Sins of the Soul

“Excuse me?” Her tone dripped ice.

“You owe me a shirt. Got blood on this one.” He made a gesture toward his stained cuff. “If I wasn’t so busy making certain you didn’t run off, I’d have two hands free and the job would have been far less messy.”

Not waiting for her reaction, he reached into the gaping hole he’d made in Butcher’s chest, let his thoughts coalesce and his energy focus.

In the distance he heard a sharp clap of thunder. He froze, glanced up. The sky was clear.

He refocused on the body, noting as he did so that the thunder seemed to have agitated the arthropods that lived in the soil, because they were crawling out of the earth. Centipedes. Insects. Worms.

A second clap of thunder followed the first, closer, angry, the sound unnatural. It left him feeling vaguely uneasy.

It must have affected Naphré in a similar manner. Her head tipped back, her gaze focused on some distant spot, and he could see she was funneling all her attention to listening for a repeat of that sound.

When the night stayed quiet, he returned to his task, summoning the darksoul to him. It came, cold and slippery, writhing into his hand and up around his forearm before slithering higher to caress his shoulder.

He was glad to see it. Given how long the body had been cold, there had been a moment or two when he wasn’t so certain the darksoul hadn’t left on its own journey to the Underworld, somewhere beyond Sutekh’s reach.

Butcher knew things, had seen things the night Lokan was killed. Alastor felt certain of that. Unfortunately, he had no way to communicate with the darksoul directly. That was Sutekh’s job. He was just the messenger service.

He tethered the oily, amorphous cloud with a band of pure energy that served as a harness. The darksoul writhed and twisted just above his left shoulder, jerking at its bond as though it understood its fate—to be consumed by Sutekh as a meal of pure power. To be robbed of any hope for rebirth and future life.

Thing was, this soul wasn’t as dark as he’d hoped. Butcher might have been a killer, but he’d done some good in his wasted, mottled life, because there was still a hint of shine on him. Normally, this wasn’t a soul Alastor would have bothered with. Sutekh liked them dipped in tar, dripping malice and malevolence like ice cream melting down the sides of a cone in the sun. A soul with a shine, even a tarnished shine, was one that held little interest.

Except this soul was different. Alastor hadn’t harvested it as a meal. He’d harvested it for his father to read like a book.

As he raised his head, he caught Naphré staring at the darksoul. He was surprised she could see it. Humans couldn’t. But then, he already knew she was a Daughter of Aset, which made her not precisely human regardless of the fact that she presented as one, without even a hint of supernatural vibe.

The confines of the grave kept them as close as peas in a pod.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

“Don’t what?” His gaze dipped to her mouth.

She wet her lips. “Don’t take his soul.”

There was anguish in her words. Genuine pain.

“You killed him,” he pointed out. “I know.”

She didn’t argue her case, didn’t talk about how she’d had no choice or how Butcher had gone for her first, both of which Alastor suspected to be true.

Inexplicably, he thought of wrapping his arm around her, drawing her against his chest and just holding her. Bloody strange inclination.

He reached for her, meaning to touch her, just a single, fleeting touch. He froze when his fingers were just a breath away from her cheek. Time hung suspended. Finally, he dropped his hand, and said, “Oddly enough, if I could do as you ask, I would. But your friend here has a role to play, information to share that is important to me. So I’m afraid I must decline your pretty plea.”

And damned if he didn’t mean every word of that ridiculous little speech. If Butcher’s darksoul hadn’t potentially held the key to finding Lokan’s killer, he just might have done as she asked. Such was the power of those incredible night-dark eyes.

“Be careful when you leave,” he said. “There’s someone else out there.”

“You’re warning me to be careful?” She laughed, dipping her chin again in that way that was both alluring and oddly out of character. A demure killer. Naphré Kurata was a puzzle, one he’d like to take time piecing together.

Or slowly taking apart.

“The someone that’s out there…you mean up the road?” she asked, her tone hard. “In the tree? Rifle scope?”

“Or binoculars. That’s the one. But they aren’t up the road anymore. They moved closer.”

“Yes, I caught that.”

His gaze dipped to her mouth and lingered. Her lips parted and her breathing hitched.

“Bloody hell.” He leaned in, intending to taste her, to take a kiss, one kiss, before he headed to Sutekh’s realm.