Lies & Omens: A Shadows Inquiries Novel

by Lyn Benedict

  He turned Marah down, she reminded herself. His choice. She hadn’t asked him to. She just appreciated it. Enormously. The blue water beyond the ocean causeway glittered in the sunlight. Lupe fidgeted in the backseat.

  “How’s it look up ahead?” Demalion asked the uniformed officer.

  The man shrugged uneasily, cast a glance over his shoulder. “Hell if I know. They tell me that the whole island’s gone weird. Strange plants sprouting overnight. Stranger animals. Waterfalls. We’ve had to chase tons of gawkers away.”

  “I see,” Demalion said. He took back his ID, and the man leaned in, rested his arm on the open window.

  “So, do you know what’s going on, Agent Wright?”

  “Yes,” Demalion said, and, in a move worthy of all federal assholes, rolled up the window, making the man jerk back or lose fingers. He glanced over at Sylvie before he touched the gas pedal again. “We’re sure about this? Erinya owns my soul. I don’t want her to decide to collect on it because she’s in a bad mood.”

  “I’m sure,” Lupe said, leaning forward between the seat backs. “Drive.”

  The island loomed ahead, and Sylvie shook her head. “Erinya. No sense of discretion.” Even from the far end of the causeway, the changes were blatant and undeniable. Vegetation curled above the island like greenish smoke. A sharp-edged hill rose high and bare out of the massed tree tangle. White-stone walls meandered along the top of it like an open mouth showing teeth. A pair of distinctive gates blocked the narrow, stony path toward the rearranged dwelling. Sylvie wasn’t even sure there were ceilings.

  “That’s what’s left of Val’s house?” Zoe said. She slumped back, and said, “You get to tell her. Not me.”

  “Maybe she won’t ask,” Sylvie said.

  Demalion pulled up at the second roadblock, this one designed to keep anyone on the Key from leaving. Sylvie wondered how many people were stuck with Erinya. Whether Erinya was leaving them alone, or whether they were all her stunned acolytes by now.

  The officer who waved them to a halt was less impressionable than the first. He looked at the ID, and said, “What’s your purpose here, Wright?”

  “Same as yours, I’d imagine,” Demalion said, nodding at the line of uniformed officers preparing to take the final few steps onto the Key. “Send a man in for recon.”

  “Didn’t get enough information from the flyover? The Feds buzzed Key Biscayne all night. Made our choppers stand down.”

  Lupe growled, slid out of the car before Demalion could argue further with the policeman. “I’m going in.”

  “Wait,” Sylvie said. She dragged Lupe around to the far side of the car, trying to keep their conversation away from prying ears. A vain attempt. The police pivoted to keep them in focus, hands on their weapons. Sylvie said, “Gentlemen. Don’t get trigger-happy. You won’t like the result.”

  They hesitated just enough that she felt comfortable putting her back to them. “Are you sure about this, Lupe? Erinya’s trapped, and not in the best of moods. A drawback to being a god? Their tantrums can last eons.”

  “She won’t hurt me,” Lupe said. “She likes me.”

  “She liked you as a monster,” Sylvie said.

  “I’m still a monster. It’s just … inside now.”

  “Lupe—”

  “I killed people, Sylvie. I ripped them apart and ran my claws through their guts. I’ve done a lot of things in my life. None of it has ever been as satisfying as killing. Erinya understands that. Erinya likes me. And you know. I think I like her.”

  Sylvie let her go. If the world was going to change, if people were going to see the truth of things, she needed to let them act on what they knew. She couldn’t play gatekeeper for the entire world. She had to trust people to make their own decisions.

  Lupe nodded, walked past the armed men, walked right to the seething vines. Their chaos continued unabated, lashing and twining, but as she reached out, they parted, swallowed her down.

  The cops swore and took steps back. Sylvie watched the greenery close up again and wondered if she’d done the right thing. It seemed to be a constant refrain in the back of her mind, as if she were vibrating to the uncertainty of the world.

  She shook it off. She’d pulled the wool from the world’s eyes. She couldn’t regret it. Whatever came. Whatever happened.

  Better to build a world with truth than one full of lies.

  19

  And After

  TWO WEEKS LATER, SYLVIE WAS PUTTING TINY PINS IN A VERY LARGE map as Demalion called out city names, state names, country names, listing places that were waking up. In the states, Florida had been the first to admit that there were magic and monsters and everything people had dreamed of and feared.

  Of course, they had Erinya’s Key Biscayne makeover to help them along. The cops had gone in an hour or two after Lupe—shamed into it—and, surprisingly, Erinya had let them come back out, unscathed. Their report, which Alex had helped herself to, had said two women were living there, and they both could turn into monsters at will.

  Then the army had invaded.

  They’d been gone for four days, stumbling out with depleted weapons, shiny new PTSDs, and the word from on high: Erinya might be trapped there, but she demanded respect. Word got out. A god had taken over Key Biscayne.

  The Christian fundamentalists claimed it was a devil and were holding prayer vigils for God to smite Erinya out of existence. So far, there was no response.

  A temporary prison, Sylvie thought. She’d forgotten that temporary meant a different thing to immortals. It might be centuries before the other gods came to a consensus on whether Dunne’s trap constituted an act of war or not.

  Another pin marked one final ISI attack in Seattle. While Sylvie and Demalion had been busy fighting Yvette, a sea monster had slipped out of the dense fogs and taken out the ISI building, two piers, and a homeless shelter. The sheer number of witnesses made Seattle the second city to acknowledge the truth, that humankind had neighbors they knew next to nothing about.

  Sylvie didn’t like that pin. Not only did it mark civilian casualties, it marked her failure to track down all the Good Sisters. There was at least one out there, and a dangerous one at that. One like Merrow, who could turn monsters into weapons. Alex was struggling to crack Graves’s computer encryption. Maybe once Alex succeeded, Sylvie would have a better idea of how many more of the Good Sisters were running loose.

  Demalion said, “Earth to Sylvie? UCLA just started a new scientific study on ESP.”

  “Yeah?” she said. She braced her cast-encased hand against the edge of the board and stuck a tiny pin in an already crowded spot. The universities, as a whole, were reacting in two ways: sheer, unbridled fascination or utter refusal to accept the magical world. That was all right. They weren’t the ones she was worried about. Not really.

  She was worried about the churches. It was one thing to believe in your gods, to get proof that your gods were real, concrete, tangible. To have your faith proved fact. It was a whole other type of shock to realize that other people’s gods were just as real. Right now, the religious groups were being very, very quiet. It made her nervous. The whole world made her nervous, hence the board—Alex’s idea to keep them up to date, trying to predict trouble spots.

  “Apparently, someone at UCLA was going back through old studies and found out that the reports had—”

  “Changed,” Sylvie finished. “Proved that psychic powers were possible?”

  “Guess whatever it was was definitive enough. The new scientists are a group of geneticists.”

  Sylvie grimaced. “Urgh. That … I don’t like that. They go too far down that road in this environment, and we’ll have genetic scans made mandatory. The government’s already strung tight.” There were seventeen red pins in DC. Each of them represented another blip on the radar, another constituent group who’d managed to get an audience with their senator or congressman for something that once would have branded them lunatic fringe.

  “Tell
me about it,” Demalion said. He sounded strung tight himself. She stopped putting pins in the corkboard and looked at him. “Marah’s been calling.”

  “Marah tracked you down?”

  Sylvie had been expecting it. Partly because Marah was just that determined. Partly because Sylvie and her allies hadn’t gone far.

  Sylvie had left her South Beach office behind—not that there was much left of it—and found them discreet office space in Hialeah. It wasn’t the beach, but it had everything she needed, including a lot of escape routes. Hialeah was a transport city.

  Originally, Sylvie’s intention was to pack up her business, her partner, her sister, and Demalion and get out of Florida for good. It would have been the wise thing to do. But Erinya was still her mess. She couldn’t walk away from that. Right now, Erinya was playing nice, making a nest out of her small world for herself and Lupe. If that changed, it would be Sylvie walking up the causeway, with her gun in hand.

  She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. Lupe had come over for lunch a day ago, and she was happy, healthy, and bringing a peace offering from Erinya—a slew of carnivorous plants in pretty pots. Sylvie had passed them off to Alex with a grimace.

  Erinya hadn’t forgotten Sylvie’s and Dunne’s treachery, but … as Lupe said, “She’s occupied. We’ve got worshippers finding their way to us, daily. Supplicants asking for vengeance and aid.” Lupe had ducked her head when Sylvie asked how vengeance played out with Erinya trapped. Lupe hadn’t needed to answer after that.

  Lupe was dealing out punishment in Erinya’s name.

  Demalion sighed. “Marah’s trying for the hard sell. Pushing guilt. I don’t think she’s even capable of feeling guilt.” He stepped away from the desk, stretched out the kinks in his back. His shirt rose, revealing smooth flesh where there had been stitches.

  Another benefit to the Sphinx toxin treatment. He healed better now. Sylvie would be lying if she said it didn’t ease her mind. But healing wasn’t where her thoughts went as she watched the small, subtle play of flat muscle over his hips. He caught her gaze and grinned, slow and wicked. “Call it a day? Head home?”

  “Don’t think about it,” Alex said, from the front room, eavesdropping automatically. “I swear. I’m this close to getting into Graves’s files.”

  “You’ve been saying that for days,” Sylvie said. She almost, almost opened her mouth and teased Alex about losing her touch. Then she recalled Alex, unhappy and scared and losing her mind, and shifted direction. “You’re just cranky ’cause Tex is out doing fieldwork.”

  “You sent him to Georgia.”

  “Look at the map!” Sylvie said. “There are pins all over Georgia! I have to know why. And there’s only so much that facts can tell me. I want to know the feel of the—”

  Their room-to-room argument was disrupted by the front door opening. The bell—a Zoe special—rang once, then twice: short bright dings that told Sylvie that it was a human coming in, and an armed one. Zoe had spelled the door chimes to alert them to a lot of different combinations since she couldn’t be there to do it herself. Val had whisked Zoe back to Ischia. Sylvie’s parents, appalled and newly aware of the dangers of the world, had thought Val offered the safest alternative.

  Sylvie couldn’t really argue. Look what Zoe had done under Sylvie’s supervision.

  This time, the chimes’ special tones were irrelevant. Sylvie recognized the man coming in. “Detective Garza.”

  “You’re a hard woman to find,” he said. He gave Demalion a quick once-over, noting the gun at his hip, then, like everyone else who’d made their way to their new office, fell silent before the map.

  “Those are all … what are those?”

  “People interacting with or reacting to the Magicus Mundi,” Sylvie said.

  Garza let out a sigh that was more groan than breath. “I killed a man and covered it up, then I forgot about it.”

  “You had help,” Sylvie said. “I helped you kill him; the Good Sisters made you forget.”

  “Can I help you?” The question burst out of Garza’s mouth, raw. Needy.

  Garza paced, thrust his hands into his pocket, looked embarrassed; Demalion left the room, closed the door behind him.

  “That’s not usually the way this goes,” Sylvie said. “People ask me for help, not if I need—”

  “Look. I can’t do this,” Garza said. “I go to work every day, and I don’t even know what I’m doing anymore. We got memos from above. Telling us to stay away from Key Biscayne—it’s not even in our jurisdiction. Someone sent down a list of likely monsters we might run into. Ways to identify witches, werewolves, even vampires. But no one really knows anything. It’s not enough. I feel like I can’t do my job right because I don’t know enough.”

  “You used to do just fine—”

  “I know better, now. I don’t want to wait for more memos, Shadows. I want to be there, on the front line, be the one figuring this out. Not waiting for it to be a problem that crosses my path—”

  Sylvie held up a hand, opened the door. “Demalion. Can I have your phone?”

  He blinked but tossed it in her direction. She caught it awkwardly with her good hand, then set it down to poke through his call history. Garza vibrated with impatience.

  Sylvie found the number she was looking for, hit redial. Garza said, “Shadows!”

  Wait, she mouthed. When Marah picked up, her voice was triumphant. “Demalion, I knew you’d—”

  “Sorry, just me. I’ve got a deal for you.”

  “What kind of deal?” Marah sounded suspicious.

  “Simple. Stop trying to recruit Demalion.”

  “That’s not a deal—”

  “If you’ll let me finish, I’ll make it worth your while. This is Detective Raul Garza. He wants a job. On the front line. He wants to know all about the Magicus Mundi. He ID’d a Maudit sorcerer as a criminal before the Magicus Mundi gossip started.” Sylvie passed him the phone.

  A few minutes of impromptu job interview later, Garza handed the phone back to Sylvie, looking far more at ease than he had when he came in.

  “I still want Demalion,” Marah said into Sylvie’s ear. “Do you know how useful foretelling can be in politics? I’m a professional assassin, and I tell you, I was not prepared for the cutthroat tactics.”

  “I’m hanging up, Marah,” Sylvie said.

  “I get what I want,” Marah said, before disconnecting.

  Sylvie, despite herself, despite Marah’s cheerful tone, found her blood running cold. In the front of the office, Alex gave a sudden shriek of triumph as Graves’s files gave up their secrets.

  SYLVIE STOOD ON THE RIVER’S EDGE AND THREW THE WREATH OF pale flowers onto its sluggish surface. She waited for the bait to work while the water lapped up over the white petals, slowly dragging them downward.

  It was quiet around her, almost peaceful here on the isolated river basin. Made her nervous. She shot a glance back toward the roadway, toward the bulk of the rental jeep, and a moving shape that was Demalion, pacing around the vehicle. He didn’t think coming to Brazil was a good idea, thought it took them too far off their turf.

  Sylvie couldn’t blame him, but the trip had been necessary. A month had passed since Alex had cracked the encryption on Graves’s files. A month since that triumph had turned to worry and set Sylvie on the hunt.

  Everyone was hunting, it seemed like. Hunting for answers, for safety, for a way to stop or control the changes. All across the world, people were being drawn into the Magicus Mundi’s influence as surely as the wreath continued to sink.

  Marah’s ISI was on everyone’s lips; last Sylvie had heard, before she set off on this river hunt, eight separate ambassadors from European countries had come to learn from the ISI. As if the ISI was an example of anything but what not to do …

  Sylvie still worried most about the religious groups. The schisms were fast and ugly—people wanting peace, wanting communion with the gods, wanting wars to glorify their gods’ names and smite the u
nbelievers. And people were listening to them. A lot harder to dismiss a man who declared the gods were speaking to him when Key Biscayne had an entirely-too-tangible god that could be visited, prayed to, worshipped. The Church of Wrath was growing exponentially.

  Sylvie had already killed two gods who were nothing of the sort—only a jumped-up Maudit sorcerer and a necromancer who resurrected the dead. Taking advantage of the climate. Sylvie had managed to get herself on television once again, lecturing the would-be believers about the differences between gods and men, and why blind faith was no good for either. She had ended up being asked to consult on cases all over the US. She was flavor of the month; but when she could, she sent Demalion out to play nice instead of her. After years of keeping an unofficial profile, her sudden notoriety was nerve-racking.

  A mosquito hummed at her ear, and she swatted it away, wincing as the cast on her hand caught her hair and tugged a few strands free. She was healing fast, but not inhumanly so. A mixed blessing. She might be the new Lilith, an immortal woman, but at least she was still human.

  Demalion, not so much.

  Hospitals and doctors were being subpoenaed all across the country by the ISI, trying to winkle out any Mundi living in their midst. The witches, Sylvie thought, had been the tipping point. The world seemed to accept the idea of monsters—after all, maps had declared HERE BE MONSTERS for centuries. Monsters were upsetting but part of the collective unconscious.

  Witches, though, scared the fuck out of people. Made them realize that maybe they couldn’t tell the monsters at a glance. Made them pull apart from each other instead of growing closer in the face of the Magicus Mundi. And then, someone let slip about werewolves and succubi and all the shape-shifting things that looked human but weren’t, and the rare half-breeds …

  Martial law had looked like a possibility for a few fraught weeks, then things settled back into a panicky détente, while the government passed law after hasty law about creatures and things they knew next to nothing about.