by Lyn Benedict
“Lilith can veil herself, an inverse use of her self-will. As she makes herself charismatic, she can also make herself a will-o’-the-wisp.”
“Just like school.” Sylvie sighed. “All theory. No real-world application.”
“You’ll find your flippancy will mean nothing against her. You cannot win. The best you will do is delay her victory, prevent her from usurping the god’s power.”
“Sounds like defeat to me,” Sylvie said. “You’ve accused me of missing or misinterpreting facts and decided I’ll fail in my job. Let me tell you what you’ve misunderstood. Immortality is a weakness. There’s nothing Lilith can want as fiercely as I can. She has all the time in the world, after all. If she loses now, there’s always later, always a backup plan for another time. But humans know we only get a lifetime, a bare handful of years. So little time to redeem our mistakes—” She cut herself off, and shook her head, shook the thoughts away. She stood, rolled the little crystal ball back into its holder. “Never underestimate the will of a creature who begins to die at birth.”
17
Back to the Basics
BACK OUTSIDE, SYLVIE PACED THE PARKING LOT, KICKING AT LOOSE landscaping gravel and bark chips. Her entire brain felt locked up, grinding between aggravation, fear, and yes—she’d cop to it, even if only in her own head—a little, treacherous pleasure when she thought of Demalion.
Still, the frustration, the thought that she should be doing something, anything, rolled pleasure under and drowned it as effortlessly as a riptide. To go through that interview and come out no further ahead was infuriating. So much so that she considered going back upstairs and taking it out on Anna D rather than the landscaping, but a faint glimmer of sense held her back. Anna D, sphinx, had teeth, and Sylvie still ached from fighting with Erinya.
As if on cue, all of her sundry pains sat up and cried for attention. From one breath to the next, Sylvie went from furious avenger to whimpering mortal. She staggered to the front steps and settled herself as gingerly as an old woman. Damn, she really thought at least one of her ribs was cracked.
What now? It was something to know who had snagged Bran and why, the confirmation of her theory that Lily was after Dunne’s power. Ultimately, that information did her little practical good.
Eventually, Lilith would have to deal with Dunne, if she wanted to trade Bran for power, though how she expected to accomplish that was a mystery Sylvie couldn’t even begin to grasp. Unless, Sylvie shuddered, there wasn’t going to be a trade, or even the lure of one. Maybe Bran was as good as dead. Maybe Dunne, weakened by grief and guilt, would make easy prey for a clever and willful immortal.
Sylvie wished she could think otherwise, but it seemed plausible. It wasn’t like Lilith had any scruples about killing innocents. A nightclub turned crematorium proved that.
Sylvie had two real options as she saw it. Recover Bran herself or force Lilith to do it for her. Neither prospect pleased. Sylvie was no witch, had estranged the only one she trusted, and if a god couldn’t force Lilith to obey Him, what chances did Sylvie have?
Tears stung her eyes, and she blinked them back. Weakness wouldn’t accomplish anything. She needed a goal, even a little one.
Her cell phone chirped, a reminder that she had a message. She tugged it out of her pocket, frowning. Witch. She gestured rudely at the glass above and flipped the phone open. Three calls missed in the last hour. Maddening, since she hadn’t shut it off. Guess Val wasn’t the only witch to weave leave-me-alones into her house.
Sylvie tucked the phone up to her ear and listened. Alex had called first, and Sylvie flashed to the vision Anna D had shown her of Alex throwing down the phone.
Alex’s voice tried for casual and failed. “You know how you said the satanists weren’t magic? I think they got some real power. The bell went off, Syl. That curse went active. Call me! Tell me where to go. Val turned me down for sanctuary—you must really have hacked her off this time, Syl. Good riddance, anyway. She makes me nervous, and her mansion—bleah.” Alex’s panic faded under her familiar ranting about Val Cassavetes.
Sylvie grinned even through her worry. Yeah, a onetime juvenile delinquent, Alex never did make happies with the conspicuously consumptive. Still, Val had some nerve. It was one thing to turn on Sylvie, another to risk an innocent—where were her morals now?
“Look for me tonight,” a woman said in the next message. Sylvie blinked. That was it? The voice wasn’t familiar, and the number was blocked. Sylvie shrugged and went on.
Alex again, and more stressed. “I’m getting out of here. Hitting the hotels. Call me.”
Sylvie hit memory, called Alex, and got nothing but her voice mail. “Hotels sound good, Alex,” Sylvie said. “Stay tucked away. Stay safe. I hope you took my spare gun when you raided my closet. You know how to use it. Don’t hesitate.”
She swallowed hard. That wasn’t going to make Alex relax any in her theory that Sylvie killed people, but Alex alive and horrified was a fair price to pay for Alex’s safety.
She tucked the phone into the jacket and sighed. She really hadn’t planned this day well. Coming to see Anna D left her stranded, no cab fare, no transit, and she felt itchy, fidgety, needing to move.
“Where’s a hot-wiring Fury when you need her,” Sylvie said, and sighed again, worry shifting. Erinya had been sullen and silent after Lilith’s attack, slinking away as Sylvie approached Tish’s, which, in retrospect, made little sense. Erinya knew Tish, and if Tish were willing to take in a perfect stranger, surely she would have accepted the Fury.
Sylvie wondered if maybe Erinya wasn’t hurt more deeply than she’d let on. After all, Lilith had shown up soon after Sylvie had shot Erinya. Bullets followed up with balefire; even a Fury might hurt, and like an animal, might head for solitude to lick her wounds.
Pray, Dunne had said, and she would reach him. She wondered if transportation issues and a vague concern for one of his creatures was enough to rouse him from his troubles.
Approaching footsteps rounded the edge of the walk and faltered, probably at the sight of her. A dirty beggar at the gates of heaven. A conspicuous have-not at the doors of plenty. She’d be lucky if they didn’t call the cops Of course, then she’d have a ride out of here. If the cops responded at all. If they weren’t still absorbed in hunting Bran Wolf.
“What are you doing here?” he asked.
She raised her head, startled. “Demalion.” He didn’t sound angry, and Anna D’s words were echoing in her ear. Apparently, he liked her. She licked her lips. “Are you selling information to Lil—”
“No,” he said. “I’m not sure who is. It’s different addresses every time. Like someone who doesn’t belong is accessing any computer they can.” He settled beside her on the stairs, giving the cement a quick glance to make sure his pristine suit would stay that way.
“Don’t you all have passwords? Private terminals? Locked doors?”
“Temps, cleaning people, rookie agents, random politicians,” Demalion said. “You didn’t answer, though. What are you doing here?” he repeated.
“Suffering for all my sins,” she said.
“Those sins include thinking I’d sell government information to a psychopath?”
“Yeah,” she said.
“Forgiven,” he said. “Go in peace, my child.” He sketched a cross over her head, and she found herself smiling.
“You like to make the priests cry, don’t you?” she said. “You were a bad altar boy. Drank the sacramental wine. Nibbled on the host when you got munchy.”
“What, and bring shame on my mother? She’s not much for religion but a big believer in manners. She lives here, you know,” he said. It was a quiet explanation for his presence and a polite demand for hers.
“I know,” she said. She watched his eyes darken. “She’s a right bitch.”
“After all you said about your family—you dragged mine into this?” He surged to his feet again, frustrated rage, and collapsed back against the stair railing. His
mouth worked over things he couldn’t get out.
“Huh,” Sylvie said. “And rumor has it you don’t hate me half so much as I thought.”
“What did—”
“Give me a break. She was a source, Demalion, not a means for petty vengeance. I didn’t know who she was until she told me.”
“Hardly a source,” he said. “She scries a little. A talent that she indulges just so she can decorate with shiny crystals. Who gave you her name?”
“Val Cassavetes. Anna D, she said. A local power. Capital P. It’s way past time for someone to have a heart-to-heart with his mother.” She grabbed his pant leg and pulled him back down beside her.
“Cassavetes,” he said, tonelessly. He tugged the little crystal out of his pocket, rolling it, then stilled and stared down at it.
He knew Val, of course, knew her reputation, and right now, Sylvie thought, he was reassessing his own family history.
“Your family’s occult,” she said. “Deal with it.”
“Easy for you to say.” The crystal began its nervous migration over his fingers again.
“I just found out who my primogenitors are, and I’m not a happy camper, so don’t expect sympathy.” She stilled his hands with her own, enjoying the human warmth of them, nothing unearthly here, just human flesh and bone, no matter what his mother was. The crystals he carried, though, hinted otherwise. Maybe he had inherited some of Anna D’s talents. Or maybe he just found crystals comforting, having grown up surrounded by them. She didn’t have enough clues to guess. “What did Dunne do to you?”
“I thought you’d have figured it out by now,” he said.
“God, the attitude runs in the family,” she said. Then, as it crossed her mind, “Were you born with a tail?”
“What?”
“Ah, never mind,” she said. “Keep your secrets.”
“Dunne blinded me,” Demalion said. The crystal shifted, dropped to the cement with a tiny crack as he turned his hands to clasp hers.
“You see me,” she said. “You drove here.” Even while she contradicted him, she was tabulating. He had talked about a third team spying on Dunne, spies who would never watch them again, a team of two field agents and a clairvoyant.
“As long as I’m not within five miles of Dunne, Wolf, or the things he considers his, I’m fine. The minute I overstep—” He swallowed hard. “It takes longer each time to come back,” he said.
“Lovely,” she said. “Perfect fate for a spy.”
“I’m glad you admire his sense of irony. It makes it all so much easier to take.” He detached his hands from hers and stood.
“Hey, Demalion,” she said. “Where’re you going?”
“Didn’t you say I should have a talk with my mother?”
“Jesus, not today,” Sylvie said. “She’d slaughter me for sure.”
Demalion frowned but hesitated.
“So . . . I’m sorry for yelling at you earlier.” If she’d thought she could manage it, she would have tried for a winsome smile. But tiredness made it an impossible effort.
“What do you want?” he asked. Noncommittal, still looking toward the condominium, still ruffled by her amusement at Dunne’s justice.
“A ride,” she said. “Suburbia’s not my thing.”
“Where to?”
“Haven’t decided yet.”
“Your hotel?”
“Cash-flow problems. Stayed with Tish last night. Not an option tonight.”
“Fine,” he said, held out his hand. She let him pull her up, wincing as her ribs shifted.
“Doctor?” he asked.
“Some strapping might be nice,” she said. He slid an arm around her waist, and she let him, leaned her aching head on his shoulder. She wondered if his mother was watching from above, clawing at the walls. She tried not to smirk.
“You need to be more careful,” he said, as they made their way across the lot to his car.
“I’m always careful.”
“Yeah, in a way that would make a drunk stuntman blanch.”
She pulled away from him, climbed into the car. “Just shut up and drive,” she said, sinking into the passenger seat and sulking.
“It’s a good thing I like you,” he said.
“A very good thing,” she agreed. After all, she was in no shape for another fight. She closed her eyes for a minute, then said, “You want to upgrade that detente of ours to a truce?”
“Depends. You going to run out on me again?”
“No,” she said.
“Then very much,” he said. “Not only for our sakes. I think this mess may take both of us. I think I’ve followed your path. Brandon Wolf was kidnapped to get to Dunne’s power and immortality. And immortality’s a powerful lure.”
“Not for her,” Sylvie said. “She’s already immortal. Lilith, not Lily. The Lilith.” My blood kin . . . That part she left unsaid; truce or no, there were some things she just wouldn’t share with the ISI.
“Just the power, then,” he said.
“Just,” she agreed. “Don’t you think Lilith would make a nice addition to the pantheons? Spreading balefire with a thought instead of a borrowed spell?”
“What’s the plan?” he said.
Sylvie fidgeted. Trust Demalion to hit her weak spot. “See if we can find any other address for Lilith. See if Dunne will come check up on our progress. Maybe we can get him to hunt her.”
“That’s not much of a plan—”
“More ’n you have,” Sylvie snapped. “I might be stalled for a moment, but that’s ISI modus operandi.”
He glanced away from the road, frowning. “Truce?”
“Mea culpa, just frustrated,” Sylvie said. She shrank in her seat; they were just crossing back into the city proper, and the traffic was getting interesting. “Eyes on the road, blind man.”
“So we’re looking for her less likely hangouts, and continuing to watch the ones we know about,” Demalion said. “The ISI could put out a bulletin, get the cops in on it.”
“Most of the cops are either hunting Bran or dealing with the Magicus Mundi; the last thing they need is to be sent after a woman who throws balefire party favors around.” She wasn’t going to put people between herself and Lilith. She licked dry lips, said, “You know, you don’t have to help me.”
“I’m going to,” he said.
“Fine,” she said. Take that, Anna D. She’d tried. No one could say she hadn’t.
Demalion pulled the car to a stop, and she followed him into his apartment building, workaholically close to the ISI base. She bit back a comment, at least until he opened the door to the tiny apartment and revealed piles of labeled cardboard boxes that showed clear signs of being lived out of. She looked at him again, all crisp and clean in his charcoal grey suit, and said, “Good call on getting the suits out first. Not like you’ll ever want to eat on plates or anything.”
“Hey,” he said. “Hosting you, remember? Play nice.”
“If I were nice,” she said, “I’d offer to help unpack.” She sat on the couch, admiring his forethought in keeping it, at least, clear of the clutter.
“I’m pretty sure my heart would stop,” he said, dropping down at the other end of the couch with a woof of displaced air and dust.
“That better not be some oblique comment about my housekeeping skills, ’cause I’m not really in the mood to remember my apartment is on the ISI daily tour.”
“Too tired to get mad?” he asked. “That’s a first.” He tugged out the little quartz globe, cracked now, and rolled it between his palms.
Sylvie pounced, grabbing for it. He jerked back, startled, and slid to evade her. She snarled one hand in his shirt, caught his wrist; they grappled for a moment until he fell from the couch. Sylvie grinned, crouched over him, crystal in her hand. “So, how does this thing work? And how often have you used it on me?”
“I haven’t,” he said. At her raised brow, he repeated himself. “I haven’t.” No excuses, no proof, just a statement. She
was annoyed that she believed him.
“So, how does it work?” she said. “Do you need a new one, now that this one’s chipped?”
“No,” he said, relaxing from his cautious tension. He lay back, watched the crystal sparkle between her fingers. “It’s only a focus. I’m clairvoyant. I see the images inside my head. It’s not like real vision. It’s color-reversed, or black and white. Sometimes it’s blurry.”
“Like satellite TV for the brain,” she said. She dropped the crystal onto his stomach, rested her weight on his thighs. The crystal rolled with his breathing, and she put her fingers on it, pushing it along his rib cage, then chasing it down his belly and catching it in his navel. She pushed up his shirt to admire the gloss of glass against his warm skin, the way his flesh goose-bumped and shivered at her touch. “The talent’s innate in you, and it never occurred to you to wonder why?”
“We have psychics on staff. They’re human.” There was unease in his voice. He rolled his head to the side, avoiding her gaze.
“Maybe they just think they are,” she said. At the quick wash of pain that crossed his face, she regretted saying it. After all, as far as her honed senses could tell, he read human. She opened her mouth to say so. “You really never wondered about your mother?”
He squirmed beneath her, and she answered for him. “You took her being human for granted. Like most of the normals out there who don’t recognize the Magicus Mundi until it waves hello up close and personal.” She rose and reseated herself beside him, braced comfortably between his hip and the low-fronted couch.
She poked the crystal into movement again. “Do you want to know what she is? What’s lurking in your genes?”
“I’ll ask her myself.”
Sylvie studied the reflection of her fingertips in the glass and slid it between two ribs, using his tie as a net when the orb slipped away from her. He sucked in a breath. “Sylvie, not that this isn’t . . . pleasant—what are you doing?”
“Do you think she’s looking at you right now? Or when you’re looking in the glass, does she look back? How do you manage to feel unwatched?”