Deadly Sin (Cassandra Farbanks) (25 page)

I peeled Aram’s arm carefully back and scooted into the now empty space so I could sit up and look around. My skin twitched when I heard soft breathing other than my own and I scanned the room intently. Who the hell else was in here? Nothing in the room looked right. Furniture was turned on its side and the table appeared crushed under a great force. Just past that I located the source of the breathing. A giant, furred beast was curled up asleep. It looked like a werewolf. I cursed pushing to the edge of the bed. I needed to see who it was and if they were hurt.

My first attempt to stand wasn’t very successful. My knees wobbled and I bounced back onto my butt on the bed. My locket bounced and jiggled around my neck. I felt battered and bruised all over. I was also tired, my body working overtime, sapping all my energy and trying to heal those bruises. How much damage could I have taken in one night? How had so many people gotten involved in what I thought had just been me and Aram? I took deep breaths in and out and used the bed post to help support me until I had the strength to step away.

I couldn’t tell the color of the fur in the darkness, and he made no move as I edged closer. I bent down to my knees looking him over. He looked like he’d been in a fight. I didn’t want to touch him. I feared the same, sudden flash of clarity through the foggy haze of memory. Still, I was compelled by something sick inside me to know who this was. Something told me if I knew who it was I would feel worse than I already did. I ran my fingers through the fur checking for injury. It was far softer than I imagined. I worked my hand down till I found the thinner layers of hair on the belly, where I touched his bare skin. A flash came of a warm, tanned hand in my hair pulling my head back so I could kiss the man behind me. I thrust my hands over my mouth to keep myself from screaming or hurling.

Not DJ! I would pay money for it not to be DJ under all that fur, but I knew it was. I felt my stomach leap up and threaten to exit through my mouth. Jareth I could explain. He lived here, slept next door. He could have easily been drawn in by accident. But DJ? It made no sense. He had absolutely no reason to be in the vampire’s nest. Yet there he was, sleeping off what looked like a hell of a fight that I wasn’t sure he had won. I sat back on my haunches trying to breathe. I looked up at the ceiling like it held answers. I felt a wave of anger rush through me. Rin was going to pay for this. I felt used and humiliated. How was I going to face Aram when night fell? I’d tried so very hard to keep my promise to him. I really had. I felt dirty. A single tear cut a swath down my cheek and I tried to control the urge to blubber like a little girl, but I was hurting in a major way. Surely that earned me the right to mewl my lot.

I sniffed, one of those involuntary ones you do when you’re about to let rip on a crying jag, but the smell stopped me. The room smelled awful like it had been shut up for days. There was also the strong scent of rust. I didn’t understand the scent. Before I could contemplate it any further, the wolf opened his eyes. The one I could see was luminous, the color of bitter chocolate in the poor light. It examined me intensely. I stared back, frozen to the spot. I didn’t even try to hide that I was naked. I bet he saw all there was to see any way. His tongue lolled out and his muzzle twisted into a goofy grin until he started to look around. He looked confused at where he was. DJ tried to stand but his front right paw crumpled when he put his weight on it. I guessed it was broken. His eyes focused on me intently, trying to pull his memories of last night to the front. I got up and stepped around him, his head following me. I dithered, not knowing how to help him. Do I call a doctor or a vet?

DJ started to twist and writhe. I was smart enough to recognize the shift in reverse. DJ was retaking his human form. Strangely, I started to panic. I could cope with the situation with DJ as long as he stayed a wolf. If he became a naked man I just couldn’t handle it. I started to back away. The edge of the rug felt strange and spongy under foot, like it was soaked with water. I hoped to hell it wasn’t werewolf cast off. I kept stepping back as the fur on his body began to recede around a man. I tried to bolt for the bathroom but slipped. I went ass over teacup to the floor and lay there as the pain registered in every one of my nerve endings. I lay with my arm in something cold and wet. It felt sticky and thick like honey.

“Cassandra?” DJ called from the other side of the room, the over turned couch blocking our view of each other. “Are you alright?”

“I will be,” I groaned. “We need some kind of light. Think you can get to the bedside lamp?”

DJ stood up and I could see his rearview as he walked for the lamp. He had an ass you could chip a tooth on. I told my brain to stop thinking shit like that right now. The light snapped on and I blinked several times before I could focus. However, with the light on and him facing me, there were other things to notice. I averted my eyes.

“Can you point that somewhere else? Or cover up?” DJ looked down and snorted.

“With what do you suggest?” I scanned the floor in front of me. I picked up one of the scattered couch cushions and raised my arm to throw it at him. As I raised my arm I found that it was slick with blood. I choked down a scream and did that slow, horror movie turn to see what was on the floor beside me.

Vincent was lifeless and cold. His eyes were closed as if in sleep, but he was so pale that I knew he was dead. The blood came from the puckered wound on his neck. It was less than a pint, but had dribbled slowly across the unleveled floor and soaked into the rug’s edge. He had bite marks on his neck, wrists and even his groin – yuck! He’d been drained dry. With so many vampire bites and the anti-coagulant in their saliva, his wounds didn’t close. He’d been drained so that the vampires could perform in bed again and again as the spell demanded.

I dry heaved and held my stomach, smearing it with the blood of the man whose death was my fault. He unfortunately had followed me into the room because he had a cigarette at the wrong time, wrong place.

I clamped my hands to my mouth and the blood smeared on my face. I shot to my feet. I had to get clean. I had to. DJ took in the blood splattered on me and rushed for me. He stopped on the other side of the body, for the first time processing that it wasn’t my blood.

“Oh shit!” he said with real feeling, but I wasn’t sure that really covered it.

To cap of my horror, the other white forms in the room began to move. DJ flattened his back against the wall and I realized he was cradling an arm against his chest. It was broken!

Aram sat up in the bed, his hair sleep tousled. He looked confused. He even jumped when Jareth’s head appeared over the edge of the bed as he sat up on the floor. Aram’s head turned slowly till his eyes found me and he stared.

“Cassandra, you are naked and bloody.”

The husky longing that quivered through his voice was too much for me right then. I spun on my heel, threw myself into the bathroom and locked the door with a decisive snick behind me.

Chapter Twenty

I sat under the pounding spray, letting it wash over me warm and somewhat comforting. I watched the swirl of water and blood as it circled around the drain. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes as the sting of tears became too much. My nerves were raw and I could feel myself shaking. The world had lost some of its color. Bits of the night came back to me, snatches of heaving bodies and unbridled sounds of passion. I’d had sex with them, all of them, compelled by the madness of a sin. A life had been sacrificed for that sin. Vincent had paid that price.

So many emotions flowed through me like the water over my skin, disgust, pity, anger, regret, fear and loathing. Every time I thought I was through the emotional hurdles, like lottery balls something new would pop to the top.

My brain was at war with itself. One voice told me I doomed Vincent by running to Aram, while another told me I was right to come to the man I love because I made a promise to sleep with only him. The first voice chimed in,
but you didn’t sleep with just him. It appears you rode his brother, a werewolf and a human as well.
The other voice spat back,
that was still better than letting Rin use magic to rape you
.
Compared to that, what’s a little sex between friends
?

A fist pounded hard on the bathroom door. I pushed up onto my knees, grasped the dial and turned it off. I pulled slowly up, scratching my nails against tiles to get to my feet. I pushed open the stall leaving my finger smears on the steamed glass and grabbed a hanging towel to wrap around me. The pounding continued. I checked it was still locked before leaning my back against it.

“What is it?” I was pleased with how level my voice sounded.

“Please, we must talk,” said Jareth as solemn as he always sounded. I didn’t really want to talk to any of them. I dislike personal confrontations. Give me a bad guy to beat down any day. I wanted to rip back the floor, climb in and pull it over the top of me like in a cartoon, hiding till it went away. Of course, my head told me that wasn’t reasonable.

“Alright!” I looked down at my bare feet as my hair dripped water on my toes. I heard a sigh through the door.

“Please Cassandra, do not make us have the conversation we must have with you through the door.” He waited a beat. “Please come out of the bathroom.” I turned my head to look at the door knob jiggling gently.

“I’ll come out under two conditions.”

“State them.” The door handle stilled.

“All you guys have to have pants on.”

“That can be done,” he replied. He almost sounded amused. “And your second request.”

“A robe for me.”

* * * *

Ten minutes later I sat in one of the righted chairs swathed in a comfortable blue terry robe with my hair drying in a mess of curls over my shoulders. Aram in leather pants and Jareth fully dressed were sitting on the couch. DJ took the other chair and pulled on a ragged pair of Levi’s. I stared at the newly cleaned spot on the floor as if I could still see the outline of the blood pool.

“Cassandra!” I turned back to face the three men. My face felt warm and I looked down at my hands in my lap. I found it hard to look any of them in the eyes. It was ridiculous as they’d seen every inch of me, and I of them.

“Does anyone recall the last three nights?”

“Three?” I jerked my head up and look at Jareth. He took my surprise in stride.

“You and Aram were in here for, we think, a night alone with Vincent. Then the Were and I apparently joined you for two more.” I swiveled to look at DJ.

“Why were you here?” I couldn’t keep an accusing tone out of my voice. DJ didn’t seem to hear it. His eyes focused on the bare line of my legs poking out under the robe. I growled lowly. His eyes shot up to my face and he cleared his throat.

“I heard what had happened at the police station. I went to see if you were alright. Trinket said that you hadn’t come home after the party.” I thought about that. I hadn’t checked in with Trinket. She had only one recourse. To assume I hadn’t come home.

“I was worried so I came to see if the vampire had taken you.” I heard Aram growl this time. “When I got here you were lying on the bed. The vampire appeared to be out of it and your neck was bleeding.” I looked up at DJ and saw such tenderness in his eyes that it unnerved me. “You opened your eyes when I called your name, but the minute I touched you everything became blurred.” I swung my head in Jareth’s direction.

“And you?”

“The wolf came in during the day, an hour or two before we usually rise. Several guards tried to pry him off you, unsure of whether you wanted his attentions. He broke the arm of one, and the arm, leg and collarbone of another.” I saw out of the corner of my eye that DJ looked a little embarrassed. “When I woke I too tried to separate you, but as soon as I touched you, my memory too blurs.”

“How come the guards weren’t affected?” DJ asked out of some sort of morbid curiosity.

“Our guards know better than to touch my Andra,” said Aram smirking.

“I can’t understand what happened,” said DJ rubbing his hand through his hair and flexing his muscles. I tried not to stare at them.

“Cassandra, can you explain?” I raised my head from his abs to face all of them. I felt myself shrinking under their gaze.

“Someone put a spell on me, a lust spell, to try to make me his. I fought it till I could get here, but anyone I touched, it seemed to spread to them too.” I held my hands up in apology. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” I put my hands over my eyes as if it would keep the tears at bay. How did things get so out of control?

“Why did you choose here?” I didn’t see who asked the question. I kept my face covered.

“I made a promise. I wanted to keep it.”

“What the hell? To whom?” I spread my fingers and peered through them, to see DJ on the edge of his chair, angry. He was so mad because Aram was looking so smug.

“To me,” he said like a cat with the cream.

“What promise?”

“That is our business, not yours.” DJ stood up, his hands balled into fists. Aram kept his cool, watching the younger man react.

“She’s just as much my lover now as yours!”

“Because you were with her once?” Aram started to laugh.

“With you vamps down for the daytime, I am sure it was more than once.” Aram stopped laughing and looked menacing. I was out of my chair quick as a flash and mad as hell. I thrust my arm out, smashing power against DJ’s chest and forcing him back into his seat.