Sinners' Kingdom #1: The Book of Lust (Complete)

59

I stood idle on the damp sands, standing on top of the dragging hem of Lust's robes at his insistence when he left me there. He wasn't far, just in the water no more than — well, I wasn't good enough to guess distance by hearing, but it couldn't be more than twenty or thirty feet or so away, right? I wouldn't be so concerned if I didn't think the bird calls in the distance were becoming more raucous again. Maybe it was my imagination. Being a sound that only humans could hear, it made perfect sense for a cursed bird call to disorient me and make me uneasy to be alone. Logical. Nothing hinky about it.

"Your nose would be useful here, Mammon," Lust called. I was relieved to hear him so close, at least enough that he didn't have to shout his lungs out to be heard. I pulled the edges of the robes tighter around my chest anyway, still unsettled by the increasing winds. Would we find the Indra's Net in time before the storm hit? We still had to make it all the way back to shelter, too. I did, at least. No doubt the demons would be just fine. How nice.

Mammon didn't reply to Lust's request, or so I thought. At seemingly nothing, Lust called again:

"Underwater, I presume, but if anyone can scent something under the surface, it would be you." Another long pause. "Then I can explore farther from the shore. Unfortunate that we have no Hellflame to light underwater. It would help greatly, would it not?"

Mammon must have already transformed, and was speaking telepathically. It made me wonder why he didn't choose to do so all the time. There must be rules for that kind of magic or something, because if I had the choice, it seemed a lot more efficient to not have to ever speak aloud to get my point across to someone. I glanced up at the sky and cast my unseeing gaze around, frowning. Yeah. I'd appreciate some silence for my battered ears right about now.

"Nothing yet?" I asked, raising my voice to ensure Lust could hear me over the crashing waves and rising wind. "Maybe it beached up somewhere else. I'll — uh, I'll..." What, shuffle across the length of the beach back and forth like a vacuum cleaner until my feet bumped into something?

"Stay as you are, love. We're in luck. This is high tide, so it's possible we'll find the Indra's washed onto the shore." A pause. "No need to be so negative, Mammon. Besides, with how eagerly you're searching, you don't appear as pessimistic as you're attempting to sound?"

Oh, well, that was nice of him. After that argument I'd fearlessly started with him in the cave when I'd thrown all caution to the wind (mostly because Lust was there to back me up if things actually got hairy?), I'd thought Mammon would sulk and grouse while refusing to contribute. But he must be cooperating because he owed me a debt. Now that I stood here unbothered and left alone to my thoughts, I recalled how we inadvertently freed him from his prison under the Kunlun Temple, and then my wildly unexpected heroics in delivering all of us off the mountain before we got caught in a spell trap.

I wrapped my arms around myself, fighting off the chill that came from both the unpleasant weather and the unpleasant memories. That could have been it for me. Trussed up by manhunters and dragged off to face the Coven, then executed. Until I cleared my name and found a way to render these two demons harmless, there was no other possible sentence. I swallowed, feeling my world sink a little more under my feet.

"My, that was quick. What did I say? Fate is friendlier than you accuse it of being, isn't it?"

My eyes widened. Did Mammon find it? That fast? No way! I hobbled forward, nearly tripping on the trailing bottom of the robes, only to find myself swept into the air in an all-too-familiar embrace.

"If only you could see this," Lust murmured in my ear, wistful. "It's amusing, watching Mammon swim out like that, all four legs kicking. Oh, and he's diving now. He'll be absolutely sopping, fur and all. I'll have to recreate this memory for you when your sight is properly restored. He's usually so intent on keeping up appearances, but he's completely forgotten himself in his excitement."