Eternal Sin Read Free Page A

pair of human feet drew back. His fingers still sliding over the keys, Synjon tracked the males, waited for them to spot him, scent him. It took no more than a moment before they did, before a pathway was created across the polished stone floor.
    Syn continued to play as the Roman brothers approached, stalking him like prey. They appeared rather tense. Syn wondered what that felt like.
    The one he knew best, a nearly albino vampire male with a perpetual sneer, spoke first. “Nice party. But I think our invitation got lost in the mail, Brit Boy.”
    There was a time when Syn had risen to the male’s caustic play. Reveled in it, in fact. He had no interest now. “You weren’t invited, Lucian. In fact, none of you were.”
    The male turned to his skull-shaved brother, Alexander, and snorted. “Good to know the guy still has some asshole left in him.”
    Alexander didn’t respond. His focus was entirely on Synjon, his tone serious as he spoke. “We have a problem.”
    “We?” Synjon asked, his fingers moving into Bach’s Concerto in F Minor. He used to despise the piece, had been forced to practice it over and over as a balas , but now he felt only the smoothness of the keys against his skin.
    Alexander’s voice dropped, and his eyes narrowed. “The veana who carries your child—”
    “Petra,” Syn supplied, picturing the dark-haired veana and feeling . . . nothing.
    “Yes,” Alexander ground out. “She hasn’t gone through her Meta . We didn’t know that before. When we brought her back home . . . We didn’t know how a veana in swell who hadn’t gone through her transition would react . . . She’s losing her mind, Syn.”
    Synjon looked up, assessed the male. He couldn’t imagine why Alexander was telling him this. “Now that you’re here, would you like to stay? Join my guests?”
    A growl rumbled in Alexander’s chest. “No.”
    “Perhaps you’d like something to drink?”
    “Christ,” Lucian muttered, leaning against the piano.
    “Some one to drink, then?” Synjon caught the eye of one of the humans who enjoyed feeding his vampire guests. She grinned hopefully at him.
    “We’re not here for a party,” Nicholas said tersely, moving around to the other side of the piano. “Petra is ill, Syn. She can’t control her emotions. She’s in pain. She’s going out of her mind. It happened soon after she returned to the Rain Forest. You have to—”
    “Attend to my guests,” Synjon said evenly. There was so much to do—he had to select his blood donor for the evening as well as his sexual conquests. He had discriminating tastes in both. But first, a little Prelude in C-Sharp Minor. Rachmaninoff used to make him snarl.
    Times changed, it seemed.
    Arching an eyebrow at the three males, he said, “If you’ll excuse me.”
    “‘Excuse me’?” Lucian repeated, giving Syn a disgusted look. “Whatever happened to ‘Get the fuck out of my way, you bleeding tossers’?”
    Useless . Words with emotions attached .
    “I don’t react to people and problems with threats and anger anymore, Lucian,” he said, his voice even. “I take care of them quietly, quickly.”
    “That’s too bad,” Lucian muttered. “Merry fucking Christmas.”
    “We should go, find another way to help her,” Nicholas said tightly. “This paven doesn’t give a shit about anything. And it’s our fault. We made him that way.”
    “Cruen made him that way,” Alex amended.
    “We forced him, held him down and allowed that ancient bastard to drink the emotions from his blood.”
    “We had to.” Alex’s gaze slid away from Synjon. “He was unreasonable and dangerous. We couldn’t risk having Petra or the child harmed.”
    Lucian growled, pushed away from the piano. “Well, now he feels nothing for them, and Cruen got to run free.”
    Not free, Synjon mused, closing in on the seven-measure coda. “Well, gentlepaven , it was a successful plan all around. I’ve never felt better.”
    “You feel