by Lyn Benedict
Sylvie bit her lip, needing to concentrate. That electric feel increased, and her thoughts felt fuzzed out. She traded the squeezed-out blue tube for the green one, and when her hand left the diagram, a vaporous trail traced her movement, luminous in the dimness.
“What does it feel like?” Lilith asked. “It’s always bothered me, that I lack that particular talent. It’s ridiculous how important power is. It trumps everything, and that’s not right. Look at Zeus, throwing petty fits just because his will was balked. Power shouldn’t go to idiots. Or to those who see life as a source for experiment. Power shouldn’t be used to prod and poke, deceive, blind, manipulate—but the gods reflect us, and we reflect them. Bound together in foolishness, venality, and greed.”
Sylvie concentrated on smearing the malachite green with fingers that felt bee-stung and raw, shivering as she traced the looping Greek letters that read love. The station felt as if it had warmed at least ten degrees. Sweat beaded on her scalp, on her cramping thighs, behind her knees. Somewhere, she could hear someone trying to start an engine that resisted, grinding as it stuck between gears. It annoyed her, made her head buzz. Her eyes itched and burned; the template of the oubliette blurred in her vision, and she echoed Lilith’s admonition to herself. Focus. You can do this. Never mind that she had never had a desire to touch magic. Distrusted it.
Tick, tick, her heartbeat said, pointing out that she no longer had the luxury of swearing off magic on principle. Too much depended on her successful use of it. Just this once. An exception to the rule.
Lilith said, “You’ve heard the truism a thousand times. Power corrupts. There are those who might wield it wisely, who would understand that power is best used sparingly. You understand. Don’t you burn to do better? To take the power from those frivolous hands and hold it safe in yours?”
“That’s you, seeing yourself mirrored in me,” Sylvie muttered. Getting better at this. Sweating bullets, but her focus was refining itself; it left her breath enough to argue. “I don’t want power over others, at least not magical power. It’s a burden.”
“I never said otherwise. But if it’s needed—If you know you could do what was needed. Someone has to do it; someone might as well be you. Or me, of course.” She grinned. “Preferably me.”
Sylvie scowled; Lilith just kept talking, and her voice was insidious, slipping in past Sylvie’s concentration, past the numb fuzziness of reality fighting her attempts to alter it. That engine sound wasn’t real at all, she thought, as it shifted to a Doppler pulsing in time with her heartbeat. It was reality slipping, earthquake fashion, along a fault, a basso continuo protest.
Lilith’s words were hard to ignore, trickling in like icy water on a rainy, winter day, snaking in beneath her collar, as relentless as a bore who held forth despite the blank, desperate expressions of his captive audience.
God, she thought, suddenly appalled. It’s in the blood. The laser focus, the obsessive stubbornness, the inability to shut the fuck up. She whimpered low in her throat, tuned her senses to the oubliette spell, trying to block Lilith out.
“—of it is, if left alone, mankind would settle itself out, like the animal kingdom. There is no sin in nature. There is, instead, equilibrium. But gods, they have to poke and prod, make rules and pick fights—tell me about wars, Sylvie. Can you think of one that didn’t have religion at its core?”
“It’s water torture,” Sylvie breathed. Or subliminal programming, she thought. Her fingers wavered; she forced her focus back on that machine-grinding, bone-humming, electric sensation of power coiling beneath her.
“The gods—”
“What about you?” Sylvie said, pausing for a moment as she came to the end of a curlicue she couldn’t interpret. Her breath came in gasps; her belly growled, and her knees felt like they might reverse themselves at any moment. The Fury’s borrowed power aside, the spell was eating through Sylvie’s own energy. The way things were going, even if she managed to open the oubliette, she’d be as weak as an infant, easily brushed aside. Sylvie fought to distract Lilith with the only means left to her. Words. “You want power. You want to be worshipped.”
“Never,” Lilith said, her temper flaring in instant denial. “Worship’s where—Sylvie, watch out. You almost missed a spot.”
“Backseat spell casting?” Sylvie griped. It was more maddening that Lilith was right. She’d nearly skipped a tiny little symbol, and for all she knew, that could be a vital piece. It still burned that Lilith had spotted it before she did, when she was far enough across the room that she shouldn’t be able to see anything.
“It’s like perfect pitch,” Lilith said. “I can hear it, still can’t carry a tune. Be careful. Neither of us can afford a mistake. Where was I...? Worship is where things go wrong. Worship means you’ve stopped seeing people as independent beings, infantilized them permanently. I don’t want worship. I just want to make things right.”
“Run for Congress,” Sylvie said. “Hell, run for president.”
“Worthless,” Lilith said. “You aren’t listening. We reflect the gods. What happens with them, happens with us. The gods are corrupt, petty, despotic—so are their followers. The worst, though—”
“Let me guess,” Sylvie said. She gritted her teeth, pushed a last spurt of paint through the tube, stained the cement in a crimson swirl and shuddered as the entire diagram rang like a crystal goblet being struck. The tortured-machine hum smoothed out as reality bent and accepted its restructuring. Her bones vibrated to the new tune. “The whitebeard who booted you from Eden. Or should I call him Bluebeard.”
“You saw my work?” Lilith said. “You are dogged. Can you say I’m wrong? The similarities are striking. Bluebeard gave each successive wife a key and demanded that she not use it. And He put the Tree in the midst of our garden. They both demanded implicit trust but were not worthy of it. Neither of them ever considered that trust was a two-way street.”
Sylvie lifted her dizzy head and stared at Lilith. She panted, shivered, fought for breath. She felt cold and hot at once, as if the oubliette was a roaring fire in an arctic room. Everything she had learned only confirmed it for her: She loathed magic. All those sorcerers who did this kind of thing on purpose were morons.
When her breath had stabilized enough, when the buzzing in her limbs had faded, she said, “Does this really work for you? Talking people into submission? Did you just expect me to crumble and say of course you’re right?”
“No,” Lilith said. “I told you. I don’t want worshippers, or witless obedience. I want—”
“Anarchy,” Sylvie said. “Free will, free world, and you step in only if the whole shebang starts to go to hell. Lose your precious equilibrium.”
“You do understand. Maybe even agree.”
“Too general not to,” Sylvie said. She stood, her legs shaking, and backed away from the spell circle. It hummed in her head, alive, but not open. “If, on reflection, I say you’re full of shit?”
“I don’t care,” Lilith said. Abruptly the edge was back in her voice, the danger vibrant in the underground room. “Just be a good woodsman and bring me the little lover’s heart to eat. Open the door, Sylvie. Where’s your key?”
Sylvie hesitated, the moment upon her. There weren’t a lot of options; she had brought a key, or something she hoped would pass for one. But she didn’t want to use it with Lilith waiting. She had no intention of freeing Brandon just to have Lilith pounce on him; Sylvie’s entire body still shook with the effort of rebuilding the oubliette, and the gun was useless. What was left? Her mind raced, searching possibilities. A door has two sides, her dark voice pointed out.
Sylvie licked dry lips. Not an option she really wanted to consider, but the alternative? She imagined Brandon Wolf dead at Lilith’s feet, at Dunne so grief-stricken that he fell to Lilith’s attack, or turned the world inside out, trying to recover what was lost by time. In every scenario Sylvie could imagine, innocents died, Alex died, suffering for Sylvie’s mistakes. Unless—
/> Sylvie picked up the remaining item in the satchel, unwrapped it from the silk scarf she’d carried it in to protect it. Behind her, Lilith hissed something under her breath.
Sylvie didn’t pay attention, her eyes riveted on the painting, the small, violent self-portrait of Brandon Wolf. The flayed heart seemed to pulse. The oubliette throbbed in sympathy.
Dunne had set off the oubliette. Some of him in him, Alekta had said. The painting, crimson in spots, dull brown and flaking in others—Sylvie thought it, too, had some of Bran in it. She flaked a tiny little rusty chip off and watched it stream toward the oubliette, a tiny object caught in an eddy.
Disturbing, Sylvie had thought the first time she saw the painting. A second viewing had clarified her visceral response. It looked painted in blood, and it seemed that looks weren’t deceiving.
“What is that?” Lilith said.
“Can’t you tell?” Sylvie said. “You were fast enough to point out my errors in spell copying. You think this’ll work?”
“Yes,” Lilith said, her voice husky, a little excited. “Do it. Bring him up. Do it now.” Her eyes were almost pure silver now, gleaming and milky in the low light. Her gaze was avid, was fierce, was . . . off. Something had changed.
Sylvie cradled the painting to her chest and shivered as the oubliette seemed to yearn toward it. One choice left. Sylvie shivered again. She didn’t want to—God, she didn’t want—
She clutched the painting close, the image facing outward, as if the heart shown were her own, her rib cage split asunder, and stepped back, one step, two, keeping an eye on Lilith, whose face grew distantly puzzled, pallid eyes going narrow under frowning brows. “What are you doing, Sylvie? Open it, at once.”
A third step, and Sylvie could feel the tug of the spell, like a magnet aligning, reaching out for its complement. Lilith stood, moving with the awkward, lanky haste of a marionette, and Sylvie laughed. “Jesus,” she said, seeing it suddenly. “You’re blind! Dunne’s spell. You were there when he blinded Demalion and his team. You got caught in it. You were half-blind when I came in carrying supplies from Dunne’s house, but the key’s wrapped in silk. Inert, magically, until I unwrapped it. You can’t see me at all.”
“Don’t need to,” Lilith said. “I can feel the spell. I can—”
“Pity,” Sylvie said, on an adrenaline high. “I would love to see your expression when you realize what I’m doing.” She took that last step back, her heels clearing the sticky-wet, painted lines. Beneath her feet, the cement trembled like quicksand. “When I lock the door from the inside.” Then the oubliette tasted her, tasted the painting in her hands, and found it a match, tugged it to itself. The world bent, and she plummeted into the spell.
21
Love Divine
WHEN SYLVIE WAS IN FOURTH GRADE AT PINECREST, THE READING curriculum had included Alice in Wonderland. Sylvie was one of the few who hadn’t enjoyed the assignment. Even then, her core of practicality was set; she found Alice and her casual curiosity to be the acts of a dangerously careless girl. Now, at the mercy of the oubliette’s undertow, Sylvie felt the first glimmer of sympathy for the girl, as she plunged on her own long fall.
She was surrounded by a colorless haze of motion that pulled and pried and tried to take her apart. The tough leather jacket creaked; seams popped like the breaking of tiny bones. Bran’s self-portrait warped and wavered, trying to escape her hands. The gun fluttered feebly at her spine like a stunned bird. “No,” she said, her voice swallowed by nothingness. “No.” She would not loose her grip. She had no intention of coming out on the other side naked and defenseless, assuming she would finish the journey at all if the painting, the key, left her grasp.
The idea of spending eternity locked in nothingness—Sylvie reassessed her ideas of hell and growled under her breath. “I’m coming through, and I’m taking it all with me. My gun, my key, my clothes.”
As if it had been a test, the oubliette spat her out, abruptly and painfully, into absolute darkness. Her knees ached from the impact; her free hand stung where she had flung it down to protect her face. Her breath sobbed in her throat. She dropped the painting, and dug her fingers into the surface, trying to guess what it was. Softer than concrete, harder than earth, all one piece, melting slightly away from her hand but warmer than ice. It reminded her of nothing so much as molten glass, drifting, stretching, minus the scalding heat.
She held her breath, listening, trying to hear someone else’s presence, trying to guess how big the enclosure was. He’s dead, Val had said. But the room didn’t smell of decay. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears with the effort of not breathing, deafening to her and defeating the purpose. She sucked in a grateful gulp of air and froze. God, the air—how did it . . . ? Would it last?
A faint candlelight glimmer touched her eyes, a diffuse glow in the darkness, a splotch of color that could be wishful thinking.
“Hello?” she said. “Brandon?” Her voice wavered, but was, at least, audible. She didn’t want to be alone in the dark, cut off from everything, dying in inches. She wanted to have made the right choice. She wanted her chance to save Brandon, to save Alex, to save innocents from the manipulations of the powerful.
The glow strengthened, then raced around the room, spreading outward in fiery streamers, delineating a circular enclosure about the size of a conference room. A whisper of breath touched her ears, then a sudden trickle of something that was distinctly running water. Sylvie, who hadn’t realized how ringingly silent the oubliette was, began to relax. The glow increased.
The water became visible first. Of all the things she’d expected to find in a spell prison, a scaled-down Greco-Roman fountain, complete with fat cherubs dribbling water, was not one of them. The marble gleamed with a slick, soapy shine; the water smelled sharp and clear and cold.
The confines of the oubliette slowly came clear, a pinched-off teardrop of a room, a demented genie’s bottle. The walls curved undulantly at their base, arched inward at the top, seemed made of some shifting, opaque material that roiled like chemical-laden toxic clouds.
Sylvie inched away from them. The floor . . . She shifted her gaze until the vertigo passed. She stood above the floor on some stretched-out pane of glassine material. The true floor belled beneath it, and Sylvie dared another glance down. It, too, burned with the chemical cloud-roil of the walls, made her think of planks laid over lava spills.
She was alone on one side of the fountain, but on the other? Squinting against the growing brightness, she walked around the curve of the fountain and stopped cold.
Brandon Wolf lay asleep—not dead—on the floor, naked as the day he was born. The dread she’d held tightly to her since the beginning of this case, from the moment Dunne had sworn Bran was alive against all reason, fled. Sprawled, asleep. As if the oubliette was nothing more than a time-out for a child.
She knelt suddenly, knees weak.
God, photographs did not do him justice. Sprawled, prone, head tucked on one outflung arm, he woke nothing so much in her as sheer animal want. His supple skin, the dark-flame tint of autumnal hair, the long eyelashes peeking out beneath longer bangs, his lips, slightly curved even in sleep, his shoulders broad and golden, his lean thighs, his—Sylvie’s kaleidoscope thoughts derailed entirely, leaving her with nothing but a quickened pulse and the undeniable urge to pounce. She shivered. And she’d thought succubi were dangerously attractive.
The idea shocked her cold for a brief, brain-saving moment. Bran’s attractiveness, even unconscious, more than a match for a succubus, for a preternatural creature of desire? Sylvie’s breath caught. Her dark voice whispered. Human? It sounded perplexed. The edge was gone from it, quiet wonder in its voice.
Sylvie caught a quick gleam of eye shine as he peeked through his lashes, and realized he was feigning sleep. “Brandon,” she said.
He swung into a crouch, facing her. “What do you want?” Even his voice was delicious. Low, husky, as warm as a firelit room.
“To get you
out,” Sylvie said. She looked into amber eyes and forgot to breathe. “My name’s Sylvie. Dunne sent me.”
“Bullshit,” he said, though his entire face washed with relief before closing off again. “You’re one of Lilith’s lackeys.”
“I am no one’s lackey,” she snapped. He flinched, and she thought, Great, scare the guy senseless. “Really, I’m working for Kevin.”
He flicked a glance at her, flicked it away. “You’re wearing Erinya’s jacket. I bought it for her in London.”
“I am. You think she’d let just anyone borrow it?” He wanted to believe her, but he had the eyes of someone used to pain and disillusionment. It deepened the beauty of his too-pretty face.
He shivered, and she tracked the ripple of muscle and skin, sliding her gaze down the taut curves of his shoulders, down to the flat planes of his chest, the narrowing of his waist and hips. He dropped his hands to cover himself, flushing. Sylvie yanked her gaze away. God, what was wrong with her? The poor guy was scared, naked, and she gawked at him like he was nothing more than meat. She shucked the jacket and dropped it into his lap. “Sorry,” she said.
“Used to it,” he muttered, and she looked over in time to see the resignation on his face, and more—the old scars on his forearms.
He might be strong physically—his body attested to that—but there was a fragility in his eyes that she didn’t like.
“It’ll be okay,” she said. Shit comfort, but the best she could manage.
He nodded, still not looking. His hands fisted in the coarse leather.
“You don’t believe me.”
“Lilith’s clever. Erinya’s not. I’m not. We’re easy to fool.” Bitterness laced his voice.
“She got you with the murals.”
“She got me way before that,” Bran said. “Years and years ago.”
Years and years? Dunne had only become a god recently. Sylvie got that irritating prickle again, the one that said she hadn’t been given all the information she needed.