Sins of the Soul

She wanted to scream.

She didn’t dare scream. They would have a way to get inside her then.

Her fear swelled, choking her, demoralizing her.

“Naphré. Bloody hell, Naphré!” Alastor’s voice coming at her from so very far away.

She should look for him, reach for him.

No. If she opened her eyes, they would crawl inside. And as soon as she thought it, she swore she could feel it, the slither of the maggots and the million tiny legs of the centipedes, inside her lids, scampering across her eyeballs.

She opened her mouth to scream and they poured in.





ALASTOR HADN’T EXPECTED HER to come here.

Foolish, really. Because here she was.

And he’d had ample warning. The centipedes that Naphré had seen in her bathroom and the one that had terrorized Marie in the living room. Harbingers.

The Shikome had found them. What had he bloody well imagined? That she’d slink off and wait patiently after she’d missed her opportunity in the alley earlier tonight?

As the surge of legs and shiny bodies swelled toward them, he reached for Naphré, tried to grab hold of her, but his fingers slipped and slid as though he was grabbing oil. He couldn’t get a firm grasp. There was only a writhing, twisting tide of tiny creatures flowing like a river, like lava, obscuring the space she had occupied only a second past.

His gut clenched. Fear. It had been so long since he’d felt that emotion that he almost didn’t recognize it. And then he did. The taste of it was strong, bitter, stinging his tongue.

He wouldn’t lose her. Not like this. Not subsumed into this wriggling mass.

Alastor dove into the writhing, clicking sea, searching for the Shikome, intent on attack. But he could no more get a fix on her than he could on Naphré. Thousands of tiny legs touched his skin. Thousands of tiny bites erupted, small stings that swelled to burning pain. He surged forward, and still he got nowhere. He closed his hands and insects oozed between his fingers, but he couldn’t find Naphré no matter which way he turned.

Jerking back, outside the tide, he tried to figure out an effective approach.

A single centipede dropped from the mass and scampered toward him. And then was gone.

He stared at the spot it had been. There was only dark, polished wood and shadows. And no centipede.

With a snarl, he dove into the fray once more, eyes open, lips peeled back. They crawled on him, bit at him and his skin prickled and swelled, then split, his flesh scored raw. Blood and ribbons of skin hung from his lacerated fingers and palms, and still they bit and burrowed into him.

He flung his hands and watched the centipedes and spiders fall. They moved and wriggled, and in a blink, were gone.

But that was the thing. He hadn’t blinked. Hadn’t looked away.

Illusion.

The pain, the blood, the writhing mass that enveloped them, all illusion.

Were those that veiled the Shikome illusion as well?

He surged forward, pushing against the moving, squirming wall of them, and reached deep into the mass. He couldn’t find her, couldn’t feel her, but he closed his fingers tight and pulled back with a sharp yank. The force of his action threw him off balance and he slammed hard against the wall.

The centipedes swelled and grew, until they were as long as his arm, biting out massive hunks of muscle and skin, leaving raw gaping wounds in their wake. They crawled all over him.

“Enough,” he snarled, and pulled on his reserves of control, seeking the icy calm that had kept him sane for nearly three centuries. Control. All he needed was control.

And the tide ebbed.

Naphré was in his arms, trembling, gasping, eyes shut tight, hands opening and closing as though she crushed something in her fists.

She crushed nothing. Only air.

But in her mind, she crushed the waves of insects that overwhelmed her. She used whatever resources she had, and she fought. And something inside him roared in recognition and awe.

Panting, he spun her to face him, pressed her head against his chest and wrapped his arm around her back. He had no name for what he felt, no context for it. She was a woman he barely knew. She was a Daughter of Aset. She was nothing to him.

But she could be everything. He didn’t know where that thought came from. Didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to think it.

He pushed the emotions that battered him into the plain beige box he kept for them in his mind, closed the lid and wrapped it in chains and a padlock.

Better. He could breathe now, he could think now.

If he didn’t acknowledge the fact that he was starting to care about her, then that caring couldn’t pose a threat to his control.

He raised his gaze to the open door, and there was the Shikome, only standing there on the landing, covered in her living, writhing garments.

He had a suspicion about the Shikome’s presence, and in a moment he would test it, but first, information.