Sins of the Soul

Mick…had he been in on this? Had he known she was the mark even as he handed her the envelope of cash?

Glancing around, she saw a much more appealing option than the hill. Maybe twenty yards in, set between two massive granite monuments, was an open hole just waiting for a casket.

Naphré headed for it, forearms looped under Butcher’s armpits, posture hunched as she shuffled backward toward her goal.

Butcher weighed a ton. Growing heavier by the second.

She was out of breath and her arms were starting to feel the burn.

Want some poutine, girl? She blinked. Buried the memory. Butcher had loved his poutine. Among other things.

Why did he have to go and pull a gun on her? And a knife? Why the fuck?

Affection wasn’t his forte—or hers—but taking a contract on his protégée? It made no damned sense.

But there were a lot of things about Butcher that hadn’t made sense lately. A few weeks back, he’d insisted on doing a hit alone. Said he didn’t want her with him. She’d been curious enough to wonder, but not enough to press the issue. Once in a while, Butcher had preferred to fly solo, likely because he was on a job he’d known she would turn down. Her scruples made her a bit more finicky than him.

The thing was, her gut told her something had gone wrong that night. Butcher hadn’t been the same since. More paranoid than usual. More secretive. He’d said something about a temple and a sacrifice. And one night, after a full bottle of Crown Royal, he’d mentioned a name: Frank Marin. And something about Krayl, which could be a person, place or thing. He hadn’t been in the mood to play twenty questions.

She’d been curious enough to do a little digging. Turned out, according to the Internet, that Krayl could be a lot of different things, including a starship commander in an online role-playing game set in the twenty-third century, a college basketball player or a demon. She hadn’t been able to turn up much info on the demon. What she’d come up with on Marin hadn’t offered any answers, either. He was scum. He’d done time in Australia for molesting kids. And recently, he’d turned up dead, killed in some seedy motel in Texas.

Had something gone wrong the night Butcher did that solo hit? Had Frank Marin been part of that? An accomplice? Not likely. If Butcher had wanted company, he’d have taken Naphré.

A witness?

Maybe. Probably. But at this exact moment, it really didn’t matter. Right now, what mattered was cleanup.

She settled Butcher on the grass, and peered into the hole. There were bugs in there. The kind you could see—worms, maggots, centipedes—and the kind you couldn’t—bacteria, fungi: saprophytes that thrived on dead flesh. She was okay with the former. Not so much the latter.

It was the bugs too small to see that always got you.

Touching her pocket, she felt for the mini bottle of hand sanitizer she carried with her wherever she went. The squared-off shape was oddly reassuring.

She grabbed the cold metal handle of the shovel and dragged it out of Butcher’s pants. Then she squatted, rested her free hand on the edge of the grave, and hopped in.

Squelching her reservations about playing in the dirt, she worked quickly, methodically, digging down an extra few feet. Within minutes, she’d built up a sweat despite the cool temperature.





TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Naphré stood the shovel in the corner, clambered out and squatted by Butcher’s side. With a grunt, she rolled him in. He hit bottom with a thud, sending up a small geyser of clods of damp earth. Then he lay there, arms at awkward angles, legs tangled, eyes staring unseeing at the blue-black sky.

Naphré stood looking down, panting, feeling like her lungs were wrapped in metal bands, or maybe it was her heart. It hurt. And she didn’t want it to. She sighed, then went back into the hole. Legs spread, she straddled Butcher’s corpse, hesitated, and finally shook her head.

“Kuso,” she whispered, though she wanted to shout.

She tugged on Butcher’s arms and legs. Rigor mortis wouldn’t set in for a while yet, so he was still pliable and it took little effort to arrange him like he was sleeping. Better. But…

Bending over, she reached down and closed his eyes. Her hands were cold, his skin colder still.

She needed things. She knew that. Things to ease his way. God, she never thought about this stuff. She just did the job and moved on. But this wasn’t a job. This was different.

Shoving her hand in her pocket, she rummaged for coins. Came up with three dimes and a quarter. Not enough. She needed six coins for the River of Three Crossings.

Bad enough to bury him like this. She wasn’t sending him anywhere without those damned coins.

With a grimace, she went through his pockets once more. Nothing.

Okay then. Okay.