Blood and Sin (The Infernari Book 1) (17 page)

Chapter 14

Asher

“Nikki?” I whispered.

Staring back at me from the opposite end of the room was Nicole Asher, my wife, her blue eyes lit up in surprise. My stomach plunged into freefall, my heart galloped, I couldn’t breathe.

Back from the dead . . . like an angel.

But then I noticed the details. Her blonde hair flowed around her like she was underwater, defying gravity.
Not real . . . she’s not real.

Her blue eyes flickered crimson.

Not human.

My hope died with a sickening crash.

I looked around for Joy, our daughter, who would surely be with her mother.

But my daughter wasn’t there.

My daughter was dead, and so was my wife.

There was no one in the room but Lana.

No one but a demon.

Nicole began to change, morphing back into Lana. Seeing it happen, something tugged painfully at my heart.

Deep down, I felt hollow. Emptied of something essential.

“Never . . .” I rasped, my voice shaking, “
never
 . . . never do that . . .” My fingers coiled into fists.

She swallowed, her eyes wide. “I didn’t do it to hurt you,” she whispered, backing up. She banged into the mirror behind her, its surface vibrating. “I wanted to see . . . I’m sorry.”

I was dying inside at the reminder of what I’d once had—a beautiful wife, a perfect daughter, a blissful family . . . oh God, I’d had it all—and it was stolen from me. And this demon, she was like rot in the wound, making my grief fester.

“How
dare
you wear her skin,” I said, my voice hoarse with anger. With pain.

My wife. My
wife
. Lana wore her face like someone would a coat, and she used her black magic to do it, cursing someone else by doing so.

I prowled toward her, my chest rising and falling faster and faster, my breath escaping in furious hisses. I stepped into her space, my body towering over her.

“How
dare
you disgrace her memory, how dare you mock her, how dare you defile her,
demon
.”

Lana’s eyes welled with tears.

Letting a demon into your heart . . . it was like swallowing cyanide. I should kill her right here, right now, just as I would any other demon. But even now I couldn’t, much to my everlasting shame.

Instead, I spun and punched the wall, putting a hole in the rotting, termite-infested wood. The nearby photo fell, its flimsy frame breaking apart.

I stormed back to my room and slammed the door. All through the house, I heard frames thunk onto the floor.

The last thing I heard, before I roared in agony, was the quiet whimper Lana tried to suppress.

Lana

I collapsed against
the wall, letting my body sink slowly down to the floor. A sad sob slipped out. I covered my mouth, afraid Grandmaddox would hear it.

That
Asher
would hear it.

My tears rolled down my cheeks and onto my hand as my shoulders shook. I bowed my head, my hair lank and listless around me.

What had I been thinking? Wearing her face was torture enough. But then to get caught? And by Asher of all people? If only what I felt right now was simply embarrassment . . . It was so more than that. So much more.

In those first few moments when Asher had caught sight of me, before he realized I was Lana and not his wife—the expression he’d worn was somewhere between hope and rapture.

He’d never looked at me that way.
No one
had ever looked at me that way.

But the way he had looked at me once he realized who and what I was?

Disgust. Horror.

I pinched my eyes shut, two more tears squeezing their way out.

You are an Infernari, one of the last of your people.
I comforted myself.
You are strong, and brave, and kind.

I dropped my hand from my mouth and pressed my forehead to my knees, which I gathered in close to my body.

I wanted to hate Asher for the way he looked at me, the way he made me feel, but I understood. I’d worn the skin of fallen Infernari many, many times, and every once in a while someone recognized my likeness. No one wanted that kind of reminder; it mocked their grief.

It was just that this time my heart had also gotten stepped on.

I didn’t know how long I sat there like that. Long enough for my shoulders to stop shaking, my tears to stop falling. Long enough even for the sounds outside to die down just a bit.

I drew in a shaky breath, and pushed myself up to my feet. Heading into the bathroom, I turned on the faucet to wash my face.

The spout gurgled and spat. I almost groaned when I remembered the water here didn’t work.

I began to leave, but then my eyes landed on a razor. It was carelessly lying on the counter amongst dozens of other old knickknacks, the color of its green handle faded with time, a relic from some long forgotten guest.

I was mesmerized by its blade, which was mostly dark orange from age. Without thinking, I reached out and picked the razor up, turning it over and over in my hands.

It wasn’t a real weapon, but it could cut all the same. And being in this world, my body depleted of magic for long stretches of time . . . I wanted to cut. To release my blood from my body, savor the sweet pain of it, then cull my magic.

With a swift twist of my wrist, I snapped the handle off. Then I worked my fingers under the edges of the brittle plastic, trying to pry the razorblade out from it. With a pop, the small, flat blade was free.

I stared at it in wonder, then ran my thumb over the rusted edge. It wasn’t very sharp, but if I pressed, it could split my skin.

I moved the blade to the crook of my arm just to test the theory. The edge of it pressed into my skin, then I sliced the razorblade across my flesh.

My skin split, and the pain that flared up was instantly overshadowed by the satisfying feel of it burning up into magic. I didn’t bother healing the skin, even as I converted the blood. I didn’t much care that I was cursing myself.

I pocketed the razor. I would be keeping this. Sometimes—sometimes the urge to blood-let came over me. This little razor, it could control the urge if I turned it on myself when the need got bad. For now I still had a small reservoir of magic, but it wouldn’t last forever. Once it was gone, I would need to control the urge to cull because, from my best guess, Asher and I were still a ways from the portal.

The portal . . . through my drunken haze I remembered. The bargain I struck with the hunter, the one that would allow me to fulfill all my oaths, it all rested on Grandmaddox lifting the memory spell.

She would never lift it, she said as much.

But I didn’t technically need
her
to lift the spell; I just needed her elixir. And as a potion master, she’d undoubtedly have a bottle of it here in her house.

Those conniving humans had rubbed off on me, I thought as I began moving, heading toward the door to my room. The floorboards beneath me creaked, and I heard wood splinter. It wouldn’t surprise me if this house was held together by magic alone.

I stepped into the hall, closing the door softly behind me. At the end of the hall, a narrow staircase continued up the rickety house. I made my way toward it, the ancient wood floors creaking under my boots. Grandmaddox had told me once that she kept her potions up in the attic; now I followed her old words.

I shuddered as I began to ascend the stairs. Back in Abyssos, we never made indoor spaces this narrow. Almost all Infernari needed the elements to be close at hand. The stars above us, the land around us, the earth beneath us. We loved wide open spaces.

The musty smell of decay clung to this place. And that was another thing we were unfamiliar with. Decay. Magic never died, even if bodies did. If an Infernarus’s remains were left alone for long enough, the magic trapped beneath their skin would burn through the body, escaping outwards and converting flesh to ash as it did so. I’d seen it happen often enough in the years of the war. I didn’t know why Gandmaddox chose to live like this.

I summited the stairs, the attic door in front of me fitted with a half a dozen locks. I knew what I’d find behind it.

I would curse Clades a little more by using my power to break in, and he wouldn’t agree with this. Ignoring a pang of guilt, I reached for the door and used a pulse of magic to tumble the locks. The door creaked open, and beyond it . . .

Shelves and shelves of bottled curses and tinctures, hexes and elixirs. Some of them glowed luminous colors, others looked like sludge, and some still moved and pulsed inside their containers.

The rows that weren’t taken up by Grandmaddox’s concoctions were filled with raw ingredients. Hair, fingers, eyes, teeth, shriveled, desiccated things. The room reeked of death.

Death and power. The hair on my arms rose as I moved deeper inside, my fingers trailing over some of the glass jars, reading the labels. Affection, friendship, lust, infatuation—all spells to evoke feelings in the natives. I remember how scandalized I’d been the first time I heard of them; they were so blatantly deceitful, and Infernari weren’t deceitful creatures.

Except when they wore the face of another . . .

I pressed my lips together, my hand dropping away from the containers.

This room was full of bastardized magic, begotten from Infernari power and human technology. Some of it taboo, which was partly why Grandmaddox lived here rather than Abyssos.

She lives here because she is half human, and the primus hates humans.

I rubbed my temples, my head beginning to pound. That human brew was souring inside me. I was almost tempted to scour the room for something that could nullify the effects of the comedown from the alcohol, just so I wouldn’t have to use more magic.

My eyes returned to the racks of potions. Of course, the most important ones Grandmaddox kept locked up in her curio cabinet. It rested at the far end of the room, the bottles within it practically vibrating from the spells they contained.

Retributor. Death curse. Memory suppressor. Forget-Me-Not.
Rememory
.

Gotcha
.

I reached inside and grabbed the vial of rememory, the opaque, white liquid sloshing inside. I uncorked the lid and ran it under my nose. I winced as the magic stung my nostrils. Powerful. I would only need a drop or two.

I brought the glass to my lips and tilted it up. Just a sip. That’s all I needed.

I didn’t mean to swallow a whole mouthful of it, enough to go noticed; I was still blundering from the alcohol.

I almost spat it back out, but that too would go noticed. So I forced myself to swallow the entire mouthful of rememory, cringing against the sickly sweet taste of the tincture.

I could feel the magic slipping down my throat, coating my stomach. Hastily, I corked the vial and put it back into the cabinet, my hands beginning to shake.

A thin sheen of sweat broke out along my skin.

Drank too much.

I backed away from the cabinet, my insides beginning to feel tingly, like the sensation of falling. Out of nowhere, my stomach convulsed. I stifled a gasp at the painful contraction. My stomach convulsed again, this time more powerful than before.

I staggered, then fell to my knees, a hand pressed to my belly, and I moaned softly.

I could feel the magic working, spreading. Slithering into my veins and circulating through my body until the entire thing was abuzz with the spell.

As quickly as it circulated, the magic moved upward, into my head. I moaned again as tendril after tendril snaked up my spinal column. My headache throbbed, each pulse of my heart making the pain flare brighter. I bowed my body until my forehead touched the floor, taking on a prayer’s pose.

There was nothing graceful about this magic. Whatever shields blocked my memories of the portals, they’d become embedded in my mind, the same way foliage overtook ruins. And this potion, it ripped away the shields violently.

I forced a fist into my mouth, biting down my own flesh to muffle my screams. My skin split beneath my teeth, and I tasted the metallic tang of my blood.

One by one the portals presented themselves. One sat at the juncture of two ancient rivers. Another lay in the catacombs beneath a city.

The second to last portal was the one I was looking for.

An enormous mountain rose high above the rest, purple and snowcapped. Near its base it was covered with dense plant life. I could practically feel the thick humidity of the place clinging to my skin. It was so similar to our capital. To home.

At the foot of this mountain were caves. Ancient caves with whispering walls and something that shouldn’t belong. A gateway to an entirely different world.

The portal.

This one will take you home.

I opened my eyes, not realizing I’d closed them in the first place. I could sense even from here the tug of the portal, like a lodestone trying to lure me closer. I knew how to get back.

I knew how to get
back
. I let that realization work its way through the pain. Up until this moment a part of me believed I would never make my way home.

My bargain with Asher was back on.

I began to rise, but the grip of the potion hadn’t loosened. Another wave of agony washed through me as another shield was ripped away. My mind recalled portals that no longer existed—it recalled and
mourned
for them. Weaving a portal took time. Lots and lots of time. Time and magic. It was almost a living thing itself.

And so many of them had been destroyed.

But it was more than just the portals that resurfaced from my shielded memory. Another lost memory came to me. A horrible memory, one that was both an end and a beginning.

I was falling back, back into it . . .

I ran through the encampment, my battle leathers straining with the movement, my ivory necklaces shivering as the pointed beads rubbed against one another, my hair snapping behind me.

The world around me was on fire. I screamed as the web of lives I held inside me shrank and shrank, soul after soul snuffing out. Death felt worse than I imagined. It felt like I was being unmade piece by piece.

Everywhere bloody, slaughtered bodies lay. Screams and smoke and magic released from the dead—it all filled the air. It was terrible and beautiful, and it was killing me from the inside out.

I sprinted toward where I last saw my mother and father—my blood parents. They’d been in their tent, eating breakfast.

Please don’t be in there.

An arrow sliced through my shoulder, and I released an agonized cry.

I ran on, using my magic to force the arrow out of the wound, then using more magic to patch the skin up. There were so many mortally wounded Infernari—there was no need for temperance when it came to spending my powers now.

Then I saw it.

In the distance, through the burning haze, I could make out the top of my parent’s tent. Flames enveloped the faded fabric, letting off great plumes of smoke. Inside I could hear howling shrieks.