Page 50 of Sins of the Heart

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“I’m guessing that’s a rhetorical question.” He just

stared at her, terror and rage glittering in his gaze. She

almost laughed. “Are any of those witnesses still alive?

Is that it? Everyone who watched the skinning is dead?

And you’re not inclined to join them in hell?”

Live witnesses were a liability, which explained

Marin’s reticence.

A live witness would be invaluable to Sutekh. A

dead one would be invaluable to his opponent. So the

soul reaper’s executioner would be inclined to kill the

witness and take the soul to a territory off-limits to the

Lord of Chaos.

Either way, it was war.

Once the battle started, it wouldn’t stop in the Underworld. It’d spill Topworld, into the mortal realm.

The thought chilled her like an Arctic wind.

CHAPTER FOUR

As for any god or any goddess who shall oppose

themselves to me

They shall be handed over to those…who live on

hearts

—The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Chapter 124

St. Louis, Missouri

DAGAN KRAYL PROPPED ONE shoulder against a burnedout streetlamp and surveyed the dilapidated house before him. The angle of the moon sent his shadow

slicing like a dark arrow deep into the overgrown yard,

past the maze of old truck tires to the skeletons of two

rusting, graffiti-covered cars. The place was little more

than a shack, with boarded-up windows and a wide

plank nailed across the door.

No one home.

Butsomeonewatched him, hidden… Where?

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