Sins of Eden Read Free

voice, veering to the left and vanishing into the trees.
    Elise tore herself from the crashed pickup and flashed through the night.
    For the past several weeks, she had been sick, incapable of feeding well enough to regain control of all of her powers. Now, she loosed herself into the night without hesitation. There wasn’t even a microgram of anathema powder remaining inside of her.
    More than that, she felt like she had fed on an entire army of victims, with blood and sex and flesh and fear, and she was strong enough to take on a second army if she wanted to.
    Elise saw everything as she expanded to fill the unnaturally dark night. She saw the werewolves closing in on the pickup, ripping the doors off to help Anthony and Brianna climb out. She saw the careful transfer of Rylie’s body to flat ground and Ariane Kavanagh emerging from a second vehicle behind them.
    She saw the angel named Nashriel skimming the border between air and void in the sky above, wheeling in circles as he watched for enemies that might threaten the wolf pack.
    Elise saw every inch of shadows under the canopy of the trees, between the grains of topsoil, deep within the layers of ice.
    And she saw Benjamin Flynn running.
    With a thought, she materialized in front of him, arms flung wide so that she formed a wall with her mortal body.
    Benjamin skidded to a stop before striking her. Now that they were closer, she realized he wasn’t impervious to the cold after all. His whole body was trembling, his lips pale, his runny nose frozen. He didn’t cut the most imposing figure.
    “What do you want with us?” Elise asked.
    He looked confused. “What do I want? What does that even mean?”
    She opened her mouth to reply, but wasn’t sure what to say. Something in his tone told her that he wouldn’t have understood.
    Benjamin shoved her.
    Elise let out a small cry of shock as she lost her grip on the trees and fell backwards.
    She never hit the ground. She flashed into shadow inches before she contacted ice.
    When she reappeared, she found herself standing in New Eden.
    Elise’s jaw dropped. Her boots crunched on frozen ground as she turned. That ground belonged in Russia. The trees framing her view of the city were likewise the trees of the tundra, with their desperate branches grasping for any brush of sunlight they could get in the long winters.
    Everything else surrounding her was ethereal. The frozen ground turned to white cobblestone a few feet to her left, and one of the angels’ newer buildings thrust toward the clouds, its upper floors of shimmering crystal hidden by storm clouds.
    Smoke spiraled into the black sky. Some of the trees were burning.
    Lightning flashed through the clouds over New Eden. For an instant, Elise glimpsed a familiar landscape high above her head: an icy road framed by forest and a pickup truck so far away that it looked to be half the size of her pinky nail.
    Benjamin had pushed her into another dimension.
    He was nowhere in sight now. When Elise searched for him with her other senses, ethereal power crashed over her, smothering her ability to sense anything else.
    This wasn’t just a vision. She was really in New Eden.
    Some part of her was perversely amused that she had stumbled back there after all it had taken to reach New Eden the first time. A much larger part of her was horrified by the implications.
    What other worlds would be spilling onto Earth next?
    She stormed deeper into New Eden, searching for Benjamin’s movement among the swaying branches. The wind was picking up. The city groaned and crumbled around her.
    Another consciousness pushed against hers, powerful and brief.
    Leliel.
    The angels knew Elise had come back.
    She raced down the twisting cobblestone road faster.
    Benjamin was scurrying over a bridge when she found him, rubbing the circulation back into his arms. On the other side of the road, Elise could see Earth again—not the tundra that they had left behind, but somewhere with waving grass