Sins of the Flesh

She had long ago outgrown the skin of that child. And she had buried her childish emotions at the deepest point of the smooth, calm lake that had become her center. Where was that lake now? All she could find were the crashing breakers of a storm-tossed sea.

She finished brushing her teeth, washed her face and then left the bathroom. She had barely crossed the threshold when she froze.

Cold air. Silence. No physical warning, only the faintest tingle at her nape. Her arm came up to block the blow as she spun.

Calliope had a quick view of blue eyes and blond hair pulled back in a ponytail.

And the gleam of a knife arcing toward her throat.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN



O you who come to me in order to disarray, I will not allow you to disarray me.

You shall not deal harm against me.

I am your protector.



—The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Chapter 151

THE HEEL OF THE WOMAN’S palm came at her nose with stunning speed. Calliope arced back, avoiding both the blow and the blade by a hair.

Her attacker was fast, an equal match. She blocked with her forearm, dipped, blocked again. Her blood raced through her veins, roaring in her ears.

Her opponent went low. Calliope danced beyond reach.

How had someone breached the security of the Guard?

The answer came to her as she landed a blow to her assailant’s kidneys, then took one to her own knee. She stumbled and almost went down, and at the last minute managed to pull up.

No one had breached the compound. Her assailant was a Daughter of Aset. And from the gleaming knife in her hand, Calliope got the message that this visit was meant to be lethal.

An assassination.

With the consent of the Matriarchs? Or was this a product of betrayal of the entire Guard?

If the Matriarchs had wanted her dead, why not simply kill her while she’d been in the glass cage?

The blows rained down on her, and she moved in concert with her attacker, thrust, block. Instinct and an eternity of training guided her every move.

Adrenaline surged through her, hitting her cells, amping up action and reaction.

The knife caught the lamplight as it flashed toward her. She arced, blocked, a fraction of a second too late. The honed edge gashed a long wound in her side.

She stopped thinking about anything but survival. As a blooded Daughter of Aset, she had longevity and the capacity to heal on her side, but she wouldn’t survive a stab to her heart or the severing of her carotid artery, and it appeared her attacker was aiming for one of the two.

They circled. The knife slashed toward her. Calliope evaded and blocked. The tip of the blade raked her forearm, slicing through cloth and skin. With a snarl, she struck a blow to the throat and another to the chest.

Suddenly her assailant froze then jerked away like someone had hooked her on a fishing line.

Panting, Calliope jumped back and swiped the sweat from her eyes with the back of one hand as she pressed the other to the gash in her side.

She was acutely aware of the bathroom fan humming in the background and the light leaking through the partially open bathroom door. Too familiar. She’d been here before.

Lifting her gaze, she gasped.

Malthus Krayl had the woman by the throat, and his free hand was pulled back to strike.

A hand extending toward her. The sliver of light through the partially open door. The faint hum of the bathroom fan.

This was the future she had seen in flashes. Malthus Krayl ready to tear out a heart. Not hers, as she had supposed. The assassin’s.

Slowly, his head swung toward her. He stared at her blood-soaked side and then the wound that stretched the length of her forearm, making the light gray sweatshirt flower crimson.

The skin around his eyes tightened.

“Hope you don’t mind that I cut short your fun, pretty girl,” he said. “Fascinating show. Of course, it would have been even better if the two of you were in a plastic pool filled with Jell-O, wearing only your panties.”

He paused, and the smile he offered was feral. “Or better still, nothing at all.”

“What are you doing here?” Calliope asked then clamped her lips shut on the slew of questions that threatened to follow.

“Playing the fucking hero, it seems.” The soul reaper sent her an enigmatic look and tightened his hold on his struggling captive. But he didn’t rip out her heart. Calliope supposed that was a good thing.

Pressing the fingers of his free hand to the side of the blonde’s throat, he murmured, “Where’s your jugular, sweetheart? Ah, there we go.”

He dragged something out of his pocket, and as he pulled the cap off with his teeth, Calliope saw it was a syringe. He jammed the needle deep into the vein in the woman’s neck and emptied it then raised his head, snared Calliope in his winter-gray gaze and shrugged.

“Needed to be the jugular,” he said. “Intramuscular would take forever to make her drop. Into the vein is far faster.”

As if on cue, the woman sagged. He laid her on the floor, patted her cheek and straightened.