Before his eyes, Sin changed. Left the building. The female who had finally found a bit of softness, kindness, and acceptance disappeared behind a cold, remote mask. Only the very slight tremor in her fingers as she jammed them into her pocket gave away any sign of emotion. He thought she was going for a weapon—he certainly deserved it.
Instead, she drew out a neatly folded square of bills. She peeled off two fives and dropped them on the floor. “The ten bucks I owe you.”
She walked out of the flat and out of his life. When the door closed, so softly he barely heard it, he retched. Barely made it to the toilet. He’d done it. He’d finally thrown the rock that hurt her. That drove her away for good. Sin didn’t cry. She couldn’t afford to. Not yet. She had to talk to her brothers.
Her brothers.
It struck her that not only did she feel the need to go to them, but for the first time, she truly acknowledged what they were. Yes, she’d known they were siblings, but at some point, they’d actually become family to her. And crazily enough, her first instinct was to go to them.
And didn’t it just figure that the first one she ran into at UG would be Wraith. “Smurfette!” He grinned as she stepped out of the Harrowgate. “Where’s Con? Some warg was just here and he said Con left the sanctuary with you.” When she didn’t reply because her throat had closed up, Wraith’s smile faltered, and his voice gentled. “Lore’s here. I think he’s in E’s office.”
She started down the hall, and Wraith fell into step beside her, his silence both surprising and oddly comforting. When she got to E’s office, though, Shade was there instead of Lore. Shade pushed himself off the wall he’d been leaning against. “Where’s Con?” Why was everyone so freaking curious about him? She wanted to scream at them to shut up, but the moment she let loose, the waterworks would start and all those emotions Con had wanted her to feel would lay her flat. “Not important,” she said crisply. “What’s up with the vaccine?”
“Initial immunizations have begun,” Eidolon said from behind his desk. “A lot sooner than I expected. So far, the two males I vaccinated and then exposed to the virus are fine.”
“You actually got volunteers for that?”
“Heh. Volunteers. Funny.” Wraith’s grin was pure evil. “They were both on Carceris death row. By volunteering for the testing, they got their sentences reduced to life in prison.” Personally, Sin would rather have death, but whatever. The fact that death row in a Carceris jail lasted only a week probably scared the poor bastards enough to make them volunteer. Well, that and the fact that the Carceris’s main means of execution was to toss the victim into a pit as bait for the hellhounds.
If you were lucky, they only tore you apart. If you weren’t lucky, and they were horny… She shuddered. Little frightened her as much as the unholy canines. But she did find it amusing that the souls of evil humans who had tortured animals and were sent to Sheoul-gra got to spend a lot of time in the pits with the beasts. She’d always loved the whole an-eye-for-an-eye thing.
Shade shoved a stick of gum in his mouth. “Now, what happened with Con? Raynor said—” The only thing I’ve ever wanted from you is sex and blood. Dammit. She didn’t want to talk about it. And yet, her mouth opened up and words came out. “He’s at his apartment.” The tears she’d been holding back finally erupted, but she dashed them away before Eidolon could hand her a tissue. “He tried this… bond thing—”
“What do you mean, he tried? Against your will?” Shade’s voice degenerated into a dark rumble. “And what the f**k happened to your finger?” “I had to get the assassin ring off so I could go to…” Con. She’d done it, in part, so she could be with him. What a freaking idiot she was! Anger and misery tightened around her chest, making it hard to breathe.
A snarl from behind her startled her. “I’ll kill him,” Wraith said.
Shade tossed his gum wrapper into the trash. “I’ll help.”
“We’ll make it a family fun night,” Eidolon drawled, his voice calm, cool, and serious as shit.
Gold flecks peppered the blue of Wraith’s eyes, and he flicked his tongue over the point of one fang. “I told you I won’t let anyone f**k with my family, Sin.” At the time, he’d said those same words to her. Meaning that he didn’t want her f**king with his family. And now… she was the family. “Don’t. Please.” Somehow she kept her voice from cracking. “I just want to forget.”
They stared at each other in silence for a while, and then Eidolon cleared his throat. “I discovered how you came into existence.”
It was an abrupt shift of subject, but a welcome one. Eidolon was good at that. “Do I want to know?” Shrugging, Eidolon leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers over his chest. In the short time she’d known him, she’d learned that when he settled in like that, he was gearing up for a medical lecture.
“You told me your mother used a demon herb to attempt an abortion,” he said. “The most common plant used for that purpose is skullwort, but it’s meant for demon physiology, not human. When ingested by most demon species, the mother’s body becomes hostile to the fetuses. But in a human it does the opposite. It strengthened the demon halves of you and Lore instead of destroying them. And because it’s a demon chemical compound, it reacted… badly… with your human half. I suspect your mother ingested the herb immediately after conception, and likely a couple of times after that. The herb is loaded with hormones, and it apparently retarded the normal progress of gene development that should have turned you into a male.”
Retarded. Nice. “So if Lore and I shared the same womb, why would it affect me and not him?”
“You’re fraternal, not identical. You have different genes that are susceptible—or not—to different things. Same thing happens in alcoholic human mothers. She might give birth to one twin with fetal alcohol syndrome, while the other has no symptoms at all.” Eidolon shifted, sitting forward in his chair again. “There’s something else. Unlike Lore, you’re not sterile.”
She blinked. “Then why haven’t I gotten knocked up, like, a million times by now?” “Because you don’t ovulate, but you do have viable eggs. You can have a family, Sin. You’ll just have to go through an in vitro procedure.” “That’s not going to happen.” Not only did she not want kids, but who would she have them with? No one but Con had ever wanted to be with her. She’d never wanted to be with anyone but him. And in the end, he’d rejected her. Left her, the way he’d said he wouldn’t do.
God, how could she hate someone and ache for them at the same time?
A hot, angry flush settled over her skin, and she knew she was going to burst into tears again.
“I have to go.” She leaped to her feet, making a slashing motion with her hand when her brothers tried to stop her. She needed to be alone. Like she’d always been. Sin hightailed it through UG’s halls as fast as she could without looking like a complete idiot. It was only as she entered the emergency department, where the Harrowgate was, that she realized she had nowhere to go.
She’d lived for so long at the assassin den that she had no other residences. In her haste to get out of the den, she’d left her clothes, her few trinkets, and all her weapons—except what was on her body and a few spares she kept at Lore’s place—behind. Now she was homeless on top of everything else.
“Sin.” She wheeled around. She wasn’t overly surprised to see Raynor, the dude she’d seen in Scotland, standing there, but still a ball of “oh, shit,” dropped into her gut. He’d been waiting for her. The hunter’s gleam in his eye was a dead giveaway.
“Are you here about the vaccine?” It was a lame question, but she was on the verge of tears over Con, was unnaturally nervous, and her guilt over the fact that she’d started a plague that had killed hundreds, maybe thousands, of his people still ate at her.
“Yes, thank you for asking.” He moved toward her, and she felt like a rabbit in a wolf’s sights. “You destroyed a lot of lives, including those of many of my friends and family.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry—”
“That’s not good enough, you little bitch,” he snapped, the sudden change in him putting Sin on edge.
Somehow, she kept her expression and voice neutral. “Is that why you’re here? Because you want your pound of flesh from me?” “That’s exactly why I’m here. I have a proposition for you.”
“Whatever it is,” Sin said wearily, “you can shove it up your ass.”
He laughed. The dude’s moods flip-flopped like a dying snake. “Trust me, you want to hear this. If you don’t, more people will die.” He headed toward the parking lot, obviously expecting to be followed. Sin nearly didn’t. But she had a feeling he wasn’t bluffing, and she couldn’t be responsible for more deaths.
Once they were in the parking lot, he stopped near an ambulance. The stall next to it, where the rig she and Con had taken should have been, screamed with emptiness, reminding her of Con, of being in the back of the rig, of his hands on her.
Stop it. Grow a f**king pair of balls and get over your tender feelings. Good plan. She’d let Raynor take the brunt of her misery.
“Okay, dickhead,” she said finally. “What do you want?”
“I want the born wargs to be destroyed. It’s time the balance of power shifted and turneds took over.”
“That’s all? Well, good luck with that. I want world peace and for people to stop making bad Batman movies, but guess what, buddy, I’m screwed, too.”
“Sarcastic little wench. I will get what I want, and you’re going to give it to me.” “I don’t think so.” She jammed her hands into her pants pockets. Her left hand felt weird and she wondered idly when she’d get used to the missing digit. “I mean, the ‘me giving it to you’ part. I am a wench.”
Raynor snorted. “Only a demon could be proud of that.”
God, this guy was slime. How had Con not killed him before now? Con. Stop it! “What do you want? I’m bored. You’ve got ten seconds to tell me why I’m here.”
“You’re here because I want you to create a virus that affects only the pricolici.” Not just slime, but delusional. The parking lot vehicle entrance flashed, and an ambulance zipped through, pulling to a stop in the unloading space near the doors to the ER. Sin’s pulse went a little crazy as she peered into the cab to identify the medics. Con wasn’t one of them. Not that she’d expected him to be, but she couldn’t help but look.
Stop. It.
“You do realize,” she said, turning back to the warg, “that the last time I created a virus, it jumped species.” “It won’t if the pricolici are contained.”
Sick bastard. “Okay, for shits and giggles, what in the hell makes you think I would ever do that?” Raynor smiled. “Because you’re going to become my personal assassin.”
“You should see Eidolon for a brain scan or something.” She watched the medics unload some sort of hideous, skeletal demon out of the ambulance. “Because you’re f**ked in the head.” The warg’s voice became an eerily calm drawl. “Did you know that when a born warg hides the fact that her offspring were born human, she is committing a crime punishable by death? She and her offspring are chained to stakes on the eve of a full moon, and once the pack shifts, they are torn apart. And eaten. It’s a painful, gruesome death.”
Sin didn’t allow her expression to change, but inside, she was sweating bullets. “So?” “So I know Conall’s little family secret. I have a spy inside the pricolici pack you and he visited. And I know all about his granddaughter, Sable.”
Oh, holy shit. “And what do you think you know?”
“I know that at least one of her twin cubs was born human.” He leaned forward. “Because my brother was the father.”
Sin’s throat closed up, but she managed a raspy “What?”
Raynor cast a glance at another vehicle coming in through the parking lot gate. “I was there. I watched The Aegis kill my brother, and I kept an eye on her for months—” “Why?” Sin interrupted. “What would you have to gain? Or are you just some obsessed, creepy stalker?”
The warg’s gaze drifted, softening his expression. “Do you know what it’s like to be invisible, demon? I was on the Warg Council when it was even more of a joke than it is now. We were allowed to sit in on meetings, but we had no input, no vote, no voice when even the dhampires, who aren’t even full wargs, had more power than we did. I needed every advantage, every bit of ammunition I could get, no matter how insignificant it might have seemed at the time.” His eyes refocused, bitterness burning in them once again. “So I watched Sable, and when she disappeared with Conall for a few days and returned to the village with the infants, I suspected that she’d had one or both of the cubs turned and tattooed. But it wasn’t until Con’s appearance a few days ago, followed by her rapid departure from the village with her family, that I knew for sure. And I will spill the little secret.”
“Bastard.” Sin drew her right hand out of her pocket, preparing to fire up her gift and fry the fucker. “You wouldn’t—”
“Oh, I would. I’ll tell her pack what she’s done, about Conall’s part in it, and I’ll take you there to watch. He might even be put to death with them.”
Instead, she drew out a neatly folded square of bills. She peeled off two fives and dropped them on the floor. “The ten bucks I owe you.”
She walked out of the flat and out of his life. When the door closed, so softly he barely heard it, he retched. Barely made it to the toilet. He’d done it. He’d finally thrown the rock that hurt her. That drove her away for good. Sin didn’t cry. She couldn’t afford to. Not yet. She had to talk to her brothers.
Her brothers.
It struck her that not only did she feel the need to go to them, but for the first time, she truly acknowledged what they were. Yes, she’d known they were siblings, but at some point, they’d actually become family to her. And crazily enough, her first instinct was to go to them.
And didn’t it just figure that the first one she ran into at UG would be Wraith. “Smurfette!” He grinned as she stepped out of the Harrowgate. “Where’s Con? Some warg was just here and he said Con left the sanctuary with you.” When she didn’t reply because her throat had closed up, Wraith’s smile faltered, and his voice gentled. “Lore’s here. I think he’s in E’s office.”
She started down the hall, and Wraith fell into step beside her, his silence both surprising and oddly comforting. When she got to E’s office, though, Shade was there instead of Lore. Shade pushed himself off the wall he’d been leaning against. “Where’s Con?” Why was everyone so freaking curious about him? She wanted to scream at them to shut up, but the moment she let loose, the waterworks would start and all those emotions Con had wanted her to feel would lay her flat. “Not important,” she said crisply. “What’s up with the vaccine?”
“Initial immunizations have begun,” Eidolon said from behind his desk. “A lot sooner than I expected. So far, the two males I vaccinated and then exposed to the virus are fine.”
“You actually got volunteers for that?”
“Heh. Volunteers. Funny.” Wraith’s grin was pure evil. “They were both on Carceris death row. By volunteering for the testing, they got their sentences reduced to life in prison.” Personally, Sin would rather have death, but whatever. The fact that death row in a Carceris jail lasted only a week probably scared the poor bastards enough to make them volunteer. Well, that and the fact that the Carceris’s main means of execution was to toss the victim into a pit as bait for the hellhounds.
If you were lucky, they only tore you apart. If you weren’t lucky, and they were horny… She shuddered. Little frightened her as much as the unholy canines. But she did find it amusing that the souls of evil humans who had tortured animals and were sent to Sheoul-gra got to spend a lot of time in the pits with the beasts. She’d always loved the whole an-eye-for-an-eye thing.
Shade shoved a stick of gum in his mouth. “Now, what happened with Con? Raynor said—” The only thing I’ve ever wanted from you is sex and blood. Dammit. She didn’t want to talk about it. And yet, her mouth opened up and words came out. “He’s at his apartment.” The tears she’d been holding back finally erupted, but she dashed them away before Eidolon could hand her a tissue. “He tried this… bond thing—”
“What do you mean, he tried? Against your will?” Shade’s voice degenerated into a dark rumble. “And what the f**k happened to your finger?” “I had to get the assassin ring off so I could go to…” Con. She’d done it, in part, so she could be with him. What a freaking idiot she was! Anger and misery tightened around her chest, making it hard to breathe.
A snarl from behind her startled her. “I’ll kill him,” Wraith said.
Shade tossed his gum wrapper into the trash. “I’ll help.”
“We’ll make it a family fun night,” Eidolon drawled, his voice calm, cool, and serious as shit.
Gold flecks peppered the blue of Wraith’s eyes, and he flicked his tongue over the point of one fang. “I told you I won’t let anyone f**k with my family, Sin.” At the time, he’d said those same words to her. Meaning that he didn’t want her f**king with his family. And now… she was the family. “Don’t. Please.” Somehow she kept her voice from cracking. “I just want to forget.”
They stared at each other in silence for a while, and then Eidolon cleared his throat. “I discovered how you came into existence.”
It was an abrupt shift of subject, but a welcome one. Eidolon was good at that. “Do I want to know?” Shrugging, Eidolon leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers over his chest. In the short time she’d known him, she’d learned that when he settled in like that, he was gearing up for a medical lecture.
“You told me your mother used a demon herb to attempt an abortion,” he said. “The most common plant used for that purpose is skullwort, but it’s meant for demon physiology, not human. When ingested by most demon species, the mother’s body becomes hostile to the fetuses. But in a human it does the opposite. It strengthened the demon halves of you and Lore instead of destroying them. And because it’s a demon chemical compound, it reacted… badly… with your human half. I suspect your mother ingested the herb immediately after conception, and likely a couple of times after that. The herb is loaded with hormones, and it apparently retarded the normal progress of gene development that should have turned you into a male.”
Retarded. Nice. “So if Lore and I shared the same womb, why would it affect me and not him?”
“You’re fraternal, not identical. You have different genes that are susceptible—or not—to different things. Same thing happens in alcoholic human mothers. She might give birth to one twin with fetal alcohol syndrome, while the other has no symptoms at all.” Eidolon shifted, sitting forward in his chair again. “There’s something else. Unlike Lore, you’re not sterile.”
She blinked. “Then why haven’t I gotten knocked up, like, a million times by now?” “Because you don’t ovulate, but you do have viable eggs. You can have a family, Sin. You’ll just have to go through an in vitro procedure.” “That’s not going to happen.” Not only did she not want kids, but who would she have them with? No one but Con had ever wanted to be with her. She’d never wanted to be with anyone but him. And in the end, he’d rejected her. Left her, the way he’d said he wouldn’t do.
God, how could she hate someone and ache for them at the same time?
A hot, angry flush settled over her skin, and she knew she was going to burst into tears again.
“I have to go.” She leaped to her feet, making a slashing motion with her hand when her brothers tried to stop her. She needed to be alone. Like she’d always been. Sin hightailed it through UG’s halls as fast as she could without looking like a complete idiot. It was only as she entered the emergency department, where the Harrowgate was, that she realized she had nowhere to go.
She’d lived for so long at the assassin den that she had no other residences. In her haste to get out of the den, she’d left her clothes, her few trinkets, and all her weapons—except what was on her body and a few spares she kept at Lore’s place—behind. Now she was homeless on top of everything else.
“Sin.” She wheeled around. She wasn’t overly surprised to see Raynor, the dude she’d seen in Scotland, standing there, but still a ball of “oh, shit,” dropped into her gut. He’d been waiting for her. The hunter’s gleam in his eye was a dead giveaway.
“Are you here about the vaccine?” It was a lame question, but she was on the verge of tears over Con, was unnaturally nervous, and her guilt over the fact that she’d started a plague that had killed hundreds, maybe thousands, of his people still ate at her.
“Yes, thank you for asking.” He moved toward her, and she felt like a rabbit in a wolf’s sights. “You destroyed a lot of lives, including those of many of my friends and family.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry—”
“That’s not good enough, you little bitch,” he snapped, the sudden change in him putting Sin on edge.
Somehow, she kept her expression and voice neutral. “Is that why you’re here? Because you want your pound of flesh from me?” “That’s exactly why I’m here. I have a proposition for you.”
“Whatever it is,” Sin said wearily, “you can shove it up your ass.”
He laughed. The dude’s moods flip-flopped like a dying snake. “Trust me, you want to hear this. If you don’t, more people will die.” He headed toward the parking lot, obviously expecting to be followed. Sin nearly didn’t. But she had a feeling he wasn’t bluffing, and she couldn’t be responsible for more deaths.
Once they were in the parking lot, he stopped near an ambulance. The stall next to it, where the rig she and Con had taken should have been, screamed with emptiness, reminding her of Con, of being in the back of the rig, of his hands on her.
Stop it. Grow a f**king pair of balls and get over your tender feelings. Good plan. She’d let Raynor take the brunt of her misery.
“Okay, dickhead,” she said finally. “What do you want?”
“I want the born wargs to be destroyed. It’s time the balance of power shifted and turneds took over.”
“That’s all? Well, good luck with that. I want world peace and for people to stop making bad Batman movies, but guess what, buddy, I’m screwed, too.”
“Sarcastic little wench. I will get what I want, and you’re going to give it to me.” “I don’t think so.” She jammed her hands into her pants pockets. Her left hand felt weird and she wondered idly when she’d get used to the missing digit. “I mean, the ‘me giving it to you’ part. I am a wench.”
Raynor snorted. “Only a demon could be proud of that.”
God, this guy was slime. How had Con not killed him before now? Con. Stop it! “What do you want? I’m bored. You’ve got ten seconds to tell me why I’m here.”
“You’re here because I want you to create a virus that affects only the pricolici.” Not just slime, but delusional. The parking lot vehicle entrance flashed, and an ambulance zipped through, pulling to a stop in the unloading space near the doors to the ER. Sin’s pulse went a little crazy as she peered into the cab to identify the medics. Con wasn’t one of them. Not that she’d expected him to be, but she couldn’t help but look.
Stop. It.
“You do realize,” she said, turning back to the warg, “that the last time I created a virus, it jumped species.” “It won’t if the pricolici are contained.”
Sick bastard. “Okay, for shits and giggles, what in the hell makes you think I would ever do that?” Raynor smiled. “Because you’re going to become my personal assassin.”
“You should see Eidolon for a brain scan or something.” She watched the medics unload some sort of hideous, skeletal demon out of the ambulance. “Because you’re f**ked in the head.” The warg’s voice became an eerily calm drawl. “Did you know that when a born warg hides the fact that her offspring were born human, she is committing a crime punishable by death? She and her offspring are chained to stakes on the eve of a full moon, and once the pack shifts, they are torn apart. And eaten. It’s a painful, gruesome death.”
Sin didn’t allow her expression to change, but inside, she was sweating bullets. “So?” “So I know Conall’s little family secret. I have a spy inside the pricolici pack you and he visited. And I know all about his granddaughter, Sable.”
Oh, holy shit. “And what do you think you know?”
“I know that at least one of her twin cubs was born human.” He leaned forward. “Because my brother was the father.”
Sin’s throat closed up, but she managed a raspy “What?”
Raynor cast a glance at another vehicle coming in through the parking lot gate. “I was there. I watched The Aegis kill my brother, and I kept an eye on her for months—” “Why?” Sin interrupted. “What would you have to gain? Or are you just some obsessed, creepy stalker?”
The warg’s gaze drifted, softening his expression. “Do you know what it’s like to be invisible, demon? I was on the Warg Council when it was even more of a joke than it is now. We were allowed to sit in on meetings, but we had no input, no vote, no voice when even the dhampires, who aren’t even full wargs, had more power than we did. I needed every advantage, every bit of ammunition I could get, no matter how insignificant it might have seemed at the time.” His eyes refocused, bitterness burning in them once again. “So I watched Sable, and when she disappeared with Conall for a few days and returned to the village with the infants, I suspected that she’d had one or both of the cubs turned and tattooed. But it wasn’t until Con’s appearance a few days ago, followed by her rapid departure from the village with her family, that I knew for sure. And I will spill the little secret.”
“Bastard.” Sin drew her right hand out of her pocket, preparing to fire up her gift and fry the fucker. “You wouldn’t—”
“Oh, I would. I’ll tell her pack what she’s done, about Conall’s part in it, and I’ll take you there to watch. He might even be put to death with them.”
