Sins & Shadows

by Lyn Benedict

  Under her hands, Erinya’s skin shifted and stung. Sylvie forced herself to hold on. It never seemed to get easier, touching one of the gods. She wondered how Bran had stood it and stayed sane.

  “No, no, no, Eri,” Sylvie said. She leaned her weight back, trying to stop Erinya, and having as little success as if she were trying to hold back a bull. Erinya’s mass seemed far more than her human shape allowed.

  Sylvie gritted her teeth and dug her nails into Erinya’s skin, jolted at the increase in sensation. Erinya stopped; her lips peeled back from her teeth, but she paused.

  “Let’s not go haring off into the dark. We know she’s been here before. Maybe she’ll be back to check on—”

  Maybe, Sylvie decided, was the wrong word to use. The Fury batted her away with a single hand, slamming her backward. Sylvie’s spine impacted painfully with the edge of a table; a chair screeched across the floor.

  “I’ll find her if I have to wade through the blood of every human in the world.” The sweet-voiced, slangy punk was gone; in Erinya’s voice, in her eyes, all that showed was rage. Sylvie lost the battle with her self-control. Her skin burst into goose bumps, giving way to a convulsive shudder.

  The Fury’s pupils swelled, feeling Sylvie’s fear. She leaned closer, nearly nose to nose with Sylvie, and said, “Will you dare stop me? When you know so many humans deserve the pain I visit on them?”

  Sylvie sucked in a shaking breath, trying for calm, and losing. She gave up trying to control her body and focused only on meeting Erinya’s glare head-on, watching as the engorged pupils slowly turned phosphorescent. She counted her own heartbeat in the tiny sparks of crimson that danced in the Fury’s sclera, in the small scales that began to dot the false delicacy of her temple and eyelids.

  “Get off me, or I will make you comprehend mortality.” It wasn’t her voice, not really. That dark inner core had stepped to the front, spewing its determination not to be beaten.

  Erinya barked a laugh. “How?”

  Sylvie smiled, letting the expression spread across her face, displacing fear. “You said yourself, your shells can die. I’m good at killing things.”

  Erinya frowned, her gaze clouding; Sylvie felt the intrusion in her mind, a brief kaleidoscope of bloody imagery. Cassavetes, Hellhound, sorcerers, succubi, an angel with buckshot wings . . . Her greatest hits, replayed. Sylvie pushed Erinya out of her mind, put her hands on Erinya’s shoulders, and shoved.

  Erinya stepped back; Sylvie ignored the sensation that sparks leaped between her fingers, crackled against her hands. She pressed harder. Erinya staggered, and Sylvie advanced.

  “I think. You help. Isn’t that what Dunne sent you to do? To act as I tell you? We stay here. Lily might, yes might, come back. Even if she doesn’t, we can get a better description of her. A definitive one. Then you can hunt to your heart’s content. In the meantime, stay.”

  Sylvie spun on her heel and strode into the crowd, past the few dancers who had stopped to stare at Erinya and herself.

  Sylvie fetched up near the stage before the shaking found her again. She leaned up against its support, her legs trembling and her throat dry.

  A drink drifted into her vision, held toward her in a nicotine-stained hand. “Coke, right? On the house.” Sylvie shot him a glance, identifying him as the staff member she had seen in the hallway, heading for a smoke break. Sylvie took the glass, her hands so chilled that, for a moment, the cold sweat on the glass felt warm.

  She held the glass, loving the heavy tangibility of the crystal, something natural, something normal, something that didn’t fizz and burn like a god’s power. She shifted uncomfortably as the leather jacket buzzed against her neck and back.

  “You lied, you know,” Sylvie said. “This place is plenty scary.”

  “Ah, you brought the scary with you,” he said, as easy and casual as he had been in the hallway. “JK.”

  “Sylvie,” she said. She eyed the Coke, contemplating the addition of more caffeine to a nervous system jazzed with adrenaline.

  “It’s fine,” he said. “Promise. I owe you one.”

  “Yeah?” Sylvie said. She took a sip; sweetness exploded on her tongue and reminded her how parched fear made her throat. She took a larger draught and set the glass down on the stage.

  “Well, you and your scary friend chased off my ex and her psycho Barbie accessory pack. Helen thinks it’s funny to come here every night and make me serve her. I,” he said, a scowl crossing his good-natured face, “don’t.”

  “She’s a bitch,” Sylvie agreed.

  “I’ve got better taste now,” JK said. He hopped up and took a seat on the edge of the stage, swinging lanky legs.

  “Yeah?” she said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You want to prove it by giving me your phone number?”

  Sylvie finagled a card out of her jeans pocket, held it before him. “If you answer a couple of questions first.”

  “Shoot,” he said. “I give good answers. You should see me with parents. I can even make them overlook the tats.” He presented his arm to her; the words Live Your Own Way blazed around the forearm.

  Sylvie traced the final flare of the y, curling around his wrist. “My parents didn’t object to my ink.”

  “Can I see it?” he said. “Is it someplace . . . interesting?”

  Sylvie smiled, luring him in. It didn’t hurt that he was cute as all get-out. For the second time, she thought this club had a lot to recommend it.

  “Tell me about Lily,” she said.

  He blinked. “I was thinking it was going to be fave food, music, STDs.”

  She handed him the card, tapped the front of it. “I’m working.”

  “Working. Like a cop?”

  “Not like a cop,” Sylvie said, smoothly but quickly. Something had to have drawn him to Helen in the first place; she didn’t want it to be a shared aversion to authority.

  “PI?”

  “Inquiry agent,” Sylvie corrected. “See, Shadows Inquiries.”

  “What’s that when it’s at home?” he said. Laughter lurked in his eyes, daring her to answer truthfully.

  “PI,” she said. “But without rules.”

  “Cool,” he said. “Didn’t figure you for a ‘draws within the lines’ kind of woman. So, Lily?”

  Sylvie said, “Anything you can tell me.”

  “Lily,” he said, picking up her glass, stroking the condensation off it, and letting the drips fall from his fingertips. “Sweet Lily . . . though she isn’t.”

  Sylvie made a go-on gesture.

  “Lily—don’t know if that’s her real name. Doesn’t fit her much. Toil not, neither does she spin—well, I don’t know what she does for kicks, but she’s just not the idle sort.

  “She’s got money. Rumor has it, she has a share in the club. But I think her real job’s in art somehow. She found the artist for the murals here. You might check galleries if you’re hunting her. It wouldn’t surprise me to find she owned one, ran one, patronized one.”

  Sylvie sighed. “That’s specific,” she said. “She might be named Lily, or not. She’s got money, or access to it. She likes art—”

  “Some art,” JK interrupted. “Do not get her started on traditional religious iconography. That woman can seriously hate.”

  “And she might own, work in, or hang out at one of the hundreds of galleries in and around Chicago,” Sylvie finished.

  “She travels, too,” JK said.

  Sylvie threw her hands up, giving him the reaction he was teasing for, but she didn’t find it funny at all. JK, while being helpful, had told her nothing immediately useful. Some of that leaked into her voice despite her efforts. Inside her head, a clock kept a countdown, and she felt like it was heading fast to single digits. Part of it was Erinya; the Fury stalked the bar, back and forth, back and forth, like a caged animal.

  “Look, JK, it’s really important that I find her. Anyone else who might know more?”

  “You might ask Wolf,” JK said. “She
hung out with him a lot.”

  Shock hit Sylvie. Of course Lily had hung out with Brandon. What better way to learn about your victim than to befriend him?

  “Eye candy, I thought, when she first brought him in. Thought it’d be awful. Some no-talent hack with a line of bull and a pretty face, but turned out he could really paint. And she backed off some once his boyfriend showed up.”

  “Yeah?” Sylvie asked, and if JK thought her accepting the shift in focus was strange, he didn’t say so. Truth was, Sylvie felt safer not saying Lily’s name aloud. There could be more scrying-glass televisions, charmed to a mention of Lily’s name. Sylvie shivered at the weight of unseen eyes on her skin, reminded herself that paranoia was a dangerous friend.

  If Lily had seen her kill Auguste, or was watching Sylvie question her acquaintances, surely she would have already acted on it.

  “Big guy. Quiet. Older. Dropped him off once or twice; I bet just to prove Wolf was taken.” JK fidgeted, dragged out his cigarettes, tapped one out, stuck it in his mouth.

  “So, what did Wolf think about her?”

  JK lipped his cigarette as if it were lit, then let it drop into his lap. He chased it, studied it, avoiding her eyes.

  “What?” Sylvie said. “You can’t tell me you didn’t get a chance to talk to him. I saw those murals. He was here for a month, minimum. And you were around enough to see Lily and him together.”

  “That doesn’t mean I talked to him,” JK said, picking up her Coke, melting ice and all, and taking a drink as if his throat hurt.

  “JK, you always talk,” Sylvie said. “I’ve only known you for minutes, and strangely, I’m sure of that.”

  “Look,” he said. His voice dropped; his cheeks reddened. “I don’t have anything against fags, I really don’t, it’s just that I couldn’t—”

  “Talk to one?” Sylvie finished in irritation.

  “Couldn’t deal with the fact that I wanted him, okay?” he snapped, then blushed again. “God. I watched him, you know, more entertaining than mopping up last night’s stale beer. He just—there was just something. His hands were covered in paint, green, blue, gold, and I saw him forget, push his hair out of his way. He got paint on his face, in his hair, and he looked so surprised. Like he couldn’t figure out how it got there, and then he just laughed. I wanted him so bad. . . . I stayed the hell away from him.”

  Sylvie let the silence lie while JK picked up the cigarette, and with a furtive glance at the bar, lit it.

  “So,” Sylvie said, “confession being good for the soul and all that, you feel better?”

  “If by better, you mean mortified, sure,” JK said, stubbing out the cigarette after two quick, deep puffs. He put it out on her business card. “I just—I don’t swing that way. It freaked me out. So, really, I don’t have a clue what he thought about Lily. I mean, she disappeared after his boyfriend came in, so maybe Wolf was annoyed with her hanging around and asked him to discourage her. I didn’t see much of her after that.”

  He wouldn’t, Sylvie thought. If Lily had gone after Bran to punish Dunne, she had to have some connection with Dunne, maybe even a history—though in that case, Sylvie would have expected Dunne to put her at the top of the suspect list. He didn’t seem to have anyone there at all. Or maybe he hadn’t shared.

  “Look, I’m glad to talk to you. Mostly,” he said, with a wry twist to his mouth for his confession. “But the person you really need to talk to is Auguste or Wolf. I can give you Auguste’s address.”

  “Thanks,” Sylvie said. “Would you do one thing for me?”

  “Maybe,” he said. A little wary now.

  “Call me if you see her.”

  He hesitated; Sylvie stifled familiar exasperation. Always the sudden withdrawal. Talking was okay, just gossip, ultimately harmless. People could always reassure themselves that they weren’t the only ones who would talk, finding both anonymity and absolution in the thought. But calling her? That brought them right into the picture, and worse, lobbed a bit of the responsibility directly their way. No one wanted that.

  “Call me,” Sylvie said, laying out a new card beside the scorched one.

  A massive crunch cut the air, followed by a patter of falling glass. Sylvie whirled. Erinya crouched on the bar top, the bartender back against the mirrored wall, at the center of a new starburst of cracks.

  Erinya reached for him, hefting his weight with inhuman ease. Along her back, muscles shifted and spikes snagged and stretched out Erinya’s mesh shirt like a porcupine-quill coat.

  “Shit,” Sylvie swore, taking off at a run.

  “Erinya,” Sylvie snapped, even as the bartender’s face went slack with terror. “Stop it!”

  Erinya backhanded her, hitting her jaw with stunning force. Sylvie went down to the taste of rust, seeing stars. She crouched on the floor and shook long bangs out of her face.

  Get up, the voice told her. Make her pay.

  Sylvie drew the gun; a man near her yelped in surprise, and Sylvie whirled. JK gaped at her.

  “Back off,” she growled. Without waiting to see that he did, she jammed the gun barrel into Erinya’s rib cage, snugging it in amidst the wide-spaced mesh of her shirt, nestling it into quills that pricked at her skin, and said, “Let him down.”

  “He wants her dead. . . . Wants to kill his mother—for her house . . .”

  “Wanting isn’t doing,” Sylvie said. “One more warning, Erinya.”

  “Fuck you,” Erinya said. “I’m doing my job—”

  “You’re interfering with mine.” Sylvie fired, once, twice, and again.

  Blood splashed her hands, more rust scent in the air, beginning to compete with the sting of shattered glass and high-proof alcohol. Erinya stiffened; then she lashed out, one-handed again. Sylvie managed to duck, warned by the tiny adjustment of muscles along Erinya’s neck. Erinya’s nails tore strands of her hair from her temple with a distinct and delicate sting.

  The knit mesh of Erinya’s shirt shifted to scale and covered the burned and cored flesh, the bloody gouges that the bullets had torn.

  “You dare shoot a god?” Erinya said, shoving the bartender away. He dropped and scuttled for the front door. Erinya hissed, and he froze. “Not done with you yet, matricide.”

  Sylvie grinned, her own temper shining as bright and as sharp as diamond. “I’ve been stupid. I started to believe , to see gods everywhere. Dunne may be what he claims to be, but you—you and your sisters are no gods. You’re nothing more than shaped power. Like angels. Like demons. I can destroy you.” She raised the gun again, peered through her bangs, her narrowed vision like a gunsight.

  “It might take some careful doing, I admit.”

  The screaming behind her was beginning to get on her nerves. Sylvie wondered how many shots she had in the gun now that it had been magicked. Would it make its own? Enough to take down the Fury? Enough to shut up the shrieking crowd?

  What the hell are you thinking? For once it wasn’t the dark voice that crawled out of her mind, but her own. She shuddered all over, cold, sick, and utterly horrified. She fed all the fear into rage, her specialty, and the talent that kept her alive.

  Erinya leaped, and Sylvie fired. Three more shots, all into Erinya’s torso. Erinya tumbled forward, somersaulting, and came up in a crouch. She hissed, a snakelike tongue lashing out from between sharpening teeth. Her wounds healed.

  Sylvie, trying to assess the next move, met Erinya’s furious eyes and fell into them. Her head pounded, sweat slicked her face, her neck, and her vision exploded into a thousand images.

  Her gun, and the people who fell beneath it. Strangers. Enemies. Allies. Innocents. Michael Demalion. Val. Alex. Even her sister Zoe. Sylvie stood in a world turned abattoir and laughed as she made her will felt; when there was no one left, she turned the gun toward the heavens.

  Not real. Not going to happen. Try again. The dark voice spat it directly into Erinya’s mind, refusing the madness, refusing to be influenced by something external.

  The
hallucinations fled. Erinya knelt before her, looking for all the world like a pup who’d been unexpectedly smacked. “Get up,” Sylvie said, sheathing the gun. “Put your face back on.”

  Erinya rose to two feet, shook all her little monster bits—teeth, clawed hands, snaky tongue—into human shape once more. “I owe you pain.”

  “Collect it later, if you can,” Sylvie said. “We’ve made ourselves unwelcome. Let’s go.”

  She turned and froze, looking out over the club attendees—why hadn’t they fled? They looked ready to bolt at a whispered “boo,” and yet they still stood, shaking and watching. Her eyes flickered to the entrance and widened.

  A woman stood there, leaning against the doorjamb, entirely at her ease. She wasn’t much to look at, not quite as tall as Sylvie, judging by the space she took up in the door frame, on the whipcord side of slender, with hair a shade darker than Sylvie’s, sleeked into a twist, held up with what looked like chopsticks. She straightened once she had Sylvie’s attention and met her eyes.

  “You,” she said, her voice pitched low and very clear, almost familiar. “You are an interesting girl. Pity.”

  She was blocking the door, Sylvie realized abruptly. One rather ordinary woman holding a frightened mob of people at bay with only her presence. Lily reached up and fiddled with her hair, a nervous tell that spoke nothing of nervousness. Sylvie’s eyes narrowed.

  Erinya snarled and disappeared, reappearing across the room, claws arcing out before her.

  Lily tugged a chopstick free, and snapped the stick between her fingers; a brittle crack that created a group moan from the nerve-shattered crowd.

  “Brûlez,” she cried, and Erinya, a bare scale width away from sinking her talons into Lily’s flesh, tumbled backward on a wave of scalding white light. The bartender went up like flash paper, flesh wicking the heat and raising a curtain of white flame.

  Sylvie was already covering her stinging eyes. Dear God, no. Not this. She had thought Erinya’s monster act had filled the room with terror, but that was nothing compared to this. The screams now were of pure, primal dread, as vision led to flame led to spontaneous combustion.

  Sylvie pressed her hands tighter, screwed her eyes shut harder, still getting bleed-through, like flashbulbs all around her, strobing through the vulnerable skin of her eyelids. She felt feverish, on the edge of burning.