“How did you do that?”
He flexed his hand, answering her without ever taking his watchful gaze off their surroundings. “It works even through the leather if I force it to.”
“Oh.” She stepped over the still-twitching dead creature, a little shaken to have seen Lore’s power firsthand. She hadn’t expected it to be so… fast. “So, uh… were you born with this issue?”
“Nope.” He kept walking, his eyes constantly scanning for danger. “Came with my dermoire when I was twenty. First person I touched was Sin, and it didn’t affect her. Second person dropped dead. I thought it was a heart attack or something. Not that I cared. I was crazed at the time.”
“Crazed?”
He paused, head up, black eyes scanning, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention. “Along with the dermoire came an uncontrollable lust and that fun rage.” He started moving again, as if he’d never stopped.
“It all happened suddenly?”
“Yeah.” His voice was gruff. “Sin and I shared our grandparents’ house for a year after they died. One morning we both were struck with this massive pain. Went on for hours. When it was over we had new tats, and I was a raging monster.” He kicked at a steaming, softball-sized stone. “I scared her pretty bad. Tore up the house. I guess I took off, was gone for days. I don’t remember much of it, except bits and pieces I wish I didn’t remember.”
She started to reach for him, but dropped her hand to her side at the last second, unsure if he’d appreciate a comforting gesture. “I’m sorry.”
“Whatever. It was a long time ago.”
Maybe, but it was obviously still painful. “What happened to Sin? I mean, if you went nuts, did she?”
“I don’t know.” He launched a morning star in a smooth motion that barely registered until a winged demon fell out of the air in front of them, the blade bull’s-eyed in the center of its third eye. This place was going to give her a heart attack. He, on the other hand, was acting as if they were strolling through a park. “We’ve never talked about it.”
Never talked about it? Idess and Rami had discussed everything. Nothing was off-limits for them. Granted, they’d spent centuries together, and Sin and Lore had only a fraction of that, but it still seemed odd, given how protective they were of each other.
She watched him fetch his weapon and wipe it clean on the creature’s leathery skin. “What did she say when you finally went home?”
Tucking the star into a leather hip housing, he picked up the pace. “We’re almost there.”
“Lore,” she said, catching up to him, “what did she say?”
He patted down his jacket and cursed. “I forgot my claw darts.” Silence stretched as he kept walking. Finally, a long, drawn-out sigh came from him. “I betrayed and abandoned her. It’s ugly, and I don’t like going back there.”
She grabbed his arm and forced him to stop. “Tell me you’ve apologized.”
He frowned down at her. “What’s it matter to you?”
“It’s just… if you don’t, you might never get the chance. And you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”
“You sound like you know something about that,” he murmured, but somehow she heard him over the growling earth and bone-chilling shrieks that came at them from all sides.
“I do.”
His eyes were in constant motion, alert and seeking out potential threats, but he also seemed to be making a conscious effort to not look at her. “She knows I’m sorry.”
“Are you sure about that?”
His frown deepened. “I’m paying for what I did every day of my life.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“Trust me, it is.” Something screeched nearby, making her jump. “She knows.”
“How?”
“God, you’re persistent,” he muttered. She crossed her arms over her chest and started to tap her foot, but when the ground protested with a bark, she froze and decided she might make Lore carry her the rest of the way. “I’m an assassin because of her, okay? She got herself into trouble with Detharu thirty years ago, and she came to me. We hadn’t seen each other in about seventy-five years, which should tell you how desperate she was. He was planning to sell her into service at a blood gallery.”
Idess’s stomach turned over. Oh, sweet Jesus. She’d never been to what was a demon version of an opium denslash-whorehouse, but she’d heard enough about them to understand Sin’s fear. Some humans and demons participated willingly, but others were forced. They would be given drugs and then turned into the “pits,” where blood-feeders like vampires could drink and get high while using the humans for sex. Each gallery had different rules governing the treatment of the humans, but even in the strict establishments, accidents and overdoses happened. In the worst places, the humans were disposable, rarely surviving more than a day, or even beyond one customer.