Sins of the Flesh

The only thing that would get in here unannounced was a soul reaper.

The second the thought formed, she regretted it. Because it made her think of him, and she didn’t want to think about him. Didn’t want to see his wolf smile in her thoughts or remember the feel of his lips as he’d brushed them across her own in the parking lot before the fire genies had come.

She definitely did not want to think about the dream she’d had where she’d pretty much had her tongue down his throat.

So she cleared her mind and focused only on her immediate need: sleep.

Exhausted, she crawled into the bed, fully clothed in her borrowed sweats. Her eyes drifted shut, and she hung there, in the space between sleep and wakefulness.

The colors were too bright. The sounds too loud.

No. This was not a place she wanted to revisit tonight.

She struggled against the mire of exhaustion, aware that she was tipping over the edge into a dream—a nightmare—yet despite that knowledge, she was sucked in.

They came from the ships. Sailors. Rough and angry, they roved in packs.

Urgency consumed her. She needed to get back to her father’s shop. The errand he’d sent her on—

She didn’t remember what it was, but she knew it was no longer important.

Hiking up her skirt, she tucked it in at the waist and darted along the streets and through the alleys. The buildings loomed on every side, creating a long, narrow tunnel, the way nearly blocked by the crowd. To her left, two peasant women held a man down while two others beat him with a pitchfork and a broom. To her right, a man in a fancy coat held another by the throat and lifted high a truncheon, ready to strike.

She darted between them, small and fast, her heart pounding, her breath coming in desperate, pained gasps.

The sounds of boots—many, many boots—hitting the street came from behind her. She glanced back and saw them. The Greek sailors from the harbor. They pushed and pummeled and called out jeers, their voices heavy with hate.

She ran, one small girl in a roiling sea of adult bodies. She dipped and ducked and stayed close to the buildings because most of the throng had spilled into the street. Her heart was near to bursting, her lungs screaming. To stop meant they might catch her. To stop meant she might never reach home.

Almost there. Almost there. The shop was before her, just at the end of the street. All around her were screams and cries, but suddenly, she heard her name soaring above the cacophony, a sharp cry. A warning. An order to stay away.

Or perhaps she only imagined the cry as she saw her mother’s face, stark with terror, her hair torn from the neat roll she habitually wore at her nape, now a dark snarl tumbling down over her shoulders. Two men dragged her back toward the open door of the shop.

Calliope ducked to the side, clinging to the wall, her chest heaving.

Frantic, she looked all around. Someone was here. Someone was watching her. Panic choked her, and she fought it back, focusing on her father’s shop.

The men inside were not like the others running mad through the streets of Odessa, clubbing and killing. She knew it. She felt it deep inside. These men were something else.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she tried to still the shudders that racked her body. Her terror swelled and bulged because she knew what they were. Her grandmother liked to tell her stories of fiends and demons and flesh-eating monsters that wore human faces. But the stories terrified her because in her heart, Calliope had always suspected the monsters were real.

And now she knew they were. They had come for her family.

These are not men, she thought, and her soul trembled at that certainty.

Her mother had told her about pogroms in the past, saying that if a mob grew hateful and mean, she must hide until it was done.

Blinded by tears, she glanced about, frantic. No one seemed interested in her, one small girl, yet the feeling she was being watched didn’t subside. On every side was the mob, growing angrier and more reckless by the second. In her father’s shop were the men who held her parents. There was nowhere for her, nowhere safe.

She fell back and ducked into a clump of bushes. Hiding in the tangle of branches, huddled into a ball, she clasped her arms around her knees. Her limbs shook though she tried to hold herself still, and terror gnawed at her soul.

Through the open door of the shop she could see the two men who held her father. One turned his head toward her and for the briefest instant, she thought he saw her, that he would come for her. A part of her almost wanted that, wanted him to bring her to her parents so they could all be together. But the stronger part knew that they would want her to stay exactly where she was.

Her father struggled against them and once almost tore free of them. A third man backhanded him across the face, and the one who had been looking in her direction turned away.