Sin Eater (27 page)

He used Claudia’s keys to get
into her apartment, taking the stairs slowly, his head pounding with each step. When he passed Iola’s door, however, the headache eased. He wondered for a moment if she was home, but there was no light coming out from under her door. So he let himself into Claudia’s abode and flicked the lights on. When they didn’t work he frowned and flipped the switch a few more times, then let out a girl-like shriek and covered his chest with one hand as a bright light came out of the darkness right at him, like a train in a tunnel. Then the room lights came on.

Raphael collapsed
into laughter, actually doubling up on the sofa, rolling off and hitting the floor in a ball.

“Fucking hilarious,” Voro growled, kicking the door shut. “What do you want now?”

“Hey, nothing. Honestly.” He paused to collect himself. Angels also thought that surprising people was absolutely hilarious. And the glow-bug routine was pretty standard. “I just wanted to check on how you were doing. And I can see you’ve been back to work. You reek.”

“And you smell like you’ve been rising in the oven for about the last four hours.”

“Don’t be jealous, just ‘cause you’re carrying around the stank of a thousand ages.” Raphael got comfortable again on Claudia’s sofa. “You feel better?”

“More like myself. But I really need to shower.”

“Please do. I brought you something, too.”

“What?”

“It’s on the bed.”

Voro stalked down the hall, his funny bone definitely not tickled in the least, and turned the lights on in the bedroom. There were shopping bags all over the thing, and a few weeks of clothes were inside upon further inspection.

“Holy shit,” Voro breathed, then turned back to the door. Of course, Raphael was there, hoping to make him shit himself apparently. But Voro was expecting him this time. “That’s sweet, Raphael. You didn’t have to do that.” He was being over-appreciative.

Raphael made a face. “Whatever. You’ve been wearing that thing for two days straight. And it ain’t the sins alone making you smell bad. I’m not even going to ask about underwear.”

“I happen to not be wearing any.”

“Like I said, I don’t
care
.  Just wanted to help you out. But what are you doing here? Don’t tell me you and this broad are getting married.”

“You must be retarded.”

“Don’t get cranky.”

“She’s got someone after her, she’s in hiding. I’ve got
nowhere to stay and she said I could crash here. Plus, she’s worried about her neighbour across the hall. She lives alone.”

Raphael gave a knowing look. “That’s your
frustro,
isn’t it?”

“And if it was?” Voro turned his back to Raphael as he shrugged his jacket off and began unbuttoning his shirt.

“You can’t be with her, man. You know that, right?”

“So Essum told me. I know that.”

Raphael was quiet, and Voro had half a hope the guy had left. But then he spoke again, so no luck there. “I know we make them irresistible, but … really?”

Voro paused in the process of undoing his pants, his head sagging down on to his chest. “You have no idea.”

“Wow. That’s really … cruel of us.”

Voro shook himself as the angel started laughing again, dropping his pants.

“Hey – what the hell?”

“I told you I wasn’t wearing underwear.”

Raphael pretty much ran to get out of his way as Voro walked naked into the bathroom.

“Oh God,” Raphael was muttering, covering his eyes and immediately stumbling over a foot stool. “I have to gouge my eyes out now.”

“Now who’s jealous?” Voro waited until Raphael opened his eyes to check if he was in the bathroom yet before cupping himself and waving the handful in the angel’s direction.

“Christ, Voro.” He turned his back, shuddering.

“Watch your mouth, Night Light.”

Essum had first called on Daphne one evening after dinner but well before dark. He’d asked her to go for a walk with him around
the grounds of her family’s manor, and she’d agreed, likely because he’d completely caught her off guard. She had been shy, meeting his gaze under lowered eye lids, and asking him the polite questions that people always ask when they first meet. What did his father do? How long had he been in Lincolnshire? What did he do with his time?

Of course Essum already had back-up stories for all her courteous inquires, having used them many times over already when meeting new people. The lies came easily, but they left a bitter taste in his mouth as he said them. He hadn’t wanted to lie to her at all. He had wanted to tell the truth, boast that he was a divine being … even if it was from a place most humans worked their lives to avoid.

The more time he basked under her gaze, the more he needed her to believe he was human. He needed Daphne to crave his company.

The walk was over far too quickly, but of course she was an unmarried female and he was
The Moor
.  As it was the groundskeepers froze in the middle of their tasks to gawk, only returning to work when Daphne met their stares pointedly.

She stopped in front of her back steps, and he paused alongside her, thanking her for her time. He touched her hand, meaning to just kiss the back of it.

As his hand made contact, again there was a jolt, but this time he held her hand anyway, and when he pressed his lips to the milky pale skin on her hand, the same jolt hit his mouth and he straightened suddenly, looking up into her exquisite forest-green eyes.

She was surprised too, her rose bud lips were parted as she gasped, and her eyes widened so he could see the white all around them.

“What … what
are
you?” she breathed, her chest heaving.

He just shook his head, not knowing what to make of his physical reaction to her. He dropped her hand, hating to let it go but at the same time, he just had to. It was making him ache.

“Will you come and see me again?” She asked, composing herself and adjusting the back of her upswept hair with one hand.

“If you wish.”

She nodded, then added, “I would like that.”

“It would be my pleasure.”

Then, as they’d stood staring at each other, memorizing the details of each other’s faces, the door had been flung open and a large man with ruddy skin burst out of the house, yelling at him foully to get off the property.

Daphne had pleaded with him to stop, tell
ing him this anger was unnecessary, that Essum was on the grounds as her guest. It made no difference; the brute pushed at his chest and called him ugly words, telling him he wasn’t welcome.

Daphne had grabbed the man’s arm – it was her brother, he was able to pull that from the brute’s brain – but then he yanked free of her hands, toppling her over so she landed awkwardly on the stone steps. If she had hit her head -

Essum had growled in anger, he’d faced the brute and unleashed all the nasty reasons you don’t fuck with a Sin Eater into the man’s brain at the same time. Daphne’s brother was struck all at once with every fear he’d ever felt and left unresolved … every moment he’d felt small and alone, every moment he’d known he was in trouble all came on him full force, and he fell to his knees, cradling his head on the ground as he wept. It was swift and sudden, an uppercut to the psyche that would take any giant to his knees.

Daphne was staring at her brother, then looked up at Essum in horror. “What have
you done?” Her voice was rasping she was so shocked, and she trembled in fear … and anger. He could smell peppers. It was mostly anger.

“I am sorry - ” he stammered, his heart breaking at the way she was glaring at him.

“Get out of here,” she whispered, then repeated with much more force. “Get out of here!”

He had turned and left immediately, realizing his hands shook and his stomach was turning. At first he thought his human body was having a reaction to something he’d eaten … but he knew that wasn’t it. It was because he’d scared her, and she’d turned him out of her life.

And because he’d touched her. The inside of his palm was blistering slightly as he looked at it, white bubbles rising on the thick skin. He’d frowned, then touched his lips. The same thing, painful bumps mostly on his bottom lip.

Of course they healed as he continued to stare at his hand in shock, his lips losing their numbness within minutes. And his stomach felt better as soon as the marks faded.

She’d asked him what he was, and now he had to wonder what
she
was.

Of course, now he knew she’d been his
frustro,
and the reaction he had to that brief contact should have sent him running. But once the mind is piqued with extreme curiosity, you just had to know
everything
.

There we
re no manuals or handbooks for Sin Eaters. Both sides could deal out all kinds of nasty shit that could either help a guy out or send him right back to his maker. And more often than not, you will
not
see it coming for you.

That’s why Essum had such a hard-on to get Voro’s
decipio
fully operational and uncharacteristically strong. He couldn’t believe the guy could consume and hold on to sins, but then again … he was a heavenly vessel. Any sin he carried would eventually be forgiven by the guys upstairs. It was a get-out-jail-free card, this whole
decipio
business.

Essum was perched in the corner of an operating room with his musings, having pushed the room noise out of his mind. But now he was paying attention again as Veneratio Aubericus was wrapping up a straight hour operating on the femoral artery of a guy that had fallen through a plate glass window. He was just finishing up the stitches, and the entire process was giving Essum a headache.

The guy wasn’t human, Essum was sure of it, and the operating room had just proved it. At his very touch the bleeding man had calmed, almost as though the pain was gone. And Essum had noticed a decrease in the patient’s anxiety level at that time, too. Anxiety smelled like cordite, and it was eased bit by bit the longer the doctor’s hands were on the man’s body.

He was able to read this doctor’s thoughts, and it was a mess of medical school crap that he echoed to the staff attending him. There was nothing else going on there, but he wasn’t likely to be thinking, “Well, you see, I
am
a leprechaun …” And he didn’t appear to know Essum was there, since Essum wasn’t making himself visible at the time.

The logical assumption would be the guy was just a simple healer. There were some humans that had a healing touch, and it had nothing to do with
either
side, they were what they were. But had the doctor seen Essum vanish? Essum was careful about human eyes being on him when he did that. Perhaps the guy could
sense
him; plenty of humans got a whiff of malevolence when he was around.

Veneratio Aubericus made Essum very nervous. And it was a twitch that wouldn’t leave him until he knew with certainty what side the bastard was on.

Voro appreciated that Raphael had gotten him clothing, he really did. But their styles
were definitely not the same.

Angels loved to be comfortable above all else. So the bags were full of jeans and T-shirts. Voro’s tastes ran towards … well, expensive suits and dress shoes that cost what some people’s cars were worth. Was that evil? Who knew, it was what he’d come to prefer for himself.

He still had to admit the stuff was easy to walk around in, and less restrictive of movement. The jeans felt almost natural, and the royal blue T-shirt was made with distressed fabric that was like a soft touch. Voro couldn’t remember a time when he’d been this comfy, other than naked in bed, of course. When he left the bedroom fully dressed, Raphael was watching the local news on TV.

“That colour looks good on you,” Raphael noted, then turned his baby blues back to the tube. “Tell me about this guy,” he added, pointing with a remote control.

Voro had already noticed the mug shot on the screen. It was the guy that he’d followed off the subway the night he first saw Iola, the guy that had broken into Claudia’s apartment.  The guy that had killed Portia. Charles Goodwin, and he was back at large.

Of course, Voro knew this already, and he was glad the guy’s face was getting splashed around, it would make it harder for him to move around the city. Voro also knew that only about
five percent of the population would actually phone the police if they saw a person that was wanted for a crime, violent or not. People, as a whole, were really only interested in anything outside of their daily lives to a certain extent.

And since the guy was completely nuts, he would be totally willing to just walk around anyway, at large or not.

Voro sat on the sofa, rubbing his chin as the anchorwoman droned on about not approaching the man and calling the police immediately.

“So … this guy is in it somehow with Essum,” he said out loud, and Raphael looked surprised.

“How do you know that?”

“He killed Portia, and that is just far too random for me to ignore. He had to have known I knew Portia, and he killed her as a declaration of war against me. Because everyone else this guy killed is from the bottom of the dregs of the city. All of a sudden he bags a millionaire in her own home?”

Raphael was nodding, watching the reporter move from news to the lighter side of the days’ events. Apparently the humane society opened a new kennel.

“Should we find out if it was Essum? I mean, we get to the house and we’ll know within minutes.” Raphael was working the remote around in his hand like a baton as puppies rolled on the grass in
Technicolor in front of him.

Voro was nodding and feeling totally exhausted at the same time. “We could do that. I
would
like to know for sure. We’ll have to find a car - ”

“No problem.” Raphael switched off the TV and rose to his full six-feet-six-inches, stretching his arms above his head so his fingers hit the roof. He gave a loud groan then dropped the remote where he’d been sitting. “I’ve got one outside.”

“Dare I ask what kind of car?” Again, angels were more about comfort and necessity than style.

“Oh, I’m sorry. It’s a Focus, all right? We don’t have the funds that the unscrupulous can manage to acquire for themselves.” He shrugged. “The Sync system’s pretty nice.”

“Let’s just go before I change my mind.”

“Voro, you should wear jeans more often,” Raphael suggested as he responsibly turned off the lights in the room on the way out of Claudia’s apartment. “They make your ass look pretty good.”

“Fucking angels.”

“I’m just being honest.”

“Keep it to yourself.” Heaven help him from this idiot. No, really; heaven help him.

Please?

Charlie knew he should do as Master told him, but he was feeling so good and so much better, even better than after the first time Jasper had touched him … he just
had
to go back to where this
feeling good
had started. Plus, he really liked that woman’s house. It was so nice, and all her stuff had been so clean and tidy …

He took a subway as close to her suburb as he could. He still had to walk about five blocks, but he didn’t mind. The streets were
quiet and empty; it gave him time to think.

Obviously he would soon be all better. That had to be the reward that was waiting for him. And the past day had been the first time he felt like a
normal
person. The new Master was here to help him, Charlie had to believe that. And that’s why the old Master had placed them together.

He came up on the house suddenly, realizing he’d been walking longer than he originally thought. The lights on the outside of the house were on, and there was yellow police tape across the door. He looked around, but only green lawns and darkened houses presented themselves. So he walked up the curving driveway, plucked the tape from the door frame, and pushed the door open. It swung inward in front of him, and he was totally shocked that it wasn’t locked. There was no sound inside, so he stepped on to the tiles in the foyer and re-attached the police tape behind him before closing the door.

Charlie wasn’t dumb enough to turn on any lights, so he used the exterior light spilling in through the windows to make his way to the staircase.

He didn’t look in the living room.
He could smell the blood still; he didn’t want to see what else was left. That was the past; he was going to get better now.

Charlie went up the carpeted stairs to a walkway that crossed over the foyer and living room with doors along one side. He picked one at random, found it to be a bathroom. The next one was a bedroom.

He entered that room, taking a deep breath. He could smell a faint perfume here, and with the amount of extra clutter he knew this must have been
her
room, not a guest room. There was an armchair by a window, so he crossed to that and sat down. The perfume got stronger as the air was pushed out of the chair’s padding, and he closed his eyes. It was a nice smell.