Blood and Sin (The Infernari Book 1) (24 page)

Lana had said as much earlier. She could still sense the curses that draped over the land from millennia ago, when the people here worshipped her kind and bled for them. Died for them.

That was the legacy of demons.

Death and curses and misfortune.

Lana sat in stunned silence, staring straight ahead and knotting her fingers in her lap. She was an innocent amongst monsters. Monsters with no moral compass.

I pitied her. But that wasn’t what was carving up my insides.

I had let her into my heart somewhere along the way, and I knew she’d let me into hers. I could see it in her eyes every time she looked at me.

I lusted after her, too. It didn’t hurt to admit these things. Not anymore. But this was bigger than that, bigger than me, bigger than her.

And I was no less a monster than the demons that had massacred the town we just left.

She was an innocent pawn in this game.

And sometimes, pawns had to be sacrificed for the bigger game plan.

I chewed the inside of my cheek, wishing I could forgive her people’s sins like Lana could forgive mine. But I couldn’t. They had killed a part of me when they killed my family. A part of my soul.

And that village . . .

The need for revenge burned through my blood like acid.

I looked over at Lana, pressure stinging my sinuses. I wanted so badly to let her save me, to let her change my mind, to let her replace my broken heart with hers.

But it was too late.

The idea had already sunk its claws into my brain.

It was simple.

Genocidal, but simple.

She would have to be induced to open her blood connection, either through coercion or trickery. A lethal toxin, injected into her heart, would then spread from her, down her connection, into the blood of the thousand remaining Infernari.

Every last demon would fall.

Paralyzed, unable to wield magic, their bodies would rot from the inside out.

All
would die.

This was no longer about the portal. I could no longer hope to pull off a full-frontal attack against one this heavily defended, not without an arsenal, not without the element of surprise.

Nor would I try.

Attacking the portal would be the decoy, the feint, the misdirection.

An all-or-nothing crapshoot.

If I succeeded, the Infernari would go extinct.

Including Lana.

The nausea I’d felt at the sight of so many dead bodies resurfaced at the thought of innocent Lana dead.

Killed by my own hand.

“What are you thinking about?” Lana whispered.

I shook my head, jaw clenched.

“Infernari don’t normally cull that aggressively,” she said. “It’s because they feel threatened . . . by
us
. If we turned around right now, this would all stop. We could run away together,” she suggested quietly. “We could disappear, become someone else.”

She had forsaken her people to uphold her oath to me, and in so doing had become fiercely loyal. She had to know Earth would kill her. She’d sicken again or waste away without the necessary blood she needed. And without her, her people might very well die.

Surely she knew this. And still she offered.

In another life I’d have given a kingdom for a woman like this.

Star-crossed. That’s what poets would call us.

Because in return for her loyalty and sacrifice, I would betray her. And it would kill every last good thing in me to do it.

I swallowed the dry knot in my throat. “Together?” I had to breathe through my nose to control the terrible emotions taking hold. The self-loathing. The guilt. The premature remorse.

“I’ll never be welcomed by Infernari again. You’re the closest thing I have to family now.”

I couldn’t look at her. I squeezed my jaw. “I thought you wanted to show me Abyssos?”

“I wanted you to see my home,” she said, looking down, frowning. “But you’ve taken my home from me, and now you’re all I have left to protect. I can’t lose you, too.”

As she spoke, my heart felt like it was being slowly crushed.

To betray her when she felt this way about me . . . the very thought had my stomach kinking up.

I couldn’t.

I couldn’t do it.

She was too precious. She had bared all of herself to me—her good side, her brave side, her wicked side, her dark side—and instead of loathing her, I had fallen for her. All of her.

I had fallen for the sinful, exotic creature she was.

I couldn’t do it
. And I didn’t know if that made me a worse person or a better one.

Just utterly fucked.

I would have to find another way to destroy demonkind without killing Lana . . . or run, like she said. Run away.

Put this all behind me and start fresh. She might get sick again, but modern medicine could combat most illnesses. And that blood magic of hers . . . we’d deal with that when it came.

Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t too late.

Maybe she could still save me.

I felt something right then I hadn’t felt in years . . . hope.

Lana

When our car
finally came to a stop in front of our villa, I took in the large building.

“Are you sure this is it?”

“It’s it,” Asher said as he stepped out of the car, grabbing a bag of groceries in the backseat that we’d picked up on our way.

I stared at the white stucco house, a row of columns holding up the second story. Some sort of flowering vine grew up the sides of it, the deep pink petals bright against its lush green leaves.

It was . . . beautiful. Exceedingly so.

I followed Asher out of the car, my eyes drinking in our surroundings. Everywhere grew green plants with waxy leaves, some with strange, brightly colored flowers. The air was thick with moisture and the sounds of birds and other creatures.

Another pang of homesickness hit me. Many aspects of this place reminded me of Abyssos.

This entire time I’d been counting on going through the portal, talking with the primus, and figuring out a way for me to fulfill all my oaths.

That no longer appeared to be a possibility. Not now that my people had slaughtered an entire village, a village that likely contained more people than our entire population. Not now that they were taking the threat of Asher—and me—this seriously.

I’d hoped that the primus would understand, but those lifted memories of mine and his most recent orders left me angry, confused. I had admired the man; I didn’t know what to think of him now.

Ahead of me I heard Asher whistle from inside the house.

And then there was Jame Asher. An enemy-turned-ally. But Grandmaddox had been right. He was more than that to me.

A lot more.

He might have regretted the kiss, but I didn’t.

I followed him into the house, my eyes going wide as I took in the high ceiling and the carved wooden beams that held it up. A wrought iron chandelier hung in the spacious living room, and a staircase wrapped around the side of the room.

Asher was watching me avidly. The intensity of his stare made my cheeks flush.

He prowled toward me slowly, and Mother above, I couldn’t figure out whether that was anger or longing that sharpened his features. I backed up against a side table, jostling a lamp that sat on it.

Asher didn’t stop until he was nearly touching me. He braced a hand on either side of the table, caging me in. I looked up and up at him. His shoulders were impossibly broad, thick bans of muscle curving around them.

This close I could see the golden tan of his skin and a couple faint freckles that dotted his straight nose. That strong jaw, those serious eyes. I felt like prey beneath his stare.

He dipped his head, a lock of his hair sliding in front of his brow.

“We need a drink, and then we need to talk.”

Asher pulled the
cork out of the wine bottle, his arm muscles bunching as he did so, his hair sliding in front of his face.

My mouth went dry.

He glanced up from his work, catching me staring at him like he was my next meal. Very un-Infernari of me.

My cheeks heated again. Even my hair swayed around my shoulders as though it were flustered.

Asher took it all in, his face giving away nothing. He turned his back to me to pour the wine, and I sagged against the counter I’d been leaning on.

You would’ve thought I’d learned, but my damn eyes now moved to his broad, muscular back and the T-shirt that stretched over it.

Infernari
didn’t
do this—lust after people. Or, rather, they only did this when they wanted to mate with the person in question.

I felt myself pale.

Gods above . . .

No.

Please, no.

The Book of the Lovers
, one of our holiest tomes, said that the heart finds its mate first. The body follows its lead, then, lastly, the mind.

I pinched my eyes shut. Mother of gods, that was what was happening.

I didn’t want this. I
couldn’t
want this. To yearn for a human . . . for my heart to choose him—

I breathed deeply through my nose.

But I did want him, didn’t I? I had wanted him for a while, and now my life was inexorably tied to his through the oaths I’d made.

“You alright?”

I blinked several times. Asher stood in front of me, extending a wine glass.

I nodded far too quickly, taking the drink from him and swallowing a huge gulp of it.

“Cheers,” he said belatedly, clinking his glass against mine.

My heart has chosen him. He doesn’t even like me. And we’re likely a day away from dying in some grisly death.

The gods had made a tragedy of my life.

Infernari mated for life. If I denied the pull, would my heart choose another? Ever?

I clutched my drink tightly to me, my hands trembling.

“So, about the portal,” Asher said, moving away from me to look out the window.

I released a long breath. The portal. Right.

“They’re going to be there tomorrow, aren’t they?” He glanced over his shoulder. “All the demons that culled that town.”

“Yes.” I took another gulp of my wine. It tasted like water on my tongue.

“So they know that we’re here. And now they’re waiting for us.”

My eyes lost focus. Distantly, I noticed Asher swivel around.

I nodded.

He pressed a thumb into his lower lip, mulling over our situation. “So what do we do?” he asked aloud.

I squared my jaw. My entire life I had fought to save my kind.
All
of my kind. Perhaps I had been topside for too long, but I was beginning to see the unfairness of my fate when I had given so much.

“We meet them.”

“Lana, they have an entire city’s worth of power amongst them. We have a single gun and a half-empty clip.” He said this all gently, like I was naïve.

I gave him a deep look. “I’m not planning on fighting them.”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Death isn’t our only option,” I continued. “If we can convince them you’re no longer a threat, they’ll stop hunting us, and they’ll stop culling so aggressively, and we can all stay alive.”

Asher rubbed his forehead. “But I am still a threat. As long as I live, I’m still a threat. They know that.”

“Not if you formally surrender to them. When Clades attacked us with the swarm, he told me the only way for us both to live was if you surrendered, but he didn’t think you would at the time, ever. Prove him wrong. Tomorrow in the cave, lay down your guns.”

“My
gun
,” he corrected. “I’m down to just my Glock and . . .” He unholstered the gun and ejected the magazine. “
Eleven
bullets. It’s a wonder they’re still scared of me.” He snapped it back into place, the corner of his lip twitching.

“In exchange for your
sworn
surrender,” I said, “we make them swear an oath that they won’t hurt us.”

“Please. They’ll blow me out of the water before I even get close.”

“I can reach out to them through my affinity,” I said, “I can ask them to hear us out, like I did with Clades.”

“Who I then shot. They learned their lesson, Lana. They don’t trust me anymore to swear oaths.”

I hesitated, then continued. “There is one way. One way to bind a human to an oath . . . which you won’t like.”

His eyebrows pinched together. “How?”

“We’ve done it before, sort of. You give them your blood, enough for them to curse you with. So you can’t renege.”

He stared at me incredulously. “Should I cut off my own head while I’m at it?”

“Have I not proven that you can trust Infernari to keep an oath,
no matter what?
Alive, dead, it doesn’t matter to them. They just want you to stop killing our kind.
I
want you to stop killing our kind . . . and I want you to live past tomorrow.”

“And rot in a dungeon for the rest of my life?”

“I’m a lifebreather, I’m the princeps of Abyssos, I’m the primus’s daughter. Even deathmarked, I still have some sway.”

He studied my expression, and I waited, and waited.

Finally, he seemed to deflate, and he said, “Maybe.”

I felt my entire body relax, too.

Maybe was good enough for me.

Human aromas filled
the kitchen as several of the pots and pans in front of me bubbled and simmered. Next to me sat my mostly empty glass of wine.

“I can’t believe I’m making Italian food in Mexico,” Asher muttered from where he cut vegetables.

“I can’t believe I’m making
human
food!” I was practically bouncing on the balls my feet.

I might’ve drunk my wine a little too fast.

“You’re watching noodles boil,” Asher said over his shoulder. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

He stopped chopping. “And—” He came over, stepping up behind me, so close that his chest pressed into my back.

I didn’t breathe for a moment.

“—you’re supposed to be stirring.”

“Hmmm?” I said, distracted by the way I fit against him. The crown of my head came up to his sternum, and my torso was engulfed by his broad chest.

He was big, even by Infernarus standards.

Asher picked up a large wooden spoon and put it in my hand. Then he wrapped his fingers around mine, our arms brushing together. He directed our hands round and round the pot in front of us, stirring the long flat noodles.

If this was how humans always cooked, I’d found myself a new hobby.

A lock of my hair draped itself over Asher’s arm. He paused, and I bit the inside of my cheek. Human hair didn’t do that—lay claim to things it liked. And Asher was pretty skeptical of anything not human.

I could practically feel his eyes on the dark strands that lay against his skin. After a moment, he resumed stirring as though nothing were amiss.

We stood together like that for a while. I wondered if he was as tense as I was; I couldn’t tell. He seemed like a natural when it came to physical closeness, despite his cold and aloof attitude. And he seemed content to stay pressed against me.