Page 20 of Patron of Mercy

Thanatos had never been on a boat for longer than it took to retrieve a soul, and then only rarely. Boats left him with a feeling of vertigo, like the world was trying to remake itself beneath his feet.

Still, those damned eyes of Lach’s had always been his greatest weakness. Thanatos wanted to obliterate any negative emotion he saw in them. Lach’s sadness, his rage, his fear—no matter how much he tried to hide them, Thanatos always saw them there and was taken with the urge to hold him until they went away. He didn’t think it had ever worked, not really, but he had always tried before.

He watched Lach stumble down the sidewalk, shoulders slumped and hands in his pockets, his steps shuffling.

For reasons he couldn’t explain, Thanatos followed.

Part of him expected the posture to change once Lach was out of sight of the Hunt Building, the spring to return to his step, and his usual devil-may-care attitude to resurface. Instead, he shuffled along one sidewalk after another, head down, dejection written on every line of his body.

Did he know that Thanatos was watching? Was that why he was being so dramatic?

On the other hand, Lach had always been prone to the dramatics. When he’d decided to leave Thanatos, he hadn’t just left, he’d run away. And stayed away. And when Thanatos hadn’t taken the clue and left for good during all that time, Lach had told him in no uncertain terms why he wanted nothing to do with Thanatos.

Block after block, Thanatos followed him, and Lach continued to shuffle along, hardly paying attention to where he was going, even as he made a short phone call. Still, he seemed to arrive at his destination, because after what felt like forever, he was standing in front of a sailboat.

At least, Thanatos thought it was a sailboat. What he knew about boats could fill a very small pamphlet, and it would mostly be made up of pictures. It had a sail—did that make it a sailboat?

Lach hopped aboard with the precision of an expert sailor and stood there, staring out at the river. He shook his head and disappeared below deck as Thanatos watched from the dock.

He should go. Lach would be fine. He’d been fine for thousands of years, and he’d made it very clear that his version of fine didn’t have a damn thing to do with Thanatos. He didn’t want or need him there, not really.

So why had he been so damn determined to get Thanatos on his boat? It seemed like a nice enough boat and all, but they mostly looked the same to him. Lach didn’t want to spend time with him. Planning, he’d said, but it didn’t seem like there was much to plan.

They couldn’t plan for booby traps they didn’t know about or crypts they hadn’t located. They had no idea what, if anything, protected the scythe.

So the purpose of spending days, or weeks, or however long the trip took, on a boat with Lach seemed like a particularly virulent form of self-inflicted harm on both their parts.

Thanatos was no great admirer of himself, but he’d never been one to deliberately hurt himself either.

After a long while, Lach came back to the—deck? topside?—with a bottle of beer in one hand, and sat down on the edge of the boat, legs dangling over the side, staring into the dark water.

The image that painted was beyond disturbing. Lach, contemplating the deep. Lach had never been one to contemplate anything.

Thanatos sighed the sigh of the deeply put-upon.

“Fine,” he announced, allowing himself to become visible once again. “I’ll travel with you on your boat. But I still think this is a mistake and a waste of time.”

Lach turned around so fast that he knocked his beer over, then snatched it back up, mopping up the spill with his sleeve and muttering apologies to the boat under his breath. A mere second later, though, he was hopping up and striding across the distance between them.

There was the spring in his step, the almost annoying confidence, and the fey grin that had the dual effect of giving Thanatos butterflies in his stomach and rebreaking his heart at the same time.

“Definitely not a mistake!” Lach told him, eyes sparkling with excitement. He started to hold a hand out to Thanatos to help him aboard, realized there was a beer in his hand, and quickly turned to set it down. “Sorry, sorry, wasn’t expecting you—um, to be so early. I thought you’d change your mind in the morning.”

Thanatos rolled his eyes and didn’t dignify that nonsense with a response. He tried not to focus on the warmth of Lach’s hand in his as he pulled him aboard. That led nowhere healthy, and Thanatos wasn’t going to further complicate the messy situation they found themselves in.

He would finish this trip, help Lach save the harvest, and then they would part ways. Thanatos couldn’t afford to get attached again; it would only end in tears.

Faithful Sons

The Brazilian air was warm and sticky, even in May, and Martina Paget was ready to be done with it. She was sure it was a lovely place when on vacation, but she wasn’t on vacation.

“They must have been sacrifices,” the irritating, nasal voice of her Midwestern counterpart said. He was rubbing against her last nerve. Of course the human remains found in the pit near Parque Arqueológico do Solstício had to be human sacrifices, because Jim desperately wanted them to be. That was the kind of story that garnered attention and drew in money. Not to mention confirming his opinion of his culture’s superiority in his own mind. As though his ancestors hadn’t sacrificed humans in their own ways.

“There’s no indication of them being killed,” she told him for the second time—in that conversation. “Let alone sacrificed. Much more likely it was an honored burial place.”

He sniffed derisively and opened his mouth to start explaining her own profession to her, again, when her phone rang. Without a word or so much as a by-your-leave, she pulled the phone from her pocket, stood from the table, and walked away from him.

There was a mild breeze outside the building, and it felt amazing against her warm cheeks.

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