The Sinner

Ambri moves aside the sword strapped to his narrow waist and takes a seat with the grace of a hunting cat. Eistibus places two more glasses of wine on the bar and leaves us.

“I have a task for you,” I say to my second.

“You have only to name it and it is done.” Ambri’s voice still carries his human accent—he’d been a wealthy British lord some three hundred years ago and spent his brief life traipsing around Europe, spending money, bedding anything with a pulse, and generally being a living embodiment of lust, sloth, and gluttony.

Not much has changed.

I sip my wine; it tastes sour. Or perhaps it’s the words in my mouth. “I want information on a human. Guy Baker.”

Ambri arches a perfect brow. “Guy? Are the humans running out of names?”

I smirk despite myself. Ambri is my favorite of my servitors and the closest thing to a friend. If one can call a demon who’ll stab you in the back if it furthered his own ends a friend. But I can’t judge—I was once just like him. My path to the top of the hierarchy is littered with the bodies of those who stood in my way.

“I want a full report,” I say. “Who his demons are, his history, his natural weaknesses and vices, everything.”

“Consider it done. Anything else?”

“If there were anything else, I’d have named it.”

“Aye, my lord.” He watches me over his wine glass with onyx eyes.

“Speak your mind, Ambri,” I snap irritably.

“Are you not curious as to how your legions are faring on the Other Side? Maras is commanding them well in your absence, but they’re still your servitors, my lord.”

My servitors can go to Oblivion for all I care.

How much better would the world be without them? Without me?

But it’s futile—and pathetic—to think my departure will atone for my sins. Maras, or any number of other demons from the Brethren, will rise to take my place. War and strife will continue as it always has. So long as humans harbor a spark of malice for each other, there will always be demons to stoke it into an inferno.

Ambri’s shrewd, black gaze narrows on me.

“Very well,” I grit out. “Tell me.”

He relays news about conflicts in Myanmar, in Eritrea, in Sudan. I’m hardly listening, and he notices.

“You seem a tad distracted, Lord Casziel. Is everything well?”

They plagued her with flies…

I bite back an order for Ambri to send a battalion after Deber and Keeb, to rend the twins limb from rotted limb, then transport them back to the Other Side in pieces.

“Everything is well,” I mutter into my wine.

“I only inquire because you haven’t shared with me, your loyal second, why you’re on This Side, taking a leave from your command.” He nods at the door of the back room. “Lord Ashtaroth is here too, or so I smell. Did you get in a bad way with the old man—?”

My hand snakes out and closes around Ambri’s throat. I haul him close, my hard glare boring into his wide black eyes.

“Watch yourself, Ambri,” I hiss. “Control your wagging tongue or I’ll cut it out of your human mouth and leave your bedmates sorely disappointed.”

“F-forgive me, m-my lord,” he chokes out but knows better than to struggle.

I release him with a snarl and drain my wine. “Guy Baker. Tomorrow night. Go.”

Ambri straightens his collar. “Yes, my lord.”

He makes his way through the tavern and out into the night.