hands over my skin once more.

Gone. I got them all.

I stared at their wriggling carcasses on the floor, my lungs heaving and my skin crawling.

They wriggled their way from the floor to the base of the wall, inching upward in a single file line, their suckers still dripping with my blood.

Horrified, I watched them vanish one by one into a hole in the wall boards.

Taking my blood to Grandmaddox.

She’d stuck them on me to harvest my blood.

To curse me.

Fuck
this house.

I wasn’t spending one more second in this nightmare.

Jaw clamped in rage, I swiped my holster off the bureau and dragged on my jeans, tripping in the leg holes. Boots on, I crushed as many leeches as I could, mashing them into a bloody goop. Screw the rest of my stuff. Shirtless and cursing, I raged down the hall and kicked down Lana’s door. It exploded in a blast of splinters.

She bolted upright in bed, her hair disheveled.

When she saw me, her eyes widened. “What’s going on—?”

By way of answer, I scooped her off the bed and threw her, shrieking, over my shoulder. Securing her by the legs, I kicked out the remaining door shards and strode back into the hall and down the stairs.

“Gods above,” she said, “Asher what are you doing?” Her hands pressed into either side of my exposed torso.

“We’re leaving,” I growled.

“That’s obvious enough.” Perhaps if I’d been in another mood, a better mood, I would’ve cracked a smile at a demon saying such a thing.

The halfling took my blood. With leeches, no less. Horror and fury battled for dominance.

I stormed out of that blighted house and burst out onto the cold street, the sky now a ghostly predawn blue.

Lana immediately began to shiver in my arms. But she didn’t fight my hold; half of me thought she would after what happened earlier.

Not until we reached my Hummer, parked a block away, did I release my iron grip on her to set her in the passenger seat.

Circling to the driver’s side, I hopped in the vehicle and cranked on the engine. Laying on the gas, I peeled out of there.

Back on the road.

Leeches
.

I squeezed the steering wheel.

Motherfucking
leeches
.

Next to me, Lana pulled her knees up to her chest and continued shivering. A yawn worked its way through her body, shaking her limbs further.

I ground my teeth together. It would be easy enough to despise her if she acted anything—
anything
—like the bastards I hunted. Even now it was hard to hold onto the fact that she’d worn my wife’s face only hours ago.

Working my jaw, I cranked up the heat for her benefit. Reaching behind the seats, I pulled out the wool blanket I kept for emergencies and tossed it at her.

“Th-thank you,” she said, her teeth chattering. She wrapped herself up in it. She leaned her head against the window, failing to react to the fact that I dragged her out of her beloved Grandmaddox’s house in the middle of the night.

“You smell like blood, Jame Asher,” she said, finally breaking the silence. Her eyes had drifted close.

I gripped the wheel with my knees and pulled on a spare T-shirt. Half a dozen bite marks bled into the fabric where the leeches had bitten me.

I tugged at my collar, airing out my inflamed skin. Ooh, it boiled my blood.

What was left of my blood, at least.

Couldn’t tell if the dizziness was from a hangover or blood loss. No doubt Grandmaddox had been gathering it to curse me, and she’d gotten more than enough. My middle name might as well be
Fucked
.

“You led me right into the lion’s den,” I said, barely controlling my rage. “Right into a goddamn witchhouse.”

“Which part are you mad about now, Jame?” Lana said, folding her arms tightly over the blanket. “You kissing me, or me wanting to be Nicole, or the beads, or me kissing you back, or dinner, or what? What is it now? Why are you so mad?”

“How about the army of leeches that tried to eat me alive in my sleep? That’s a start.” I dragged my hand down my face. “You know, she put leeches in the jambalaya, too. It’s like she can’t figure out who should be eating who. I’m telling you, that woman is sick.”

“So you’re still mad about the jambalaya?”

“No, I’m mad about the leeches, Lana. The
leeches
.” I sighed and slumped in my seat. “Not at you. I’m not mad at you, I’m just . . .
mad
.” It took saying it for me to feel the truth of my words.

I wasn’t mad at Lana.

God, what was fucking
wrong
with me?

You’re losing your edge, Asher.

Lana stared straight ahead. “Huh. So that’s what Grandmaddox was doing in your room. I was wondering about that.”

“Madwoman,” I muttered.

“You didn’t have to drag me out,” she said. “You could have just asked to leave nicely.”

“And what did we get? Did you lift your spell? No. Do we know where the portal is? No. Do we know
anything?
No. We just spent the night in an insect zoo for no reason.”

“Actually . . .” Lana rubbed a strand of her faintly glowing hair against her cheek, “we might know something.”

“Yeah? What?”

“Well, while you were sleeping, Jame Asher—”

“Getting eaten,” I corrected.

She gave me a look like I was being a baby about it.

“—I snuck into Grandmaddox’s potion room, and I drank the remem . . . I released myself from the memory block.”

My eyebrows drew together, and I peered sideways at her. “Wait, you did what?”

“I got my memory back.”

“Of . . . ?”

“The portal . . .”

I swear she was about to add something else.

Whatever it was, she bit the words back and finished, “I know where it is now.”

I blinked, taking a moment to process. “Wait, so you . . . ?”

“Stole the potion because she wouldn’t give it to me. Now I remember.”

I stared at her. “And now you . . . now you . . . ?”

She pulled her blanket around her tighter. “I know where the portal is, alright? It’s in a cave on the slope of a tall mountain above dense jungle. I can see it as clearly as if it were right in front of me.”

I broke into a grin, all my prior anger forgotten. “Attagirl, Lana!” I leaned over to slap her knee. “Way to step it up. So you know where it is?”

She nodded and sat up straighter, looking proud of herself.

“Okay, so where is it?” I focused on the road again. Thanks to Lana, things were starting to go in our favor.

“I just told you,” she said.

“Yeah, but
where?
”

She looked confused. “Uh . . . in a cave on the slope of a tall mountain above dense jungle, what I just said.”

I started to sweat. “What . . . what is that? That could be a description of literally anywhere on Earth, that’s not a location.”

“Well, that’s what I remember,” she snapped, turning defensive. “Once we find the mountain, I’ll know where it is.”

I groaned and tilted my head back. “How are you supposed to find the portal with that? That’s like saying it’s near water, or on land—or on a planet. They didn’t give you
anything
else?”

She crossed her arms. “I’m not going to help you anymore.”

I quelled my frustration and put on my game face. “No, you’re right, you did great . . . you’re doing great, Lana. Is there anything else you can remember? Anything
specific?
”

“Only that it’s the tallest mountain where we’re going . . . but I doubt that’ll help you. I doubt anything will help you, you stubborn ox.”

“I can work with that.” I whipped out my smartphone, which thankfully I’d left charging in the Hummer. “Tallest mountain in Mexico . . . Pico de Orizaba, right here, a dormant volcano. Beautiful.” I showed her a picture of the snowcapped peak. “That it?”

Her eyes lit up. “Yeah, it’s down in a valley on the other side, just over here—” She touched the screen, and the image vanished, replaced with a series of bloody, half-rotted bodies. She flinched back. “What happened? What did I do?”

“You just changed tabs, chill.” I closed out the old search, regarding Azazel—
how to dissolve a body in acid
—and got back to Pico de Orizaba.

So there it was.

The next portal.

Thank you, Lana.

“Watch the road for me.” I hopped onto a trip-planning website and booked us a villa in the valley she was talking about, deep in the jungle.

“
Asher
 . . .” she whined, her knuckles turning white on the sides of her seats.

I glanced up to see a semitruck bearing down on us. I swerved back into my lane just in time.

I tossed the phone into her lap and resumed driving, a smile on my face. “It’s ten hours to the border, and then another fourteen hours to our villa. Just a few more days’ driving.”

“I kept up my end of the bargain, now you keep up yours,” she said. “Give me back your blood. The vial you still have.”

“So you can curse me?”

“Only if you misbehave.”

Didn’t matter anyway. Grandmaddox already had plenty of blood to curse me with. Might as well give Lana some, too.

“You know, you shouldn’t trust me to keep my word,” I warned her.

Naïve thing. She
was
too trusting. It was going to get her killed, and she might be the only Infernarus who didn’t deserve it.

Begrudgingly, I dug the vial out of my pocket and handed it to her. “I’m not an Infernarus. You told me where the portal was, but I didn’t have to give you this.”

She put it around her neck again, pausing to marvel at my blood and looking quite pleased with herself. “But you did.”