Page 45 of Vampire Sins
He struggled to his feet, his perfect abs flexing as he stood and his midnight hair draping attractively over his forehead. He flashed me a grin as he recovered from the worst of the blow. “You were always full of surprises.” He sighed and removed his hands, revealing his cock no worse for wear that stood at full attention.
It took all of my willpower not to admire him. “Right, and I’m also full of thoughts of my mates screaming in my head right now.” It wasn’t that I could actually hear them, but in particular I couldfeelLuke’s rage, and now that I knew that was his cardinal sin, it made me crack a smile.
Derek gave me a raised brow, but instead of questioning me, his gaze fell to my runes that were glowing so hot they were visible through the sheer fabric of my lingerie. “Ah, well, I haven’t seen a curse like that in a very long time.” He sighed and adjusted his cock and pushed away a demon-woman who tried to stroke him. “Come on, then, succubus. I might be damned for eternity, but a mark like that means you have a chance at salvation. I won’t begrudge you that.” He waved me on as he approached the stairs. He snapped his fingers and black leather wrapped around his waist, forming the perfect pair of leather pants that made his ass look amazing. He paused and grinned over a muscled shoulder. “You going to gawk at me or are we going to go meet this witch of yours?”
Sarah broke from the shock first and curled her fingers into fists before she stormed past the Incubus King. Vikki trotted after her.
Right then. Off to the final layer of hell and whatever damnation waited for me there.
Hell's a Witch
Sonya
I followedDerek into the pit, which is exactly where I imagined someone like him would end up if he ever died. I never in a million years would have thought I’d willingly follow him.
Sarah and Vikki held onto each other as they slipped into the bright flames of the lowest level of hell. Derek, Vikki, and Sarah were my unresolved sins and they all played their part. Derek, his cock still rigid in his unseemly leather pants, took the lead and fearlessly walked through the flames. Vikki looked back at me, her eyes so dark they looked black, an endless void that represented her sin as a siren, forever consumed by her pain making her want to stand still and wallow in it. Sarah tugged her along, only giving me one dismissive glance. She resented me, her pride still biting at her heart that I’d required other lovers to survive. She’d never forgive me for that.
I stopped on the last step on the staircase to hell and paused before the flames as I considered that. Forgiveness. That felt like it was important.
“Sonya?” a voice called me from beyond the flames and jolted me from my thoughts.
My eyes went wide and my breath caught in my throat. I scrambled into the wavering heat, because that voice had haunted my dreams all my life.
My mother.
I found her trapped in the worst of the flames with chains binding her wrists. Sarah was already at her side trying to free her, but hissed when the chains burned her. Vikki took a step back and called for Sarah to stop, that it was too dangerous. The way Sarah looked at me told me she knew what I was going through and she wanted to help. Panic colored her features and sweat gathered at her brow because she recognized the woman who looked so much like me right away. Long blonde hair, even if it was stuck to her face, framed her exquisite features. Pride swelled in my chest, an appropriate sin that I didn’t deny myself.
“Mother!” I shrieked, but a witch’s cackles kept me rooted to the ground.
The witch from my nightmares stepped through the flames and shadows swirled around her body like snakes, cutting through the bright red columns with ease. “Well, look at you, child. I underestimated you.” Her dark eyes narrowed with malice and reflected the inferno that seemed to rage even harder around us. “It’s time to end this.”
Derek moved first. He’d been hiding in the flames, as if waiting for the evil he sensed to show itself. I never imagined that he loved me, or even really cared for me, but he launched for the witch and wrapped his fingers around her throat. “You don’t belong here,” he growled as he squeezed.
The witch’s eyes bulged, but she flicked her wrist and the shadows sent Derek catapulting off of her. Embers flung into the air when he landed onto flames. They didn’t consume him, though, only licked around his pants that wouldn’t burn. He struggled to his feet and adjusted himself again, giving us a wicked smirk. Shadows coiled a line in front of him and barred his path.
“You’ll get your turn,” the witch promised with a sneer, then sent more shadows going after my mother.
Hearing her scream tore my heart into a thousand tiny pieces. I didn’t care if the fires around her would burn me. I reached for her anyway, pushing Sarah and Vikki out of the way, and yanked on the chains. Pain shot up my arms, but I drew on the power of my runes, of my bondmates whose souls rested inside me, who would die for me if I asked for it. I had power over sin—four sins, at least, and that was a majority. It gave me enough strength to fend off the worst of the burn and unlatch the heavy buckles around my mother’s wrists even as the witch’s shadows writhed around us, blocking off Sarah and Vikki from any hope to assist me.
The witch shrieked with rage. “How can you break hell’s chains? You don’t possess the power of shadow!”
No, I didn’t, and my arms instantly sagged at my sides as invisible needles punished me for breaking the witch’s spell.
My mother wrapped her arms around me and it all felt so surreal. How could she be here, in the bottom of hell, trapped by a witch? How had she been here all this time?
“Daughter,” she urged until she pulled away and I met her gaze. The power of hell bled through her eyes with ruby brilliance, making her look even more breathtaking. She was like me. She was only strengthened here… the mother of the Queen of the Damned. “We don’t have much time,” she told me as she rubbed my arms, urging sensation back into them.
My vision blurred as tears threatened to overflow onto my cheeks. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. Probably the last time I’d seen my mother. “Time?” I echoed. We’d been robbed of time. I’d been denied a life with a mother and she’d been suffering down here all for what? To entertain a vile witch who’d tried to find a loophole to avoid hell? Tough luck. I gritted my teeth together as feeling returned to my fingers and I made a fist. My gaze snapped to the witch who’d been busy chanting some new malicious spell to hit us with. “I need to kill her.”
“No,” my mother said and shook me so violently that my teeth clacked. “Hell doesn’t work like that. If you disable her body, she’ll just rise up again. You must defeat her the same way you have mastered your sins.” She glanced down at my runes. Four of them burned hot. The three outliers had already begun to dim and fade. I was never meant to master them all. “Four,” she murmured. “Four is enough.”
I had to use my sins to my advantage. The most prominent of all burned through me and I recognized Luke’s raw rage that made my chest expand, made an echo of wings ghost at my back. It should have frightened me to feel his power so thoroughly, but I felt his sin. I’d helped him overcome his anger, not destroy it, but use it for good. There was such a thing as righteous anger, I realized, and it empowered me instead of bringing me down. When painful slits sliced down my back, I buckled over with a cry.
“Yes,” my mother cried. “You’re doing it! Keep going!”
This was what she’d meant by mastering my sins. Each man’s soul inside of me would feed me his power. Angel wings sprouted from my back and even in hell, a coolness swept across the fresh appendages as they spread out into the open. Tingles ran through my body and new nerves flared to life.
I staggered past my mother, temporarily off-balance by my new wings, and approached the witch whose chants had only grown more frantic as her eyes bugged out when she saw me. I grinned, because a fucking Witch of the Shadow Coven was scared ofme.A witch that had cursed me as a child, doomed my mother to twenty years of imprisonment in hell, and was about to become my bitch. This was going to be fun.
