by Lyn Benedict
Sylvie shivered. “Why?”
Their shadows merged again, and Sylvie shuddered through another onslaught, growling even as he fed her his frozen words. There was necessity, and there was Marco, and his misogynistic history. And an icy hand that was sliding down her throat toward her breast.
She tore herself away, sprawled on the tile; the words gusted out on impact, strained, but clear.
“Sorcerer found him.”
“Sorcerer. Azpiazu?” Sylvie held up a hand. “Nod yes, or no.”
The shadow on the wall swayed, grudging her that, but his need to communicate was too strong. He nodded.
“Killed?” Sylvie asked. Her throat felt sore, stretched by its brush with death.
The shadow swayed, a twist at its top like a small tornado. Dizzying to watch, to focus on that pale shadow on a white wall.
“Taken.”
Another nod, slow so there could be no misunderstanding. It should have made her feel better. Taken was a long way from dead. But taken, when she was trapped here, felt a whole lot like dead.
“For his binding spell.”
The crash of shadow and cold against her, within her, pressing inward, an invasion. Marco pressed into her skin, into her body, climbed inside, and pushed a nightmare of images into her brain.
Wales/Sylvie, bent over his/her computer, reading spells by tech light, stretching absently, lifting an empty soda can to their lips, brief burst of warm dregs dropping onto their tongue. Long ache in their spine and a yawn, cold coins in their palm, the kiss of cool air as they passed the ice machine, the sudden stink of animal in the hotel’s wide halls, strong as skunk, turning too slow, the blow crashing down, the impact and crackle against the soda machine, then black.
Waking underwater, lungs straining for air, with claws ripping patterns into their skin, blood swirling upward, so hypnotic, so sleepy, bubbles rising, find Sylvie . . .
Sylvie jerked away from the memories, from Marco’s invasion, from the physical sensation of being drowned, of being frozen, of being afraid. She lunged for the sink, hung over it, gagging.
Sweat sprang out all along her hairline; her neck felt swampy with it.
“Sylvie?” Cachita pulled the belt from her scrub pants, wadded it up, wet it with cool water, and sponged at Sylvie’s face. “What’s happening?”
“We’re getting out of here,” Sylvie said, when she felt more in control. “We’re not waiting for Tepé or Erinya or, hell, for Alex to call us a lawyer. We’re getting out. We’re getting Wales, and we’re kicking Azpiazu’s ass all the way to hell.”
“How?”
Sylvie leaned against Cachita’s human warmth, soaking it in. “Marco’s a free ghost now. But he used to be a Hand of Glory. I’m betting he still has it in him.”
“What does that mean?” Cachita asked. “Hand of Glory? A free ghost?”
“It means,” Sylvie said, “we’re walking right out the door.”
AS SOON AS THE LAST OF THE SHAKES HAD LEFT HER BODY, THE LAST of the ghost-repulsion fled, Sylvie gave Marco the go-ahead. The shadow drifted toward the door, and after a moment, the door popped open. An alarm buzzed, an annoying electric whine like a swarm of mosquitoes. Cachita tensed, but Sylvie said, “Marco can handle it. Just stay behind me.”
They followed the ghost into the hallway, their bare feet leaving marks in the frost caused by his passage.
Three ISI agents appeared in the hall, talking rapidly into their headsets, and balking at the sight of them escaped from their cell.
Pausing, Sylvie thought, was definitely their mistake. They crumpled one after another, falling so fast that they didn’t even have time to draw their weapons.
Cachita squeaked beside her. “What just—”
“Don’t ask.”
Marco might be biting into their souls, putting them into soul shock, but hell, they were still getting off easy. Erinya, Tepeyollotl—the white walls would be bloody by now.
By the time they neared the front door, word had gotten out, and Marco had taken down so many agents that he had lost his translucency; he pulsed with stolen pieces of soul, a false heartbeat that glowed dimly in the building’s bright lights.
Sylvie collected two holstered guns, yanking at buckles and webbing and slinging them over her shoulder. She’d want them later. Even if they wouldn’t work against Azpiazu and his oh-so-talented ability to change metal into something harmless.
Another agent appeared, blurry behind the luminescent mirage that was Marco, and for once, Marco paused. Sylvie edged out behind him, found Agent Stone standing a cautious distance away, her red-stained hand held up before her face like a shield.
“Call off your ghost,” she said. “I’ve got your stuff. You can get gone. We won’t stop you.”
“Cachita,” Sylvie said.
Cachita took the unspoken command and met Stone halfway, careful to stay out of the woman’s reach, to keep an eye on her holstered gun. But Stone seemed more concerned with keeping her one hand held before her.
Marco thrummed and pulsed but held steady. Afraid to attack, Sylvie thought. Stone might be more than he could take.
If the red-stained hand was like Zoe’s, Stone could have gained it through killing a ghost. Enough to make Marco cautious.
“Got it,” Cachita said, retreated back to Sylvie’s side, a rough bundle of clothes and shoes in her hand.
“Get dressed,” Sylvie said. “Hey, Stone . . .”
“Marah,” the woman said. “My name’s Marah.”
“Don’t care,” Sylvie said. “You got car keys?”
“You don’t need mine,” she said. “The cars in the garage have keys in the ignition. Just pick one.”
“Thanks. Now go away before Marco decides to snack on you after all.”
“I could help you—”
“No,” Sylvie said.
Marah nodded once, and backed away. “Just remember. I offered.”
“Brownie points noted,” Sylvie said.
“What about this?” Marah held out the obsidian summoning knife. Cachita collected it; when she returned to Sylvie’s side, Sylvie took the knife herself.
“Thanks,” Sylvie said. “Now go away.”
Marah held up both hands in mocking surrender, turned as if putting her back to an armed escapee was nothing, and sauntered away.
“It’s mine,” Cachita snapped.
“You can’t be trusted with it,” Sylvie said.
Cachita was dressed now, khakis and sneakers and slightly less crisp blouse; she had the advantage over Sylvie, whose hands were awkwardly full with gun, knife, and clothing. But Cachita was—incompetent, her little voice suggested—used to obeying others, Sylvie thought, and made no effort to take the knife by force.
Sylvie skinned out of her prison scrubs, trading them for her own clothes, dressing awkwardly with the gun in her hand and belatedly aware of the ISI cameras.
Vanity, her voice muttered. More likely they’d be occupied with the blur that was Marco.
“C’mon, Cachita,” Sylvie said. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Cachita asked. “Out’s good, but you lost your tracker. How are we going to find Azpiazu?”
Sylvie laughed. “Cachita. Pay attention. Lassie’s come all this way to tell us Timmy’s down a well. We follow Marco all the way to Azpiazu’s front door. And as a bonus? I don’t owe Erinya my afterlife.”
17
Simple Plans
THEY HAD TO BACKTRACK TO GET TO THE ISI GARAGE, AND IT MADE Sylvie’s nerves prickle every step of the way. Marco was powerful, but he wasn’t an infallible weapon. A single necromancer in the building, or an agent who understood some basic protection spells, and their ghost-shield could be neutralized in a heartbeat.
Cachita’s breath warmed her ear; she was getting too close again, blocking Sylvie’s range of motion, and Sylvie shoved her off.
Marco moved before them, an icy fog shot through with roiling motion, endless hunger, endless appetite. He took out the
agents on guard in the garage, leaving Sylvie free to pick and choose among the car keys on the peg board.
She chose a black SUV, wanting as much space between Marco and her as possible while they hunted for Wales. He drifted into the passenger seat, and Cachita crawled into the back without a single protest.
Marco raised an arm, a bar of cold shadow pointing south. Sylvie took the SUV into the twilit streets of Miami, streaks of neon beneath the freeway flickering to life.
Cachita leaned forward, her hands tense around Sylvie’s seat. “You really think the ghost can find Wales?”
The question hurt. A sudden sharp pinch of awareness. She didn’t want to lose Wales. She had grown to like him. Was one long lunch away from calling him friend.
He might be a necromantic Ghoul, but Alex was right: Wales was a good guy.
She forced calmness. “I think Marco’s better than nothing. I think Marco’s the only game in town. I never got a chance to give Erinya Azpiazu’s scent.”
“But I have yours,” Erinya said from the backseat.
Cachita shrieked. Sylvie grappled with the wheel; the SUV slewed just enough to elicit a series of horn blasts and multilingual curses.
“Eri,” Sylvie said. “Don’t. Do. That.”
“Better than Alekta,” Erinya said. “She would have appeared in front of the truck and been surprised when you hit her. Not that it would have stopped her from climbing aboard.” She poked her head forward, shoved Cachita back with a careless hand. “Why do you have a killer’s ghost in your car? Is it for me? Can I eat it?”
“No,” Sylvie said. “He’s our guide to Azpiazu.”
Erinya snarled. “I’m your guide.”
“You’ve been replaced. You took off,” Sylvie said. “And not that I’m not grateful—the ISI’s going to be on my ass enough about one dead agent—but what the hell did you do with Alex?”
“Alex?”
Sylvie stared at her, cold horror crawling down her spine at the utter confusion in Erinya’s voice. If Erinya hadn’t taken Alex, then . . . had they left her in the ISI’s untender care? “My assistant? Blonde? Eros’s chosen—”
“Oh. Her. I took her to Eros. He wouldn’t want her hurt, and I like to make him happy.”
“Of course you do,” Sylvie muttered. Everyone wanted to make the god of Love happy. “Wait. You took her to him? You took her off earth?”
“Just for a little bit. Eros’ll send her back, soon. Probably. Unless he really likes her. He gets bored. Justice is busy busy busy trying to straighten things out up there and fighting with Zeus.”
Sylvie swallowed. “Erinya. The moment we are all done with Azpiazu? You will bring her back. In one piece. Not transformed, enchanted, or lovesick.”
Erinya shrugged. “Whatever.”
Sylvie changed lanes at Marco’s prod, a cold spur into her shoulder that made her fingers tremble as if he’d shocked her. “Jesus, all right. Turn here. I get it.”
Cachita shivered. “Sylvie, we need to hurry.”
“I’m aware,” Sylvie said. There were time strictures all over their little plan. They had to race Azpiazu’s spellwork. They had to race Tepeyollotl’s impatience. On top of it all, sooner or later, the ISI agents would start waking from Marco’s soul shock, and they were going to be pissed. The SUV would be easy enough for them to track, what with the government GPS a standard part of its equipment. “Eri, you still going to be part of this?”
“Can’t kill another god’s chosen,” Erinya said. “Even if the god wants him dead. Can’t hunt Demalion, ’cause you won’t tell me where he is.” She slumped back into the shadows of the car, the very picture of a teen who’d been unfairly grounded.
“I’m sure there’ll be things you can fight,” Sylvie said. “Stick around?” She took the next road Marco suggested, irritated at the slowness of his navigation. For all she knew, he was taking her the slowest route possible. But short of pulling the car over and trying that memory merge again, she didn’t know another way.
Wales had been beneath the water. Not deep. Tiles at his back, slimed with algae that tore under his struggles. The water just above his reaching hand. Not a swimming pool, not a natural pond. Large enough for five adults. Isolated.
She studied the roads they were on, the slow changeover from full city skyscrapers to smaller shops and slower streets. To old-fashioned streetlamps and shady walks. Coconut Grove.
And water everywhere. Biscayne Bay butted up against the seawalls there. But he wasn’t in salt water; his eyes hadn’t been stinging. Not the ocean.
Erinya cocked her head, sniffed the air, and Sylvie said, “Eri? You getting something?”
Erinya sucked her lower lip into her mouth, pouting as if she were nothing more than the twentysomething goth girl she appeared. “You gonna come work for Dunne if I tell you?”
“I think I’ll just wait for Marco,” Sylvie said. Safer, but less informative. Erinya twitched, ran her claws down the leather seats, fidgeted. Sylvie hid a grin. Erinya wanted to tell. All Sylvie had to do was wait.
“Close to the sea,” Erinya said. “Something’s twisted. Something’s rotten. Cruel. I can taste prey and fear.”
“Azpiazu,” Sylvie said.
Marco pressed closer just as a familiar landmark began to appear on Sylvie’s left. Vizcaya Gardens.
Sylvie choked back a laugh. It fit in a terrible way. Lots of water features, shallow ponds, lots of archaic luxury. She just wondered what he’d done with the tourists. Here was hoping he’d set up after hours.
She pulled the SUV to a halt, let her strange passengers unload into the tree-dark lot—Erinya bounding out, animal grace in a human form, Cachita clambering out on shaky limbs, and Marco oozing through the door.
Sylvie hadn’t been to Vizcaya since her high-school days, remembered it as a green expanse of blind grottos and ponds, of stone stairways and carefully patterned gardens. A safe place to play.
Now, while the sky purpled about them, closing them into darkness, the gardens felt anything but safe. The air pressed close to her skin, dark, hot, humid like an animal’s fetid breath. Hungry and predatory, giving her the sense of something larger moving behind the darkness.
The gardens themselves felt dead, suffocating in silence and stillness. There were none of the sounds Sylvie expected from tropical night settling in—no frog creaking, no bird wings rustling as they perched and preened, no owls calling through the dark—only silence and weight.
Erinya sniffed the air, wrinkled her nose. “It smells like rot.”
“What does?”
“Everything,” Erinya said.
Cachita shivered and her shiver was echoed by the world, a tremble in the gravel pathway they stood on.
“Hold it together,” Sylvie said. “You lose it, we get Tepeyollotl’s attention.” She wanted Cachita to wait in the car, to stay out of the conflict, stay calm. Given the way Cachita clutched Sylvie’s sleeve, leaving her behind would only send her into panic faster.
“Cachita!” Sylvie snapped. “C’mon. I expect more from the woman who was trolling the streets for a sorcerer armed only with a Taser.”
Cachita blinked, released Sylvie’s arm, put her chin up. “Right. Right. I’m sorry.”
“Erinya,” Sylvie said. “You smell Azpiazu?”
Erinya shook her head, dark hair flying. “Only death.”
Cloaked by spells, Sylvie wondered. Some type of sensory illusion hiding him? It would be well within his abilities and his predilections.
Sylvie looked ahead. From the parking lot, there was only one entrance, one way in. The gardens lay beyond that, but if Azpiazu was set up where Sylvie imagined he’d be—at the main reflecting pool—he was going to see them coming long before they could get to him.
Marco jabbed her with cold fingers at her spine, shoving her forward. A clear urging to move.
Sylvie checked her borrowed guns, reassuring herself that the clips were full. She stepped forward; the ground crumbled at Sylvie’s feet,
grass withering where it should have held the soil together. Earthworms lay slack and dry; the ancient sinkhole beside the entry gate shifted, pulling dirt downward. “Eri, the gate?”
Sylvie squeezed out of Erinya’s way, brushed up against a hand-lettered sign on the iron gate: Closed for alligators. She shook her head. Only in Miami was that an excuse. She wondered if they were real gators encroaching on tourist land or some illusion Azpiazu had created. For once in her life, she hoped for magic.
Erinya ripped the entry gate from its hinges, a metallic shriek in the quiet night, and flung the twisted iron into the brush. Leaves fell like rain.
Maybe the stink of rot was no illusion. Maybe everything was dead. Sylvie touched a fallen leaf, and it smeared beneath her fingers, its cellular integrity gone, a pulpy mass of rot.
Not a good sign.
Azpiazu had to be on the very edge of god-transition. Close enough that Tepeyollotl’s power, filtered, warped, changed, was bleeding out through him.
Sylvie headed through, keeping to the trembling stone path, her gun before her.
Five steps in, something enormous hissed and roared out of the bushes, scattering branches and pebbles. Sylvie jerked back, firing directly through Marco. Her hand went cold and numb. Bullets did no good. Not when you were faced with a two-headed bull alligator in full charge.
Sylvie focused on the grey-green-black blur, aimed at the gaping mouth on the right, and realized abruptly what was bothering her beyond the two-headed nightmare of it. The alligator had no eye shine on either head. Four eyes at twilight? Should be full of shine.
“It’s dead,” Cachita said, gagging. “Your Fury was right. Everything’s dead.” Her lips trembled.
It was worse than that. Sylvie got a quick glance of the alligator’s legs as it lumbered toward them for another try. Instead of claws, it had hands. Human-style hands. At least they slowed the gator, buckling and breaking under its weight, made evading it a possibility.
Azpiazu’s fight for shape-shifting integrity was warping the world around him.
Erinya changed form, grew claws and thick scales to rival the alligator’s hide, and attacked with an eldritch screech. The alligator snapped furiously, even as Erinya tore gobbets of dead flesh away, sent reeking bits into the air like piñata stuffing.