Sins & Shadows si-1

by Lyn Benedict

  At the time, Sylvie had seen it as a meaningless gesture, but now, in her head, the image of the sketched cross burned so bright it made her eyes water.

  Dunne sighed. “He was Catholic? And truly believed. I’m sorry. He’s been taken to the light god’s hands, and He is a most jealous god.”

  “So that’s a no, then? Figures,” Sylvie said, when the disappointment that thickened her voice past speech faded.

  “I’m sor—” he said. She flung up a hand. Stop. Sorry meant nothing to her.

  “Then you have nothing to offer me,” Sylvie said. “But I guess it doesn’t matter. You’ve got my obedience anyway.” She couldn’t believe she had almost liked this man.

  “That’s not true,” he said. “I can give you the other thing you want, the thing you don’t want to admit to.” There was a note in his voice suddenly that resonated with her own internal voice, the one that spoke so often in terms of kill or be killed. She raised her head and met his eyes, no longer gentle, but cold, grey, and full of purpose.

  “I’ll bring them to justice.”

  Sylvie’s heart thudded in her rib cage. “The cops can do that,” she said, dismissively. “I can do that.”

  “When they were masked?” he asked. “When the trail from the club has gone cold? When they’ll be hunting you? Kill you, and they not only get their power, they get rid of a witness to their crimes. Or . . . just say the word, and I’ll take care of them.”

  Sylvie shivered; another line crossed. Asking Dunne to remove her human enemies was only one step from her doing it herself. Of becoming the monster. Still, the word hissed out, over her doubts, over her fears. “Yes.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked, his voice gentling again, as if he could read that weak trace of dismay in her thoughts.

  “It would be . . . justice,” she said, voice flat. Her hands shook, and she slid her wet palms down the sides of her jeans. If Dunne and the sisters took out the satanists, it would solve her most pressing problems. Protect Alex, her family, anyone else the cultists ran across in their search for her. “A life for a life.”

  “His life for all of theirs,” Dunne said.

  “He was only their first victim. They’ll want more.” Sylvie thought of Alex crying silently for days, of her own tears, which stalked her at awkward moments, of Suarez’s bewildered parents uncovering their son’s private life. She closed her eyes, allowing that dark whisper to overrule the rest of her mind. “Can you deliver?”

  “Yes,” he said. Simple, confident, impatient. He gestured to the sisters, and they sauntered back into the office. Magdala and the punk girl settled on Sylvie’s battered couch, speaking to each other in liquid syllables that Sylvie didn’t recognize. The blonde beelined for Dunne’s side. Obviously, he played favorites, Sylvie thought.

  “Kevin?” Alekta asked. Glee surfaced in her pallid eyes. “Is it time for work?”

  “Yes, Alekta,” Dunne said. The other two women looked up with sudden interest, but he waved them back. “Just Alekta.”

  He nodded at the chair he had made, and Sylvie sat in it, ill at ease. “It’s easy enough, Sylvie. Just think of one of them; we’ll seal our bargain after the first one’s been dealt with. The rest will come . . . after you find Bran.”

  There was the reminder of her leash again, she thought. Take out one of her enemies, but the rest would be free until she recovered Bran. It all added up to an unspoken Find him fast.

  Sylvie closed her eyes, remembering. She wanted to be sure—they had been masked. She didn’t want him to just kill anyone and pretend it was one of them. There had to be some way. . . .

  She focused. The leader raised his arms, spoke behind his mask, and Sylvie frowned. Nothing distinctive about him. Tall, but not remarkably so. He wore gloves, a full face mask, a full cloak. She couldn’t even tell if he was white, black, Hispanic, or other. She wouldn’t recognize him if she saw him on the street.

  Reluctantly, she chose another target. Parting the crowd, pushing through silken cloaks, bumping up against one of the most avid participants. Behind her mask, the eyes had been blue; a spill of red-dyed curls tangled at the nape of her cloak, and her perfume, the ripe, sex-sweet musk of tropical orchids. Her, Sylvie thought, remembering the girl’s laughter when Suarez fell.

  “That one,” she said. “That one first.” There was a brush of softness against her face, the faint prickle of blunt-cut hair and the creak of leather.

  She opened her eyes and found Alekta pressed nearly into her, her eyes wide and blank, her mouth gaping. Sylvie recoiled, reaching instinctively for her gun and coming up short. “Get away from me.”

  “Did you get the scent?” Dunne asked.

  Alekta nodded, tongue lolling out of her mouth in a horror-movie moment; her waist and belly sucked in, her ribs expanded, her arms thickened, and she dropped to all fours, still shifting leisurely, as if she intended to enjoy the hunt.

  “No!” Sylvie snapped. “No.”

  Dunne said, “What now? Changed your mind?”

  “No, but not like that. Not shredded by an animal.” Sylvie had seen deaths like that before—ugly, loud, and bloody. She wasn’t going to watch it again, and she had every intention of seeing the satanist die. If she ordered it, she had a duty to bear witness. Her heart pounded. “You do it,” she told Dunne. “Not your minion. You.”

  Alekta whined, but reversed her transformation on Dunne’s command. “Fine,” he said. He reached over Alekta and seized Sylvie’s arm so tightly she knew there’d be bruises.

  Bastard, she thought, just before the world dropped out from under her. She shrieked outrage, but the sound was swallowed by the overwhelming blur of color and noise that surrounded her. Like being inside a tornado, she thought, her breath hiccuping in her chest. And then it was done, and she and Dunne stood on the Gables campus of the University of Miami, midway between the Rathskeller, the Olympic pool, and the University Bookstore.

  When she could speak, she growled, “Never again. I don’t like magic used on me.”

  And such magic, she thought, her nerves still jangled. Dunne was far too talented. Mind-viewing, summoning of those horrible sister-demon things, transport spells, and of course, that tiny hiccup in time that she’d experienced earlier.

  Humans could do each of those things if they were sufficiently talented and foolhardy. It took a type of power that always fought back, twisting in on itself, devouring its users if they faltered for even a moment.

  Dunne seemed to use magic as easily as he breathed. Sylvie bit her lip; she was going to have to give Val a call—what she knew about magic was sketchier than it should be, confined mostly to her reasons for distrusting it.

  “There she is,” Dunne said, gesturing. He had taken a seat on one of the benches that lined the concrete path.

  Two girls walked side by side, coming down the path toward them. Sylvie recognized her would-be target immediately, in the way she moved, held herself, smirked.

  The girl shook back her red curls and nudged her prettier companion just hard enough that the girl stepped off the path and into a slick spot of mud. She went down, and the red-haired girl laughed.

  Still spreading her own particular brand of joy, Sylvie thought. If she had had any doubts, that little act of spite erased them. She nodded at Dunne, and his lips tightened.

  “She wasn’t the one who shot him,” he said, but even as she opened her mouth to protest, he nodded. “Done.”

  Sylvie turned, and the girl was suddenly gone. Sylvie had expected flames for some reason, people screaming and fleeing, campus police scratching their heads over an undeniable case of spontaneous human combustion, maybe even the girl’s ashes blowing back across Sylvie’s skin.

  Instead, there was nothing. No outcry, no notice. Even the girl’s companion, rubbing exasperatedly at the mud on her jeans, seemed unaware that anything had occurred. But one moment the girl had been there, sauntering down the path, the next—nothing. Nearly nothing, Sylvie realized. Something lay on
the path, something small and fragile.

  With shaking legs, Sylvie walked over to the place where the girl had vanished, and bent, her fingers ready to recoil. An illusion, surely, not the thing itself. Sorcerers excelled in illusion and deception. But this—she reached out and touched it. Her eyes and her fingers agreed. She picked up the orchid, white bleeding into pale pink, the roots dangling, and said, “Transformed? Not dead?”

  “She isn’t a murderer,” Dunne said. “Revenge is outside my nature. If you want her dead, you’ll have to do it. It won’t be that hard. Just throw her back on the ground, let someone trample her. Run her through a Weed Eater. Or even simpler, let her dry out and die.”

  Sylvie let out a shaky breath; she should be relieved that her orders hadn’t put that responsibility on her. Instead, she only felt as if he was squirming out of their bargain. Testing her determination.

  Sylvie felt the frailty of the narrow stem, the fleshiness of the petals, and cast it down onto the path again, raised her sneakered foot, imagining how the plant would shred, pulpy and tender beneath her heel. But when her sole touched pavement, she felt only the grit of concrete. She opened her eyes. Dunne stepped back from her, holding the orchid in his hands.

  4

  Murder, Morals, Motive

  “AS SIMPLE AS THAT FOR YOU?” DUNNE SAID, TOUCHING THE FRAGRANT petals. “Transformation is not enough? An evil turned to harmless beauty, made benign—”

  “You want me to take the damn case, don’t lecture me on my morals,” Sylvie said. “They killed Suarez. They’ll be after me. Yeah, it’s pretty simple. Kill or be killed.”

  “But she’s harmless now,” he said. He frowned, but the expression was more puzzled than disapproving. “It’s one thing to kill in self-defense or in protection of another. To kill once there is no pressing need—”

  “If your lover is dead, or alive but tortured,” Sylvie said, “will you dare tell me you won’t exact his pain on their hides?”

  As he quailed, she pressed her advantage. “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, tit for tat; it’s the oldest, simplest justice there is. Or is that different from being Justice with a capital J? Are you a kindlier, gentler justice?”

  He closed his fingers, and the orchid vanished. Sylvie caught the protest in her throat. “You let her go?”

  “No,” he said. “Put her elsewhere.” His eyes were tired, and he rubbed at them with the heels of both hands, the face of a man with a dilemma. “Is this going to work? I need you to think—you’re almost as bad as the sisters.”

  “Fuck you,” Sylvie snapped. “I’m smarter than your minions.” She was shaking, cold all the way to her bones at what she had tried to do. She didn’t kill people. Even if they were flowers. She clung to that thought, but she had always responded to fear with rage. Fear paralyzed you. Rage kept you moving.

  “How many others could you identify clearly from your memories? The girl passed close to you—you saw her hair, heard her laugh, saw her move, smelled her perfume and sweat. The others? If you destroyed her, their identification becomes harder.”

  “Your sisters could follow her scent back, right?” Sylvie said.

  “Oh, they could have followed it anywhere. On anyone she’d been near. Like her classmates, her teachers, the people in her dormitory, and those she stood next to on slow elevators. How many throats would you see the sisters hunt?” His eyes were steady on hers.

  Sudden sickness welled in Sylvie’s throat; she turned from his gaze.

  “This way, you have a choice. We can still ask her questions. Identify the others the simplest way.”

  “Kinda hard to ask a flower questions,” Sylvie said, trying not to let him see how shaken she was. “All that language of flowers crap aside.”

  “Don’t be difficult,” he said. “I’ll change her back first, of course.”

  “Of course,” she said. No big deal. Transformation. Real transformation of matter. Most transformations were only a matter of rearranging mass. Werewolves were big because men were bigger than wolves. Turning a person into a toad would only result in a toad the size of a man. To turn a woman into a single, delicate orchid—to change her back at will—that required destruction and creation of mass. Destruction was a human skill, possible for a juiced-up sorcerer. Creation—wasn’t.

  He took her arm again, and she yanked away. “No. We are not traveling that way again.”

  Dunne’s face darkened. “We don’t have a lot of time—”

  “Enough for you to lecture me on ethics. Enough for you to prove your skills. I think we have enough time to take a car wherever we go next.” She met his eyes, refused to back down. He could force the issue, she supposed. But he was weak, too. He was desperate, and he needed Sylvie.

  “Fine,” he said. He gestured in a manner that looked a lot less like a spell trigger than a man throwing his hands up in exasperation. With the sudden rearrangement Sylvie was beginning to get used to, her truck appeared in the parking lot nearby, its battered and clawed red hood a familiar beacon.

  “Great,” she said, her poise restored with its appearance. The clawed hood reminded her she’d survived a lot more intrinsically malevolent creatures than Dunne was turning out to be. “But tell me this. Where are we going?”

  “To look for him,” Dunne said. Bewildered panic entered his eyes again.

  Sylvie found a bench and sat on it, noticing campus security showing up more and more in her line of sight, blooming like fungus after a rain. Watching Dunne. Not approaching him. Just watching.

  “Everyone’s looking for him. Sit down, Dunne, and let’s do this right. You accused me of not thinking, so let’s think. Where was he the last time you saw him? When exactly was that?”

  “I’ve told the cops that,” Dunne said.

  “Look, what do you suggest I do?” Sylvie said. “Wave a wand? I’m no witch. I am what you see, what my reputation declares me: an inquisitive bitch with a gun. I suppose I could wander the streets like your mindless cops, calling his name like he was a lost cat. . . .”

  The police reports appeared in her lap. He slumped forward, head in his hands. “That’s efficient,” she said.

  She flipped through the first report. Not local, these boys. Chicago. She frowned. She hated Chicago—all that concrete, those looming high-rise buildings, and the poor man’s ocean. Couldn’t hold a candle to the tropics. She found the Polaroid again of Brandon moving away from the camera’s eye.

  “That’s the most recent one,” Dunne said, his voice rough. “It was taken the night he was abducted. Two weeks ago.”

  Sylvie noted the cream-and-green sweater, the nice watch, the glittering gems in his ears. “Is he wealthy?”

  “Yes,” Dunne said. “But it’s not a kidnapping.”

  Yes, Sylvie thought. Of course he’d be wealthy. If you’re the play toy of a god, why not be rich. “Any vengeful exes?”

  “I checked them out,” he said, raising his head to meet her eyes. “Thoroughly.”

  “They still alive?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Dunne said, offended. “I’m not a killer.”

  “No, but your pets are,” Sylvie said. “No tricky technicalities here. You didn’t kill them. Did the sisters?”

  “No,” he growled, for one moment sounding uncannily like the creatures he commanded.

  Sylvie shut up, self-preservation kicking in. She flipped the picture facedown, turned it faceup, trying to restore her first impression of Brandon Wolf.

  Delectable.

  She closed her eyes and tried not to think about opportunists, killing for money or sex, feeding some dark fetish she’d never even imagined.

  Dunne said, in echo of her thoughts, “The FBI thinks there are approximately twenty known serial killers working, and assumes there may be up to three hundred working the country unnoticed. There are more than that, but the odds are still against one of them having taken Bran, especially when you consider that Bran is more aware than most of the evils of this worl
d. Besides, I told you. He’s not dead.” He snagged the photograph from her, looked down at it.

  “You’d—feel it?” Sylvie asked, unable to keep the skepticism from her voice. “Like something out of a romance novel? Kindred souls and all that rot? You were a cop, Dunne, you know how full of shit that is. People die, and it’s an ugly surprise to their loved ones, each and every time.”

  “I’d know,” he repeated. “I’m not human. I am a god.”

  “Who once worked as a cop,” Sylvie said, forcing gentleness into her tone, turning the acid to humor. “Were things slow on the god front—had to moonlight?”

  He pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes. “Bran—” he whispered.

  Without fanfare, the skies clouded over and began to rain, a sudden Miami downpour that turned the air silver and thick with water. Sylvie grabbed the police report and bolted to her truck.

  He appeared in the seat next to her, the passenger door still locked, and she said, “All right. All right.”

  He seemed very close to shattering, and, god or not, he had power. She didn’t want to be at ground zero if he blew. She leaned back against her seat, let rainwater trickle down her face, and thought. Two weeks missing, no ransom, no clues. Conventional wisdom argued that Brandon Wolf was dead.

  But then, Sylvie thought, stealing another glimpse at Kevin Dunne, this was not a conventional situation. There was another alternative; Brandon Wolf might have fled. Her searching could jeopardize some exotic occult protection the young man had found—but she wasn’t sure she believed it.

  Dunne, despite his power, despite his minions, despite everything, kept defaulting back in her mind to Nice Guy. It made her uneasy.

  She started her truck, tucking the rain-spattered police reports in the door pocket, and headed for Miami International. Chicago, huh. At least it would take her out of the satanists’ immediate reach.

  “Hey, Dunne, don’t suppose you can magic me up a passport and a credit card?”