Page 21 of Sin

And if I happened to linger just long enough to memorize the site and her username, well... that was just a matter of security, wasn’t it?

Someone needed to make sure she followed the rules.

Chapter

Six

CHAOS

The sight of Sin’s back as he stormed into his bedroom greeted me as I rounded the corner in search of Grim. Before I had the chance to utter a single word, the incubus slammed the door behind him. Looks like Red had him wound up already.

I chuckled to myself as I continued past his room, shaking my head as the distorted scream of Sin’s guitar filtered down the hall. He was more affected by her than I thought he’d be. He’d been so confident earlier, but she’d obviously thrown him for a loop. Served him right.

For as long as I’d known him, Sinclair had been annoyingly arrogant. Anything that took him down a peg or two was a win in my book. Not that I was about to tellherthat. My plan was to stay as far away from Lilith’s ward as possible. Though I supposed she was technically our ward now. And I had to... breed her. Unless Sin was successful first.

Fucking Grim. This was all his fault. And in typical fashion, after tossing us headfirst into this disaster, he fucked off and left the rest of us to deal with the fallout.

He wasn’t going to run from this. I wouldn’t fucking let him.

“Grim!” I bellowed as I barged into his office, the door swinging so hard the knob embedded into the plaster wall. “Grimsby! I know you’re in there.”

As expected, I found the avatar of Death behind his desk. The only indication I’d startled him was a slight flinch of his eyes before he quickly clicked something on his keyboard. For Grim, that was the equivalent of a teenage boy caught jerking off to his daddy’s porn.

“What are you doing?” I asked, immediately closing the distance between us.

“Nothing you should be concerned about.”

“Really?” I mused, peeking around the desk at his computer screen. His screensaver was up, the 3D line art swirling around and changing colors. “You won’t mind if I do this then,” I added, shooting forward and clicking the button that would bring his desktop to life.

“Motherfucker,” Grim growled, settling back in his chair in what could only be called defeat as the surveillance feed we’d installed in Merri’s room came up.

“Well, well, well. Espionage is supposed to be my forte. I didn’t expect Death to be so conniving. Usually you just waltz in and take what you want.”

He cut a deadly glare my way and scoffed. “Espionage? Spare me. You barge in like a bull in a china shop. There’s a reason your name is Chaos.”

“I’m strategic when I need to be. Brute force usually gets the job done.”

“Mmm,” he hummed noncommittally, telling me without using words that he thought I was full of shit.

Chaos hadn’t always been my name, though it was as appropriate as my first. A long time ago, I’d been known as Ariston. My mother had visited a seer prior to my birth. She’d been told that I was destined for greatness and that I required aname deserving of my future legacy. I couldn’t help but wonder, knowing how things played out, how much of my name ended up being a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because surely one whose name meant ‘the best’ had placed a target on their back not only for their enemies, but the gods as well.

Not that any of it mattered. I’d set that life aside when I’d taken up the horseman’s mantle. As had Sin when his time came centuries later. Out of the four of us, only Grim and Malice were the originals, at least as far as I knew. We didn’t really talk about who or what came before. Those versions of ourselves were long gone. Dead and buried.

“She’s a pretty little thing, I’ll give her that,” Grim muttered. “Already giving them hell.”

“Pretty things have a way of getting people into trouble.”

“They aren’t the problem.”

“Oh?”

“It’s the ones who want to possess them.”

“Speaking of...” I drawled, settling myself on the corner of his desk with my arms folded across my chest. “What do you think he’s going to do when he finds out we’re hiding her?”

There was no need to say his name. There was only one ‘he’ I could be referring to.

“Nothing good.”