Season of Sin Read online

  “What’s for dinner?” I ask.

  “Pizza.”

  “Again?”

  “Hey. Layre is making a special trip to Italy for this.”

  “What? Italy?”

  “Where do you think he got the pizza from that you just ate?”

  “Italy… the country?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wait,” I say. “Am I in Italy?”

  “No, babe. You’re not that far from where you… uh…”

  “Where I died.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I want to know more about that,” I say.

  “In time,” Darick says. “And not until the four of us are together.”

  “I don’t like this,” I say.

  “You should, babe.”

  “Why?”

  Darick leans down and I think for a second he’s going to kiss me. The strange thing is, I don’t try and stop him. His hands touch my hips and a tingling feeling spreads through my body.

  “We couldn’t hurt you if we tried,” he whispers. “The power shift with you, babe, is nothing we’ve ever experienced.”

  I look into his super dark brown eyes and I slowly reach up to touch his face. My fingertips feel the scruff of his facial hair. He opens his mouth just enough to remind me he has fangs.

  My lips begin to part.

  It’s like I’m two people or something. I’m standing there, knowing who Darick is. Yet there’s another version of myself who’s desperate to kiss him.

  Kiss him?

  I want more than that.

  My body aches in places that would make my heart race if I had one.

  There’s a burning between myself and Darick. Just as it reaches a boiling point, Kyran is suddenly there, to my left. I turn my head and see the green pouring from him eyes. That soft lavender smell hits me and I feel soothed and weak. But the sadness pouring from him draws me to him.

  “No, babe,” Darick says and touches my right arm.

  He gives a little tug.

  Kyran’s hand grabs my left arm.

  The vampires are holding me. My knees tremble. My body aches. I can’t believe I’m dead, yet I can feel the way I feel. I can’t remember anything about my death, but as I look between the two seven foot giant hunks, I’m almost thankful I’m dead. It feels wrong, but having Darick and Kyran touching me feels right.

  At the same time, they both open their mouths. Their fangs are beautifully different. It’s so interesting to me because I always read that vampires are being almost cliché when it came to fangs. But not these guys. Their fangs are as unique as their eyes. It makes them sexier. It makes me crazier for them.

  They both pull at me. My body starts to move left to right as they silently wrestle for me. I’m not used to this attention. I don’t know what it’s like or what to do about it. So I just stand there, my gaze shifting left to right, over and over.

  My bottom lip starts to quiver as a deep pulsing begins in my core. My toes curl and I’m fighting the urge to move my hips. I have this sudden need to… thrust.

  I swallow hard.

  “Yes, babe,” Darick whispers. “You don’t have to choose. Ever.”“We share,” Kyran whispers. “And there’s plenty of you to go around.”

  “What about Seth and Layre?” I manage to ask with what feels like my last breath.

  Duh, Astrid, you’re dead… there is no more last breath for you. You already had that.

  “What about them?” Darick asks. “We go first. They come back and go second.”

  “I’ll carry you to your bed,” Kyran says. “So you can rest and understand what’s happened.”

  I want them both.

  No.

  I want all four.

  My mind flashes with images.

  In the bedroom. In the bed. The four of them, darting all around the bed, trails of color - red, blue, green, brown - as I feel their hands against my body. Touching everywhere on me. Fingers curling between my legs, flirting with my desire. A mouth to my chest. A mouth to my neck, fangs gently pressing, threatening to seek out the blood I have that means so much to them. The tip of a tongue sliding down my stomach. My body overwhelmed, unable to control myself or figure out where to start.

  “Not yet,” I yell and pull my arms from Darick and Kyran’s grip.

  I jump back and come back to reality.

  I look at my arms and see a soft green light glowing on my left arm. A soft brown light glowing on my right arm. I feel paralyzed as the colors seep into the sleeves of my hoodie and into my skin.

  They both step toward me and I put my hands out. They instantly stop. Their big, hard bodies stiffen and they look as though they’re in pain.

  “She’s not ready yet,” Darick says. “It’s driving me fucking crazy.”

  “It makes it worth more,” Kyran says. “Pain is just part of the process.”

  I lower my hands and feel tired.

  Whatever power I have, it’s draining.

  I look at Kyran. “Kiss me.”

  There’s not even enough time for half a second to go by before Kyran is right there, at me, leaning over, his lips pressed against mine. I’m blanketed by the smell of his skin, a sense of rebirth and newness, a hint of destruction.

  The kiss is quick and I breathe him in, stumbling back with a fresh sense of power.

  I crash into something - someone - and I spin around to find Darick standing there. His rough smell batters my nostrils and sends signals from deep within my body. Before I know what I’m doing, I reach up and grab the back of his neck.

  His lips press to mine. There’s a rich, almost smoky taste to his mouth and I want more. I want the two of them together, mixed together somehow.

  The resurgence that goes through me is intense, like I’m being brought back to life.

  I stop the kiss and stare into Darick’s eyes. “Can I come back to life?”

  “Not telling, babe,” he whispers. “But there are plenty of rules you need to learn on this side of life, but one thing stands true. Once you’re here, you don’t ever go back.”

  2.

  Darick’s words are still floating through my head as he leads the way from the dining room. Kyran has gone back to his position, standing in the doorway, arms crossed, guarding it, I guess. There is still no sign of Seth and Layre.

  We exit into a hallway that’s wide, tall, the walls black with a gold trim. It looks endless, but then again, everything in this house looks endless. I feel like I’ve fallen into a book and I’m dreaming. Except I can feel everything around me. I can sense everything. I just don’t have a heartbeat. Maybe I don’t even have a heart.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “I’m going to show you some truth.”

  “My death?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said so. You’re quite sought after.”

  “Because of my blood, right?”

  “Among other things,” Darick says. He looks at me and grins.

  I blush. I don’t mean to, but he’s so big and tough. And the way he looks at me makes me instantly… in the mood.

  We turn left and enter a massive room. There are wood carvings on the walls. It’s a glorified hallway, but this is like nothing I’ve seen before.

  I pause and look at the first carving. It’s of a vampire on bended knee, holding the face of a screaming man, his neck exposed with two giant holes from the puncture wounds of the fangs. The vampire has its head back, blood dripping.

  It makes me shudder and I step to the side, bumping into Darick.

  “What is this?” I whisper.

  “Our history,” Darick says. “That right there was part of our own war.”

  “Against humans?”

  “Hunters, babe.”

  “What are they?”

  Darick slips a hand to my waist. He whispers, “Hold tight and don’t make too much noise.”

  “Why?”

  He pushes me toward the wood carvin
g on the wall. I let out a yell and know there’s no way I can stop myself from crashing into the wall. I see the jagged edges of the beautifully crafted wood. The fangs of the vampire look so real. The terror on the face of the man being attacked is just as real. For a second I can hear… screaming…

  I shut my eyes and brace myself to hit the wall.

  But I just keep falling forward. Stumbling. Tripping.

  Hands wrap around my waist.

  “Easy, babe, we’re here,” Darick’s voice says.

  I open my eyes and gasp.

  We’re no longer in the hallway with the wood carvings on the wall.

  Instead, we’re in…

  There’s a blood curdling scream.

  I turn to the right and see that the wood carving is now alive. Or better yet, we entered the wood carving.

  There’s a giant vampire, dressed in all black, on one knee, head back, a man in his grasp, screaming in pain. Blood squirts from the open wound on his neck. The vampire slams his mouth to the man’s neck again with a squishing and crunching sound. The vampire growls and stands, holding the man like a dog with a rawhide. He snaps his head left to right and there’s a nerve pinching pop sound.

  The man suddenly goes limp.

  “He’s dead,” I whisper.

  “Yes,” Darick says.

  The vampire drops the man and side steps. He crouches and lifts a brown leather bag and begins to go through it.

  “There have always been hunters after us,” Darick says. “They sometimes work together, sometimes work alone. They used to work to stop us. There was a preconceived notion that we were a terrible creature. That our existence was to end life in this world. That it was the Devil himself who created the first vampire to walk the world and undo the work God had done. These people were the same ones who decided to burn women alive because they thought they were witches.”

  “They weren’t witches though…”

  Darick laughs. “Babe, any half smart witch would know how to escape that.”

  “Oh.”

  So witches are real too?

  Something inside me told me I’d find out soon enough.

  “Throughout time, there were two things all men wanted.”

  “Sex and beer,” I say.

  “That’s what I want,” Darick says. He points to the vampire, who has now dropped the bag and holds a folded piece of paper in his hand. He opens it and smiles, blood still dripping from his mouth. “What all men want is power and life. Take kings… emperors… rulers… any leader. Once they have that power, they must protect it.” The vampire closes his hand around the paper and turns, his black figure somehow sucking into itself, turning him into a black shape that explodes and is gone. Darick walks me toward the man on the ground. His neck is twisted, broken, limp. “Look at him, babe. Desperate for our blood. Willing to give his life for the chance at our life.”

  “Won’t he turn though?” I ask. “Since he was bitten?”

  “It doesn’t work that way. We’re not some Halloween horror story.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Back to my story. The rulers of the world knew that just by being in power didn’t mean having power. They could always be killed. That was the one thing hanging over their heads. So they began to employ hunters to find us. Capture us. Take our blood and create something that could make them live forever.”

  “Hunters,” I whisper.

  “Yes. Hunters. Come here, babe, I want to show you something else.”

  Darick pulls me close to him and quickly turns. I feel my entire body spin and we’re back in the house in the hallway with the wood carvings. I quickly look and see the carving just as it was before we entered it. The scene frozen in time.

  I have so many questions, but before I can ask, Darick walks me a little further down the hall. He stops and points to another carving.

  It’s of a woman in a dress. Dancing with a man. Her arm outstretched, her dress flailing behind her. Her hair flying out behind her too. The man has such a well-defined face, even in a wood carving. There are several figures in the background of it, but the detail isn’t the same.

  “This one?” I ask.

  “Yeah.”

  I close my eyes. “Okay, push me.”

  Darick’s hand touches my waist and I feel his breath against my ear. “Why would I push you?”

  I open my eyes to remind him of what he did with the first wood carving, but I’m speechless.

  We’re standing in the middle of a ball.

  There’s classical music playing all around us, people slowly dancing, all moving with a sense of unison.

  I see the man and woman from the carving.

  She’s young and beautiful, creamy skin, blue eyes, laughing as she dances with the man across from her. He’s tall, wearing a black suit, black hair, everything about him perfect.

  “It was always a battle,” Darick says. “And it eventually became explosive. Hunters against us. Our own kind against us.”

  “Why?”

  “Keep your enemies close, babe,” he whispers.

  The woman is spun away from the man and he lets go of her. She’s ready to fall and he makes a dashing move, defining time and space like the way Seth did around me. He catches the woman and lowers his mouth to hers, kissing her.

  “Of course, while we are creatures of death, we still have weaknesses,” Darick says. “Like this…”

  The man breaks the kiss and ushers the woman away from the crowd into another room.

  Darick and I follow. A man backs up and bumps into me, only I don’t feel anything. It’s like I’m a ghost and just walk through him with ease. It makes me shiver.

  We’re in a slightly darkened room as the man and woman begin to kiss wildly. I know right where this is going as the man turns and pins the woman against the wall. He runs a hand up her leg and lifts her dress. She reaches down between his legs to open his pants.

  “What are we doing?” I whisper.

  “Make you uneasy, babe?” Darick asks. “Because you want it so bad? We can reenact this. As it’s happening. See who screams louder… you or her…”

  I feel my knees tremble.

  I like the idea.

  I really like the idea.

  I catch myself biting my bottom lip and turning, considering it.

  “Watch, babe,” Darick says.

  I look and see the man put his head back. Fangs show as he presses his body against hers.

  “Weakness,” Darick whispers.

  The woman flashes her wrist and she’s holding a wooden object. She lifts her knee, hitting the vampire between his legs. He steps back and the woman brings her two hands together and drives the wooden object into the vampire’s chest.

  There’s an explosion of darkness and Darick drops to one knee, his head lowered.

  I have no idea what’s happening… but I have the sudden urge to cry.

  And I want to kill the woman.

  3.

  I can’t kill the woman because this isn’t my reality.

  Darick rises back up, a look of anger on his face. “This is what it’s become. There was nobody left to trust, not even each other.”

  The woman is on her knees, holding a small glass vial. She stabs the vampire’s neck and fills the vial with blood. She only gets that one full before the vampire disappears. He just fades into nothing, leaving behind a faint charred outline on the floor.

  The woman stands and caps the vial. She shakes it and smiles.

  “That bitch,” I say.

  “Tell me about it,” Darick says. “Beautiful and deadly. I wonder who that sounds like.”

  He nudges at me and it throws me two feet to the right.

  “Sorry,” he says.

  I’m not worried about it. I can’t stop looking at the woman. The bitch that killed a vampire to take its blood.

  She looks around, obviously not able to see us. She steps toward me and gets close enough that I can hit her. I swing my hand and see it hit her face
. But my hand goes through her face and for a quick second she looks like a smudged painting.

  “You can’t touch her,” Darick says.

  “Why not?”

  “She’s here. You’re not.”

  “I am here,” I say.

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “I don’t get any of this,” I say.

  The woman pauses and looks around again. She’s trying to find her way out.

  “Come here,” Darick says.

  I walk with him and he takes me through a few doors and we’re outside. It’s a cool night, the smell of autumn in the air. It smells… like him.

  “I’m showing you this for a reason,” he says.

  “What’s that?”

  “To show you what it has been like. We’re a violent creature by nature and by time. We can control what we need to, only when we need to. It got to a point with the blood and the hunters that we stopped trusting each other. Take the needs of a man away and he goes insane. There’s been a story of blood that’s so rare and so pure and so evil that it was said that at one time in existence, God and the Devil were friends. And they once took a blood oath together. They cut the tips of their immortal fingers and pressed them together. A single droplet of blood fell to the ground. That droplet is the blood. The blood… your blood, Astrid.”

  “What? My blood? How?”

  Darick smirks and nods to have me turn.

  I look over my shoulder and see the door open. Out comes the woman who killed the vampire. She smiles at her freedom and lifts the vial and shakes it.

  She starts to jog and Darick steps toward her. I wonder if he’s going to attack her, but he doesn’t. Instead, he plucks the vial out of her hand and shows it to me.

  “How come you can…”

  “I didn’t touch her,” he says. “I touched this. Here, take it. It’s yours. My gift to you.”

  I take the vial and it’s cold. Icy cold. Like I’m holding an ice cube.

  “What about her?” I ask. “If she took this… and you took it… I don’t…”

  Darick slips an arm around me. “Don’t worry, babe. Whether she took it or not, she wasn’t destined to get far.”

  We walk to the door and he opens it.

  I glance back just in time to see three black shadows appear and dart toward the woman. She’s like a white rabbit to three giant hawks flying, looking for a meal.