Sins of the Soul

THEY HIKED DOWN A steep slope, Alastor going first, Naphré bringing up the rear. She shook her head, thinking that if there was anyone out here watching them, they definitely made an interesting looking pair, what with Alastor turned out in his suit and Naphré in her more activity-appropriate jeans and layers and hiking boots and pack.

At points, the slope was so steep that Naphré ended up on her thigh and one ass cheek, doing a controlled slide, her feet forward to slow her descent. She had no idea how Alastor stayed on his feet, given that his fancy dress shoes had zero tread. Every once in a while, he’d stop and look back at her, and every time he did, she had the impression that he wanted to say something.

Finally, when they were about halfway down the slope, he did. “I’ll carry you.” He turned and waited as though expecting her to scramble up and leap into his arms.

“Just try,” she snarled, as a particularly sharp stone embedded in the ground scraped along her thigh as she skidded past. “I can do this on my own.”

“You sound like a two-year-old,” he said, then pitched his voice higher. “‘By myself. Do it by myself.’”

That froze her in place. His inflection was perfect. He actually sounded like a two-year-old. She knew, because the house next to hers was home to twins, and they invariably spent hours outside on the sidewalk, scooting along on their ride-on toys, yelling some version of exactly that as their frazzled mom tried to keep coats zipped and shoes tied. And since two-year-old twins didn’t exactly share a similar schedule to a Topworld assassin, they usually were out there exactly when she was trying to get some sleep.

From his perfect impersonation, she could tell that Alastor knew kids. He knew how they sounded and what they said.

The thought shocked her. And made her wary.

She was a killer, but she drew lines. Please, please, let him draw lines, too. Don’t let the guy she was falling—

Whoa. No. Not going there, even in her private thoughts. He’d given her a great orgasm. She could get one of those anywhere, including her vibrator. If she ever remembered to pick up batteries for it. She was not going to confuse sexual release with actual emotion.

“What do you know about two-year-olds?” she asked.

“What are you really asking, pet? If I harvest from babies? The answer is no.” He turned away and resumed walking while she minced her way behind him, pebbles and loose earth falling away beneath her boots. Then he turned his head and spoke over his shoulder. “But don’t get all warm and fuzzy on me. The darksouls I take are dipped in slime, blacker than pitch. Babies haven’t had a chance to accumulate that sort of darkness.”

She was quiet for a moment, following in his wake, then she said. “Next time, if you want me to believe the ‘I’m an arsehole’ speech in order to avoid answering a question, you’ll have to do better to make it sound convincing. Tell me how you know what little kids sound like.”

“A half dozen nieces,” he muttered. Clearly annoyed with her.

“And they’re how old?”

He just kept moving, silent now.

Topic off limits. But she pressed anyway. The terrain leveled out a bit and she managed to stay on her feet as she jogged a few steps to catch up to him. “Alastor?”

“Chatty all of a sudden, pet?”

She caught hold of his arm.

He glanced down, then up.

He didn’t loosen her fingers or pull away. He didn’t need to. He was already far, far away from her, his walls firmly in place. She felt the rebuff. It stung, and she had no idea why it should.

“My human family is dead. My parents, my sisters, my nieces are dead,” he said in a low, controlled voice, as though reciting a bit of information that had no meaning to him at all. “They were significant fixtures in my life. My human life. My sisters brought them to visit often. They grew to womanhood. I later learned that they had nieces of their own, and great-nieces…several generations of them, while I was gone. I never knew them.”

His nieces were dead. Several generations of them.

“Generations,” she echoed. How many years was that? Confusion assailed her.

My human family. She hadn’t thought about it, really, but now she did. He was Sutekh’s son. Not human. Somehow, she’d overlooked the varied and layered ramifications of that. He was an Underworlder, one of the few who could pass into Topworld at will. But that didn’t make him human.

She almost asked, what are you? A soul reaper, yes, and Sutekh’s son. But what exactly did that mean? And then she read the subtle tension in his frame and she thought she must tread lightly, or she would destroy whatever seed the two of them had managed to plant.

She shouldn’t care about that seed. She had no business caring about it. She’d forfeited the right to many things the night she’d sworn herself to a demon. One of those things was affection. And lov—

Don’t even think it.