Free Sins of Eden by S.M. Reine Page B

on a full moon.” She sidestepped in time for another wolf to run past her. “Angels and demons have committed a lot of sins. What happened to werewolves might have been the biggest of them. I think this is what they should have been like all along.”
    Happy goddamn puppies ?Summer would have loved it. Abram was tempted to go upstairs and grab her just so that she could see.
    “Thanks,” Abel said stiffly.
    Elise pulled her gloves back on. When she spoke, her voice was strained. “It’s for her.”
    A shudder rippled through Abel’s shoulders. “Yeah.”
    “Take them. They’re yours now,” she said. When he started to move away, though, she grabbed his elbow. “Use them to protect Abram.”
    It was a dangerously stern order. Abel had never taken orders well, not when they had come from his mate and definitely not coming from a demon. Abram braced himself for a fight.
    But Abel just said, “Yeah.”
    His agreement seemed to relax Elise, and she released him.
    When Abel stepped into the middle of the garden, the wolves all stopped moving.
    Luminous silver eyes turned to focus on him.
    Abel didn’t speak to them. But one by one, they sank onto their forelegs, displaying submission.
    The corner of Elise’s mouth lifted in a smirk. She headed toward the back door, leaving her strange and surreal work behind her.
    Abram followed. Several of the wolves broke away, winding around his legs. He could almost feel their furry flanks brushing against his knees. “Why do you want the wolves to protect me?” he asked Elise’s back.
    “You know why,” she said without looking back.
    So she knew what the attack from the hybrids had meant. His heart sank. “What are you going to do about it?”
    “I’m going to use your blood,” Elise said. His hand twitched for his gun. “Don’t bother drawing that. I won’t kill you, and you can do whatever you want once I’ve opened the gates to Eden.”
    “You really think you can kill Belphegor?”
    “If I can’t, nobody can.” It wasn’t exactly a motivational speech.
    “Hope you’ve got a better plan than that.”
    A ghost of a smile moved over her lips. “I hope so, too. The wolves are the beginning of it.” She opened the hotel’s rear door. “If we survive this, remind me. You’re a kopis. I can teach you to perform exorcisms, too.”
    He was startled. “Why?”
    “Why not?” she asked, standing aside to let him into Gora Hotel. “We might need more of this in the future.”
    Abram didn’t understand what she was talking about yet, but she did seem to have a plan for the future. The fact that she even thought there might be a future—any future at all, much less one that needed another exorcist—was weirdly comforting.
    For the first time since leaving New Eden, ever since the sky had broken and the world began to burn, he felt a touch of hope.

    Elise held her composure all the way down the hall and up the stairs, while she felt Abram’s eyes on her. It wasn’t until she was alone on the second floor that she stopped to stare at her hands.
    Twenty-two exorcisms. All successful.
    It had barely tapped into the wellspring of her power.
    She sensed James approaching and turned. He hung back several steps. Worry knitted his eyebrows together. “Are you all right?”
    Was she? Elise didn’t feel overwhelmingly hungry. The light from the candles throughout the hallway didn’t make her skin ache. She could leave her mind open to the sense of James’s beating heart, tasting the slosh of its pulse on her tongue, and didn’t feel the urge to attack him.
    She was definitely all right. More than all right. She’d cast magic with ethereal influences, and it hadn’t hurt her at all.
    “I’m fine,” Elise said, and she couldn’t keep the note of wonder out of the words.
    She stepped into James’s room. Belphegor had restored the wall that Nathaniel had destroyed, but the furniture was singed, and many of the papers on the desk were ash.
    James hung back