“What am I?” I panicked. I could feel my breath getting out of control.

“You’re an immortal now. Every immortal has a specific need. It’s how we survive. Vampires need blood, lycanthropes need raw flesh, succubi need human emotions, and we need souls, or rather, the separation of the soul. We feed on the tearing that occurs when the soul is set free.”

I frowned at him. “What are we?”

He smiled. “Death Deities, Sin Eater, Grim Reaper, Black Angel of Death. You choose. Either way, your touch does tend to finalize everything in one's life.”

I shook my head. “Death Deities? No, that’s a myth. That’s mythology.”

I looked down at the dead girl and knew that what he had said was true. I was what he had said. I looked at my hands. They were long and slender but nothing about them looked out of the ordinary. They were my mom's hands. I'd always loved that. I shivered, imagining my mom looking down on me comparing our hands. Hers had never been as dirty as mine were.

I dropped to my knees, astonished at how much I could hate myself, Dorian, and Aleks, all at once.

“This is the fate I chose instead of death, instead of my one single death? I'll survive by doling out death, like I was God? Like I have any right to choose for others? How could you not tell me? How could Aleks not tell me?”

My words felt as if they belonged to another. My voice sounded too hollow to be mine.

Dorian ignored me. He looked at his cell phone, as if I were keeping him from something pressing. Something besides the death and burial of a girl. I knew, that to him, this was one useless girl. I shuddered as I looked at her. I wondered if he had used his mind tricks to do terrible things to her first.

I couldn’t reason with myself. I was death, and that was a fate I was going to have to find a way to work around. “You've made me into Death. I'm Death. Will I kill everything I touch?”

He shook his head and sighed impatiently. “No, you have to learn to shut it off and on. You have to learn to control it.” He kicked the girl on the ground, not respecting her limp dead body. “This is because you were too hungry. If you let it get too far, your hunger will take over. You will feed, Aimee. We always feed. If you don’t get too hungry, you can be picky. You can choose the evil or sick.”

“Don’t touch her.” I shrieked at him and picked the dead girl up off of the forest floor.

I held her like she was my sister, my kin. If she were my family, I would want something else for her, beyond some disgusting demon kicking her corpse in the woods. She was still warm in my hands. I didn’t know what to do with her. I smelled in the air for the ocean and started to run toward the smell of the salt. I had never seen a dead body before, let alone held one in my arms. I wanted to hug her and cry and tell her everything would be okay, even when it wouldn’t. It would never be okay; I had taken her life.

I ran as fast as I could, which apparently was pretty fast. I saw the ocean through the trees and ran down to the beach. I looked both ways to ensure no one saw me carrying a dead girl out into the open waters. I felt the cold ocean water hit me like a refreshing wave. The cold didn’t hurt like it should have. I swam out into the chuck, holding her hand. I swam as hard as I could, until I reached a good distance from the beach. I was amazed at how quickly I could swim. I let all of my breath out and grabbed the dead girl's hand. I sank like a stone down into the cool ocean water.

The seawater didn’t bother my open eyes. I watched seaweed and small fish pass by us as we sank into the dark. When I reached the bottom of the sea floor, I found a big rock. I pinned her under the rock, trying desperately not to think about what I was doing. I left her there in her pink pajamas and white t-shirt. I looked at the peaceful look on her face and felt nauseous. I swam to the surface, kicking with my legs as fiercely as I could. When I broke the surface, I breathed in relief to feel the air in my lungs. No air in my lungs felt unnatural. I swam to shore and crawled out of the ocean waves. I felt defeated.

I tried to be realistic about the whole situation. It was my first time being a soul-sucking demon. It was my first kick at the can feeding off of a person. I made a rookie mistake. I could do better. I could find a cancer ward or criminals and easily put them out of their misery. I knew that if I’d been warned or trained by someone with compassion and care, it wouldn’t have happened. I looked into the forest where I knew Dorian was, and decided I would try my luck alone for a while. I knew I couldn’t stay in my hometown, as no doubt I would be a danger to anyone I knew.

I started to run along the beach and dove into the water again. I knew Portland was my only hope. I shut myself off. I shut off my feelings for Shane. I had no feelings for Blake, not any I was willing to act upon. I knew my sister and my dad would be desperately sad without me, but at least they would be alive. I shut off my feelings for the girl on the ocean floor, who didn’t deserve the death she received.

I swam until I reached the harbor. I never really tired, but I got winded and bored after a while.

When I got there, I crawled out breathlessly and dragged my sopping cold body into an alley. I pressed my back against the wall and waited for things to make sense—no money, no food, no shelter. No friends. No Shane. No Aleks. I shook my head and tried to reason with myself. Tried to make it make sense.

I noticed a scent on the cool breeze. I lifted my nose and took a deep inhale. The smell was ecstasy—like a donut shop or patisserie. My mouth watered. I opened my eyes and realized what I was seeing. It was a couple walking hand in hand. I was smelling them. They smelled like dessert. I turned and ran into the alley. I wouldn’t take another life. No matter what. I dragged myself into a cardboard box and closed my eyes.

Chapter Seventeen

How much sin can a sin eater eat in a city full of sin?

One Year Later - Portland, Oregon

My palms grew warm. They itched with a burning I could not soothe. I wiped them on my pants back and forth. I dragged them and waited for the release. It was the same every time. I still had no patience like I’d had when I was alive. I had lost my ability to sit still. My trigger finger itched, so to speak. I had no trigger that the human eye could see. I was near the alley I had been in when she had rescued me. I shivered and tried not to think about how bad it had all gotten, how hungry I had been. I shook my head and snapped back to the visual I had on the mark.

I had been out for coffee when I saw him the first time. I knew he would work to fulfill my hunger once I cleared him with the Roses. He was raging when he had stormed past the coffee shop window where I had been sitting. I followed him cautiously. I knew one small move could send me into attack mode. I was still coping with the hunger. The training helped, but the hunger was something that I would battle my whole life.

I watched him from the building across the street, through the window. Even though I wanted to eat him, like I did all of them, I always looked for something I could save. It was always the same thing. I had to see there was no other option. It was also Roses protocol.

Secretly, I hated taking their lives, even though I knew their families would be free of the monster. Most of the time, the monster was someone they had unwittingly married or been born to. That was the part I tried to remember when I saw the family members crying. They were always devastated by the death, even if their life had been bad.

I heard a shout from the apartment. I looked up to see him pacing in the window. He screamed at motionless beings that I could not see within the tiny window. I could see him trembling. He was about to commit a crime and break Rose law. I sighed, thankful he was the one. I was getting too hungry and would end up attacking someone who didn’t deserve it, not the way Peter did.

I thumbed the platinum ring on my right hand mindlessly watching, always watching. The Roses had saved me from myself in a moment of weakness and sorrow. I wished I could save Peter, but he had taken it too far; his kind always did. The Fae didn’t work well with humans. Humans were too weak.

His hands flew back and forth, expressing his rage. He stopped, hovering a moment over something or someone. No one moved beyond him and no words were spoken besides his.

He was a monster, trying desperately to control his change, surrounded by humans. Weak and breakable humans. I literally watched as his mind lost its control. It was like a twig breaking from a branch. It made the most pronounced snap as the control was lost and the monster emerged.

He shouted and then his fists came down on the couch. They came down hard, making screams match the fury they hit with. His arms moved like a madman's clawing and hitting.

He was going to shift in front of them. I knew it wasn't entirely his fault. He had been desperately trying to contain the beast inside, but his history had proven he could not. He had made the mistake of thinking that he would be able to have a normal life.

I winked myself inside to see the madness. The inhabitants of the room could not see me as they covered themselves completely. I watched the horror show of Peter raging at the couch and the people curling against each other. A mom tried to protect her two small children. She used her body as a shield.

Peter’s face grew distorted as his head shivered and shook.

His rage was bringing out the beast. He literally would not be human within seconds.

I leapt forward, not even worrying about whether I was seen or not. I touched Peter's quivering shoulder. I smiled down at the small child on the couch, who peeked up at me from under his mom's bleeding arm. He smiled through the tears when his eyes met mine. I watched as lips formed the word, “Angel”.

I winked quickly, removing Peter and myself from the house before I was seen by anyone beyond the small child. Outside in the alley, Peter tried to fight me, but once I let my hands have what they wanted, he was frozen. I sucked him dry in seconds, before anyone would see. I left his body on the ground outside of the apartment.

Peter’s body would remain in human form long enough for the medical examiner to rule it a heart attack. His body wouldn’t decay the way a regular human would, but he would be buried or burned before then. I wondered what I would decay into if I were able to die. It was the one thing I envied in them, all of them. I could kill them, but nothing could take me from my existence? I left my pain in the alley with his.