Sins of the Flesh

The moments before she lit him on fire played through his thoughts. She hadn’t been thinking. She’d been acting on pure emotion. He hadn’t seen it coming. He’d thought that during their brief entanglement, they’d been on the same page. She’d acted as though she wanted the same thing he did—a little fun for a night. He hadn’t realized that he’d hurt her.

He didn’t feel particularly good about that.

Between the glucose IV and the water, Mal’s energy was slowly reviving, his thoughts clearing, his vision growing sharper, losing the haze.

First thing he saw, dead ahead, was an oasis of palm trees overhanging a tranquil pond.

Second thing he saw was a man’s back. He was wearing loose-fitting linen shorts, cut off at the knees, and not much else. His exposed skin was puckered, with fluid oozing from the raw patches.

“Nice,” Mal muttered, closing his fist on the linen that covered his own thighs. He noticed that the skin on the back of his hand was pink and shiny, a freshly healed scar.

The man turned and Mal might as well have been looking in the mirror, a little worse for wear. The face was singed red along the jaw but relatively unmarked above that. He couldn’t say the same for the rest of the body. Arms, legs, chest…all were marked by healing burns.

“Malthus,” his doppelganger greeted him.

Mal had no idea what his father really looked like because Sutekh could choose to take on any form. Kemetic art showed a creature with a doglike head, the snout of an anteater and a forked tail. At the moment, Mal wished his father would have chosen that form. It would have been far more appealing than the one that he’d taken—one that Mal had no doubt reflected the sorry shape he himself was in.

“Do I look that bad?” he asked.

“You did when we first brought you in. Not so much anymore.” Alastor glanced at him. “At least they spared your ugly face.”

Sutekh’s gaze flicked from Mal to Alastor, and back again like he was watching some fascinating but confounding species of insect. It was those eyes, flat black and soulless, that marked the difference between them. Mal’s eyes were gray. And human.

“Do you mind changing?” Mal asked with an attempt at a grin. “Bad enough I have to experience my injuries. I’d prefer not to have to look at them, as well.”

Sutekh stared at him, and Mal saw a tiny telltale tic beneath his father’s right eye, so minute it was almost imperceptible. But Mal knew what to look for from long years of purposefully aiming for exactly that reaction.

Only today, he hadn’t been aiming to irritate his father. But he’d definitely said something—

He’d asked him to change his appearance.

Mal mentally sorted through the possibilities of why that would piss him off and could come up with just one that made any sense. His father had chosen to take the form of his injured son as a show of…what? Empathy? Mal had no idea if Sutekh could feel pain, if he felt the burns because he’d chosen to mirror Mal’s form. Did he know Mal’s suffering? Was this a way to offer some fatherly support?

The thought was bizarre.

But Mal couldn’t come up with a better explanation.

Unless Sutekh’s goal was to make him more uncomfortable than he already was. Which was a more likely possibility.

He exhaled through his teeth. Maybe he shouldn’t bother trying to figure out the machinations of his father’s Machiavellian mind. He hadn’t had any luck at that for nearly three centuries.

“You are healing,” Sutekh said. Impossible to know if he thought that was a good thing or bad.

“Yeah.” Mal pushed to a sitting position and looked at his brothers. It was then he noticed that they’d paid a price for his rescue. Alastor’s forearms and hands were pink and puckered, fresh burn scars marking his skin. The left side of Dae’s neck and face were similarly marked. The fact that the scars remained days after the incident meant the damage had been significant.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“Everything was on fire. Them. You. No way to pull you out without diving into the inferno,” Dae said with a shrug. “Not the first time one of us took a hit for the other.”

No. Not the first time. And, no doubt, not the last.

“We’ll heal,” Alastor said.

Yeah, they would. And the fact that they’d been there for him, stepped up and put themselves in harm’s way for him, made Mal feel both incredibly guilty and nauseatingly touched.

“Right.” Mal cleared his throat and changed the topic. “So, uh, you’ve got my sick bed set up in the garden because…?”

“What…you don’t like the ambience?” Alastor asked.

“Just not sure why I’m in the Underworld instead of my own bed.”

The fact that they’d brought him to Sutekh’s territory was odd. But given that they were here, the garden-as-recovery-room wasn’t. This was Sutekh’s favorite place in his entire territory. He would sit for hours—hell, maybe even days—watching the exotic fish he’d had imported from the river Nile.