Sins of the Soul

“The Daughters of Aset…” Sutekh let the implication hang in the air. He was single-minded in his determination to pin Marin’s death on them, and to hold them responsible for Lokan’s murder. The enmity went way back. Sutekh had murdered Aset’s husband, Osiris, and later, gone after her son, Horus. Which explained Aset’s hatred of Sutekh.

But Sutekh never talked about what had sparked his hatred of her. Mal liked to joke that it was because she’d spurned Sutekh for Osiris, but that was just a joke. At least, Alastor thought it was.

“The Daughters of Aset lost one of their own to the Marin brothers,” Alastor pointed out.

“So you say.”

“So the evidence supports.”

They knew that Joe Marin had been there as well the night Lokan died, and that he hadn’t left before the killing. In fact, the deed itself just might have been his handiwork. They’d found evidence that he’d practiced butchering and skinning his human victims until he had it down to a fine art. And they’d found proof that he’d killed at least one supernatural before, a Daughter of Aset, Roxy’s mother, Kelley Tam.

The thing was, Daughters of Aset were a mystery. No one knew exactly how supernatural, or how human, they really were. Maybe it varied between individuals. Impossible to say given that they were so secretive that even their own acolytes often didn’t know exactly what they were.

Proof being that Roxy Tam had spent over a decade thinking that Dagan had somehow turned her into a vampire. She was a Daughter of Aset, a member of the Asetian Guard, and she hadn’t even known that she was a pranic feeder.

Unbidden, a recollection of Naphré surged in Alastor’s thoughts. Through the tear in her shirt, he’d seen the mark of Aset that was carved in her skin.

How high up in the hierarchy was she? His guess was not very, given that she didn’t give off any sort of supernatural energy. Despite her mark, the only read he got on her was purely mortal.

“What are you thinking?” Sutekh asked, rising from the boulder and striding closer, predatory, focused.

Alastor thrust Naphré from his mind. “Just pondering the enigma that is the Marin brothers.”

Sutekh stared at him from behind a mortal mask, his eyes giving him away. Not human. No. Those eyes were ancient and cold, remorseless, pitiless, lacking even a flicker of humanity.

“You try to distract me, my son.” Ah, never a good thing when Sutekh pulled the son card. “Your thoughts did not touch on the Marin brothers. You were thinking about something that brought you pleasure.”

“Pleasure?” The possibility unsettled him. “You misread. Actually I was thinking about the connection between the Marins and the Daughters of Aset.”

“Because they killed Frank Marin before we could question him?”

“We don’t know that. Dagan’s mate—”

“Consort,” Sutekh interrupted, his tone less than complimentary.

Alastor didn’t miss a beat. His father was baiting him, searching for the switch that would break his control. He wasn’t about to be played so easily. “Dae prefers to call her his partner.” He shrugged at Sutekh’s dark look. “Roxy says it wasn’t the Asetian Guard. She’s still betting on Xaphan’s concubines as the ones who took Frank Marin out.”

“Regardless of who killed him—” Sutekh waved a hand negligently “—Frank Marin is dead, his darksoul and whatever knowledge he had is gone far beyond my reach. And his brother’s darksoul was of absolutely no value. By the time you brought it to me, it was degraded beyond my ability to plumb.” Sutekh flicked a glance at the darksoul bobbing above Alastor’s shoulder. “Likely, this one is as well.”

“Then perhaps you’d best get on with it.”

Sutekh closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. He smiled then, lips peeling back from his teeth as he fed on Alastor’s annoyance. “First, tell me how you found this…Crandall Butcher.”

It didn’t matter. But rather than waste time arguing, which was a futile endeavor, Alastor summarized the events in succinct detail.

“Mal heard about the possibility of a third witness from one of Xaphan’s concubines. We ended up in a crappy back room at a crappier strip club, but Xaphan’s pet had little of value to share. It was actually coincidence that there was a Topworld grunt there to play poker, a human with a tattoo that made me think he might be a Setnakht.”

Sutekh held his index finger up. “What tattoo? Setnakhts are not habitually marked.”

“A scarab beetle. And beneath it, your name.”

Sutekh inclined his head in a short nod.

“After a brief chat in the back alley,” Alastor continued, “Mick offered a name, Butcher, and a location where he was making a hit.”

“Did this Topworlder give you a clear indication of Butcher’s value?”

“He had no idea what he was telling me. He just spewed information in a desperate attempt to say something I might want to hear. But certain things he said made me believe that Butcher knew something about the night Lokan was killed. Either the guy was there, or he spoke with someone who was there.”