SINJIN
Book 1 of the Bryn and Sinjin series
HP MALLORY
Also by HP Mallory:
THE JOLIE WILKINS SERIES:
Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble
Toil and Trouble
Be Witched (Novella)
Witchful Thinking
The Witch Is Back
Something Witchy This Way Comes
THE DULCIE O’NEIL SERIES:
To Kill A Warlock
A Tale Of Two Goblins
Great Hexpectations
Wuthering Frights
Malice In Wonderland
For Whom The Spell Tolls
THE LILY HARPER SERIES:
Better Off Dead
The Underground City
THE PEYTON CLARK SERIES:
Ghouls Rush In
Once Haunted Twice Shy
SINJIN
by
H.P. Mallory
Copyright © 2014 by H.P. Mallory
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
For All You Sinjin Sinclair Fans Out There…
Acknowledgements:
To my mother: Thank you for everything.
To my editor, Teri, at www.editingfairy.com:
Thanks for the awesome job you always do!
To my husband and son: Thank you for all your support.
To my beta readers: Evie from Paromantasy, TJ Mackay and the Eaton sisters, thank you!
ONE
The wind rattled the windowpanes of the room in which I was being held prisoner. I sighed and stood up from where I was sitting on the bed and approached the window, finding the view of the tumultuous sea outside surprisingly serene. It was almost comforting. The moonlight reflected the white caps cresting the waves, occasionally highlighting the drops of rain that bled from the sky.
There was a knock on my door, but I didn’t bother turning around. This being the second night of my captivity, I couldn’t say any visitors were exactly welcomed. I didn’t respond but heard the sound of the door opening and footsteps entering my makeshift accommodations.
“Bryn.” It was my sister’s voice. My teeth clenched as I tried to remember that even though she and I shared the same blood, as far as I was concerned, we were anything but kin.
“What?” I asked, my eyes still riveted on the view outside my window. It was easier to look at the raging storm than it would be to look at Jolie. Just the thought of her sickened me.
“I’ve brought you something to eat,” she announced, her voice tentatively soft, yet encouraging.
“I’m not hungry,” I answered dismissively, while my stomach growled in audible protest. Suddenly annoyed with myself, I made a big show of leaning my forehead against the glass so my back was toward her. Hopefully, she’d get the message that I wanted to be left alone.
“You haven’t eaten in two days,” she continued, her tone of voice strikingly familiar, almost exactly like mine. I doubted if I could ever get used to our similarities. Even though we were fraternal twins, I’d only recently discovered that I even had a sister. Truth be told, I preferred the days when I didn’t know she existed. Life was much easier then.
“So what?” I retorted, feeling as mature as a thirteen-year-old. But, there it was.
“If you’re trying to starve yourself, I have other ways of coercing you to eat.”
Her threat meant she would use the magic inherent in her species to force me to eat my dinner. My sister was a witch. And although I also possessed magic, mine was of a different sort. I was an Elemental; and Elementals and witches were as different as night and day, although Elementals were descended from witches. But, in the words of our Supreme Elder, just as the spaniel was a descendent of the wolf, such was the full gamut of the similarities between a witch and an Elemental.
“I’m not trying to starve myself,” I replied, deciding to act my age by engaging my sister in an adult conversation. I turned to face her, crossing my arms against my chest, but frowned, letting her know in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t pleased to be in her charge.
She was wearing a pair of faded blue jeans, Nike sneakers and a thick, white, wool sweater which was damp with rain. Her wet blond hair was pulled up into a ponytail, which only drew more attention to her very pretty face, a face nearly identical to mine. But there was something in Jolie’s face that mine lacked—hers was softer. Maybe it was because she was pregnant and, therefore, padded at the moment. Or it could have been that she was more naïve than I was, in her general belief that the world was a good place.
I knew the world for what it was, and it was anything but good.
Unlike Jolie, I hadn’t enjoyed a normal childhood with two average parents and a regular two-story house with a goofy dog and a white picket fence. No, instead, I was raised by no one in particular, since all Elemental and Daywalker children were regarded as the responsibility of the tribe as a whole. Nothing in my life was what I now considered “normal.” From the moment I could understand language, it was drilled into me that I was first and foremost a warrior. As such, the sole purpose of my life was to defend my tribe, my own kind. And defending my tribe revolved around destroying the creatures of the Underworld. And as fate would have it, my sister just happened to be the queen of the Underworld …
“You are already on the tightrope of being too thin as it is,” Jolie insisted, pointing at me. Clad in my customary fighting uniform of black, stretchy workout pants and a black sports bra, I didn’t want to throw off the black motif, so naturally, my sneakers were the same color. Of course, after being apprehended, her people disarmed me of the knives I usually wore strapped to both of my wrists, as well as the dagger I carried on my right thigh. “And you must be freezing,” Jolie added as she motioned to my sports bra which didn’t cover much.
“I’m fine,” I answered stubbornly. I wouldn’t allow myself to feel the cold; I was too strong for that. Yes, I could have warmed myself with my own magic but I hadn’t and I wouldn’t. Instead, the iciness in the air was a good test for me—to succumb to it would show weakness. And I wasn’t weak.
Jolie approached the bedside table and leaned down to drop off a tray. It held a glass of ice water, a plate full of fruit and strawberry yogurt, bearing the name “Rowan Glen.” If I hadn’t already figured out I was in Scotland (thanks to the guards outside my door who weren’t exactly careful in their discussions; never mind, as a sensitive, I could overhear all of their thoughts), the yogurt’s tagline: “Scotland’s Yogurt” pretty much gave it away. I didn’t know what I thought about being in Scotland. It was miles away from my home-based training camp in Montana, but with training bases all over the world, it wasn’t as though I’d never done any traveling in my life.
Next to the plate of fruit was a turkey sandwich, garnished with cheese, lettuce, tomato and a pickle. Settling my eyes on the sandwich, my mouth started salivating and my stomach growled louder, just in case I hadn’t heard it earlier.
Jolie faced me expectantly. “Bryn, regardless of the situation between us, you need to eat.” I could see worry in her eyes, which
suddenly infuriated me.
“Don’t pretend like you care about me,” I lashed out at her.
“I do care about you,” she replied almost immediately, her tone matter of fact. “You’re my sister! Of course, I care about you!”
I shook my head vehemently. “You have no right to! A little over two weeks ago, you didn’t even know I existed!” I took a deep breath and stretched my neck from left to right and from right to left as I warned myself to calm down. Losing my temper wasn’t going to help me out of my current predicament. All it would mean was that I was losing control of myself. “Besides,” I continued, “it’s impossible to care about someone you only just met.” I’d been reiterating the same mantra to myself since first encountering my sister.
“So, what?” she argued. “Now that I do know you exist, and because you’re my twin sister, I don’t want things to be ugly between us!”
“What else would you expect them to be?” I asked sarcastically, throwing my hands into the air in frustration. “We are enemies, Jolie,” I said, my voice suddenly calm, yet steely. She sighed and I saw something in her eyes that hadn’t been there moments earlier. “You are queen of the Underworld,” I continued, my eyes narrowing as my jaw tightened. “You’re the leader of my enemies.”
“But it doesn’t have to be like this, Bryn,” Jolie retorted, shaking her head like she just wouldn’t accept the facts. “We could learn to be sisters, and work through our differences!”
It was my turn to shake my head. “You live in a dream world,” I said with a sigh. Some of my anger was defusing, replaced with a sadness that didn’t make much sense to me. “You and I will never be anything other than what we are right now.”
“Adversaries?” she asked, her voice sounding hollow.
I didn’t respond but simply nodded. An uncanny, but very intense melancholy started to take root inside of me. I instantly shook it off, fully trained and determined not to allow useless sentimentality or emotions to overtake my logic and rationality. For all I knew, the magic in this room could have been affecting my thoughts and feelings. In fact, it probably was. “The sooner we both realize we aren’t sisters, but rivals, the better,” I added, my voice sounding more resigned.
Jolie didn’t say anything but just stood there with her attention fixed on the floor. Then she glanced up at me and smiled, but her smile seemed detached somehow. “When I was your prisoner, you brought me three meals a day,” she started.
I raised my eyebrows, not sure where she was going with the comment, but nodded all the same. “That’s true.”
“Back in your Lurker camp.”
“Lurkers” was the name that the creatures of the Underworld called my people. I’d only just learned this information when Jolie was taken prisoner by the Supreme Elder of our people, Luce. As for us, we preferred to call ourselves Elementals and Daywalkers. Those of us who were Elementals possessed magic. The Daywalkers, on the other hand, were similar to vampires except they weren’t susceptible to death by the sun. That and they possessed exceptional strength and speed, much more so than their vampire counterparts. Their only flaw was that male Daywalkers couldn’t live beyond their twenty-first birthdays. It was a problem that had plagued our tribe for centuries. Recently, however, we’d come substantially closer to finding the specific gene in the DNA of the Daywalkers that accounted for the premature deaths in males. And that gene lived in the blood of vampires.
After this realization, we began abducting vampires and transfusing their blood into the Daywalkers, which seemed to improve their overall health at least for a little while. Things would have gone well, except my sister’s people attacked us on our own soil. Consequently, we were forced to destroy our training base, demolishing with it all of the advancements we’d worked so hard to achieve.
“And, if you recall,” Jolie continued, ensnaring my attention again, “I ate whatever I was given.”
“Well, you were eating for two, so you didn’t really have a choice,” I snapped back.
My sister’s pregnancy was a risky one, since her mate was a warlock. The only reason I knew that Jolie’s pregnancy would be difficult was because I could read as much in her thoughts when she wasn’t consciously concealing them from me. Despite all my attempts not to care about her, much less, her unborn baby, I couldn’t deny that I did. And I hated myself for caring because all caring about someone did was make you susceptible. Emotion of any sort was something to be eliminated, and never encouraged because emotions were dangerous. And people who acted on them were even more so. After thirty years as an Elemental, I firmly adhered to the philosophy that every decision needed to be entered into only after logical, objective and rational deliberation.
I considered my concern about Jolie and her unborn baby as nothing more than a blemish, a flaw in my character. And the first thing I’d learned about weaknesses, blemishes and flaws was that they needed to be eradicated.
“Regardless of how many I was eating for, I ate,” Jolie responded, her lips tight.
Despite my feelings on the subject, I could feel the growing energy emanating from Jolie’s. The truth was that I’d immediately felt the vigor of her unborn baby as soon as she’d walked through the door. Her baby was strong, healthy and thriving. And although the news pleased me, I kept it to myself.
“Starving yourself won’t bring you any closer to escaping, Bryn,” Jolie pointed out, and she was right. There really was no point in a hunger fast; it wasn’t based on a rational decision. Instead, the only reason I refused to eat was simply because I hated being incarcerated and this was my way of asserting my independence. Again, I was acting on emotions, instead of logic.
I glared at her, but didn’t say anything as I swallowed down the bitter taste of crow. I greedily gazed at the sandwich in front of me as I sat down in a chair below my window and reached for it. Taking a bite, I wished it didn’t taste as good as it did. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t want to enjoy any aspect of my confinement. I was already devising a way out.
Jolie took a step nearer me, but I held my hand up to stave her off. I knew better than to get too close. There was some sort of bizarre, physical connection between the two of us. Whenever we came into proximity, a burst of magnetic energy blossomed between us, pulling us even closer together. The first time it happened was when Jolie and I met in our training camp. I’d never felt anything like it and it shocked the hell out of me. That bizarre energy connection was my first indication that something extraordinary existed between Jolie and me—that we were somehow united. Once I realized how much she looked like me, well, it only cemented our undeniable connection, even if I couldn’t understand it. But any association to the queen of the Underworld was dangerous for me...
I nearly choked on my next bite of sandwich when Jolie’s thoughts suddenly streamed into my head. This time, I didn’t receive her words so much as her feelings. I dropped the sandwich on the plate as my eyes closed of their own accord. My sister’s feelings continued to sail through my body until I couldn’t deny them any longer.
Focusing intently, I picked up on the fact that she was worried about our future, how we would interact from here on out. She didn’t want me to hate her. She also was unsure how the people in her kingdom would receive me. And, what was more, she was certain that I would attempt to escape, which made her even more nervous because she didn’t know the extent of my powers, or what I was capable of.
“Did you do that on purpose?” I asked as soon as the foreign feelings inside me began to dissipate and eventually disappeared altogether. I downed a few gulps of ice water and frowned at her.
“Do what?” she asked innocently.
“Release the floodgates on your thoughts?” I answered indifferently as I took another bite of sandwich and washed it down again. “Up until now, you were doing a very good job of concealing all your thoughts and emotions.”
“Oh, that,” she said with a quick and dismissive smile. “Sometimes, words don’t get the feelings acros
s quite as well as the feelings themselves can.”
I didn’t answer, but nodded because she had a point. I downed another sip of water and placed the glass back on the bedside table. Then I noticed that my fingers were starting to tingle. When I looked down at them, my hands seemed like they were miles away. I glanced up at Jolie just as I realized what she’d done. I immediately stood up, dropping the remainder of the sandwich on the floor. “You poisoned me,” I accused her, my voice sounding very distant and utterly astonished at the same time.
“I didn’t poison you,” she said flatly.
“The water,” I responded as my eyes rested on the glass and I swallowed hard. “You put something in it!”
“It’s charmed,” she answered with a shrug. I didn’t respond because my eyes started to glaze over and my head felt incredibly heavy on top of my shoulders. I watched my sister lurch forward and felt her grab my arm at exactly the moment I started to pass out. She assisted me to the bed as I placed both of my palms on the coverlet while leaning over them and taking deep breaths. I tried to resist whatever charm she’d used on me, but the room was already spinning, which meant her charm was pumping through my bloodstream. I was too late.
“I’m sorry I had to do that to you, Bryn,” Jolie started. “But I must know what your powers are; and you’ve been nothing but adversarial.”
“You charmed me!” I repeated angrily, my voice also revealing awe. Ordinarily, I would’ve been able to detect any charm or spell someone tried to place on me because I was powerful in my own right. Maybe because I’d been so hungry, I’d simply overlooked this one.
“Bryn, I need to know what happened on the battlefield,” Jolie said, spearing me with her pointed gaze. “Why did Luce and all your people disappear while you were left behind?”