Sin Undone

  “I have an idea.” Sin broke away from him before he could stop her. A couple of males started to give chase, their instinctive prey drives activating at the sight of their target darting away. Con leaped in front of them with a bloodcurdling snarl that brought them up short. He’d kill them, and they knew it.

  He angled his body so he could keep an eye on the horny males while checking out what Sin was doing, and he damned near swallowed his tongue.

  The way the sentry was swallowing Sin’s.

  The guy had her pinned against the wall, his hips grinding into her as his hands clawed at her top. A wild, primitive rage spewed like molten lava through Con’s veins. Seeing any female being savaged angered him, but he could still feel Sin’s blood rushing through him, could still feel her as part of him, and the word “mine” was a faint buzz in his head.

  But did he want her, or did he want her blood? Both were dangerous desires, and he needed to get over himself real damned fast.

  Suddenly, the sentry jerked away. Sin kept a grip on his wrist, her expression calm, cool… but her eyes flashed black fire. She said something, and he doubled over, losing his breakfast on the cobblestones. Though his movements were jerky, he withdrew an iron key from his pocket, jammed it into a panel on the wall, and the thick wood-and-iron gate clattered open, its hinges creaking in protest.

  The pack of males rushed the gate, blocking the exit, but out of nowhere, a furious roar cut through the fog.

  “Let them go!”

  Con let out a curse, looked up to see Valko standing on the wall walk. The Warg Council leader pointed at the group of males, and they tucked tail and slunk away like scolded curs. Con might be grateful to Valko for the save, but he didn’t need the guy asking questions about why he was there. Fortunately, Valko merely gave Con a slow, meaningful nod, one that made it clear that Con owed him, and then he took off, heading toward the north wall tower.

  Quickly, Con grabbed Sin’s hand and got them the hell out of town, and they kept going until they reached the Harrowgate.

  “Who was the dude on the wall?” she asked when they’d stopped.

  “Head of the Warg Council. That was his town. His pack.” Con still didn’t like the timing of Valko’s appearance on the wall, even though it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Valko would have been alerted to the arrival of visitors. “So what did you do to the guard?”

  “I gave him Khileshi cockfire.” An impish grin lit her expression. Gods, she was gorgeous when she smiled like that. “Told him his dick would shrivel up and burn off if he didn’t open the gate.”

  “I thought you can’t cure a disease once you give it.”

  “I can’t.” Her eyes glinted with mischief that matched her smile as she made a show of studying her fingernails. “He’ll be making an emergency trip to UG.”

  It was his turn to grin. “Nice.”

  He drank in the sight of her standing proudly on the hill, her gaze feral, fierce, her raven hair catching the wind and swirling around her face and shoulders. As a sex demon, she hadn’t been bred to fight, but there was something inside her that was a warrior. Maybe her human ancestry gave her that edge, or maybe it was her hard life, but something called to his own warrior blood and consumed him from the inside out.

  He wanted to take her to the ground, drive into her in a mating that would be as wild as the mountains in the background. He’d mark her with his scent, his come, his teeth…

  Holy hell, he needed to stop thinking about his fangs in her throat. He searched his memory, trying to remember if this was the way it had been with Eleanor, the only female he’d ever drunk to addiction. He recalled obsession with her blood, hunger that hurt, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember the insane need for sex.

  Slowly, Sin’s smile faded, and she spat in the dirt. “I don’t think that guard has brushed his teeth in a year.”

  He had the strangest impulse to put his mouth on hers, to kiss her until she burned and tasted only Con.

  Clearly, they were too close to the warg village, and he was still feeling the effects of the inhabitants’ animal natures.

  “Why are they like that anyway?” she asked. “I thought wargs were a little more… civilized.”

  He glanced back at the village, where the gate had opened again, and the sentry was standing just outside, watching them through the thinning mist. “Born wargs really are wolves in human clothing. It’s why they live apart from humans. You’ll never find a pricolici living in a city with them. They also are fully aware of what they do while in animal form, and they generally won’t kill humans because they’re smart enough not to want to expose themselves to the human race. It’s one of the reasons they want to exterminate turned wargs. The varcolac are a risk.”

  “Well, they didn’t seem to have any trouble with killing me.”

  “You aren’t human.”

  “Thanks for the reminder,” she muttered.

  He couldn’t help it—he reached out and tucked a tendril of her unruly hair behind her ear. “You don’t accept what you are, do you?”

  “I don’t know what I am,” she said, stepping out of his reach.

  He let his hand fall back to his side. “How can you be as old as you are and not know?” Con knew very well what he was, and he’d long ago accepted it, even if he wasn’t always thrilled about it.

  She shrugged. “I thought I did know. Before, we were just half-breed mongrels with no idea what kind of demon we really were. We had no expectations. Then Lore and I found our brothers. Now we know our demon, but not what it means. We know what Seminus demons are, but it doesn’t do any good because the rules don’t apply to us.”

  He hadn’t thought of it that way. But then, he’d grown up keenly aware of what he was: a dhampire from a shrinking line of royalty, who had arrogantly expected to take over the clan one day—until the wake-up call that said, no, the world didn’t revolve around him. He might not like the role he was born to play, but at least he’d known about it his entire life.

  “You can make your own rules.”

  “Oh,” she said silkily, “I do make my own rules. And I never break them.”

  “Like what? What is one of your rules?” He was starting to think one had something to do with driving dhampires crazy.

  “No one will ever own me again.” She raised her chin in that stubborn set he was beginning to admire. Especially because it bared the slender column of her throat and forced her to arch her back the way it did when he was driving between her legs. “I will never belong to anyone—I will die before I allow that to happen.”

  He remembered how she’d freaked out when Shade said that she belonged to them, and he wondered how encompassing her self-imposed rule was. “What are we talking about, Sin? You don’t want anyone to own you… or your heart?”

  She laughed bitterly, and entered the Harrowgate. “I don’t have a heart for anyone to take.”

  Con slung his jump bag over his shoulder and followed Sin into the cavelike enclosure of the Harrowgate.

  I don’t have a heart for anyone to take.

  Bullshit. Granted, she didn’t seem to give a crap about anyone but herself, and maybe Lore, but Con had once witnessed the way she’d wrapped her body around Shade and Runa’s child to protect the boy from an evil fallen angel. She’d used herself as a shield, and concern for the baby had darkened her expression when she’d seen the blood on his skin—blood that turned out to be hers.

  Sin the Hardass definitely had a heart. And something inside him was itching to goad her into seeing how wrong she was. But why was proving he was right so damned important?

  Because she tests you. Because she’s untamed, unpredictable, and you’ll accept any challenge if it seems impossible.

  Yeah, okay, that was why. He was easily bored, always on the lookout for ways to keep from going out of his ever-loving mind.

  It didn’t always pan out. His quest for excitement had nearly gotten him killed a few times, had taken him down some
dark paths, and in a roundabout way, it had gotten him in the situation he was currently in.

  He’d become a paramedic in part because Eidolon had forced his hand, but there was also an allure to doing something he’d never done. He’d been partnered with Luc, who was as eager to risk his neck as Con was, and who had instigated the bet that had gotten Con into Sin’s pants. Gods, life took some strange, bumpy turns.

  Con palmed the map of North America, and Sin crowded close. He could smell the damned male warg on her, and his muscles twitched with the need to hightail it back to town to kill him.

  “Where to now?” she asked, as he tapped out the map.

  “Montana. The northern Rockies,” he said, more sharply than he’d intended. “It was one of the places Lore indicated on his outbreak chart.”

  “Well.” She gave him a fierce poke in the shoulder. “Aren’t you a grumpalufagus?”

  The door shimmered open, and cool air that smelled of pine trees flooded the small space. He practically leaped out into the twilight-drenched forest, needing to get away from her. “You nearly got us killed,” he said, knowing it wasn’t fair to blame her, but the image of her kissing that bastard wouldn’t go away.

  “I also got the gate opened,” she pointed out, and he clenched his fists. “We could have gotten out of the town even without your Council leader buddy.”

  “It was reckless and stupid, and you won’t do it again.”

  “Won’t?” She jammed her fists on her hips. “Won’t? You have no say in anything I do.”

  His jaw tightened. “When it comes to wargs, you will listen to me. I know them. I know how they react, I know how they fight, and I know how they lust—”

  “Oh, for the love of God, put a butt plug in the male tough-guy crap. I know what I’m doing. I’m damned good at killing and fucking, and I’ll use either of those weapons—”

  Blinded by fury, he gripped her by the arms, hauled her up against him, and took her mouth. There was nothing gentle about the kiss at all. It was about wiping the other male out of the picture. It was about dominance and all that male tough-guy crap. It was about making sure that all his intimacies with her were about anger or pure lust, because he couldn’t afford to soften.

  Not that she’d allow that to happen. She squealed in outrage and stomped on his foot. Pounded against his chest.

  Then she bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. When the blood hit her tongue, she jerked, but the sharp pleasure-pain drove him harder, and he thrust his tongue against hers, stroking, licking, forcing her to taste him.

  And then she wasn’t fighting anymore. She didn’t need to. The razor edge of a blade was biting into his groin, and he froze as solidly as an ice sculpture.

  “Kiss me again without my permission,” she whispered against his lips, “and I’ll geld you and sell your balls to a Ruthanian specialty meats shop. Understood?”

  “You won’t do that,” he whispered back. “You’d miss them too much.”

  Sin snorted and made the blade disappear into her pocket as she stepped back. “Men are always overestimating the worth of their genitals.”

  That fast, his anger was gone, and he threw back his head and laughed. “Come on,” he said. “We have work to do.”

  Ten

  They hadn’t gone more than a dozen yards along a worn game trail when a shot rang out, silencing the crickets and sending the squirrels that had come out for their last foray before nightfall skittering into their holes in the trees. Sin and Con ran toward the sound, and in just a few yards they were following more violent battle noises and the stench of blood.

  A lot of blood.

  The scent grew stronger as they rounded an outcrop of rock and found two dead people, probably werewolves, beneath a bush.

  “Wargs,” Con whispered, confirming her suspicions.

  “Born or turned?” She didn’t see any telltale marks to indicate that they were pricolici, but the marks could be covered by their clothing. Or blood.

  “Don’t know.”

  A scream tore through the air, and they crashed through the brush, not bothering with stealth, not even as they broke onto a trail and into the middle of a slaughter.

  “Oh, God.” Sin skidded to a halt. There were two small cabins tucked away in the forest, but they must have housed several families. They were battling, some in warg form, and some still in human, using axes and knives. One male was firing a shotgun at a leaping werewolf.

  The ground was soaked with blood, and a child lay dead on a porch. A child.

  A big male swung his arm, severing a female’s head with his claws as she pleaded for mercy. “Diseased varcolac scum.” The words were warped by his animal muzzle, but the hatred was as clear as the sky above.

  Rabid fury exploded in Sin, and she launched at the born wargs, whose battle gear set them apart from the others. Her throwing knives took out one, and her Gargantua dagger ended another. She lost track of time, of control, and though she knew Con was tearing through the pricolici like a tornado through a trailer park, her concentration was fully centered on causing pain.

  Finally, nothing moved. Sin stood in the middle of the small camp, numb. Con was still hopped up from the battle, his fangs as large as a mountain lion’s, his muscles twitching. Sin sensed the darkness in him, the battle and bloodlusts that should have triggered her own, but for once, she was just numb.

  The born wargs had managed to take out everyone before they’d fallen victim to Sin’s blades and Con’s hands.

  “Son of a bitch,” Con said roughly. His chest still heaved with exertion from the fight. “They did it. Someone leaked the fact that only the varcolac are affected.”

  “You think it was a Councilmember? There are probably staff members at UG who know.” She didn’t mention that his granddaughter and her mate knew as well.

  He swept the area with his silver gaze, his entire body tense, his expression grim. “It’s possible it was someone from UG, but I’d bet my left nut it was someone on the Council. The varcolac were furious at the meeting. I’m not sure their leader, Raynor, was convinced that SF isn’t a conspiracy to kill them. And Valko… he’ll take any excuse to let the pricolici kill off the varcolac.”

  “This whole thing just keeps getting worse.” A sudden, shooting pain streaked down her right arm. She clapped a hand over her shoulder where one of her glyphs, a round sundial-shaped mark, had split in two. Odd. The gashes that usually appeared in her dermoire were straight lines, but this was a zigzag, a perfect Z that didn’t extend beyond the faded black lines of the circle.

  Con’s brow furrowed. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” she lied, because the truth was, she didn’t care. Her little sting was nothing compared to the suffering she’d caused.

  Con’s hand lifted to cup her cheek, and the tender caress of his fingers on her skin might as well have been a wrecking ball, the way it cracked her shield of numbness. Her chest tightened and her throat closed up as all the deaths piled high on her conscience. All of it was her fault, and she suddenly felt like she was drowning in blood.

  “I’ve got to fix this,” she whispered. “I’ve got to end it, Con. My life can’t have been about death.”

  “This will end, Sin—” He paused, his tawny brows drawing together. “Did you hear that?”

  She started to shake her head, but then a small cry breached the silence. She didn’t wait for Con. She sprinted toward the sound, and her heart nearly stopped when she saw a woman lying in the open doorway of a shed behind the cabins. She knew immediately what it was: a sick hut.

  For dying wargs.

  The female shrank back at Sin’s approach, her watery gaze full of terror.

  “Hey,” Sin said softly, as she sank to her knees. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Con sank down on his heels beside Sin, dropping his medic bag to the ground. “Are you injured?”

  “Sick.” She coughed, and blood sprayed onto the ground. “My family… are they…”


  “I’m sorry.” Con pulled two pairs of surgical gloves out of the bag and offered one to Sin, but she shook her head. “They didn’t make it.” At her ragged sob, Con gripped the woman’s wrist gently with one gloved hand, probably to check her pulse. “When did the first symptoms appear?”

  “This morning.”

  Con met Sin’s gaze, and she nodded. “Might be early enough for me to try.” Sin smoothed the female’s limp brown hair away from her face as tenderly as she could. Her skin was hot, probably sensitive, and she didn’t want to cause any more pain. “What’s your name?”

  “Pamela.”

  “Pamela, I’m going to try to heal you. Be still, okay?”

  A shudder went through her slender body, but she nodded. Leaving her hand on Pamela’s cheek, Sin powered up her gift. The familiar tingle wound its way down her arm and to her fingertips, and the moment it entered the werewolf, Pamela gasped.

  Con’s soothing, deep voice assured Pamela that everything was okay, and though Sin wasn’t so sure about that, she appreciated the way he was so calm, so sure, so… sympathetic. He might have taken the job because Eidolon forced his hand, but Con belonged in the medical field, and she wondered if he realized that.

  Sin punched her power through Pamela’s body, seeking out the virus. Compared to the other wargs Sin had tried to cure, this one had very low levels, and taking out the individual virus strands wasn’t nearly as difficult as she’d thought it would be.

  Eventually, the virus was dead. Gone. A thrill of excitement rode her as hard as exhaustion did, and she smiled as she released Pamela and collapsed against the side of the shack. “It’s gone,” she rasped. “I think you’re okay.”

  Con looked up from digging through his medic gear. “What about you?”

  “I could use a month of sleep, but I’m fine.” Sin reached over and helped the other female sit up. “How are you feeling?”

  Pamela swayed, but remained upright. “I’m hungry.”