Sins of the Flesh

“No. I’ll wait for you here. You have three minutes before I head out on my own.”


Disconnecting the call, Dagan acknowledged his brother’s subtle meaning. On my own. It was his way of saying he wasn’t bringing Naphré along and his way of asking Dagan to leave Roxy behind. They had no way of knowing what they would find, what shape Mal would be in. And if they needed to deal with things—soul reaper things—by taking Mal to Sutekh’s realm, their mates could not join them. Both Roxy and Naphré were Daughters of Aset, previous members of the Asetian Guard, though neither of them had ascended very high in the hierarchy. It was reason enough for Sutekh to bar them from his realm. Add to that the fact that as a rule, those who went to the Underworld didn’t get to come back, and Dagan had no intention of taking Roxy anywhere near the Underworld.

He crossed to the bathroom and yanked open the door just as Roxy stepped from the shower. Wrapping her in the towel, he pressed a kiss to her lips.

“It’s Mal,” he offered, and Roxy nodded, her bronze-green eyes full of sympathy. At the same time, they were full of questions. Though she wasn’t part of the Asetian Guard anymore, old habits had to die hard.

The two of them were still dancing around this mate thing, and trust was meant to be built over time, not forced. So he offered her everything he knew, an olive branch, because if they didn’t have trust, then they didn’t have a hope in hell of making it together.

“Alastor and I both sense that he’s hurt, but we have no idea how or why. All we know is that he called Kai for a cleanup at a downtown condo, that he wasn’t alone and that he stole a rug.”

“A rug?” she asked and shook her head. “Can I do anything?”

“Good question. One I don’t have an answer to. Yet.” He let the assurance hang, unspoken but understood, that as soon as he had a task to give her, he would. He knew exactly how competent she was. If he needed information, he’d ask her to find it. Her network of Topworld grunts and contacts was probably more extensive than his own.

She’d been an excellent soldier for the Asetian Guard, and while her exit from the ranks was recent, she was no slacker. She’d already begun to lay the groundwork for her own Topworld investigative agency, dancing around Alastor’s mate, Naphré Kurata, to see if a partnership might be possible. Naphré had her fair share of skills as a trained assassin and Topworld enforcer.

Dagan pulled Roxy against him, amazed and awed that she was his, that after years of dreaming about her, she was actually in his arms every night. He kissed her, his mouth hard and hungry. Hers was no less so. Roxy Tam met him in the middle in all ways. She stood toe to toe with him, nose to nose.

“I’ll call you.”

“Do that,” she said and stepped away. “I’ll be out on a job. A little freelance work I picked up from Calliope.”

He nodded then turned and focused his attention on summoning a portal—

“Outside,” Roxy ordered and shoved hard at his back. “Last time you opened a portal in my house you left marks on the floor.” True enough.

“Our house,” he corrected softly.

“What’s mine is mine—” she shot him an arch look “—and what’s yours is mine.”

“And you are mine, so I guess that makes this my house.”

She rolled her eyes. “Go.”

He went.

He heard Roxy’s cell ring as he opened the front door, and the surprise in her voice as she answered a question the caller asked.

He crossed the wide porch and vaulted the wooden rail. Before his feet hit the ground, the air before him began to undulate and twist, and then it became a great, black, gaping hole with tendrils of smoke that writhed at the edges.

The cold hit him like a roaring breaker, the air flaying his skin like a thousand tiny blades and shearing his lungs as he breathed in.





“WHERE ARE WE?” Kuznetsov asked.

They’d been driving for over thirty hours straight, stopping only for gas. Calliope glanced at him. “Bugaboo Provincial Park.”

She doubted he knew where that was, and even if he did, it wouldn’t be much help to him. Where they were heading was accessible only by climbing or helicopter. Naked and wrapped in a blanket, he wouldn’t get far if he tried to run off alone—not that she’d let him—and she doubted he had a helicopter hidden up his butt.

She turned off Highway #95 and headed west along the gravel road. Wouldn’t be long before a team came down from the mountain to meet them.

“Ready to tell me about the phone call?” she asked. “Who died, and why did it make you afraid?” Like every other time she’d posed the same questions in the hours they’d been together, he ignored her, which only served to bolster her conviction that the phone call he’d received when he came out of the shower was significant. Otherwise, he’d give a flip answer and blow her off.

A few moments later, he said, “I have to take a piss.”