There Are No Saints (Sinners, #1)

by Sophie Lark

I feel no sympathy. No guilt. Those are emotions I’ve never experienced. I’m aware, academically, of the full range of human emotions. I’ve studied them intently so I can mimic their effects. But they have no power over me. What I do feel, I feel intensely: rage, revulsion, and pleasure.

I’ve killed fourteen people and I’ve yet to receive a single knock on my door. A pretty young girl is a different story—the media loves to sensationalize Alastor’s work. They call him the Beast of the Bay for the way he batters his victims and even bites chunks out of their flesh.

Even if she be not harmed, her heart may fail her in so much and so many horrors; and hereafter she may suffer—both in waking, from her nerves, and in sleep, from her dreams . . .”

I smile to myself. Poor little Mara is not impervious to nightmares, whatever she may pretend during the daylight hours. I pick up the next novel on the stack, Prometheus Illbound, and let it fall open to a dog-eared page. Here she’s marked: I do not love men: I love what devours them.

Mara has no curtains on her windows. She’s so high up, she feels as safe as a crow in its nest. Crows forget about hawks.

“I loved my father,” I say coldly. “The day I lost him was the worst day of my life.” Cole smiles. “The worst day so far.” What. The. Fuck.

That’s a lie. I have tried it. All I learned is that no amount of submission is good enough for a man. You can roll over, show your belly, beg for mercy, and they’ll just keep hitting you. Because the very act of breathing is rebellious in the eyes of an angry male.

“Evil men always want to justify what they do,” she says. “And it’s not by telling you all their reasons. No . . . they want to push you, and bend you, and break you until you snap. Until you do something you thought you’d never do. Until you can’t even recognize yourself. Until you’re as bad as they are. That’s how they justify themselves . . . by trying to make you the same as them.”

“I missed you too, sweetheart,” she says. Then she kisses me on the mouth.

And I realize . . . she’s everything I dreamed of and more. More vengeful. More strategic. More effective. More fucked up.

She fucked on that painting, and then she hung it on my wall. I’m struck anew by the absolute insanity of this girl. I admire her audacity. While planning how I’ll punish her for it.

“What were you thinking?” I cry when I finally catch my breath. “You could have killed that guy!” “I hope I did,” Cole says. I turn to stare at him, gasping in the thin, damp air. “You can’t mean that.” “Absolutely I do. He disrespected you. Put his hands on you. I’d kill him for much less.”

I can’t protect her. Her death is inevitable. But I’ll be damned if Shaw is the one to do it. Mara belongs to me. I’m the only one who gets to kill her.

“All this space is yours?” she says. “No one alive has seen it. Except me and you.”

I’m blasted to bits, la petite mort, the death of Mara. I don’t know if I’ll ever come back together. Or what form I’ll take if I do.