Sins of the Flesh

On the floor was a knife. The blade was obsidian, the handle finely carved to shape a snake, or perhaps a dragon. Familiar, but not.

Fatigue made her thoughts sluggish. Calliope wondered how the knife had appeared in her glass cage. Then she wondered why it seemed so painfully familiar. A chill of premonition crawled along her spine.

“Pick up the knife.”

She did. Her fingers closed over the handle, and she thought there was some significance to this. To this particular knife. To Beset’s demand.

A memory curled up from the deepest recess of her mind, like smoke that carried a whisper. She stared at the knife in her hand. The obsidian blade. The carved handle. A dragon.

Foreign, yet familiar.

“Blood,” Beset said, not forcing the word into Calliope’s mind, but using her voice in inarguable command.

Raising her head, she stared at Beset. She reached inside herself, found the place of light and simplicity she had trained herself to seek. She held fast to it, her will her own once more.

With deliberate care, she turned the knife and made a shallow cut on her palm, staining the blade with her blood.

She bent down and placed the knife with care directly against the wall of glass that separated her from Beset. Then she straightened and raised her head.

The Matriarch had the knife in her hand, close to her face. Within the shadows of her cowl, something stirred. Calliope thought it was the tip of her tongue tracing the edge of the knife, tasting blood. But she couldn’t swear to it.

“All is as it must be,” the Matriarch said.

There was a flash of light, so bright it was blinding, and when Calliope blinked away the dancing stars, she was alone. Beset was gone.

And with her, the knife.

Turning her palm up, Calliope stared at her hand and her brows rose. The skin was marked only by a thin, pink line. There was no blood, and no open wound. Ordinarily, she healed faster than a mortal, but this was accelerated beyond her usual capacity.

Had the remnants of the reaper’s life force in her system healed her, or was it something Beset had done?

There were no answers here.

Slowly, she made her way around the glass cage that surrounded her. She didn’t bother to beat it with her fists. It was shatterproof. Escape-proof.

There were better uses for her time.

Sinking to the floor once more, she centered herself on the carpet, crossed her legs and rested the backs of her hands on her bent knees. The best thing she could do was rest. While sleep was out of the question, meditation was not.

She grounded her thoughts and searched for calm, and as she slid into relaxation, the image of the knife burned bright in her mind, the solitary image that refused to be swept out.

A handle carved like a dragon. An obsidian blade.

The knife from the video.

Her eyes popped open and she gasped.

The knife she had seen slicing through the skin on Lokan Krayl’s chest.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN



The roads in the sky and on earth have opened for me, And there was none who thwarted me.



—The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Chapter 78

THEY TRANSFERRED CALLIOPE to a cell. A comfortable one, to be sure, but a cell nonetheless. The door was steel. There were no windows. A thorough evaluation of the room revealed no surveillance devices. At least she’d been afforded a measure of privacy.

There was a bed with Egyptian cotton sheets, a bedside table with a lamp, a desk and chair, and a small bathroom with a shower, no tub. That was the first place Calliope headed. She couldn’t recall her last shower. When she came out of the bathroom twenty minutes later, wrapped in a towel, her long hair lying damp against her skin, she found a tray laden with food resting on the desk and a pile of clean clothing on the bed.

She pulled on sweatpants and a long-sleeved thermal shirt, then she managed half the food, and what she did eat, she didn’t taste. The events of the past few days had turned her world upside down, made it crazy and frightening in a way it hadn’t been for almost a century and a half. She chewed and swallowed only because common sense told her she needed to eat.

Go through the motions. Maintain what control she could.

She rose and dragged the straight-backed chair to the door. There was no lock on the inside, but she’d seen one on the outside as she’d come through earlier. She’d heard the click as her guards locked her in.

Tipping the chair onto two legs, she then anchored the back beneath the door handle. As far as protection went, it wasn’t much; it wouldn’t keep anything out. But the sound of the chair scraping on the floor would rouse her from sleep if someone tried to come in.

Normally, she would just rely on her gift of prescience, but thanks to her reaper snack, it had deserted her for the moment. She was forced to fall back on more primitive means.