“If you so much as breathe louder than a mouse fart, I’ll open your throat from ear to ear, understand?” I whispered harshly into her ear.
“Mmph,” was her mumbled reply into the palm of my left hand. Her body was tense with fear.
“We’re going to go over to that door over there, and you’re going to close it and lock it, got it?”
“Mmph, mmph.”
Keeping my grip on her mouth tight, I walked her over to the door to the huge room, and she closed and locked it, just as I’d told her to.
“Well done, Millicent,” I whispered. “Now, all I’m here for is one item, and if you give it to me without struggling or screaming, all I’ll do is gag you and then be on my way. If, however, you try anything stupid—and believe me, doing anything contrary to my instructions will be very, very fucking stupid on your part—I will not hesitate to teach you the true meaning of agony. They call me the Soultaker, and you don’t want to find out firsthand the reason I got that name. I’m going to walk you over to the sofa, and you’re going to sit down, be quiet, and stay calm. If you try calling your guards, I’ll just kill them—all of them. I’d rather not kill innocent men who are simply doing a job, but if they threaten me, they die, and then you die too. Things will be a lot easier for you if you just do exactly what I say. Understand?”
“Mmph.”
I was laying it on real thick, but I needed her to feel threatened, because I really didn’t want to kill such a beautiful mature lady.
I marched her over to the sofa, spun her around, and shoved her down onto it. She gasped, her large bosom heaving and her eyes were wide with fear, but when she looked at me, an altogether different expression came across her face. Her lips curved into a lusty smile, and she stretched out, catlike, on her sofa.
“I’ve been expecting a robbery for some time,” she purred, looking me slowly up and down, “so this isn’t actually much of a surprise to me. What is rather startling is just how handsome my burglar is. I was expecting some greasy, smelly oaf from a back alley, not, mm, someone like you. How did such a devilishly handsome fellow as yourself get into such a dirty profession?”
“First off, I’m not actually a burglar; I’m an assassin. Well, was an assassin, before I became a necromancer. But now, I’m the God of Death.”
“Ooh, well, that’s quite a career path you’ve got there. Are you really a god though, or are you just saying that? I mean, you look like a god, I cannot deny that, but so many men love to bandy that term around but then end up being such... disappointments.”
Her gaze settled on my crotch as she said this, and she raised her forefinger suggestively to her lips.
“There are a lot of ways I could prove it,” I answered, “but most of them would involve killing you, an outcome we’re trying to avoid here, right? If you had a set of bones lying around, though, I could touch them and tell you exactly how that person died. I doubt you keep skeletons in this place, though.”
“Actually,” she said, “my husband’s skull is in this very room. Tell me exactly how he died, and I’ll believe that you are indeed the God of Death, and I’ll freely give you the item you came here for, if you can do me a little favor, one that only the God of Death could do.”
“I don’t know about favors, but I’m happy to prove myself.” I didn’t need to prove myself to this woman, but I figured doing so might lead to a little romp on her bed.
“All right, where’s the skull?” I asked.
She started to get up, but I quickly pointed my wrist crossbow at her.
“Unless you want to turn into a wooden mannequin, Millicent, you’re gonna stay right there.”
“Um, okay, well, the skull is in that chest over there in the corner.”
I walked over to where she indicated, keeping an eye on her all the while in case she was dumb enough to try anything—which she wasn’t, it seemed—and opened up the chest. There was indeed a human skull inside it.
“Pardon me for asking,” I said, “but why the fuck is your dead husband’s skull in this chest? Most people bury their loved ones when they die.”
She sighed sadly before answering. “Because I was tricked.”
“Tricked?”
“Yes. Tricked, conned, hoodwinked, whatever you want to call it.”
“I have to say, I’m pretty intrigued as to how a conman’s game results in a woman keeping her dead husband’s skull in a chest.”
“My late husband, bless his soul, died while—wait, no, I’m not going to say another word. You first tell me how he died, then I’ll explain how his skull got there. Go on then, prove to me that you really are the God of Death.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I reached down and touched the husband’s skull, and, as before, a surge of almost debilitating disorientation and nausea crashed through me. In an instant, I was both myself and Millicent’s former husband, seeing and experiencing the world through his eyes and senses.
And I was on the toilet, taking a dump.
This certainly hadn’t been what I had been expecting to find out. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant dump either. I—well, Millicent’s husband—had some bad constipation. But there was more: intense feelings of rage pulsing through my system. A memory flashed through my—his—mind: an image of opening the door and seeing Millicent laying spread-eagled on her bed being fucked by a man who was dressed in a gardener’s uniform. I recognized the uniform because similar gardeners who tended the castle had worn them.
The memory faded, and the feeling of rage intensified. I was squeezing hard to get the turd out, when all of a
