Gods & Monsters

by Lyn Benedict

  “I don’t like the deal you offered,” he said. It started out distorted, as alien as a voice synthesizer, and ended the same smooth baritone he’d had before. His internals slower to recover from shape-shifting than his externals? Or was it vanity again, the sorcerer’s priority. It didn’t matter in the grand scheme, she supposed, but it helped cement in her mind the kind of man he was.

  “I don’t like dealing with sorcerers,” she said. “You’re lucky it was as generous as it was.”

  “Still, you’re open to dealing,” he said. “Which is more than you could say about the first Lilith. That woman was rabid in her focus.”

  “Maybe she just didn’t like men who used power as a weapon to oppress innocents,” Sylvie said. Her voice was strung tight; nothing good ever came of being compared to Lilith. Much less being called the new Lilith. “I think you’ll find I have more than a few things in common with her. I don’t kowtow, I don’t play nice, and I have a bad attitude.”

  “And you were created to kill the unkillable. Believe me, I know what you’re capable of. I’m depending on it.” He seemed wary and tense behind that ever-present smirk. He rolled his shoulders; his skin rolled with them, a blurring of his features, an unnatural distortion that turned her stomach. She’d seen werewolves shift; she’d seen the furies shift shape. They had been alien and strange, but they had their own beauty. This—whatever it was that roiled his skin—was nothing but ugliness. He managed to hold back the monster this time.

  “Still, I believe we can find a way to agree,” he said. “You want the women freed? I want to be freed.”

  “What the fuck do you mean, ‘freed’?”

  “I want you to break a curse for me. I’m not unreasonable. Just doing the best I can to stay alive.” His teeth were too long, forcing his lip into a false pout. He shook his head, turned purely human again.

  “I’d be more likely to spit on you,” she said. “I don’t care about your curse. I bet you deserve it.”

  Wales groaned, drawing her attention. His long limbs flailed briefly.

  “You all right there, Tex?”

  “I’m facedown in a swamp,” he muttered. “You get the bad guy yet?”

  “Working on it,” Sylvie said. Working on it with no gun, no nothing.

  “Work faster.” He pushed himself up to a crouch; his face was swelling, and blood masked his jaw and mouth. Daylight didn’t erase the horror-movie look. She winced.

  The sorcerer growled. “You will pay attention to me.”

  “Only if you say something I want to hear,” Sylvie said. “Release the women, and I might be willing to take your case. You know. Maybe next year. Maybe not.”

  He growled, fury twisting his handsome face into a gargoyle’s mask. “If you don’t help me, those women are ash. The curse you don’t care about will ensure that. Do I have your attention now? If you want to save them, you’ll have to save me first.”

  The sorcerer had enough sense to finally dim his smile when she didn’t immediately shoot him down. Enough sense to try to hide his triumph when she said, “A curse,” in a bid for more information. She wasn’t going to work for him. But she needed to know what she was up against.

  A few feet from her, Wales sat up, his expression full of furious focus, even while his eyes were glazing over. That blow the sorcerer had dealt him had been a hard one, enough to knock him out. Concussion, she diagnosed. She was just lucky he wasn’t puking his guts out. Instead, he was doing his best to follow along, doing his best to help her out. Wales was tougher than she’d given him credit for.

  “Get on with it. Tell me about the curse. Tell me what it is.” Her teeth wanted to chatter; she felt cold to her bones. She wanted to blame it on Marco, but there was a lacy pattern of frost forming over the puddle that Wales was sitting in. And the blood on his lacerated cheek was fading, wiped away in careful, invisible strokes. Marco was otherwise occupied.

  “It starts, as so many of these things do, with an accident. I killed the wrong man.”

  “He tripped and fell on your spell?”

  That wash of anger on his face again, and he hissed, “Don’t you presume to judge me, Lilith. If you had no blood on your hands, you wouldn’t be fit to be her successor.”

  “But you’re the one who needs something from me. I get to judge,” she said. “Deal with it.”

  “I killed a man with a powerful friend,” the sorcerer said. “He cursed me.”

  “If he cursed you,” Wales said, “why are the women the ones getting hurt?” He was tracking better than Sylvie had thought, enough that he wasn’t going to let the sorcerer slip that one by.

  “I am a shape-shifter,” the sorcerer declared. “I have the power to alter my shape, to take on the guise of a bear, a wolf, a great cat.”

  Sylvie scoffed. “Liar. You’re no shape-shifter, and I’m not that new to this game. You’re a human sorcerer who stole the power by killing true shape-shifters. So tell me, which one had the powerful friend? Bear, wolf, cat?”

  He ignored her. “The cowardly sorcerer refused to fight me face-to-face. Instead, he cursed me with the inability to control my form. I am become a monster.”

  “Ugly, too,” Sylvie said. She grinned when his face went scarlet. If he needed her, she could make him sorry for it.

  His lip drew up, and he took a deliberate step toward Wales. “I might require your aid, but his—” He held up his human hand in threat. Should have been less intimidating than the bloodstained claws, but Sylvie’s disintegrated gun argued that even a single touch could be deadly.

  “Fine,” Sylvie said. “Cut to the chase. What do you want me to do? Find this sorcerer of yours and bring you his head?”

  A hot light burned behind his eyes, a hunger she could feel. Wales hissed, a warning sound that she didn’t need. The sorcerer made her want to pump his skull so full of bullets that it could be used as a rattle.

  “That won’t be necessary,” he said, “but it would be enjoyable. All you need to do is . . . convince him to lift the curse. I’ll leave it up to you to decide how to convince him.” He gave her a long once-over, gaze traveling toes to crown, and leered.

  She shuddered. He hadn’t. The disgust in her belly, the twitching of her trigger finger argued he had. She’d met a lot of bad guys, but this one was winning in the sheer skeeze factor.

  Wales staggered upright, sagged, a sad scarecrow in unyielding daylight. “You’re using the women to deflect the curse. To keep your shape stable. Mostly stable.”

  “I am,” he said. “You’re cleverer than I thought, little necromancer. But I could still rip out your throat before you muster a single defense. I’m refraining as a show of good faith.”

  Sylvie said, “We get it. You’re bad. You’re scary. Tell me where to find this other sorcerer. What I have to do to break the curse.”

  “He calls himself Tepé.”

  “And he lives where?” Sylvie said. “I’m not leaving you loose in my city while I run your errands.”

  “He’ll be here soon. He follows me. Always just out of my sight. Gloating. This spell you think is so cruel . . . is the only way I’ve found to weaken him.”

  “Nice to know you hold your life so high that you’ll use innocents as a shield,” Sylvie said. “You’re not making me want to do you any favors.”

  “Every time I change without intent, without control, it’s as if acid is poured beneath my skin. I burn. . . .”

  “Not feeling sorry for you. Just so you know.”

  He gritted his teeth; his jaw deformed on one side, thrust forward; his cheek twisted and sprouted whiskers before slipping back to GQ smoothness. “Make no mistake, Lilith. I am in control here. It’s a devil’s bargain I offer you. But you cannot afford to say no. These women will wither and die. Tepé’s curse is strong, and they are human. Help me. Save them. If you delay too long, they will die, and I’ll be forced to find replacements.

  “Think of that, if nothing else. Me, loose in your city. Can you protect e
very woman who meets my needs? It’s an enormous city, Shadows. Do we have a deal?”

  “How do I contact you?”

  “You don’t. Break the curse, and I’ll vanish as I came. The women will wake and return home. Always assuming you were quick enough that they survive.”

  “I know your rep,” Sylvie said. “Soul-devourer. You’ve left a trail of bodies.”

  “You’ll just have to take it on trust,” he said. He slipped alongside the van, climbed inside.

  Sylvie yanked Wales around. “Can you do anything right now? Can you help those women? Wake them? If so, do it!”

  Wales shook his head, nearly tilted over, and Sylvie clutched his shirt in her fists as the soul-devourer drove away, his “harem” still intact. Swaying, Wales put a hand to his head, and said, “Can we get the hell out of here?”

  “God, yes,” Sylvie muttered. She wanted away with a force that nearly sickened her. Away from the scene of her defeat. Away from the sorcerer’s unclean magic. Away from her agreement to aid him.

  It wasn’t quite the rapid retreat Wales wanted. She made him sit first, studied his pupils—reactive, the same size, able to follow her fingertip—and declared him hardheaded.

  “I’ve heard that before,” he drawled.

  The blood was mostly gone, courtesy of Marco’s cleanup, and what was left, Wales mopped at with the edge of his sleeve. The gash on his cheek had coagulated; the one on his shoulder was glued shut with fabric. The two in between were reddened lines on the thin skin of his throat—a reminder of mercy. The sorcerer could have ripped Wales’s throat open, and from the way he fingered those small tears, Wales knew it.

  SYLVIE LET WALES INTO THE SOUTH BEACH OFFICE, GESTURING HIM ahead, and already looking over her shoulder. Attempted murder tended to make her a little paranoid. Wales, of course, lived in a state of controlled paranoia.

  She shut the door; he was peering out through the blinds, his mouth drawn tight. He looked tired, strung-out; he’d dozed fitfully most of the way back, jerking awake every so often, eyes frightened, hands flailing. It all argued that it hadn’t been sleep that held him last night but simple unconsciousness. Two days in her company, and she’d worked him into a frazzle.

  Alex wouldn’t be happy.

  “You know you got men scoping your shop? They’re not subtle.” His voice was pitched low, as if he feared being overheard.

  Sylvie took a look, miniblinds spread around her fingers, and sighed. “There’s the ISI. Figures. They don’t hunt the bad-guy sorcerer, no. They come and camp on my doorstep. They’re cheats. Something bad happens, they like to try to copy off my test paper.”

  “I didn’t sign up to deal with the government,” Wales said, still in that same half mumble. Trying to avoid a parabolic mike.

  “Untwist your panties, Tex,” Sylvie said. “You’ve got Marco, remember? They get too close, you disappear.”

  She let the gap in the blinds shut, kept the sign on the door to CLOSED, and headed upstairs, fighting the urge to stomp her feet like a child. She hadn’t missed the ISI and their spying one bit.

  Her little dark voice said, You should have taken care of Odalys yourself.

  They would have been back, no matter what, she argued with it.

  Think they were watching when you were attacked? Watching and waiting to see if you’d take care of the assassin yourself? Watching while the assassin held your blameless neighbor hostage?

  “Wales!” she snapped. “Stop gawking at them and start some coffee.”

  “Not the boss of me,” he shot back. But she heard him drop the blinds with a snap.

  Her upstairs office was a mess. Leftover paperwork from the previous case, still incomplete for more than just the time it would take to code things properly. If the ISI was on her ass again, it was more important than ever to keep her case files innocuous, cloak the magical in the mundane.

  But these files were also waiting on Odalys, on Patrice, on justice to be done. Sylvie dumped the files into her drawer and rested her head on her hands. It was hard to start the hunt for this mysterious Tepé when she knew the one benefiting from her actions would be the soul-devourer.

  She opened the safe, took out the newest backup gun, and sorted her feelings out by loading it.

  There was a sudden burst of conversation below, the rattle of the door closing, then Alex wandered upstairs, sipping coffee from Etienne’s.

  “Working from home?” Sylvie said. “I know you’re here a lot, but home’s the thing that has an actual bed in it.”

  “Got a futon, not a bed,” Alex said. “Besides, practice what you preach, Syl. I was just driving by, and I saw your truck.”

  “Just driving by?”

  “Okay, so I bet myself one of Etienne’s beignets that you’d be in.” She held up her free hand, then deliberately brushed powdered sugar onto her jeans. “So Tierney seems kinda pissy today. And hurt. I told him I’d get the first-aid kit, but he sent me up here, instead.”

  “ISI’s back,” Sylvie said. “He doesn’t like the government overmuch. Go home, Alex.”

  “Don’t you want to know what I found out?”

  “Phone, e-mail—”

  “Oh, but face-to-face is more fun.” She draped her lanky self over the spare chair, kicked her flip-flops off, and hooked her feet in the rungs. “Are you going to ask?”

  “Alex,” Sylvie said. “We met the soul-devourer. I’m not in the mood.”

  Alex stiffened all over. “What happened? Is that how Tierney got hurt? What did he want?”

  “He wants me to work for him,” Sylvie said. She filled Alex in; by the end of it, she was pacing the room, angry and sick all over again. “He’s holding the women as hostages. He said they get closer to death the longer I take. Wales agrees.”

  “You can’t work for him,” Alex said, focusing in with her usual talent for rubbing salt in the wound. “He’s the bad guy.”

  “I have to work for him. But I’ll make him choke on it before I’m done. For me to do that, I need to know who he is. Where he came from. What his weaknesses are.”

  “Okay,” Alex said. “Okay, I can maybe help—” She pulled out her laptop, flipped it open, and said, “I did some preliminary research. I skipped the soul-devourer part. Tierney’s right. That’s a giant dead end. The necromantic community knows he exists but nothing else about him. Hell, turns out they weren’t even sure it was a man, just defaulted to it. So I went back to the simple facts. What you and Tierney got from the symbols: old-fashioned magic, Basque magic, a linkage to alchemy.”

  “Alchemy? He disintegrated my gun with a touch.”

  “Oh yeah,” Alex said, eyes lighting with wholly inappropriate enthusiasm. “Alchemy’s all about the transformation of one thing to another. Bet your gun didn’t just disintegrate; bet it became some other type of metal first—”

  “Alex. He disintegrated my gun. Tell me you got something,” Sylvie said.

  “Not something,” Alex said. “But something that might lead to something. A nineteenth-century man they called the Basque Alchemist. Eladio Azpiazu. Supposedly he had the power of a wolf, and he scared his neighbors so bad that rather than drive him out, the town picked up and moved.”

  “Nineteenth century? Not our guy, Alex.”

  “I’ve been thinking,” Alex said. “It’s like the Maudits. They seek out apprentices—”

  “You say apprentice; I say slave,” Sylvie murmured, but she got the gist. “You think it’s a lineage. A pattern of teaching.”

  “Yeah, and a strict one if this modern sorcerer is still using the same techniques as his ancestor. That’d be like me still using quill and ink. It works, but there are better methods now. Why should magic be any different?”

  “Anything else?” Sylvie asked. “I’m greedy.”

  “One ring-a-ding prize maybe,” Alex said. “I farmed out some of the research. I thought, if the town moved, that would leave a record. Or if the town just disappeared. I know a grad student at UM, a local hi
story buff. She looked into it, confirmed that there was a town that disappeared, and this is the important part—one of the key reasons people left? A series of grisly murders where people were found with their hearts torn out. Sound like the soul-devourer? I’d say that our modern sorcerer was following the family line all the way down.”

  “Alex, you’re amazing,” Sylvie said.

  “So what’s my prize?”

  “More research,” Sylvie said. “Look into his enemy. A sorcerer called Tepé. Tepé cursed him but good. An enmity that strong should draw notice.”

  Alex sighed. “Good work makes more work. So damn true.”

  Sylvie said, “I strongly doubt that’s his real name, anyway. Sounds more like a handle than a given name. Like . . .” She raised her head. “Like the Ghoul.”

  Wales flipped her off as he joined them. He leaned against the doorjamb, and Sylvie waved him in. The landing was narrow, the stairs were steep, and Wales still didn’t look any too steady on his feet.

  Alex moved to get out of her seat, and Wales shook his head. His earlier fear had given way to a sullen sort of irritation. He had come upstairs, Sylvie thought, to pick a fight. Give himself a reason to storm out of the office and the city.

  Usually, when people wanted a fight, Sylvie was willing to oblige. Not today. She turned her back on Wales, took her seat again, tried for calm. “You going back to the hotel?” she asked.

  “Unless you have something else you want me to do today. Boss,” he said.

  “Better leave the necromancy be for a bit,” Sylvie said. Wished she hadn’t the minute the last word left her mouth.

  “You think?” he snapped. “Want to tell me to not play in traffic, too? Or hey, how about not shooting up?”

  “You look tired is all. Not in shape to watch your back.”

  Wales shot her a grin that was all teeth, offense, and not a lot of humor. “Guess it’s a good thing I got Marco for that.”

  In a hasty attempt to disrupt the argument ready to break out, Alex said, “I checked out Patrice on the way here. She was macking on some goth boy at a coffee shop.” She huffed under her breath, said, “You have to be really dedicated to work full goth gear before 9:00 a.m. Of course, later in the day it’s too hot for that much guyliner—”