Page 34

Chapter

Thirty-One

MERRI

M y boots made a squishing sound as I walked along the path that bordered the chateau. The earth was weirdly cracked and dry in some places, while other areas were thick with what could only be described as muck. The grass, or what was left of it, was flattened and brown, creating an endless sea of bleck in every direction. And the trees... They were stick-like sentinels, their brittle branches naked except for a few silent birds.

This was no spring awakening. It was something else, both sinister and unnatural.

As I drew in a long breath, my lungs protested the hot, dry air, the sensation reminding me of holding a blow dryer in front of my face and trying to breathe. It stung and burned, my chest tightening as though refusing the air. This place shouldn’t feel like the desert. There was nothing remotely desert-like about it, especially not in the dead of winter. But here I was in nothing but a t-shirt and yoga pants, a bead of sweat running down the back of my neck as I wandered the property.

Out of all the catastrophes that had struck the earth since the start of this apocalypse, this was the first one that truly made me believe our days here were numbered. I could only imagine the havoc this fiery sky would create if it remained for much longer. I doubted it would be long before the oceans ran dry and it was no longer possible for us to do things like grow our own food or, you know, hydrate.

That thought sent panic buzzing through my veins. We’d all die slowly and painfully. And those of us creatures who were truly immortal would be destined for an existence of torture. The picture unfolding in my mind was absolutely terrifying.

As I rounded the corner, Christian came into view. He was standing on a small step stool near one of the windows while he ran his hand over the stone facade. Red liquid dripped from his palm, and I gasped as I realized he must be hurt.

“What are you doing? You’re bleeding!”

Christian spared me a glance over his shoulder. “I’m strengthening the wards, mademoiselle Merri. Nothing to worry about.”

I immediately felt foolish. Cheeks burning, I attempted to save face. “Oh, haha, right. I thought you might have cut yourself on a rusty nail or something. The last thing we need is you to get tetanus.”

He smiled at me, gentle as always. “It warms my heart to know you would worry about me. But do not trouble yourself. I am just fine.” He returned to what I assumed had to be delicate work, leaving the two of us in companionable silence.

I didn’t have much—okay, any—experience with wards. Unless you counted the ones that kept me hostage at Blackwood. What little I did know was the equivalent of vampires like blood. Are you ready for this chestnut? Witches created and maintained wards. The end. So as you can imagine, watching Christian work was the apocalyptic equivalent of Netflix.

I was riveted.

“What do you need the blood for?” I asked.

He cocked one brow and looked at me like I might’ve asked the dumbest question ever asked. “The magic.”

“Does any blood work or just yours?”

“Any blood will suffice, but mine is more powerful, and this ward requires a great deal of power.”

“And do you just swipe it all over? Like that stuff you can put on cars to make the rain bead up on it?”

I could tell Christian was trying not to laugh at me. “Non. It is quite precise work, actually. I must place my blood in key spots to keep the ward intact. Think of it like a web. Everywhere the strands intersect must be strengthened.”

This property was huge. That had to take ages.

He noticed my expression and chuckled. “It is a big job, but one I work on regularly. I have a schedule so that it is easy to maintain. What I am doing now is reinforcing the key wardlines. Specifically the ones that run parallel to the ley lines deep in the earth.”

He was officially speaking Greek as far as my comprehension went. “Sounds hard.”

Christian’s grin told me everything I needed to know. He might as well have patted my head and told me I was pretty.

“How long is it going to take you?”

“The better part of a week. Unfortunately for me, no one else on this property is capable enough to weave magic of this kind.”

“Not even Mal?”

“Not even him. Although don’t tell him I said that.”

“Don’t tell Mal what?”

Both of us turned to face Sin as he sauntered toward us from around the corner.

“Nothing,” I said with a cheeky grin.

“Oooh, keeping secrets, huh? Bet I know how to get you to talk,” he said with a suggestive lift of his brows. “What are you doing out here, anyway? It’s about as comfortable as a naked walk through the Sahara.”

“Know that for a fact do you?”

“I never say no to a dare,” he quipped with a flirty grin.

I left Christian’s side and closed the distance between me and Sin, giving him a light shove on the chest. “I wouldn’t know anything about naked desert walks, but I couldn’t stay indoors any longer. I spent a long time hiding in my room in Iniquity . The outside air is something I can’t give up. Not yet.”

His expression went soft and lost all of its playfulness. Well, shit. I hadn’t been looking for pity.

“Come on, I want to show you something. It isn’t outside because I’m not the biggest fan of hanging out in hell on earth, but I think you’ll like it.” He held out his hand for me and I took it without consciously deciding to.

Somewhere between my vow to keep my distance from these men and partnering with Chaos to feed Sin the other night, I’d completely given in. It was too hard to maintain walls between us when they were actively showing me that they cared about me and my well-being. Even if the only reason they cared was because of the accidental link I’d formed between us with my dreamwalks, it was still my catnip. As a person who’d spent so much of her life starved for affection, both physical and emotional, I had zero resistance against it.

His thumb rubbed the back of my hand as we walked. It was a simple gesture, but everything about it felt right. Fuck, my head was a jumbled mess of emotions. I wanted this kind of intimacy, and if I was being honest, I wanted it with him. With all four of them. Which meant I’d royally fucked up.

Christian might have woven a web to protect us all, but I’d trapped myself and the horsemen in one of my own making. One I hadn’t even realized I was creating.

I still couldn’t believe that I’d accidentally drifted into Chaos’s dream. Or that he knew about it. He’d all but said he wished I’d stayed there. But that had to be because he didn’t understand the danger my presence there posed to him.

“Hey,” Sin called softly, giving my hand a tug and pulling me out of my thoughts. “You okay?”

“Yeah, sorry. The apocalypse has been on my mind a lot.” I gestured to the bleak landscape around us. “It’s not as easy to ignore anymore.”

He tilted my face toward him and smiled at me before dropping a light kiss to my forehead. “Well, let’s see what we can do to get your mind off it, huh?”

Sin

Man, I hoped she liked what I’d set up for her. It was a gamble. This date thing. I’d never done something like this before, but I’d been studying romantic comedies for the last little while, and I learned that if you wanted to build something real with your girl, you had to make it about more than sex. I’d like both. Real and sex. It was fucking terrifying.

And not just because we weren’t supposed to keep her.

But that was future Sin’s problem. Right now, I was just focused on connecting with her in a way that made her hopefully want to fall into bed with me for no other reason than because she wanted to. Currently, the only way we ended up in Pound Town was when one or both of us needed to feed, but I wanted to be more than her go-to bangburger. I wanted to be her man. One of her men. Whatever.

Which meant I had to rely on more than my sexual prowess to get her to be with me. I had to woo her if I was going to become one of the men she wanted to keep. The fact that I even had to plot for something like that was absurd, but here we were. A little voice in my head crooned, That’s the difference between lust and caring about someone .

If Hades was right and the four of us were destined to be hers, that meant our connection had to be a lot stronger than Lilith had indicated. Anyone could be a sperm donor. Not just anyone can be what Hades suggested. And sure, maybe the four of us might be the only beings in existence that were equipped to face off against Lucifer, but that couldn’t be the only reason fate had thrown us in Merri’s path.

And we weren’t even going to talk about the fact that Merri was probably Famine’s daughter. I couldn’t touch that one just yet because all it did was make me more convinced that she was made for me. It definitely explained why I was so drawn to her when I hadn’t ever been drawn to anyone else. She was more like me than I’d known. Part horseperson, part sex demon. Aside from my counterpart, who had taken her succubus powers and warped them into something malicious, Merri was the only other person like me in existence. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

“What in the world did you do, Sin?” Merri asked, her voice dragging me from my maelstrom of thoughts.

“I thought we could have a little sip and dip.”

“A what?”

“You know, a date night. Where we sip”—I pointed to the champagne chilling in an icy bucket—“and dip.” This time I pointed to the two tabletop easels I’d found and the array of old painting supplies. When Merri didn’t immediately say anything, I rubbed at the back of my neck. “I did some research. It’s supposed to be pretty popular. But if you think it’s stupid?—”

“No. No, Sin, I don’t think it’s stupid. You set this up for me?”

“For us.”

The wonder on her face was reward enough. If she could just look at me like that all the time, I’d be happy. Wow, was this what dating felt like? I understood why people did it now.

“Where did you find this stuff?” she asked, moving over to the little stations I’d set up for us.

“Chaos’s room.”

She stumbled, turning around so fast the end of her ponytail whipped her in the face. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, didn’t he mention his recreational activity of choice? He said he found it meditative. He’s a big fan of that one dude. Mr. Rogers, no. That wasn’t it. The guy with the afro and the baby squirrel.”

“Bob Ross?”

I snapped my fingers and pointed at her. “That’s the one.”

“You’re telling me that Chaos, the horseman War, is a fan of Bob Ross.”

“Yeah, big time.”

Her eyes were as wide as saucers. “I... I have no words.”

I smirked. “You should see his face when you mention happy little trees.”

She beamed at me as she picked up a paintbrush. “So where do we start?”

Striding to the champagne, I picked up the bottle and popped the cork before pouring us each a glass. “First we sip.”

She took hers and clinked the crystal with mine, bringing the flute to her lips and taking a taste. “Oh, that’s really nice.”

“Don’t tell Mal. I found it in the back of his wine cellar, so I’m sure it’s some super rare snooty vintage.”

She giggled as she set her flute down. “What are we painting?”

“Each other.”

She stared at me for a second before laughing. “I think you’ve wildly overestimated my artistic abilities. You’re lucky if a stick figure comes out with the right number of limbs.”

Laughing, I took up my place across from her and began squirting each color of paint out onto the makeshift palettes I’d fashioned from two paper plates. “You’ll be fine.”

“I’m really more of a paint-by-numbers girl.”

“We’ll call it abstract. Feel free to embrace your Picasso era.”

She huffed out another laugh as I added some red and yellow to the plates. “Oh, I can pretty much promise that.”

“I’m sure whatever you come up with is going to be perfect, kitten.”

She shook her head at me, and I couldn’t help but notice that she hadn’t stopped smiling. Painting had totally been the right choice.

“So we just stare at each other and paint?”

I shot her my best smoldering look, which just made her giggle again.

“If you’re really worried this won’t work, we can always go to my backup plan.”

“And what’s that?”

“We can get naked, paint each other’s bodies, and roll around on a sheet.”

Desire flashed in her eyes—and in the air between us—but she pulled herself together before taking another sip from her glass. “Maybe next time.”

Oh, definitely next time.

I wanted a commemorative canvas. I’d mount it above my bed so I could look at what we’d made together whenever I wanted. And now my dick was hard. No. This wasn’t about sex. This was about romance.

We were wooing.

Woo-ing.

Not fucking.

Yet.

Nearly an hour later, we’d finished the bottle of champagne, and Merri was deep in concentration on her art. I’d completed my portrait ten minutes before but was perfectly content just watching her work. She had this adorable habit of sticking the tip of her tongue out every time she brought her brush back to the canvas.

“Let me see what you’ve got so far, kitten,” I murmured as I came around the table to sneak a peek.

She gasped and spun around, blocking the artwork with her body. “No! It’s not ready yet.”

“Oh, come on. I just want to have a look.”

I couldn’t resist touching her, so I slipped my fingers around her waist and tickled the sliver of skin exposed by her shirt. She squealed and squirmed in my arms, bringing us face-to-face.

“You have a little paint on your face,” I murmured.

“I do not!”

“Do too. Riiiight there.” Before she could move, I swiped my index finger in what was left of her green paint and drew a line down her cheek.

“Sin!” she protested with a laugh.

I couldn’t help myself. She was so fucking beautiful, and all that squirming she was doing had her rubbing up against me. I leaned down and kissed her until she was still and breathless.

Then, glancing over her head, I said, “Looks good. Best stick figure I’ve ever seen.”

She huffed and shoved me back, but she was smiling.

As I returned to my place, I began humming a melody I couldn’t get out of my head. It had been haunting me the past couple weeks. This happened sometimes; a song would come to me in fragments, sometimes just a few chords or maybe only some lyrics. I knew better than to chase it too hard. It would come to me when it was ready.

I didn’t clock the change in Merri until I was back at my station. She’d gone pale, her eyes locked on to me, fingers clenched so hard around her brush they’d turned white. “Wh-where’d you hear that?” she asked.

“Hear what? Oh, the melody?” I shrugged. “It’s just something that’s been stuck in my head. I think it might be the beginning of a new song.”

“Oh. Uh, okay.” She seemed flustered as she hastily put her brushes away and glanced at the watch she wasn’t wearing. “I have to go. I’m late for a session with Chaos. This was nice. Thank you.”

Before I could protest, she rushed out of the room and left me with the taste of her lie in the air. I knew she didn’t have any sessions this afternoon because I’d checked with both Chaos and Malice before planning my surprise.

So what the fuck was that about?