by Lyn Benedict
“What do you want me to do about it?” she asked. She felt horrifyingly close to tears. Blamed his presence for it, a sort of evil osmosis—the storm core of him drawing her salt tears to the surface. Her entire apartment smelled like a squall at sea.
“Stop her.”
Sylvie laughed, a fierce crow of stunned disbelief. “What, you want me to do the job? She might be a god, but she’s small potatoes compared to you. Deal with her yourself.”
“She’s not mine anymore,” he said. “A pantheon of her own. Not a Fury. If I act against her, it’s war across the heavens. You created her. Stop her. Kill her if you have to.”
“She’s my … friend,” Sylvie said, and surprised herself by meaning it. That knowledge bolstered her, took her out of her own fears. So what if God had a purpose for her. She didn’t have to do it. She didn’t have to do what Dunne wanted, either.
“She’s your responsibility.”
“Fuck you,” Sylvie said.
Dunne rocked back, going human-shaped again. His eyes narrowed; suddenly, he didn’t look as gentle as he usually did in human form. “You want to use her against your enemies.”
“No,” Sylvie said. She crossed her arms over her chest, thought clearly how much she wanted him to go the hell away.
He ignored her, and said, “You already have. You sicced her on the ISI after you disposed of Azpiazu.”
“I asked her to make us an exit,” Sylvie said. “That’s all.”
Dunne flicked his gaze TV-ward. The channels shifted, blurred, landed on a local news station that wasn’t local at all. The banner beneath said it was Channel 8, Dallas/Fort Worth. And it was yesterday’s breaking news. The volume wound up; the newscaster shouted disaster into the room. An entire work force found dead, all asphyxiated at their desks. Forty people.
The news report suggested a gas leak.
“That’s the Dallas ISI,” Dunne said.
“I know that,” Sylvie said. She kept track of their branches, knew the buildings they took over. The Dallas ISI was based out of a lakeside marina. The facade was distinctive, cement slabbed with a faded trio of white sails against blue waves. The boats slipped there looked normal but all belonged to the government. Expensive camouflage.
The TV flickered, shifted again. “How about this one? I know you recognize it. Or what’s left of it.”
She didn’t at first. It was a picture as horrible and meaningless to her as a foreign disaster—all broken slabs of beige stone, glittering with dusty glass, crawling with reflected emergency lights and first responders. It was the cops’ caps that tipped her off, sparked recognition out of anonymity: Chicago cops in late-afternoon sunlight. The video clips were choppy, cameras held by a series of unsteady hands before the professionals arrived. Flashes of gold light flared like special effects every so often, the dust catching and reflecting the lights.
The broken walls weren’t beige; they were granite covered with sand. The skyscrapers to either side, though damaged, were familiar enough. The collapsed building was the Chicago ISI. Where she had killed Lilith. Where a resurrected Demalion worked.
The announcers were reading off death tolls like ghouls, adding new bodies on a ticker in the corner of the screen. Seventy-six dead. No, seventy-nine. No, eighty-three.
A pained, broken breath overrode the announcers. It took her a moment to realize it had been hers. Not possible. She’d talked to him just two days prior, and he’d been too run off his feet for anything more than just a hi, miss you, wish you were here, sorry we fought. Hadn’t even been long enough to argue over anything.
“Do you see?” Dunne said.
She scrubbed hard at her blurring eyes, understood what he was implying and the sheer manipulative gall of it scoured away her fear and pain. “You’re a bastard and a liar,” she said, couldn’t muster enough strength to make it more than a furious whisper. “Erinya didn’t do this.”
It wasn’t the Fury’s style. Erinya loved the visceral taste of battle. She wouldn’t kill by alleged gas, wouldn’t drop a building on her foes. She’d wade through their blood or consider it not worth doing.
“No,” he admitted. “But she could have. You sent her after the ISI. She’s cunning in her own way, could easily decide that your command not to hurt Demalion was overridden by your desire to hurt the ISI. While she might be a small god comparatively, the world’s still going to bend to her will the longer she lingers in it.”
“Is that even real?” Sylvie asked, gesturing at the TV. “Or is it a sick object lesson?” She pushed off from the couch, pushed past him—felt that nauseating vibration, that subsonic wrongness that indicated power—and leaned on her kitchen counter, stared at the dark mass of her backup gun in the half-open drawer. It gaped at her like an angry mouth. Metal shone within, a black tongue.
“It’s real—” he started.
She turned, gun in hand, and fired until the clip was empty, making a violent thunder of her own.
Meaningless, of course.
The only thing she’d killed was her wall. Dunne was gone. The bullet holes in the thick plaster wall and the couch—changed from cream faux suede to a dark leather with brass nailheads at the arms and back—were the only signs that he’d been there at all. A reminder he had to have left deliberately. Gods changed things by their presence. Not all of the changes were as harmless as updating her furniture.
Sylvie set the gun down with a shaking hand and grabbed her cell phone.
Demalion’s phone rang and rang on the other end. No matter how often she dialed, he didn’t answer.
3
A Sea of Troubles
AN HOUR LATER, SYLVIE WAS POUNDING ON ALEX’S DUPLEX DOOR, feeling an entirely new worry jittering along her nerves. After she’d given up trying Demalion’s phone, she’d started calling Alex.
Alex hadn’t answered either. The phone hadn’t gone directly to voice mail, her usual sign of “closed for business,” and so Sylvie worried. She’d pushed herself into the Miami night, waved off her neighbor’s tentative question about gunshots, and headed for Alex’s place.
Sylvie knocked louder, called Alex’s name. Guerro, her German shepherd, barked from inside, but Alex didn’t appear. Sylvie felt anxiety spike. If the ISI were under attack, they’d be looking for someone to blame. They had to know Alex worked for Sylvie, had to know she kept the backup files, had to know Alex was the one who coded them. By grabbing Alex, they’d have an all-access pass to Sylvie’s work history.
Just when her knuckles began to smart, when she considered breaking in to Alex’s little house, footsteps stumbled in her direction, and Alex mumbled, “Yeah. Coming.” The barking stopped.
She opened the door, leaned on the jamb, and stared at Sylvie with bleary eyes and smudged makeup that made her look like she’d decided to take up boxing. “Syl? It’s really late—”
“It’s urgent,” Sylvie said. “You all right?” She slipped past Alex’s slumped form, stepped into Alex’s living room, and suddenly wanted a real answer to that question.
Alex was obsessively tidy. Always had been. But her home showed signs of disarray. Not a lot—a pile of dishes in the sink, rinsed but not washed, a few pieces of clothing flung over the couch, a tangle of dog fur not immediately vacuumed—just the usual detritus of a day or two left untended. Still, it wasn’t like her.
“Just headachy,” Alex complained. “Had a lot of them of late. I tried to sleep it off.”
“Without taking off your makeup?”
“Syl, this isn’t an interrogation. What do you want?”
“To find out if Dunne was fucking with me,” she said, recalled to her purpose. “Demalion’s in trouble.”
“Fuck,” Alex murmured. She rubbed her face, pushed away the sleepy languor, and said, “Shoot.”
Sylvie filled her in, and Alex’s expression grew miserable. “Demalion’s tough, Syl. He’s survived worse.”
“Sort of,” Sylvie said. “Just … just do your thing. Prove to me that Dunne w
as being a godly asshole, making me pay for not doing what he wanted.”
“What did he want?”
Sylvie waved a hand, a not-talking-about-it-now gesture. “The facts, Alex? I really want to know whether Dunne’s on the up and up.”
Alex cast a last longing look toward her bedroom and dragged out her computer, blinked lashes gummed with mascara at the bright screen. “Give me a moment.” She flipped the laptop open, held it over her forearm, typed with her free hand, as if she wanted to get it done as quickly as possible.
“I don’t know if we can trust the news. He’s a god—”
“Wasn’t going for the news. Always go to the source,” Alex said. She clicked through increasingly troubling screens, and said, “The ISI. Have a seat. It’s going to take a bit.”
“You think?” Sylvie said. “They started battening down the hatches months ago.”
“Yeah,” Alex said. “Paranoid, bad-tempered bastards. But I’ve got an in.” Her lips curved into a tight smile. “Demalion’s passwords.”
His name fell into the space between them like a cold front. Alex’s smile wiped itself away, traded for a squirming awkwardness, the taste of premature grief.
Sylvie roughed her voice into working order, said, “He’s not dead yet, and he’s going to kick your ass for snaking his passwords. He’s stupidly loyal to that organization. Keep going.”
It was unnecessary advice. Alex’s fingers had never paused. “I’m hitting their memos to each other. Interoffice warnings. Red alerts, that kind of thing. Chatter’s real. Talk about Dallas, about Chicago, about Memphis.”
“Memphis? What happened in Memphis?”
“Something bad I’m guessing. They’re sending around a list of precautions to be made SOP … Syl.”
“What?”
“Another one just showed up. Savannah,” Alex said.
“There isn’t an ISI branch in Savannah.” Sylvie kept pretty close track of them. They covered twenty-nine American cities.
“Well, not anymore.”
Alex’s jaw tightened, a white sliver in Sylvie’s field of vision. Flickers of light against her skin, and she nodded. “Look at this.” She turned the computer toward Sylvie. “Security video.”
It wasn’t what Sylvie had expected. The ISI tended toward government bland, but this lobby was stark beyond that. She squinted. Was that security glass around the intake desk? Something blurred the men behind it, made them look oddly distant.
When the woman wandered into view, captured the camera’s eye, Sylvie was irritated, trying to piece together the nagging sense that she should know what this place was. Then the woman moved forward and shed her coat like a falling stage curtain. It fell fast and hard, as if it were weighted, but none of the security guards could look away from the woman.
She stretched long and lean and more naked than it seemed possible for someone to be. Her skin drew all attention, gleaming and alive with opalescence, as if milky feathers fluttered beneath her skin. She had bright eyes, supple limbs, a curling mouth as flushed as a fall apple. She held out her arms in invitation.
Sylvie’s mouth dried. The men behind the desk, behind the security glass, jerked to their feet.
It wasn’t a woman. Wasn’t a man, either. But it encapsulated the most appealing of both.
A succubus.
The men opened the door—it was security glass hemming them in—stepped out. Other men and women came out of the depths of the building, clustered around the succubus’s lithe form.
“Is that—”
“Yeah,” Sylvie said. “Succubus. But what it’s doing…
Sylvie didn’t understand it. Even if the succubus meant them harm, which it had to—no other reason for it to walk into the lion’s den—it couldn’t feed on all of them at the same time, and once it started to feed, it couldn’t keep perfect control.
The man closest to the succubus reached out, brushed shaking fingers over the perfect, pristine cheekbone. The succubus’s smile darkened. It bent smoothly, picked up its coat, revealed the weapon in it.
Sylvie sucked in a shocked breath.
This wasn’t feeding. This wasn’t hunger. This was slaughter.
The automatic weapon chattered in silence on Alex’s small screen. The ISI agents, lust-struck, had no time for lust to change to fear. The security glass grew starred and spattered with blood.
On-screen, the succubus dropped the gun, drew a finger through a spray of blood that stippled its face like freckles, and sucked it clean. Then it turned and let itself out. A bar of light—the front door left open—draped over the bodies.
“Savannah,” Alex said. “She killed all of them. Called them up and mowed them down.” She shook her head, shook away the nerves. “There’s no security footage in Dallas. Or Memphis.”
“What about Chicago?”
Alex bit her lip. “You sure you want to see?”
“Play it.”
Same thing. The lobby, familiar to Sylvie. There was the elevator where Demalion had cornered her, argued with her, before chasing her down the street and insinuating himself back into her life. She swallowed.
The beginning of the disaster was more subtle than Savannah’s succubus. So slow, it took Sylvie time to notice. Dust crawled across the lobby floor, a slow ripple of shadow. Accreting.
Not dust.
Sand.
It swirled, trickled upward like a pulled thread, fitting itself into the seams of the building. The agent at the front desk stood, approached, hand on his gun. He reached out toward that tiny spinning thread of sand; it drilled through flesh, through bone—he jerked his hand back, a hole pierced right through, started shouting for help.
Too late.
As if his blood was the catalyst, the thread of spinning sand exploded into a tornado. It devoured the retreating guard, silica slicing him to ribbon. The building shook and blurred. The last glimpse Sylvie had was a pair of shining eyes at the heart of the whirlwind before the camera failed. Not a spell. A creature of some kind.
When Sylvie caught her breath, she could come to only one conclusion.
It’s war, her little dark voice said. Coldness crawled her spine, edged her jaw and cheeks. To say she didn’t like the ISI was like going on record saying that yeah, contracting Ebola was a bad way to spend the weekend. She distrusted them down to her very core. But she didn’t like this. Especially didn’t like the sense of organization behind the attacks.
One thing she’d always counted on was the Magicus Mundi’s disinterest in uniting against humankind.
So why now?
“It’s a prison,” Alex said. “Was a prison. Savannah. They just opened it. Skeleton staff.”
“That might change things,” Sylvie said.
“You think the Mundi finally woke up and said, enough? I can’t imagine they’d like the idea of being put in cages.”
“I don’t know,” Sylvie said. Never one of her favorite phrases. “If it were the human magic-users attacking, I might be more willing to think that it’s a reaction to the jail. But the Mundi … if they were that easy to catch and cage, don’t you think we’d have a zoo full? I’m not sure they care about us that much. About what we’re doing.”
“That look like disinterest to you?” Alex said.
On-screen, the succubus dropped the gun again, rolled its shoulders and neck with a visible satisfaction. A job well-done.
“It’s too much and not enough,” Sylvie said. “It’s strange. Two different monsters, probably three if we assume Dallas’s gas accident means asphyxiation—something neither of these monsters tried. They don’t cooperate outside their own kind.”
Alex drew her finger along the screen, tracing a pattern made in the shadows of filmed blood.
Sylvie continued thinking aloud. “If they’ve organized enough to make alliances, then why not strike all at once? Why strike day by day? Allowing the ISI to warn their other branches? It’s pointless. And worse, it’s ineffective. The Mundi’s a lot of things, but
it’s brutally efficient.”
“Fear,” Alex said, running her fingers over the keyboard, over the part of the world she could control. “Let them know what’s coming and let them know they can’t stop it. I mean, can they stop it?”
“I don’t know,” Sylvie said. Grimaced. Goddammit. She wanted answers. She wanted them now. “Maybe it’s not a war. Maybe it’s revolution. A series of uprisings, each spurred on by the previous one.”
“Like an infection, spreading.” Alex bent her head over the computer. “What can we do?”
Sylvie closed her teeth on another I don’t know, and thought about it. “If it’s an infection, there’ll be a cause. If there’s an uprising, there’s a leader somewhere. Keep plugged in. Keep me informed. I got someplace to be.”
“Chicago?”
Sylvie shook her head. “And do what? Pick through the rubble and hope I strike lucky? If they even let me get that far? No. If he can, Demalion will call us.”
Alex raised her head for the first time in what seemed like ages. Her eyes seemed more shadowed now than when Sylvie had first woken her. “Let me guess. Four ISI agencies down. You’re headed for ground zero. Trying to see if you can get yourself killed protecting people who hate you.”
“Sounds bad when you put it that way,” Sylvie said.
Alex’s smile was perfunctory. “They gassed you, kidnapped you; you had to break out. If they weren’t so scared of your pet Fury, you’d be back in their cells. But you’re going to take the moral high ground and help them?”
“Miami might not even be next on the list,” Sylvie said, “Seems to me, though, that there’s a path being taken. From Savannah? There are two ISI offices in easy lines: DC and Miami. DC has its own building, but here, the ISI offices are in the hotel district. The ISI brought this on themselves but … there are too many innocent bystanders involved. Riordan does it deliberately, hedges his agents ’round with regular people. One floor of agency, fourteen floors of civilians. I don’t have a choice.”