Pain exploded, bright and hot, as she gave a particularly violent wrench that rammed her elbow against the hole in his chest. He was tempted to return the favor, to dig his fingers into the wound in her shoulder.
In the end he didn't. Couldn't.
Wouldn't.
Whatever he'd become, he hadn't sunk so low as that.
But he kept a tight grip on her, refusing to give an inch. He hadn't come here for her, but now that he had her, he wasn't about to let her go until he got some answers.
He'd been sent to find out why Asmodeus had dispatched men to San Francisco, and to harvest the darksoul of one man in particular. He glanced at the dark mass hovering above his shoulder. One task down.
They were on the roof now, and he kicked the door shut behind him. The sounds of the bar and the street and the traffic carried to them, but it was far quieter up here than it had been below. They were alone.
Amber jerked in his grasp, and he drew her tighter against him, resting his lips against her ear. He felt her shiver.
"What's the deal, Amber?" he asked softly, her name melting on his tongue. "You're here. You're alive. And you don't look a minute older than the last time I saw you…which was what? Fifty years ago?" He paused. "Don't scream. You never know what kind of vermin might come running."
She gave a spare nod and he let his hand drop from her mouth.
"I could ask you the same thing," she said, struggling against him. "Why haven't you aged? Or died?"
"Disappointed?" Circling both her wrists with one hand, he turned her to face him. Her hair tumbled forward in tousled, loose curls. There was a purple scarf tied around her shoulder and he could smell her blood. He wondered how badly she was hurt. Then he wondered why he cared.
Unable to stop himself, he reached for the scarf, picked at the knot. It was stubborn.
With his gaze locked on hers, he pulled her gun from his waist, closed his hand on the barrel and crushed it. Her eyes widened, the color draining from her face.
He let go of her wrists, took the silk scarf between his hands and tore it in two. She sucked in a breath and her gaze slammed to his.
"It was ruined anyway," he said. "The blood—" He made a vague gesture and then he realized it wasn't the ruined scarf that had her looking at him oddly, but the fact that he'd crushed her gun.
She swayed a little, as though overwhelmed by the events of the night. Maybe she was. But he didn't trust anything about her.
"What are you?" she asked, and took a deep breath, visibly getting herself under control.
No reason to lie when the truth would do.
"Me? I'm a reaper." He cocked a brow and looked at the skin showing through the blood-crusted hole in her shirt. It was healing already, pink puckered flesh that looked like a month-old scar rather than a fresh wound. "And you?"
She stared at him for a long moment, two parallel lines drawn between her brows. He remembered that frown. How many times had he reached out and smoothed it away?
"You're a grim reaper?" she asked. "Like an angel of death?"
He blinked. He'd thought she'd know what he was talking about. After all, she'd been the one to put the events in motion.
"A soul reaper," he said, watching her carefully.
The words didn't appear to mean a damned thing to her.
"I work for Sutekh," he clarified, and when she didn't react, he continued, "Set. Seteh. Lord of the desert. Lord of chaos. God of storms. God of darkness. The Underworld überlord of chaos and evil."
Her gaze snapped up, and he realized she was looking at the darksoul he'd harvested, bobbing somewhere to the left of his head.
"Is that a soul?"
He was surprised that she could see it. Humans couldn't. It was proof positive that she wasn't human. Maybe she never had been. He supposed that of all the things he could hold against her, that really wasn't one of them, since he wasn't human anymore himself.
"A darksoul. It's a meal for Sutekh. He has an army of us harvesting for him."
"A meal?"
Kai offered a dark smile. "He ingests darksouls. He feeds off evil."
She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, though the night was warm.
"What about—" she pointed at the pouch he'd thrust the heart into "—that?"
"The heart? It's an offering for Osiris. It gets weighed against the feather of truth."
She shook her head. "Who—"
"No," he cut her off. "We're trading answers. I showed you mine. Time to show me yours. What do you owe Asmodeus? And how the fuck did you slip his noose?"
"Asmodeus," she repeated, as though the name were a foreign flavor touching her tongue for the first time.
"Underworld deity," he clarified. As if she didn't already know. "Demon of lust. He runs Topworld rackets. Drugs. Prostitutes. Given that those were his grunts we just terminated, I'm guessing you sold him something in exchange for eternal youth and life and then reneged on your deal. And now he's after you."