Born Sinner (Se7en Sinners #1)

  “I think I’ll slip into a food coma if I eat another bite.” I rub my tight stomach and try to take a deep breath.

  “Not until you try this.”

  I hear the words, but I don’t understand them until there is a fruit tart just inches from my lips, hoisted by the very tips of Legion’s fingers. I flick my gaze into pools of sparkling silver, swirling with expectation.

  Is this part of it? This game that he’s playing to appease the king and persuade him to help us?

  I look up to find that everyone is staring, although they’re much too polite to make it obvious. They’re waiting to see if I’ll play nice, if I’m content with being the Se7en’s consort or with them under duress. Or maybe they want to see if there’s more to the Demon Slayer than what legend has boasted.

  So slowly that I can count my every breath, I lean in and part my lips. The tart is flaky and buttery on my tongue as Legion gently slides it between my teeth, his hooded eyes watching and waiting for my reaction. I give him what he craves, failing to bite back the low hum of approval that rumbles my throat.

  “Good, huh?” His voice slides over me like warm honey.

  “Very.”

  “More?”

  “Yes.” The word is nothing more than a breathless sigh.

  He feeds me again, until I taste only crumbs on his fingertips. His skin is sweet from the sugar and burning hot, just like the rest of him. A manufactured memory invades my head, something I couldn’t have possibly known. I’ve tasted him before. I don’t know how, but the feel of his fingers on my lips, tracing my cupid’s bow…I know it like I know my own name.

  “I guess this would be a bad time to discuss business,” Dorian remarks, his tone laced with a sinister edge.

  His words bring me back to reality, and I turn away, shifting my body as far away from Legion as it will go without making it noticeable. “Of course not,” I answer, schooling my voice.

  “Since we can agree on the terms, I believe it’s pertinent to your cause to get started, yes? Are you ready, Eden?”

  “Yes. But I’d like to renegotiate the terms.” I feel Legion go rigid beside me but I soldier on. “Finding your brother would lead him on a suicide mission. That’s unreasonable, and I think you know that. Legion is the Se7en’s leader. Without him, having the information about my Calling could be made pointless.”

  Dorian dips his head from side to side as he contemplates my statement. “Maybe so. But that doesn’t change our demands. However, there may be something that can be done to avoid death.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “Only time will tell—time we don’t have. And I don’t suppose I can turn him.”

  “Turn him?” I grimace.

  “There are…alternatives.” I don’t miss the quick glance he flicks to Cyrus, who has been lurking by the doorway. He stands inhumanely still, his massive body blending into the wall like a life-like statue. The effect is one of a deadly predator; how easy it would be to eliminate unsuspecting prey as they pass by him, unaware of the danger that waits in the shadows.

  “In any case, this is what we want, and we wouldn’t be requesting such a steep price for our services if it weren’t of great importance. We recognize that the ramifications are dire, but I’m sure you can understand. You, too, have someone that you care for—that you would do anything for—even if it went against your more delicate, human instincts.”

  He doesn’t have to worm his way into my head to know that he’s struck a chord. Sister. He knows about Sister. Meaning, he could use her against me if it came down to it.

  “I’m sorry—is that a threat?”

  “Absolutely not,” he responds coolly. “But family is everything to me. To us. It’s all we have. And when you are the head of a coven as strong as ours, it is pertinent to know your friends just as well as your enemies. I’d like to think of you as friends. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be sitting here.”

  “What my husband is trying to say,” Gabriella chimes in before cutting her eyes at the king. “We want to help you—and we plan to. But in return, we need the Se7en’s help. Specifically, Legion’s. We wouldn’t be asking if there was any other way.”

  “Wait,” I frown. “So you knew we would need your gifts? You knew we’d come asking?” It’s all so evident now. If Legion is the only one who could find the king’s brother, why didn’t they come to him? Unless they already know…

  “Your future keeps shifting,” Gabriella says, confirming my suspicions. “I’m not clairvoyant, but I can feel it. When I took your hand earlier…I connected to your life force. I saw a room underground. There’s cement under my bare feet—your feet. And I’m—you’re—naked.”

  My mouth instantly dries and blood rushes my face, roaring in my ears. My heart rate spikes with panic as I listen to Gabriella relay my worst fears.

  It’s the dream. The reoccurring nightmare I’ve had almost every night since the day I spotted the first gray strand of hair. It was my eighteenth birthday when I first experienced it. It was just a flicker then—a flash of pale, quivering skin, the bite of a cold blade, a dribble of warm blood.

  The nightmare eventually became more defined over time, until it was a snuff film played on a constant, horrifying loop night after night. No matter how many times I had to feel his hands on me and smell the overwhelming stench of blood in the air, I could never grow used to it. It still frightened me to tears and left me choking through sobs in its aftermath. No matter what I did to alleviate the terror—sleeping pills, tea, alcohol, even drugs—I still couldn’t fight the dread behind my eyelids.

  Until Legion.

  The nightmares still plagued me, but for once in four, torturous years, I saw something else when I closed my eyes. I saw light and heard laughter. I felt warmth and goodness and safety. And an intense desire that I never knew existed.

  “There’s someone there with you—watching you,” Gabriella says, bringing me back to the here and now.

  “Yes,” I whisper, my voice quivering. I shift uncomfortably in my seat, feeling several sets of eyes on me. They’re all listening as the darkest, goriest parts of my psyche are splayed upon the dinner table.

  “You kill them. You kill them all.”

  “Yes.” The knot in my throat is so large that I doubt the word is even discernable.

  “And he…he takes you. And you want him to. You beg him to.” Her face is stricken as if she is in pain. As if she can feel the agony of my victims as I instruct them to mutilate and torture each other before sinking my blade deep inside their mangled bodies.

  I should have known. The answer was right in front of me all along. It wasn’t just a nightmare. It was a prophecy.

  “You resisted him at first, didn’t you?” the young queen asks, her piercing stare seeing right through to my tattered soul. “You didn’t want to like it. You didn’t want to want him. But you couldn’t help it.”

  “Who?” Legion asks, speaking for the first time since Gabriella began to unravel my biggest fears. I feel those eyes of quicksilver rage burning into me.

  “Lucifer.” My voice is no more than a broken whisper. I utter the words on autopilot, not truly feeling their weight on my tongue. If I registered their meaning, it would make it too real. “I kill them all. Sister. Logan. My mother. Everyone I’ve ever known. I watch and I laugh as they rip each other to shreds before I spill what’s left of their blood on my naked skin. Almost every night…I dream it almost every night.”

  “But you know it changes. You have the power to alter your future.” Gabriella’s gaze shifts to Legion just a fraction, but I know he sees it. Nothing gets past him.

  “Is there nothing we can do to stop it?” he asks.

  Gabriella looses a breath before leaning back in her seat. “The next sign of her Calling is coming soon. At the end of the signs, he’ll come for her. Unless…”

  “Unless what?” Legion nearly growls.

  “Unless she longs for something more than she craves the evil that cal
ls to her. Whatever impulse will draw her to him…it’s strong. Stronger than any magic we can wield to stop it. In the same way that she can bend the will of humans, he will bend hers. She has to fight it. She has to live for something more than she’ll want to kill for him.”

  “When will it happen?”

  “I can’t say for sure. There’s a chill in the air, but no snow. I’m sorry, but that’s all I see.”

  Great. We traded Legion’s life for something I, for the most part, already knew. However, there’s a way to fight against it. And considering the perplexity on Legion’s brow, he didn’t know it was even possible.

  “But there’s something else…” Gabriella says, her voice weary. “Back when I was…just a girl…Dorian told me about a story he’d heard. It was about a child that would reign in the underworld, conjuring up all the evils within and unleashing them on the earth. Wars would wage for thousands of years, bringing endless death and disease. All that is devious and malevolent would be celebrated while mercy would be extinct. The child would be evil incarnate, bearing the mark of the beast. The antichrist.”

  I open my mouth but not a sound escapes. I clutch my throat, choking on the unspoken words. I know this story. Revelation. The end of days.

  “Are you saying that Eden is the antichrist?”

  Gracefully, the queen shakes her head. “No. The child will be the direct offspring of the one you call Master. Lucifer.”

  “We don’t call him shit,” Legion grits. “So he’ll produce an heir.”

  “He will,” she nods. Then she presses that intense gaze into me, digging those irises into me with all the power of the sun and the moon. “And I believe she will be its mother.”

  Its mother. My fate is to birth the antichrist. To bear the seed of hate and destruction in my womb.

  Intense nausea churns my gut, causing cold sweat to bead on my chest and neck. I’m going to lose it, right here on this table. Right here in front of supernatural royalty and demon assassins. I was afraid of them, when in reality, I’m destined to be the most deadly of them all.

  I don’t know what I’m doing until I’m on my feet and making my way to the door. I have no clue where I’m going, but I have to get out of here. I have to flee these walls and their looks of sympathy and their speculative stares. I’m so sick of being the topic of discussion. Tired of being a wounded lamb amongst monsters. When I’m the monster. I’m the nightmare I had been trying to escape.

  I don’t know if Legion follows me, and I don’t look back to check. I just know that I can’t sit there a moment longer and be their freak show. I’ve been playing that role my entire life. And just like my nightmares, it never gets easier.

  I don’t stop until I’m at the door of our suite, realizing I don’t have a key to get in. Releasing the sob that had been caught in my throat since I ran from the dining room, I slide to the floor, a defeated, crumpled mess of a lost girl. I don’t know if I’ll ever find my way.

  The first tear slides down my cheek just as the carved wood against my spine is jerked away, sending me tumbling backward. Alarm bells sound in my skull as I scramble to face the intruder in the doorframe.

  I don’t even have a chance to scream before he yanks me inside.

  “What the hell?” I shriek, scrambling to my feet. “How did you get in here?”

  Legion crosses his arms in front of his chest, causing his dress shirt to stretch around his biceps in the most appealing way. “What the hell?” he bites out incredulously. “What do you think you’re doing running off by yourself in a place you’re not familiar with? Shit, Eden, how am I supposed to protect you when you insist on making my job harder? It’s bad enough the witch queen stole you away from me earlier…”

  My cheeks flame at not only his words, but the possession in his tone. “I was fine, L. I just needed…” Air. Space. Time to think about my impending doom.

  “You’re not fine, Eden. How could you be?” His voice softens, taking on that raspy, emotion-drenched timbre that I’ve only had the pleasure of hearing during his most private confessions. “We’ll find a way—I promise you that. We’ll find out how we can stop the Calling. Even if I have to fight until my dying breath, I won’t let him take you. I won’t let this happen to you.”

  He stalks toward me as if to hold me or slap me or shake some sense into me, but I quickly turn away. “There’s nothing you can do.”

  “Fuck if there isn’t. I told you—I will protect you or die trying. I mean what I say.”

  “Did you listen to anything that was said? Or do you just hear what you want to hear?” I screech, suddenly furious. “I’ll like killing those people. I’ll crave to feel their blood on my hands. And if you weren’t listening, get this—I’ll beg Lucifer to fuck me on their stiffening corpses.”

  He drops his hands, tightening them into fists at his sides. “It was just a bad dream, Eden.”

  “A dream I’ve had for four years straight. And you know what? I don’t wake up screaming all the time. No. Sometimes I’m so wet between my thighs that my panties are soaked. Sometimes I wake myself up with my own moans of pleasure. And sometimes I’m so horny that I finger myself and get off on the carnage. Don’t you see, L? You’re wasting your time with me. It’d be better if I were dead!”

  He sees the light bulb flicker on in my wild eyes at the same time the thought pops into my head. He shakes his head. “No.”

  “Please. Please, Legion. It’s the only way I can ensure everyone’s safety. It’s the only way we can stop the Calling.” I’m moving towards him with pleading hands as he backs away, refusing to listen to desperate reason.

  “No.”

  “There’s nothing we can do. This is what needs to be done for the greater good. Isn’t that what the Se7en are all about? Kill one to save a million? Kill me. Don’t let me be the cause of even more pain and strife.”

  “I said no, Eden!” he roars.

  With tears welling at my red-rimmed eyes, I look up at him, begging for the mercy of death. Not my mercy. Theirs. No matter which way this goes, it won’t end well for me. And you know what? It’s not supposed to. I don’t want to take anyone else down in flames with me.

  “You’ll have to do it…eventually. You’ll have to kill me. And it’s ok. Just please…don’t let me become a monster.”

  His back hits the wall, cornered by my trembling frame. “I can’t, Eden. I can’t hurt you.”

  I nod with solemn understanding, breathing through the hurt. It’s not me he wants to save. It never was. “The Jumper.”

  “No.” He shakes his head. “It’s more than that. I think you know that. I think you’ve known that all along.”

  “How could I? I only know what you tell me, which isn’t much of anything. Tell me, Legion. Why do you even care? Why are you even wasting your time on a lost cause?”

  “You’re not a lost cause.”

  “Really?” I throw my hands up in hysterical frustration. “Because from where I’m standing, my future looks pretty damn bleak. And my present isn’t so great either. Tell me: what else do I have to live for? What reason do I have to fight against the inevitable?”

  “You have your sister.”

  “Hmph,” I snort, turning my back to him. “You taking me is the best thing that has ever happened to her. She has a new place to live; she has comfort and security. Now she doesn’t have to feel guilty about spending time with her boyfriend and actually living her life for a change.”

  “You have your mother,” I hear him say from behind me. He’s closer now, but I don’t turn around.

  “My mother? My mother?! I’ve never had a mother. Just some psychotic Jesus freak who thought she was doing God’s Will by trying to kill me. She’d be first in line to spit on my grave.”

  “You have…”

  “Pretty pathetic, right?” I laugh sardonically. “I’ve spent my whole life avoiding any permanent attachments. Never caring, never getting too close. Never letting someone in to see what I really am for
fear that I would hurt them. You know I’ve never had a boyfriend? Hell, I don’t even think I’ve ever been on a proper date before. Now you tell me—why is that someone worth saving? The girl that no one would miss?”

  Silence stretches between us like a frayed rubber band.

  “Eden…”

  I shake my head at the sound of my name. Warm hands lightly grip my shoulders, holding me in place. “Face it. It’s easier this way. It’s…better for everyone.” I swallow down the thick emotion in my throat and try to shrug out of his grasp, but I’m too weak. Nothing but a frail, broken doll that should’ve been discarded long ago. “I have nothing and no one left to live for anyway.”

  “You do.” His voice is just a hoarse whisper. “You have me, Eden. Live for me. Hold on for me.”

  I turn to face him, his hands still braced on my trembling shoulders. “Why?”

  Silver eyes glow in the dim evening light. “Because from the first moment I saw you—through the dingy window of that store, your headphones on, oblivious to the dangers right outside the door—I knew that I would die for you. So please…live for me. Just for a little while longer.”

  His words embed themselves in the hollow space in my chest, radiating with light and heat. They slither through me like liquid fire, singeing the dead, cold remains of my past pains, turning the hurt and abandonment to ash. I don’t want to believe him. I don’t want him to give me hope only to rip it away. But I have so little left to hold onto these days. So maybe…maybe I can believe in him, this beast of a man that makes my heart pound with fear and exhilaration whenever he’s near.

  I fix my lips to tell him just that, but before I can, a knock sounds at the door. My first thought is Toyol and Phenex, coming to check up on me, but just as I take a step towards the soft rapping, Legion swiftly whirls my body around, stationing it behind his.

  “What is it?” I whisper, peering around his hard frame as if the door will implode at any moment.

  “Warlock,” he grimaces, as if he can taste whomever stands just yards away. “And vampire. Stay here.”