Sin Undone

Alarm clanged through Eidolon. “Do what?” He didn’t wait for Luc to answer, threw open the door, took three steps, and froze. “Hell’s fucking rings.” Shade rushed to Con’s bed, his arm glowing, and Eidolon fired up his gift as well. “What the fuck did you do, Luc?” “You can’t help him,” Luc said. “I broke his neck after I shoved the blade through his rib cage. I thought you knew.” Eidolon shook with demonic fury as he rounded on the paramedic, and he knew his eyes had gone red. “Why did he do this, and damn you, why’d you help him?” “He said something about breaking a bond with Sin and keeping her safe. I owed him—I owe all of you—for saving my life. For saving Kar and the baby. So he asked me to do this, and I did.” Luc’s voice caught, just a slight tremor most wouldn’t notice. “He made me swear to take his body to his clan within the hour.”


“Oh my God.” Every head snapped around to Sin, who stood in the doorway, hand over her mouth and horror in her eyes. “He’s not… He can’t be…” Lore caught her in his arms as she broke into a high, keening wail of grief that sliced into Eidolon’s heart like a scalpel blade. His connection with his purebred brothers had always been strong, but he’d never had the same physical link with Lore or Sin. But for the first time, he felt Sin. Felt her pain.

And when he glanced at his brothers, he saw that they felt it, too. “Con!” Sin screamed his name over and over. Her throat hurt and her eyes felt like they were going to pop out of her head from the pressure of her shrieks, but all that mattered was getting to him. She jerked out of Lore’s arms and ran to Con’s side, her foot slipping in blood that had pooled on the floor. “No, Con, no!”

Dazed, terrified, and desperate, she grabbed Lore’s hand. “Bring him back!” She mashed Lore’s hand onto Con’s thigh. It was still warm. There was a chance. There was! “Do it.”

“I can’t, Sin.” Lore gently peeled her fingers off his. “The blade… It’s your Gargantua-bone dagger.” Impossible. Her hand went automatically to the empty sheath at her thigh. Oh, God. That son of a bitch had lifted it off her somehow. Luc cleared his throat. “He made me use it. Said that way Lore couldn’t bring him back. Something about the dagger having magical properties that would thwart Lore’s gift.” Sin barely heard Luc’s explanation, barely heard anything but the silent screams in her ears. “You bastard!” She launched herself at Luc, but Shade caught her before she reached him. Still, the intent to harm Luc was there, and the Haven spell kicked in, making the writing on the walls pulse as pain ripped into her skull like claws shredding her brain. Agony blacked out her vision, and she hit the floor with a crack of kneecaps and a cry. Shade’s arms tightened around her. And then, through the pounding in her head, she sensed the others, Eidolon, Wraith, and Lore, ease onto the floor around her. Someone took her hand. Someone else palmed her shoulder. And then someone else… Wraith, she realized, tucked her head against his chest as her world shattered into a million pieces.

Sin Undone





Twenty-six


For a thousand years, Con dreaded the three nights of the full moon that turned him into a creature feared by humans and demons alike. It wasn’t that he’d hated being the creature, or even that he hated the agony that accompanied the transformation—it was that he’d despised the thirty seconds of vulnerability that came with each change.

Now, as he opened his eyes to stare at the dark sky and rising moon, he offered a silent hello, because night was now his new best friend, and daytime was his enemy unless the ritual was completed. Instinctively, he took a breath, even though he didn’t need to. He put his hand over his heart, even though he knew it wouldn’t beat.

A boot nudged his hip, and he shifted his head on the ceremonial pallet to look up at his childhood buddy, a wiry male whose hair was covered by a blue do-rag. “Hey.” Well, at least his voice still worked.

Aed grinned. “How’s it feel to be on your second life?”

Wincing at the stiffness in his muscles, Con sat up. “Feels like I wasted the first one.”

“Better make up for it with this one, ayech?” Aed’s accent was a blend of Scottish, Danish, and something else that made half of what he said sound like gibberish to Con, who, unlike his old friend, had spent enough time with humans in the modern world to cultivate an accent that didn’t sound like it came straight out of Beowulf.

“Yeah.” Con tested his new limbs, stretching as he sat on the wood and deer hide pallet, but he felt much the same as he had before he’d gone to the night. “Luc. The warg who brought me…” “He was given safe passage. He’s away.” Good. Man, that damned warg had not wanted to do as Con asked. Con had been forced to remind him that Luc owed him after the avalanche save, not to mention that Con had been there to help at the cabin, saving not only Luc but Kar and the baby, as well. Still, Luc hadn’t gone easily into it. His last words had been I hate you for this, you motherfucker.

Con winced at a sharp hunger pang in his stomach. “And you were given the honor of seeing to my birth.” A vampire birth. And one that was required to take place on dhampire ground. If Con hadn’t been brought back here before nightfall, his life would have ended for good. No second chances. Which was what had happened to his daughter centuries ago.