Sin Eater (38 page)

Damien was silent, and Iola turned to see him nodding. When he caught her gaze, he nodded a bit formally to excuse them, but as he did so he licked his lips.

Iola felt the slightest wisp of pleasure slide up between her legs, and her lips parted to exhale in surprise. As he passed her to follow Claudia to the door, it may have been her imagination, but he seemed to … wink.

When they were gone and she was standing alone in her apartment, she felt a bloom of warmth all over her skin. Like she’d done something very, very shameful. She was incredibly e
mbarrassed all of a sudden, as though she’d been called to the front of the class to tell everyone she’d been bad.

The only trouble was she had no idea what she’d done.

When Jasper was toweling off after his shower, he was feeling almost … back to his normal self. The burn on his hand looked no worse than if he’d accidentally touched a hot pot on a stove, and it was healing bloody fast. His head was clear, his stomach was staying put for the time being, and he felt … fucking fantastic. Invincible, even. Especially since he’d just washed all that stale sweat off his carcass.

He pulled back the shower curtain while wrapping the towel across his hips, and when he saw Charlie standing in front of the sink he jumped, shrieking not unlike a girl and almost falling over the edge of the tub. The fact that Charlie was totally naked took about ten more seconds to register.

“Charlie?” Jasper tightened the towel around his waist unnecessarily; it was still firmly in place.

“You have been very kind to me,” Charlie mumbled, head down. Jasper stood stock-still, even when Charlie started to touch himself. “I know people aren’t just nice for no reason. If you want me to … do anything … you can ask me.”

Jasper tore his eyes away from what Charlie was doing to look at himself in the bathroom mirror. Yep, he was shocked and more than a little grossed out. At least
that
was normal.

“Charlie, please stop that. Don’t - ”

“I can touch you. Or I can suck on it. I don’t care. Sometime people used to want me to just touch myself … like this. It’s just to thank you.”

What. The. Fuck?

Jasper shook his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “Charlie, please stop it. Don’t … just put your clothes on, man. Please.”

Charlie stopped stroking at himself, thank god, but when he let his dick go it stood out straight, half-erect and all the more pitiful because of the look on Charlie’s face. “I’m not unworthy, Jasper.”

Jasper closed his eyes again, dragging his hands across his face. He was
so
going to need another shower. “Charlie … I don’t do anything because I want something from you. Okay? We’re both just doing what Ess – the Master says. We just have to trust in him.”

“I’ve been with the master for much longer than you. And I never got rewarded before.”

“Charlie, please. I don’t want …
that
. And it’s not because you’re unworthy. I just … I like girls, okay?”

Charlie was nodding when Jasper opened his eyes again, and he leaned down to pull his underwear back on. As he did so, Jasper caught a flash from Charlie’s brain, the shame of the memory so intense Jasper couldn’t ignore it.

Charlie had been raped as a child, Jasper caught it as surely as if it had been his own reminiscence. It was a family friend that had done it, a man Charlie’s parents had known for a long time. Jasper could smell the man’s sweat and nearly-expired cologne, and he could feel not only the pain but the fear and shame.

Jasper had to hang his head. The poor guy was so much more screwed up than Jasper had expected. No wonder he heard voices.

That’s when Jasper felt honest, true rage towards Essum for the first time. This guy wasn’t just a nut, he was a victim. And Essum was taking advantage of the effects of his whole fucked-up situation.

Charlie had tried to tell his mother what had happened, she hadn’t believed him. She’d told him he was bad, she’s slapped his bare bottom with a wooden spoon to straighten him out. And Charlie thought that even though she denied it, his mom believed him. She
knew it had all happened. And she’d chosen to blame Charlie for the whole thing. Charlie was probably right.

Jasper stepped out of the shower, and Charlie sat on the floor in front of the vanity, curled up tightly
into an alarmingly small ball. His arms and legs were impossibly thin twigs. He looked so very young right then.

Jasper put a hand on Charlie’s shoulder, and the shaking under his hand told him Charlie was trying not to cry and doing a terrible job of it. At the contact, Charlie’s remaining sordid life came to him in a fast flood of horrific images. A small teenager on the street, easy prey for thugs, whores with aspirations to be thieves, and the cops. He’d been picked up a few times, beaten, and thrown back to the curb. Men beat him and took what few valuables he might have had on him. And more sadistic bastards that wanted to humiliate and rape him under the guise of friendship.

Yeah, this all made sense now.

Jasper pulled all the memories together, bundled up like the sloppy mess that it was, and just sent Charlie one thought,
None of these things are your fault.

Charlie sniffed, raising his puffy red eyes to Jasper. “What?”

Jasper nodded as if to show that Charlie knew very damn well what he was talking about. “It’s not your fault. And I’m sorry this all happened. But
none
of it is your fault. Do you believe me?”

Charlie was deathly still, as though the act of breathing was too much exertion for him. The only movement was in his eyes, imploringly searching Jasper’s face for a punch line. But there was nothing. Jasper thought it at Charlie again:
It’s not your fault.

Charlie’s sob was like a bellow, and it was so explosive it broke Jasper’s heart. He found himself wrapped up in the man’s small arms, Charlie’s thin chest trembling against his own as he wept with thankfulness and misery and shame.

Jasper patted his back, letting him cry. How he was able to feel pity for Charlie was a mystery, but he felt it all the same. Even if the guy had homicidal tendencies. Which were all the work of Essum, come to think of it.

Charlie without Essum? Well … that was a totally different situation, wasn’t it?

Voro went to Claudia’s to get fully dressed then immediately begged off, saying he had business to take care of. The truth was he had to get the hell out of that building and back to doing what he was supposed to.

He came across an old lady coming out of the drug store who had slowly poisoned her husband to death only a couple years before. He pulled her into an alley and pulled the stink of that sin out of her failing little mind, and when she left the alley she had the glow of a clear conscious that he could only envy.

No one was taking away what
he’d
nearly done to Iola.

The next street over brought him to a young man of about twenty, who had been raping his little cousin for the past couple of years. Same thing. Voro ate that sin, set the man’s mind free to go and do it again. That one was difficult to let go, but he did. It wasn’t
up to him to judge. It was up to him to make sure it wasn’t forgiven.

Every step on the pavement made his anger rise, made Voro feel the nature that he was sent to this world with, reminded him what he really was.

He’d been here too long. It was time to go back. This place was changing him.

But first he was going to stop Essum. That
had
to happen. Essum wasn’t going to rip open some unknown divide between heaven and hell by trying out his stupid science experiment, and he sure as shit wasn’t going to let Essum sic either of his degenerates on Iola.

He’d die to prevent
that. Well, “die” in the way a Sin Eater dies. Not eternal, just a bit of fire-and-brimstone-poolside R&R. To recharge. Assimilate. Get his damn programs straight.

It wasn’t the fact that he’d done what he’d done. It was the fact that he’d done it and now it was troubling him … like he had some kind of
conscience all of a sudden. He didn’t even know a Sin Eater could grow a conscience.

And his second worry was a real head-scratcher. When Iola had come out of the bedroom after the doctor had left she’d been … all better. And not just in the fact that she appeared lucid, back to normal, and no longer grinding up against everything in her path like a bitch in heat. The evil was completely gone … in its place was the smell of fresh-baked bread.

So now he had another puzzler to figure out. Who or what was the doctor, and why did he leave Iola smelling like a goddamn angel?

The sinners were out in full force that afternoon. Every ten years or so he noticed a marked increase in their numbers, and in large population centres like this one it wasn’t hard for him to find
work
. He wondered if he wasn’t creating his own job security more than anything else. If Voro was the only Sin Eater left at this point in time, then he was wallowing in the filth he’d created all on his own this past six hundred years.

He had to find this Jasper guy, first and foremost. The guy knew Iola and knew where she lived. He was definitely Voro’s
decipio
, so the guy had to die. Voro didn’t care if he did it himself, even though he knew Iola was supposed to do it. Or maybe …

Ridiculous. He could protect them all, these two women he was starting to - choke, gag -
care
about. The
only
way it could end was with Iola killing Jasper.

But then she’d become the Sin E
ater, Voro would be mortal, and Iola would have to clean up human kind’s filth until Voro died. He could help her. He could show her what to do, explain it all to her after the fact. And then maybe he could even … be with her.

He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk suddenly, causing the man following him to plow right
into him. He didn’t budge and the man had to move around him.

“Fucking prick,” the guy mumbled, not
into his cell phone either.

Voro narrowed his eyes at the back of the guy’s head, and delivered a psychosomatic Charlie horse right to the left quadriceps. Cell phone man went down to one knee, dropped the device attached to his ear and lost it under the tires of a passing bus.

That felt better.

The thought Voro had before the asshole had bumped
into him made him start walking again, taking long strides that carried him swiftly though the human herd on the sidewalk. Jesus, if he could spend this mortal life with Iola, anything he had to do to get her to kill the
decipio
was worth it.

He needed Raphael, and he was pretty sure where he could find him.

Iola had dozed off on the sofa once Claudia and Damien left, and a knock at the door brought her awake with a decidedly
un
ladylike snort, wiping drool from her chin. The clock said it was four in the afternoon.

She made her way sleepily to the door, eventually realizing the nausea and dizziness were gone, and all that really remained was the need to go back to sleep. A quick peek through the peephole and she wanted to curl up
into a ball and disappear through the floor. But instead she opened the door, tucking her hair behind her ears like that was going to make her
not
look like death warmed over.

Vinnie smiled anxiously as soon as he saw her and she wordlessly stepped aside to let him in. He had a plastic bag slung over one hand, so he used the other hand to wrap his arm around her waist in a sideways hug. “Iola, how are you?”

His concern made her feel warm, and she frowned as another thought hit her. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“I’m taking my lunch and supper break right now. I brought you chicken noodle soup.”

She shut the door and followed him down the hall, stopping in the doorway to watch him fuss around her kitchen finding bowls, napkins and spoons.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Iola said slowly, knowing she was smiling like an idiot anyway. Something about him stepping away from surgery and broken bones to come and tend to her upset stomach made her feel like royalty.

“I was worried. You seemed to have a hell of a fever.” He cracked the Styrofoam container of soup open, and as soon as Iola saw the steam rising off the top of the liquid her stomach grumbled.

She put a hand to her tummy in surprise, and he raised an eyebrow at her. “See? It’s a good thing I’m here.”

She let him steer her to the sofa where he covered her legs with the afghan she’d had slung over the back, fluffing up pillows at her back so she could stretch her legs out across the cushions while remaining sitting upright. The he brought her a bowl of soup and a spoon, sat next to her, pulled her legs over his lap and watched her eat.

She frowned as she swallowed the second spoonful. “You’re not eating?”

“I’ll eat when you’re done,” he said absently, smiling at her in the sweetest way.

“That makes me uncomfortable. You’re going to watch?”

“Don’t make me feed you. Eat it.” But Vinnie was smiling so she did as she was told like a good patient.

“Oh,” he suddenly remembered, taking the empty bowl from her and uncurling her legs so he could stand. “Missus Dean passed away this morning.”

Iola took a moment to think about that and nodded. “That’s too bad.”

“Yeah. She passed quietly in her sleep, which is the most we can really hope for.”

As he was in the kitchen getting his own serving ready Iola mulled that over.

“Vinnie, what do you think happens when we die?”