Sins of the Soul

Even in his confused state, he knew that made no sense.

He focused his thoughts on them, willing them to feel him through their blood bond. They had a connection, not a true ability to hear each other’s thoughts, but an ability to sense when one was in pain or in danger or distress.

The knowledge made him cringe. They would have felt his death in vivid, brutal detail. Each slice of the knife. Each drop of blood.

Death.

Was he dead?

He thought he might be, thought he might have forgotten and just drifted here in the dark. How long? How long had he drifted?

Long enough that he’d forgotten his brothers, his father. His daughter’s name. Until now. Now he remembered so many things.

He remembered that his daughter had been there the night they took him. That somehow he had saved her. He remembered that they’d taken him away, hooded, bound, his power held in check. By what? What would have made him, a soul reaper, son of Sutekh, the most powerful deity in the Underworld, so weak?

His own will.

He had chosen to give his life for hers. It was the only way. He had saved his daughter. He had sacrificed himself to keep her safe. And he had spared her the horror of witnessing what they had done to him.

Faced with the same choices, he would do it again.

He remembered their hands. Gloved hands. Knives. Blood. The smell of it. The taste of it on his lips. His blood.

Now, he pressed the flat of his hand to his chest, certain of what he would find: a gaping wound, the skin stripped from the surface of his muscle.

But he felt nothing. Nothing at all.

Who had taken him? Who had marked him and cut him? He knew their faces, human and supernatural, alike.

Rage came at him, a bitter, burning tide. He had been betrayed by his own kind.

Gahiji.

The name echoed through his thoughts. And the face. He remembered him. Gahiji. His father’s trusted minion. Such treachery. Sharp as any blade. Gahiji had been there the night he was tattooed and skinned.

He thought he could feel their hands on him still, their knives, cutting only deep enough to separate skin from fascia.

They’d caught his blood in an oblong bowl. The image was sharply inscribed, clean about the edges, far clearer than his other thoughts. He could see that bowl, and the hands that held it.

A ring. A scarab beetle. He knew that sign… He reached for the knowledge, but it hovered just beyond his reach, curling away like smoke, replaced by the vivid image of knives. Two of them. The blades black, dripping blood. His blood. His pain. Dripping in fat, red drops.

Had his brothers felt his pain? Had they known?

He could not feel them. Not now. Not then.

There had been someone behind him. Someone watching. Who? He could not see, though he struggled and writhed. That voice. He knew that voice. Horror congealed in his gut.

Betrayed, yes. By Gahiji. But not only by him.

He thought of his brothers, and white hot panic flared.

Urgency made him move, made him cry out in frustration and—

The memories sputtered and died.

And he no longer remembered names.

Not even his own.





CHAPTER FOUR



Asa no kougan, yuube no hakkou. A rosy face in the morning, white bones in the evening.



—Japanese proverb

NAPHRé DIDN’T STOP to think as Butcher came at her, knife raised, the long blade catching the moonlight. She took the first shot in the instant between inhale and exhale, the second partway through the exhale. Butcher’s Glock Model 23 held thirteen rounds and one in the chamber. He’d let two go wild earlier. Now, she used two more. Double tap.

One shot to the forehead, leaving a neat, small hole. In the front, at least. The back would be messier. Second shot to the chest, maybe seven centimeters to the left of midline, the bullet slamming through muscle, tearing apart his left ventricle. His whole body went rigid, then went down in a crumpled heap.

She allowed herself a single, slow breath. In through her nose. Out through her mouth. Grief or guilt—or whatever the hell that ugly knot in her chest signified—would come later. Not now. She couldn’t afford to let it tear free now.

Survival of the fucking fittest.

Squatting by Butcher’s side, she checked the carotid pulse. First on the right, then on the left. Nothing. Dead. Gone to…where?

She didn’t even know who’d have a claim on him. Osiris? Hades? Satan? Maybe Hel, the Norse goddess of the dead.

Maybe no one.

Maybe he’d go to purgatory. Maybe he’d get eaten by Ammut and go nowhere. Maybe. Maybe.

Didn’t matter now. She was alive and he was dead.

She’d made her choice. Had she made any other, she’d be lying on the ground with all her sphincters released. She knew where she’d have headed then, straight to the demon that owned her soul, and that wasn’t anywhere she wanted to be.