Sin Undone

Slowly, the tension drained out of Con’s muscles, and he let out a long, shuddering breath. “How did you end up there?” “The asshole sold me to Detharu—the assassin master I took over for after Idess killed him.” “If Idess made the kill, why isn’t she in charge of the assassin den?”


Sin squirmed a little before she caught it and forced herself to stillness. “Idess wasn’t cut out for the job, so I volunteered.”

“But did you want it?”

She wiggled her fingers, feeling the weight of the ring. Felt heavier than usual. “It’s a great gig for someone like me.”

She really hadn’t answered the question, but Con didn’t call her on it. “So how did you meet up with Lore again?” “He joined up with Deth twenty years later. And it was my fault.” She’d gotten herself into some serious trouble with Deth and had been desperate enough to seek Lore out. Bitterness had built up over the years, and in a lot of ways, she’d hoped he’d turn her down, just to give her another reason to hate him for leaving her.

But he’d been willing to do anything to make his abandonment up to her, and he’d agreed to help find a way out of her contract with Deth. Unfortunately, there hadn’t been a way, and he’d signed on as an assassin in order to save her life.

“I’d lost my temper and killed one of Deth’s buddies. He was going to sell me to a blood gallery—”

“A what?” Con snarled, and she swore she heard the slide of his fangs shooting out of his gums. “You sound like you’re familiar with the galleries.”

“You could say that,” he muttered. “I’ve done a lot of stupid shit in my life.”

And frequenting a place where drugs were available to anyone who was willing to give up their blood—and bodies—to feeders like vamps, would be pretty stupid, in Sin’s opinion. She’d been to a few while hunting targets, and while most had standards and strict rules, like how you couldn’t kill the junkies, they were still little more than underground cesspools. And in the really bad ones, where the druggies weren’t exactly volunteers, the victims rarely survived more than a couple of days at the hands—and claws—of the vampires and demons who used them.

“Well, obviously, I didn’t get sold. Lore signed up with Deth to save me.”

“He must love you a lot to have done that.”

“He felt guilty for leaving me the way he had. And you know what’s so shitty about the whole thing?” She said that as if all of it hadn’t been one big, stinky pile of ghastbat guano. “At first, I was just happy that since he was tied to Deth, he couldn’t leave me again.” Shame welled up like acid in her throat, and she curled in on herself—as much as Con would let her, anyway. “They always leave, Con. Always.”

Sin Undone





Fourteen


The damned Harrowgate wouldn’t open. Which meant a human was nearby and Lore would have to wait until the human—or humans—left the area. Great. He was going to be late for breakfast with Idess at her favorite Italian restaurant.

He tapped his boot on the stone floor. Stared at the walls, which were pulsing with crude neon outlines of the street map of Rome. There were three Harrowgates in the area, but this was not only the closest to the cafe, but it was also the only one that was aboveground. He might be forced to get out in one of the sewer Harrowgates and hoof it back in this direction.

Shit. He was just about to tap one of the other Harrowgate symbols when the gate shimmered and opened into an alley. He stepped out quickly—the stupid things had been known to solidify and chop people’s limbs off. Or worse, slice people in half.

It was late morning in Italy’s capital, and as Lore emerged from between the buildings and onto the shop-lined sidewalk in the Trastevere district, the scent of coffee and baked goods tickled his nostrils and made his stomach growl. Every time he ate here with Idess, he felt like a damned king. Before they’d met, he’d been content with bologna sandwiches and cheap fast food. His angel had introduced him to the finer things in life, and he was rapidly becoming spoiled.

He strode up the walk, weaving among crowds of people… and then he stopped. His scalp tingled and his adrenaline kicked in, and something definitely wasn’t right. He’d spent thirty years as an assassin, and he had one hell of a sixth sense and self-preservation instinct, and his oh-fuck meter was spiking off the charts.