Blood and Sin (The Infernari Book 1) (13 page)

“Hmm.” I nodded grimly, not liking where this was going.

“And an Infernarus who’s honor-bound to protect a human—and
you
, of all humans—I’m already dead to them, and I’m only going to keep betraying them to save you, because I have no choice. That’s why they don’t care if they kill me along with you. In fact, now they’re
trying
to.”

“You do realize I’m trying to annihilate your species?” I said.

“Yes, and I hate you for it. And I wish you would die. And you
will
answer for your crimes. But not with death.”

“Ah, so you’re going to bring me back to Abyssos with you, and there they will torture and imprison me, but as long as I don’t die, you’ve fulfilled your oath and protected your kind.”

She pressed her lips together.

I’d just guessed her plan.

“It doesn’t matter to you that I would kill you in a heartbeat?”

“Unlike you, Asher, I am honorable. And you wouldn’t. You
didn’t
.”

I would, but I didn’t press the point.

Suddenly, I felt bad for her.

She was hated by all humans, and now she was being hunted by demons . . . and here she was, sworn to protect the very man who’d gotten her into this shit in the first place, who
also
wanted to kill her. We made an unlikely team. But a team nonetheless.

Anyone who was universally hated by demons, I would stand by.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I glanced over to see her still scratching at the veins on her wrist, a motion she had done so much she had left red welts.

A nervous habit of hers.

“Stop that,” I said, pulling her hand away.

She flinched, only then realizing what she’d been doing, and tugged her sleeves back down.

“You demons have some twisted notions about honor,” I muttered.

She pulled her legs up onto the seat and hugged her knees. “Why do you think we had such a brutal civil war? The delicate web of loyalties and blood oaths became so twisted it finally collapsed under its own weight. Infernari were sworn to protect enemies, they had no choice but to betray their own families, their own mothers and fathers, their children. Brothers slayed brothers to repay debts. Mates were bound by oath to slaughter each other, and many chose instead to die in each other’s arms. The war shattered our kind, it broke us, and we’ve been ghosts ever sense.” She pressed her face to the window. “And now I am sworn to protect Jame Asher, the one who will slay my gods and carve out my own heart . . . so my treachery is the most terrible of all.”

I gripped the steering wheel tighter, working my jaw back and forth as I sucked in a strained breath through my nostrils. Next to me, Lana radiated sadness. Her body seemed to deflate while her hair wept a melancholy green. Such a pitiful, dejected creature.

Sworn to protect me.

I didn’t know how to feel about that. For most of my life, demons had wanted to kill me. But a demon who wanted to
save
me?

I should dump her. Get rid of her. She was everything I
didn
’t want to associate with demons—beautiful, helpless, innocent, protective.

I needed to hate her, not pity her. Not feel for her. Not care about her.

Or else I would begin to doubt. I would begin to stumble, when I needed to be surefooted. I would hesitate, when I needed to be focused. I would waver, when I needed to be lethal.

Doubt would only make it harder when I finally did it.

When I finally killed her.

I pushed the thought from my mind.

Absently, Lana rolled up her sleeve again and picked at the vein in the crook of her elbow, right where the skin was softest, where a heroin addict would shoot up. The sight made me oddly dismayed. As I watched her scratching, picking, her movements twitchy and compulsive, a lump settled in my throat. She was itching to draw blood.

I seized her wrist, startling her again.

“Stop it. Stop doing that to yourself.”

“I’m just scratching,” she muttered, folding her arms tightly across her chest.

“So if I save a demon’s life,” I said, steering our conversation away from emotional territory, “they’re honor-bound to protect me? So what if I just saved a bunch of demons as a strategy? Then they can’t kill me, right?”

She gave me an unamused look. “An Infernarus
always
knows when your heart is true. Plus, Infernari’s lives are rarely in danger. It’s
you
they need saving from. Therefore you’re proposing to both kill
and
save them, which is the most two-faced and dishonorable of treacheries . . . you
human
.”

“Fair point.” I nodded slowly, chewing on my lip. “So when I saved you—yesterday, I mean—my heart was . . . you’re saying my heart was . . . ?”

“Yes,” she said miserably, “your heart was true.”

Chapter 11

Lana

Saving the hunter
didn’t sit well with me. It made my hair snap irately. It wasn’t that I regretted protecting his life from my own kind.

It was that I
didn’t
.

And now we were driving Mother knew where, and I could practically feel the other Infernari breathing at my back.

The hunter has become the hunted.

My legs began to jiggle, and again I began to pick at the veins in my wrist, anxiously, before I remembered Asher and caught myself. I dropped my hands in my lap.

His eyes cut to me, his brooding look only deepening.

He missed nothing, that human.

Strange, cold creature. He could be cut from ice, he sat so still.

And now I needed to make a decision. A decision I didn’t want to make. It wasn’t in my nature to weigh cause and effect carefully. Just one more thing that I’d picked up from the natives.

My eyes fixated on the panel of buttons set into Asher’s car. On a whim I began pressing them, just to keep my hands and mind busy.

One made air blast from the vents in front of me, another caused the electronic display to flicker
LOAD
.

“Stop that,” he said, swatting my hand away.

I dropped my hand, eyeing the row of buttons as my unease grew.

What to do, what to do.

“You’re new here, so I’ll let you know: you’re never to touch a man’s—”

I leaned forward and began pressing the buttons again.

Suddenly, the sound of screaming music began to blare at me from all sides, accompanied by loud clashing sounds. I let out a yelp of surprise and clutched my ears.

Asher gave me an irritated look, but I noticed the corner of his mouth turned up as he pressed another button and clicked the sound off. “You’ve never heard of a radio?”

“I’ve heard
of
it. I’ve just never heard
it
.” I looked at the buttons with distaste. “That was human music?” Carnage sounded sweeter than that.

“A type of music. Heavy metal.”

“
Heavy . . . metal
?” I repeated, not understanding the name at all.

Asher drew in a breath, like he was about to explain, then released it. “Never mind.”

I returned to picking skin around my nails, my eyes finding that photo he had taped to the dartboard.

I was avoiding the topic I needed to broach.

Just say it already.

I swallowed. I didn’t have the kind of magic to snatch back words. Once I spoke them, I was committing to this path.

There are no others left for me.

I drew in a deep breath. “I can find your portal for you.”

Asher slammed on the brakes, tires squealing as the car skidded to a halt. Dust kicked up around us, swirling over the car as he maneuvered it to the side of the road.

“How?”

“I will only find your portal for you if you come with me to the other side.”

He reared back at that. “I’m not going to let you take me to hell.”

“
Abyssos
,” I clarified. “You hate us so much, but perhaps you wouldn’t if you saw what our world looked like.”

Asher looked as though I asked him eat something distasteful. “No way you’re dragging me to that shithole.”

“You kill us because you don’t understand us.”

“I kill you because you kill
us
.” For the merest of moments his eyes flicked to the photo taped on the dartboard. A sick sensation coiled in the pit of my stomach.

I didn’t think I wanted to know this man’s tragedies. But I could leverage them.

“Asher, I’ve lost just about everyone that’s ever mattered to me . . .
everyone
. Surely you can understand.” I let my gaze move to the picture.

He gave me a hard, hard look. “Don’t. Go. There.”

So brutal. And protective. I should be annoyed, but all I could think about was how these were traits Infernari were known for. Traits they wore proudly.

He sighed out a breath. “Look, it’s not an option. The moment I cross over, you’d all gut me.”

I shook my head. “Infernari would respect our oath.”

“Lana,” and now Asher looked at me pityingly, “don’t be naïve.”

“You know nothing of my world,” I said heatedly.

“I’ve met enough demons.”

“They are not everyone!”

Asher exhaled, running a hand through his hair. “So they wouldn’t kill me. They’d simply torture and imprison me.”

“I am the heir apparent. Beloved of the primus dominus. They wouldn’t dare go against my wishes.” At least, I hoped. Considering they’d seemed just fine with killing me, I wasn’t so sure.

“And what would your wishes be?”

“You have done horrible things,” I said, looking him dead in the eyes. “But so has every Infernarus I know of, save a few.” Most Infernari were killers by the age of twelve. “I don’t want more death and pain. I want you to see my world, I want you to
understand
 . . . if you could just see my world . . .”

He held my gaze for a long time. Just when I thought he’d laugh the idea off, he said solemnly, “Okay.”

“I need you to vow it,” I said.

“I vow that in return for locating the portal, I will go through it with you and see what’s happened to your world.”
Before I destroy it.

I might not be a clever human, but I heard the hunter’s unspoken words clear as day.

“A blood oath,” I said. “Before I tell you anything further, I want your blood.”

“You’re not getting a damn drop my blood, demon.”

My lips curled back, and it was all I could do to refrain from hissing at him. I was giving him his precious portal.

“Then you will get no information from me, you human swine.”

Asher raised an eyebrow. “‘Human swine’? That’s the best you got, Lanie?”

“My name is not
Lanie
. It’s not
demon
either.”

“Pretty hypocritical of you to get angry at the names I call you right after
you
insult
me
.”

I stared at him, remembering all over again who this man was. “Your lying human words mean nothing to me, Jame Asher. I want your blood so that if you go back on your word like you have in the past, I can curse you.”

Asher grimaced, like I embodied everything he found wrong in the world.

We stared each other down, at an impasse. Time drew out, and still I wouldn’t look away.

“Blood oath or nothing,” I bit out.

Finally, Asher cursed, breaking eye contact to stare out the window. His leg began to jiggle. He ran a hand through his hair, ruffling it. My gaze unwillingly drank the sight up.

“And you know where the portal is?” he asked, those stormy eyes of his returning to me.

“Not yet.” He had an instant to look incensed before I continued. “But I know someone who can lift the memory spell.”

He huffed a laugh. “You know someone who can lift the spell,” he repeated. “That’s cute, but Lana, whoever this demon is, they won’t help you, not after what you did back there.” He jerked his head toward the way we came, toward where Clades had fallen.

I swallowed down something thick at the Infernarus I left behind. My friend.

War has made both him and you do worse.

“She is not an Infernarus,” I said. “Not
exactly
.”

Asher raised his eyebrows. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“She is half Infernarus, half human.”

It took the hunter a second to react. His nostrils flared. “That ... can happen?” He looked repulsed by the notion.

“Yes,” I said, trying not to be offended. The Infernari I lived with found the idea almost equally disturbing. But other clans believed it natural, especially now that our numbers had been decimated.

“She’s not bound by the same oaths that we are,” I added. “And she does not carry the same grudges we do.”

Asher stewed . . . and stewed.

He eyed me. “If this
friend
of yours doesn’t deliver on her end, I want my blood back.”

“Agreed.”

He lightly thumped the wheel with his palm as he deliberated, that strong jaw clenching and unclenching. He knew my own word was as good as law.

Eventually, muttering to himself, he turned off the car and threw his door open. I tensed, not knowing what he was doing. A moment later he opened the door behind his driver’s seat. Leaning in, he began to rummage through a black canvas bag. I heard a clinking sound, and then he was zipping up the bag and returning to his seat.

Gruffly, he handed me a wicked-looking hunting knife and a small glass vial. “Get it over with before I change my mind.”

I stared down at the items in shock. A large part of me hadn’t believed he would go for this.

I didn’t want to think too hard about why a man like Asher carried around small, empty vials. It seemed to me more malicious than the knife.

And the knife, oh, the knife. I wanted to run my fingers along the sharp edge until I felt the bite of pain and the burn of magic in my veins.

“Your arm,” I said, setting the vial aside for the moment.

Grimacing, he laid his forearm over the center console.

I grasped his wrist. He jolted at the touch, then before my eyes the straining muscles of his forearm relaxed.

A forbidden warmth spread through my stomach when I saw our skin pressed together. I hadn’t touched a human man like this.

I traced Asher’s veins with my fingers. They stood out starkly against his tan skin, the thick, corded bans of muscle in his arms pressing them close to the surface.

“Faster, Lana,” he said, impatience lacing his voice.

“The location of the cut is important,” I said.

“Important for what?”

Potency
. But I didn’t dare tell him that. Humans had choice cuts of meat. Infernari had choice cuts of blood. Of course, we rarely got to be picky these days.

My fingers stopped at a location where Asher’s veins made a diamond shape.

Here
.

My hair was beginning to lift.

I began to murmur, thanking the Mother in the Old Tongue for the lifeblood as I pressed the edge of the hunting knife to Asher’s skin, the contact so light it raised his gooseflesh.

My eyes rose to Asher’s and there they stayed locked. His deep brown eyes bore down on me, his striking face unhappy. I could’ve sworn I saw fear at the back of his gaze.

With a swift flick of my wrist, I slashed the knife across his flesh. The vial was in my hand before the first bead of blood trickled down his forearm. Asher’s mouth was a hard tight line as I touched the glass to his skin and collected the liquid.

I captured almost all of the blood in the vial, then corked it.

Asher ripped off the sleeve of his shirt and used it to staunch the blood flow. Taking the knife from me, he wiped it too off on the material.

I watched him, the urge to burn off the blood and convert it to magic riding me hard. Instead I focused on the vial of it in my hand. I held the container up to the light streaming in through the window.

“Don’t lose that,” Asher warned.

When this was the only thing holding Asher to his word? “I won’t.”

Twenty minutes later
the vial dangled from a necklace I’d fashioned from some of Asher’s rope. I couldn’t stop touching it.

“Can you stop looking so fucking gleeful about having my blood around your neck?” Asher said from next to me.

I shook my head, a small smile tugging at my lips.

He had agreed to cross over.

The deadliest, most wanted native had agreed to cross over. And I, an Infernarus, had
convinced
him. I was so proud of myself.

And of him. I peered over at Asher through the locks of my hair. He’d agreed to see Abyssos, despite his hatred. He let me collect his blood as collateral. Neither of these things came naturally to this hardened human.

“So who’s this broad we’re meeting with?” he asked.

My hand wrapped around the vial. “Gandmaddox. She lives in . . . Nola?” I wasn’t sure if I was saying that right. I rattled off the address I’d long since memorized.

“New Orleans?” Asher huffed a laugh. “Hah, I knew there’d be demons there.”

Asher

In the heart
of the French Quarter—a block from Bourbon Street—Grandmaddox’s house sprouted like a weed out of a too-small lot wedged between hotels. Top-heavy with ivy-covered iron balconies, the four-story brick Creole townhouse sagged like a Jenga tower. It had already begun to topple, in fact, leaning precariously against the neighboring hotel.

Painted monkey skeletons hung in the dusty, first-floor windows, alongside jars of pickled eyeballs.

Awesome.

The front door jingled and opened into a smoky tea room advertising psychic readings—the demon moonlighted as a tarot card reader, apparently.

Lana pushed into the empty shop ahead of me, which made up the entire first floor, and I glimpsed the vial of my blood dangling over her sternum. Her collateral.

What the hell had I gotten myself into?

Coming here was a bad idea.

Giving her my blood was a bad idea.

Trusting
her was a bad idea.

But why not? A demon’s word bound them like a physical law. Lana could no more violate our agreement than she could walk through walls.

Around her neck, my blood was safe.

At least, until
I
violated our agreement. Which I would probably do.

Return with her to Abyssos? Unlikely. I would steal that vial back before we even had the opportunity to cross. Or maybe I would hop down for a quick peek before I destroyed the portal—I could at least give her that in exchange for its location.

She wanted to show me how the Infernari suffered, she wanted to convince me to spare them.

She could try, but it wouldn’t work.

My hatred of demons ran deeper than she could ever imagine.

Behind us, a bleeding orange sun set between the buildings, casting the front of the shop into a fiery glare while leaving the back in shadow. On the wall, a cuckoo clock ticked slower and slower, as if time itself was stretching out. Place gave me the creeps.

“Grandmaddox?” Lana said, venturing deeper. “Grandmother? Are you here?”

All around me, shelves slumped under the weight of bone necklaces, tins of incense, jars of insect carcasses. My nose wrinkled, but as I edged away, my hip bumped a rickety side table, spilling a deck of tarot cards onto the floor and rocking a candelabra. I grabbed it before it fell.

My fingers came away smeared with cobwebs.

“Fuck this place.” I muttered, stooping to pick up the deck.

Every card landed facedown, except for one—
The Hanged Man
.

I flipped over another one and got
Death
.

Stupid.

I stood to find Lana had ventured deeper into the shop. “Grandmaddox?” she called.