Sins of the Soul

Keep it light.

“You said generations. How old are you?” Oh, yeah. That was light.

“In mortal years?”

“Umm…sure.”

“Watch that boulder,” he said, and circled around it. She followed, thinking that their conversation was over.

Only after a long time did he say, “I was born nearly three hundred years ago.”

She sucked in a sharp breath.

Well, there was a lesson. Don’t ask if you can’t handle the answer.





THEY REACHED A GULLY. On either side of them the mountains rose, tree-covered and green. The ground beneath their feet was sandy, dotted with stones and rocks and boulders. There were small pockets of muddy water here and there. Alastor figured it must have rained recently.

He’d had the perfect opening, and he’d chosen not to use it. They’d talked about his family. It had been the ideal opportunity to talk about Sutekh, to tell her that the demon that had tricked her into signing away her soul was, in fact, no demon at all, but his father. But he’d held his tongue.

He didn’t know why her name was in Sutekh’s book of debts. He didn’t know why his father, out of all the souls he had claim to, had chosen to offer her, Naphré, to Izanami. And all those unknowns kept him from the big reveal. Because he couldn’t betray his father. Loyalty to his father, his brothers, was ingrained in who he was, who he had become.

Until he knew more, he couldn’t tell her a bloody thing. And that was eating him alive, because the omission felt like a betrayal.

The ground before him wasn’t smooth or flat. Their going was slow and arduous as they skirted boulders and deep grooves in the ground. Alone, he would have traveled the distance in perhaps one-tenth the time. But he wasn’t alone.

“Dry riverbed?” Naphré asked from behind him.

“Looks like.” He didn’t say more, though a part of him wanted to. Wanted to just hear her voice. He liked the sound of it, calm and smooth. Feminine.

“Do you actually know where we’re going?” she asked.

He snorted. “To Izanami’s realm.”

“Do you know how to get there?”

He stopped, turned. “Why do you ask?”

“You’re striding along so purposefully, I’m trying to figure out if it’s because you know where we’re going, or because you don’t.”

“I do.” In a manner of speaking. He knew the general location but not the exact coordinates of the entrance to Yomi. But he’d detect the subtle vibrations of the molecules in the air that signaled the supernatural when they approached Izanami’s door.

“Lead on, Macduff.”

“Misquote,” Alastor said, walking on.

“What?”

“The actual quote is ‘Lay on, Macduff, and damned be him who first cries ‘Hold! enough!’”

She walked silently behind him, and then, “Well, they mean the same thing.”

He laughed. “Close enough.”

“Must you always have the last word?”

“Whenever possible.”

She didn’t complain, though he set a brutal pace. For her, anyway. For him, it was a stroll.

“Let me take the backpack,” he offered for what must have been the tenth time.

And again, she said, “No. It isn’t heavy.”

“I was raised never to let a lady carry something when I could carry it for her.”

She laughed, a deep, throaty sound that made him feel like he was standing in the sun. “What on earth gave you the idea that I’m a lady?”

He opened his mouth to offer a pithy reply, when his instincts started screaming and he stopped so abruptly that she slammed into his back.

“What’s wrong?” She shifted so her back was against his and they presented the most advantageous configuration against any threat. He suspected it was an ingrained, automatic response.

“I don’t know.” Nothing. There was no noticeable change in their surroundings, not in temperature or the scent of the air or the ground beneath their feet. No hint of supernatural energy. Yet, it was all wrong. “Stay close enough that you can hear my pulse,” he ordered.

She pressed tight against his back, her pack digging into his shoulder, and a quick glance told him that she had her knife in her hand. For all the good it would do her against a Shikome, or anything else Izanami might send.

He looked down at the ground beneath their feet, almost expecting a veritable army of creeping centipedes to be swarming out of a crevice and skittering up their legs. There was nothing there. A quick scan of the surrounding slopes yielded no clues. There were no supernaturals about, and no humans.

But he wasn’t fooled. They were a step away from disaster.

“We need to move. Now.” He grabbed Naphré’s hand and set off at a jog. She kept up, no questions, no arguments.

As they rounded a bend, the gully sloped down and they followed it to where an enormous boulder blocked their way.