Sinners' Kingdom #1: The Book of Lust (Complete)

79

I had enough juice to Command Lust again, for now. I could see again, albeit only out of one eye. And I had an Indra's Net that a Grandmaster gave me at the top of a blizzarding mountain, because she said it might be my one hope of making it out of this alive.

That was all I needed.

"Sable," Lust growled between clenched teeth, voice forced. "Don't do this."

My confidence swelled yet again. At this rate, it would burst. Go ahead. Burst, then! I was fucking tired of being terrified, of fighting being terrified. But the strength of my Command was already waning. Frustration boiled as I wrestled with the last droplets of power clinging to my soul. Already! Of course it had been weak, and of course I realized maybe it was only even working because Lust himself was so weakened, too, but couldn't I at least put up a decent fight! Already exhausted again—

But it wasn't all for nothing. Lust struggled, the tendons of his neck straining as he fought the compulsion of my order. He refused to break the stare, but the light of his crimson eyes flickered as if a fierce candle flame had been lit behind them. The longer I stared back, the harder I pushed and pushed, the faster and stronger the glow blazed, in and out, in and out.

My God. It was working. But I hadn't even had room enough to doubt, so I didn't stop to marvel at it. This was as it should be. This was as it must be.

"Down," I ordered once more, and I didn't even have to use up the last speck of my strength to do it. Like a house of cards, Lust's resolve toppled. I slid down from his arms into the water as his twitching arms obeyed my will, and I righted myself with a kick of my feet to keep from dipping under the surface. His only remaining resistance was to anchor me with both of his hands on my hips, the tips of his claws gently scraping me through the fabric of the robes. Just as well. He was tall enough to stand on the sloping lake bottom, but we were far enough from the shallows that my head would have gone under if he weren't holding me upright.

"Sable, my love—"

"Don't. I'm not going to die useless."

"Nothing will ever touch you again."

"That's my plan," I agreed firmly, but it might have been lost in the great crashing noise that erupted from the bank where the snake monster bashed his tail into the ground, cratering it yet again as Mammon went flying into the water, finally thrown off. Oh, shit. And not a second too soon. "The sirens!"

Like a great cloud of smoke, the creatures swirling together in the sky tipped earthward on its side, the rightmost edge diving towards us in slow motion. No. Not slow motion. From that distance, it might look slow, but that was only an illusion. When they dropped on me, it would be like a falcon bashing into a field mouse, breaking its neck with the sheer force of the dive.

"Yes, we don't have long, we need to leave. Sable!"

I pushed his face away, too impatient to tear my stare away from the mass in the sky dropping towards us. He caught my wrist with his own hand that he pulled from around my waist, fingers grasping me tight. He pulled me closer in the same motion, anchoring me to himself inescapably with his other hand still on my hip. That was when I noticed it. I paused, glancing at the grip he had on my arm with an abrupt frown.

"What is that? What's on your hand?" My pulse rocketed, red-hot intuition sending warning adrenaline rushing through me. "Something... What is that!"

"Nothing—please listen, love, I—"

Wait. I looked to where I had unconsciously pressed my hand to his shoulder for leverage, the handle of the Indra's net trapped between my palm and his skin. Hot? Really hot, and heating up still. Why—? I slapped my opposite hand onto his arm to steady myself before lifting the whip away... to find a fierce, thick red welt visibly rising where it had been pressed a second before. The angry swelling of the mark glowed, scattered with specks like flaring cinders as I stared.

"Sable! Look at me."

I couldn't. Intuition struck again, connecting the dots with lightning speed in my frazzled mind. My gaze flicked to his hand now, the one wrapped around my arm. The strange, striated sensation pressing into my skin... those were welts, too, even thicker and hotter. And... blood? Tiny crimson rivulets seeped out and dribbled away, mixing with the water droplets clinging to our skin as they split and trailed down both his arm and mine.

"It hurts you," I said dumbly. "The whip."

"It's a protective Holy relic. It sees me as the enemy. You've somehow claimed it already. It serves you."

"Claimed?"

"Sable, there's no time to explain! The beast is coming into the water now. I'll draw it and the sirens away. Hold onto the Shard until I return—"

The Shard. Right. It was in my other hand, the one awkwardly twisted and hanging from his shoulder. I was holding on to two powerful relics, one Holy, one Infernal. A confused human who had no business with either.

But I was here, wasn't I? I would make the best of it.

"If this thing is 'serving' me and protecting me," I said calmly, and I pulled my captured hand out of his grip with surprising ease. "And if it's a weapon, it can do something about the sirens and that snake. So tell me how to use it. I'm fixing this shit right now, and you're going to help me do it."