“You knew?”
“She confessed to her sin and begged me to keep her from the weighing chamber.”
“Ace, I—” Cat’s voice caught.
I waved her concern away. “This was forever ago. I barely recognize it as my story.” I swung my legs off the lounger and leaned forward, facing Cat’s shining eyes. “Aneksi was already mine. Ammit had seen to that. I devoured her because it had to happen. She stood in front of the crowd, her head up, her shoulders back, and she looked her fate and me in the eyes. She had a warrior’s soul.”
“I…” She licked her lips and tried again. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You remind me of her.” I gestured roughly in her direction. “Not the face, but the spirit. In the same situation, you would’ve cut the guy in two.”
She blinked, her lips slightly parted and her expression the most confused I’d seen it. “Is my soul damned?”
I smiled, enjoying her fumbling for a response. I could let her sweat, another me might have, but lately, I’d been trying good on for size. “I’ve seen your soul—briefly,” I added after her whole body had tensed to either attack or defend. “I’ve also seen you kill, but you did so for the right reasons. What I saw in you was light. You’re a good person beneath all the homicidal tendencies. You’ve struggled with your moral compass in the past, but it’s steered you right so far.”
“I…you saw all that?” She laughed a little, awkward laugh.
I’d thrown her off her stride. I’d have to remember that and try it again. We had a few days left in our vacation. I could fill it with making the warrior cat squirm, especially if she insisted on tracking me down and crashing my alone time.
“Yah know…” She looked out at the ocean, throwing her face into profile. “I think the housekeepers are trying to summon a demon. I’m pretty sure I heard chanting coming from the room next door last night.”
Changing the subject. I’d shaken her all right, and considering the weird little ache inside, I’d unsettled part of myself too. When too many memories vie for attention they each stirred the other, lifting old emotions to the surface.
“They can go right ahead.” I scooped up my empty beer bottle, got to my feet, and started back up the beach. “I’m not on the job. Unless locusts start raining from the sky or some asshole parts the Atlantic, I couldn’t care less.”
“Ace…”
I stopped and glanced back. She was still sitting on the lounger, looking at me like I was the mystery here, not her reasons for sticking closer than my shadow.
“Are we hiding? This place, this vacation…in six months you never once took a day off.”
“Enjoy your vacation.” While you can.
I saluted her with the empty bottle and trudged up the beach. Like I’d said, Cat was sharp, and absolutely right. I may have neglected to mention the warning I’d received from a few underworld contacts. Anubis had waited long enough for me to come to him. His jackals were on the offensive, and I was hiding under a resort–shaped rock until I figured out how to survive the God of the Damned and the shitstorm he was stirring in the underworld. Add to that my newfound notoriety as the godkiller, and suddenly the pantheon’s spotlight was on me.
“Did you feel that?” Cat’s concerned tone halted my steps.
The breeze continued to toss the bar sounds of laughter and chinking glasses around the beach, but I couldn’t feel much of anything beyond a mild sense of contentment brought on by the beer and Bethany-Jane’s company.
“I swear, I—”
A tremble rumbled beneath my boots. Cat shot to her feet and looked down at the sand.
“Earthquake?” she asked, looking to me for answers.
It wasn’t an earthquake. I scanned the length of the beach. Stark white loungers tracked left and right. Lights from the hotels and beachfront homes illuminated the sand, stretching long shadow-fingers toward the surf.
The sand shifted around my boots, sucking me down an inch.
I bolted for Cat. “Get off the sand!”
Her eyes widened, and she looked down. All around her, the sand rippled. She lifted a foot. “What the—”
I caught her by the arm and yanked her onto the lounger behind me. The damn thing rocked, threatening to topple us over. Cat bumped against my shoulder, knocking me sideways. I gave her a shove, trying to maintain some balance, but the seat rocked the other way and tipped like a boat. Cat dropped a foot onto the sand. A fleshy, wrinkled tentacle shot out whip-quick, snagged her ankle, and yanked. She staggered, teetering on the edge of the warped lounger.
“Hold on!” I hooked an arm around her waist and pivoted, pulling her back.
The tentacle knotted tighter, its thick skin creaking.
Magic burned the air—a quick blast I recognized as Cat’s. She twisted and her claws, as sharp and precise as daggers, caught the light.
Too late I realized her plan. “Don’t!”
She sliced through the tentacle, cutting clean through it, and then kicked the flaccid appendage off her shoe.
“What the hell was that?” Cat panted.
“A vurk, and you just pissed it off.”
“What’s a vurk?”
A mound of sand swelled a few feet away, rising up and towering over us. Sand poured down the vast worm-like body.
It opened its massive circular mouth and loosed a thunderous roar, flinging out countless wriggling tentacles from deep inside its cavernous throat.
So much for paradise. “Run!”
Buy the thrilling continuation in the Soul Eater series from Amazon here.
Also by Pippa DaCosta
The Veil Series
Wings of Hope ~ The Veil Series Prequel Novella
Beyond The Veil (#1)
Devil May Care (#2)
Darkest Before Dawn (#3)
Drowning In The Dark (#4)
Ties That Bind (#5)
Get your free e-copy of ‘Wings Of Hope’ by signing up to Pippa’s mailing list, here.
Chaos Rises
Chaos Rises (#1)
Chaos Unleashed (#2)
Soul Eater
Hidden Blade (#1)
Witches’ Bane (#2)
See No Evil (#3)
Scorpion Trap (#4)
Science-Fiction
Girl From Above #1: Betrayal
Girl From Above #2: Escape
Girl From Above #3: Trapped
Girl From Above #4: Trust
New Adult Urban Fantasy
City Of Fae, London Fae #1
City of Shadows, London Fae #2
About the Author
Born in Tonbridge, Kent in 1979, Pippa's family moved to the South West of England where she grew up among the dramatic moorland and sweeping coastlands of Devon & Cornwall. With a family history brimming with intrigue, complete with Gypsy angst on one side and Jewish survivors on the other, she draws from a patchwork of ancestry and uses it as the inspiration for her writing. Happily married and the mother of two little girls, she resides on the Devon & Cornwall border.
Sign up to her mailing list here.
@pippadacosta
pippadacosta
www.pippadacosta.com
[email protected]
Witches' Bane (The Soul Eater Book 2) Page 15
