Sins of the Flesh

“I’m guessing you want to know how long since you had your little run-in with Xaphan’s fire genies,” Dagan said. “Measured in Topworld time? Days.”


Days. An enormous gulley of time between him and what he wanted: Calliope Kane and, through her, Kuznetsov.

Except that if he was brutally honest with himself, he wanted them both.

Kuznetsov for the secrets he held.

Calliope Kane for reasons of a different sort, only one of which was payback.

She’d stolen his damned car. She’d stolen a nice helping of his blood. She’d stolen Kuznetsov.

No. Not true. He’d let her steal the High Reverend, and he had no way to explain that. He could have sacrificed her to the fire genies. But he hadn’t. He’d taken the hit himself so she could get away.

What the fuck was wrong with him?

Altruism had never been his thing. Especially not for an enemy of his kind, which she was, given the whole son of Sutekh, Aset’s Daughter/Otherkin thing.

But that was just it. He didn’t want to be her enemy.

He wanted her for more than just her link to the High Reverend.

Which made about as much sense as snow in July.

He opened his eyes again, the light still so bright it blinded him. All he saw were vague, dark shapes.

“The knife…” he rasped.

“Got it,” Alastor said. “And you were right. The blade is volcanic glass. It appears to be from Hokkaido.”

“Japan,” Dagan clarified.

Which could either mean that Izanami had been involved in Lokan’s murder, or that someone had covered their tracks very well, setting up the origins of the knife as a red herring.

“The knife had traces of blood,” Dagan continued as Alastor tipped the glass against Mal’s lips once more. Mal focused on his brother’s words rather than the fact that the water moving down his throat felt like ground glass. “The Topworld techs say the traces were human. Female, for the most part. At least four different women. And one man. Alastor offered up some blood as a control. The tech’s tests indicated that the male’s blood was a match for having the same paternity as Alastor.”

Which meant that the knife Mal had found had been used on Lokan, one of the two blades they’d seen in the video. Find the second knife and they’d have a direct line on the supernaturals Kuznetsov had been working with, maybe even a lead on the bastard who’d masterminded the entire scheme.

“Our Underworld techs are looking at the knife now.”

Mal nodded. At least, he thought he did.

The knife. The blood. Lokan’s blood. Hope flared. He knew that Roxy Tam had the unique ability to track humans through their blood, sort of a supernatural GPS. If she took a taste of Lokan’s blood, would she be able to find him?

“Blood,” Mal croaked. Then, “Roxy.”

“We were a step ahead of you,” Dagan said.

Mal’s breath hitched as hope surged.

“But so far, she hasn’t come up with a thing. I’m not sure if the blood was too old or the amount too small. Either way, Roxy hasn’t been able to find him.”

Disappointment was a stiletto plunging deep.

Alastor gave him another drink. It went down far easier than the other two, more like gravel than ground glass.

“Genies?” he asked, the single word coming out as a barely intelligible croak.

“Four of them were lying on the ground when we got there. You were working on the fifth. The one who was still intact was running around shoving hearts into chests. We almost bloody well turned around and left since you didn’t appear to need any help,” Alastor said.

Yeah, he’d needed help, but not because he couldn’t take care of business himself. He could do that, too well—that was the problem. When they’d turned him into a living torch, he’d been caught in the moment. Instinct and centuries of training kicked in until he wasn’t thinking, just acting, thrusting his hand through skin and bone, deep in their chests to rip their hearts free.

He’d been a breath away from harvesting their darksouls and feeding them to Sutekh as a meal of pure power.

And that would have been a disaster. It would have cost Sutekh any hope of maintaining pleasant relations with Xaphan, the keeper of the lakes of fire. While a brawl between sides would be tolerated, darksoul harvests would not.

Soul reaping 101. Don’t harvest from your allies. It tended to piss them off.

“Why’d they attack?” Dagan asked.

“They wanted Kuznetsov.” Mal took another sip of water. He closed his eyes tightly then opened them wide, trying to get his vision to clear. The light bored into him, as though someone was jamming a nine-inch nail through his pupil. “Nerita said Xaphan told them not to come back without him.”

But there was more to it than that. For Nerita, it had been personal.