Sins of the Flesh

Choking on her sobs, Calliope scooted back deeper in the shadows.

There were screams and cries coming from all around her, adding to her panic and the feeling of being trapped, cornered. She huddled even smaller, but she could not look away from her father and the men who held him. A part of her was waiting for him—her brave, strong father who carried her on his shoulders even though she was a big girl now, ten years on her next birthday—to tear from their grasp and come for her. Save her.

But the men who held him were bigger. Stronger.

Her eyes widened, and she choked on her horror as the third man drew back his hand and thrust it through her father’s chest.

A scream bubbled up, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out, bit it hard enough that her mouth filled with blood. Above the din of the street, she thought she could hear the sharp crack of bone, like a dry twig snapping, and her father’s cry, sharp as a crow’s.

And then the man tore her father’s heart from his chest. Blood sprayed in all directions.

Bile burned her throat. Tears blurred her vision. Her heart pounded so hard she felt it slamming against her ribs like a hammer.

In her stupor of fear and loss and grief, she felt arms close around her, strong and solid, not to confine but to comfort. She didn’t dare relax into the embrace, didn’t dare trust it. Whatever insidious thing invaded this moment, she knew in some conscious and aware part of her brain that there had been no comfort for her that long-ago day.

Confused, she tried to focus her attention. Then. Now. Time blended and bent and became something other than it was.

Calliope cried out, knowing it was a dream, while at the same time, knowing it was real.

She was a child.

She was a woman grown. She was a blooded Daughter of Aset, one hundred and sixty years old.

The thick, syrupy tendrils of the dream snaked around her limbs and torso, and she struggled against them, almost awake.

She needed to wake up. She didn’t want to see this again. Please, never again. She needed—

The man who held her father’s heart laughed, wild and uncontrolled. She knew what was coming; she wanted to look away.

He tipped back his head. He lifted his hand. He squeezed the heart to make the last of the blood trickle out in a rich stream. It poured into his open mouth, like wine from a flask, dribbling over his lips and chin.

He drank her father’s blood.

Then, baring his teeth, he brought the heart to his mouth and tore off a hunk. Chewed. Swallowed.

And Calliope watched, unable to tear her gaze away.

Bile burned the back of her tongue. Horror clogged her throat.

Enough. This was the moment it ended. This was always the moment it ended—

Someone else stepped from the shadows, behind her father, behind the monsters who had killed him. She stared as he moved into the light.

Gray eyes looked back at her.

Malthus Krayl.

The sense of being watched earlier. The arms that had held her. It had been him. He had followed her through the streets of Odessa. Rage uncoiled, mixing with the turmoil of horror and fear and confusion that churned within.

Some part of her had accepted his comfort. Some part of her had known all along it was he.

But he had no business in her dreams.

His kind had done this. They were the monsters, the murderers. He was a monster. She wanted to leap on him. Stab him. Claw him. But she couldn’t because he was only a memory inside her own mind.

He reached out and closed his hand around the arm of the monster who had killed her father, sending the remnants of her father’s heart tumbling end over end, taking an eternity as it fell to the floor.

And then Malthus Krayl thrust his fist through the monster’s chest.

Calliope jerked upright, panting, sick, tearing free of the nightmare and the emotion it drew.

The dream was always the same. Only tonight it had been different. Tonight, she hadn’t huddled in the bushes, sobbing until a gray-eyed stranger pulled her free. Tonight, the timing was off and the gray-eyed man had taken on a new identity, and a name.

One thought slammed her as she sat, gasping a lungful of the cold night air.

Malthus Krayl had found her.





MAL STOOD ON A ROAD that was barely a road. A bit of gravel in the wilderness. Step three feet in any direction other than the way he’d come, and the road disappeared, swallowed by the forest. Tipping his head back, he stared up at the mountain that loomed above him. Massive. Eternal.