Sins of the Soul

“Habit.” She went to the front door, opened the closet and took out a pair of hiking boots. She bent and sheathed the longer knife inside the left boot, then straightened and settled the shorter one in the utility belt she’d buckled at the curve of her hips.

He followed, pausing only when he spotted a crystal dish of hard candies on a shelf. He grabbed it and emptied all of them into his jacket pockets to supplement the toffee caramels he had left. He’d been caught a time or two without adequate sugar. The hunger had been powerful, gnawing at him from the inside out, not just in his gut, but in every tissue and cell and tendon. Rather unpleasant.

Setting the now empty dish back on the shelf, he raised his head and found her watching him.

“Ready to visit the realm of the dead?” he asked.

“As long as it’s just a visit and not a permanent move.”

“I won’t be leaving without you,” he said. Because he couldn’t outrun the suspicion that Izanami meant to keep her there.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN



ALASTOR DID THAT THING with his hand and conjured another portal. As she stared at the undulating, smoking hole and felt the chill creep through the air toward them, Naphré made her displeasure known.

Quite clearly. “How did you think we’d be traveling?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Plane. Train. Anything other than the vomit-coaster.”

He laughed, that same low, rumbling laugh that she’d first heard in the graveyard. It enveloped her. Made her hyperaware of everything about him. The scent of his skin. The way his mouth curved to reveal that long, sexy crease in his left cheek. The hint of darkness and promise and…raunchiness in that smile.

There was no doubt in her mind that Alastor Krayl didn’t have many rules in bed.

Actually, no, she had the feeling that he loved rules, as long as he was applying them to others. He was all about control.

And she didn’t want to examine the reasons that she found that appealing.

Without any warning, he took her hand, twined his fingers with hers and dragged her into the icy blackness of the smoky, undulating hole before them. Cold. Mind-numbing, skin-flaying cold. Tiny ice crystals formed on her skin, her lashes, her lips. Every breath was an agony. Every small movement a nauseating flip.

The trip through the portal, as he called it, wasn’t any better the second time than it had been the first. The bone-deep chill, the feeling of disorientation, the horrible sensation that there was only this dark pit of nothing and the whole world was somehow gone, were all exactly as they had been when he’d dragged her into the portal in the alley.

Up became down, right became left. She lost all sense of time. She couldn’t see Alastor, couldn’t feel him, except for the firm hold of his hand on hers. That was her anchor and she held on to it with everything she was.

They hit their destination and the hole disgorged them. She stumbled, and almost fell, Alastor’s quick lunge and the steely band of his arm around her waist the only thing that kept her from going down.

She heard the crumple of a candy wrapper and opened her eyes to find that he was holding one of his ever-present toffees out toward her.

“Here. This’ll help.”

Popping the candy in her mouth, she closed her eyes and let the sugar melt on her tongue.

“Where are we?” she asked once her teeth stopped chattering enough for her to speak.

“Japan.”

Of course they were. “Your black hole certainly beats airport lineups.”

He glanced down at her, his eyes so blue it nearly took her breath away. His lips lifted in a delicious, shiver inducing curve. “Done much traveling, pet?’

“A bit. Japan. Egypt. I went to the Dominican Republic once. Mostly, I’ve just traveled around North America. For work.”

“Work,” he echoed, then laughed. “Is that what you call the assassination business?”

“You ever hear the saying about pots and kettles?”

He stared at her for a long moment, and then he said, “We make a pair, don’t we?”

“We do,” she said softly, and he held her gaze as seconds ticked past.

Finally, he stepped away, glanced about, and tossed casually over his shoulder, “You said North America. Not South America?”

“Nope. Not my turf. Topworlders there have their own territorial teams they like to use. The top team in South America are the Ramirez brothers. Butcher never wanted to step on their toes. He said it was bad business. So we stuck to our own continent.”

“Just as Underworlders stick to their own territories.”

“Just as.”

“Bad business,” he mused, mouth grim, eyes hard.

“What is?”

“Being here is bad business, pet. You stick to me like glue, right? You do not leave my side. You do exactly as I say.”

“You’d like that.”

His gaze dipped to her mouth. “Yes, I would.”

She rolled in her lower lip, swiped her tongue across the surface, trying to ignore the little shiver that chased up her spine. “I’ll follow your lead. You’re the expert.”

“What makes you say that?” Exasperation tinged his words. She didn’t like that. It made her uneasy.