Sins of the Flesh

Dagan seemed to think they might hit the jackpot here.

The fact that his two brothers were so hopeful made Mal edgy. He didn’t get why they couldn’t see what he saw. He was the least pragmatic of the three of them. He was more of an optimist than Alastor and Dae put together. Yet he seemed to be the only one who could see that Lokan wasn’t coming back.

No matter how many body parts they managed to find, too much time had passed. By now, their brother would have partaken of the food of the dead. His soul was lost to them.

But the sweet taste of revenge was still on the menu.

Mal wanted those who’d killed his brother to pay in blood and pain. And no matter what Calliope’s Matriarchs implied, he fucking well knew that the list of suspects didn’t include either Dae or Alastor.

“Fuck,” he snarled as his foot sank into a pocket of sand buried beneath the greenery.

Dae paused and turned. “Who pissed in your cornflakes?”

“Calli.”

“Calli, huh?” Dae’s expression grew speculative. “She’s okay with the variation of her name?”

“It’s growing on her.”

“I’ll bet. Like a fungus.”

Mal kicked at the vegetation and waited to see if it would kick back. You never knew. Maybe it was something other than it seemed.

But the vines did nothing more threatening than lie there, snaking along the ground and up the sides of the squat, single-story gray brick building that sat about fifteen yards away. They twined up the walls and over the flat roof. A quick circle of the perimeter revealed that three of the four walls were obscured by vines as thick as Mal’s wrist.

Dagan took the hint and let the subject drop. He gestured at the one wall that was nearly bare. “Of course, that one couldn’t be the one with the door.”

“You looking for a free ride?” Mal grabbed hold of a vine, testing its strength. Damned strong. He put his back into it and started tearing away at the vines. No easy task. When he peeled one back and yanked it off, there were more tangled underneath.

Kind of like Calliope.

Peel away one layer, and there were dozens more.

He figured it was going to take a hell of a long time to work his way through all of them, and oddly, he was looking forward to that.

“So…you and Calliope Kane,” Dae said, his voice too casual, tinged with discomfort. Guess he hadn’t taken the hint after all.

Mal snorted. “Roxy put you up to asking me about this?” He knew Calliope had spoken to her, mentioned that she and Mal were together. It was no stretch to imagine that Roxy had started connecting the dots.

“Yeah.”

Mal got hold of another vine and pulled. It was stubborn and intractable and it took several tries to get the insidious little tendrils that wove into the other vines free.

“So what’d she do?”

“She did more than piss in my cornflakes. She dropped a bag of dog shit on my head right before you called,” Mal said. Which was the perfect way to describe Calliope’s untimely revelation.

“Care to explain?”

“No.” What was he supposed to say? That her Matriarchs believed one of his brothers had killed Lokan? Which one? Dagan? Alastor?

Osiris had made a similar accusation weeks ago, couched in terms of condolence in the missive he had sent to each of them when Lokan died. The messages had been identical, written on papyrus with shiny gold leaf. So sorry for your loss. I understand your pain. I, too, was murdered and dismembered. By my own brother.

That message had as many layers as a bean dip, and the possible interpretation that Osiris thought one of Lokan’s own brothers had killed him.

Mal thought the same thing now that he had then: No fucking way.

“You called before I could clear the air with her,” Mal finished at last.

“I actually kind of like her,” Dae said, pausing to shoot Mal a look over his shoulder. “Even though she can barely look at me without hauling out a knife.”

“She has something of a hate-on for reapers,” Mal said. “Or had. I think she’s working on it.”

“She’s not the only one who doesn’t exactly warm to our kind. I have a feeling that her superiors in the Asetian Guard would have preferred she had killed Roxy rather than let her muster out to be with me.”

“I have a feeling you’re right.”

“But she doesn’t hate you…” Dae shot him a speculative glance that went on just a shade too long.

“She has her reasons.” Mal offered no more than that. Those were Calliope’s secrets and he’d hack off his own arm before he’d betray them, even to his brother.

The thought jarred him. He was loyal to Dagan and Alastor and Lokan, and to his father, after a fashion. When the hell had he become loyal to Calliope Kane?

Dae shifted a few feet to the left and kept tearing vines, and Mal figured that was that.