Sin had to force himself not to laugh when it was obvious Kat wasn't amused. But he knew for a fact that Damien was right. He only took the lives of those who deserved to die, and so long as he did, Sin had no problem with him.
Kat shook her head. "And if you eat enough of those souls, they begin to corrupt you until you become one of them. Everyone knows that."
Damien scoffed. "Only if you're stupid. I'm two hundred years old and I haven't turned yet. You just have to learn to hum a lot so you don't hear their bullshit echoing in your head. It gets really loud and ugly the closer to final death they go. But then you eat a new soul and it usually finishes off the old one, so there's no real danger of turning evil yourself."
She tried again to shrug off Sin's hold. "You disgust me."
Damien took it in stride. "Like you don't have any revolting habits."
"I don't eat people."
"Technically, I don't, either. I only swallow their souls. Which, I might add, you should try someday... Finger-lickin' good."
She let out a shriek before she lunged again.
Sin wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her up from the floor, which was a really stupid move, since she then proceeded to kick him in the legs. "Why don't you go back downstairs, Damien? I'll call you when I have a minute."
"Sure, boss."
Sin waited until the door was safely shut before he released Kat. She turned on him with her nostrils flared and her green eyes snapping fury. "Don't you ever keep me from teleporting again."
"Why not? You did it to me."
Kat calmed a degree as she realized he was right. She'd done that to him. Funny, it hadn't seemed like a personal invasion until it'd happened to her. No wonder he'd been so angry in Kalosis. But that didn't change the fact that he was in the wrong where the Daimon was concerned.
"How can you condone what that man does to stay alive?"
"Me? I'm not the one whose uncle went wild on an entire innocent race. If not for Apollo and his condemnation and curse, none of the Daimons would even exist."
"They killed his son and his mistress," she said as if that warranted the god's unreasonable anger.
"Three soldiers killed his son and mistress," Sin reminded her. "The rest of them were completely innocent. How many of the Apollites did Apollo kill as children the day he went wild on them? Does he even care? Oh, wait a second, I forgot. How many of the Apollites were his own flesh-and-blood children and grandchildren that he condemned to death? Did he care they were damned over something they had no part in? He killed more of his own blood family in anger than the three soldiers who killed that mistress and child. A lot more."
Kat cringed. Again, Sin was right. The Stryker who served Apollymi was Apollo's own son. Originally, Stryker had had ten children who had been cursed along with him. Out of that ten, all of them had gone Daimon and been killed.
All of them.
"Tell me something, Kat?" Sin said, his voice deep and tense. "If you were going to die at twenty-seven and someone showed you how to live another day, would you really choose the life of a complete stranger over your own?"
"Of course I would."
"Then you're a better person than I am. Or maybe you just haven't had to fight for survival so you can't truly understand what it's like to look death in the face and have him stare right back at you." The heat in his voice sent a shiver over her.
Still she wasn't swayed to his side. "You're immortal. What do you know of dying?"
A cold look descended on his features as pain glowed in those golden depths. "Immortals can and do die. Some of us more than once."
There was something there... something she needed to know the answer to.
"And have you ever taken the life of an innocent to live another day?"
His eyes were harsh and cold. "I've done many things in my life that I didn't want to. I'm not proud of them, but I'm still here and I intend to be here for a long time to come. So don't you dare sit in judgment of people when you haven't been in their shoes."
Kat reached out to touch him even though she knew she shouldn't. The instant she did, she felt the rawness of his grief. But more than that, she saw him with his daughter, screaming out her name as she was killed by demons. His black hair was plastered by sweat against his dark skin. Blood ran down his rage-contorted face and body in thick, crimson rivulets.
She could see him cradling Ishtar against him and feel the searing ache that made her gasp.
Then Kat felt the sharp, crisp pain of something piercing her heart.