by Lyn Benedict
“Tell me about her then, if you know so much. Tell me how I have anything to do with her, other than being the one sent to make her give back what she’s taken.”
Anna D bridled again at Sylvie’s challenge but finally said, “There were humans even before the gods turned their interest to the mortal realm. The gods began to watch, to shape themselves to interact with the humans, and the humans reacted accordingly. Millennia passed with each of us shaping the other. Then several of the gods chose to create their own peoples—”
“Start at the very beginning, why don’t you?” Sylvie muttered, leaned forward, and put her head in her hands. She could smell the leather of Erinya’s coat, lingering smoke, and a lingering wisp of Demalion’s cologne. Damn, he smells good.
“I am not talking for my own edification, Ms. Lightner,” Anna D said, in a schoolteacher-prissy tone of voice, and wasn’t Sylvie going to kick someone’s ass for telling the witch her real name. . . .
“I get it,” Sylvie said, when the silence continued, when she realized she was going to have to listen actively, like some remedial student. “So which creation myth are we talking?”
“Can’t you guess?”
“I don’t think you like it when I guess.”
“Her name’s not Lily,” Anna D said. “It’s Lilith, and she is an immortal creature of immense will, frustration, and rage.”
“Lilith,” Sylvie said, thought she said, though no sound came from her mouth. Her lips felt cold. It wasn’t surprise; it felt like fate. After all, it was the succubi, Lilith’s daughters, that had brought Sylvie into awareness of the Magicus Mundi all that time ago, Lilith’s influence that had seen Sylvie’s innocence shattered. Lilith’s touch tainted everything. Her fingers curled tightly into fists, stretching the jacket’s pockets taut.
“Your conflict was inevitable—”
“I made some of her daughters dead,” Sylvie said. “In retrospect, not the smartest move ever.” She picked up one of the little crystals and juggled it hand to hand. No wonder Demalion had taken to carrying one; they were as smoothly soothing as meditation balls minus the annoying chime.
“She has other offspring,” Anna D said. “What’s a double handful of them gone to a woman like her? To a woman of enormous will and obsessive focus? They could not help her; she dismissed them from her mind. But you, Ms. Lightner, are fated to face her.”
“Fate’s just an easy word for not trying,” Sylvie said. “I make my own choices, make my own fate.”
“Perhaps fate was the wrong word,” Anna said, shifting in her seat to gaze at the sheet glass. Sylvie doubted that she and Anna D were seeing the same sky beyond it. “There are patterns. Cause and effect, choices so small they’re meaningless until the accumulation is clear. Do you like to look in mirrors, Ms. Shadows? Do you like what you see?”
“We were talking about Lilith,” Sylvie said.
“We still are,” Anna D said. “Answer me.”
“I always wanted green eyes,” Sylvie said.
“Do not be pert,” Anna D snapped, lips drawing into a snarl; her teeth seemed rather long and very white. “I have put up with enough of your foolishness. What do you see in the mirror?”
“Myself,” Sylvie said, intimidated despite herself. The Furies were always enraged; their sudden bursts of temper were expected. This feral distortion of an elegant woman just plain scared her. Kill it, the dark voice hissed again.
“Tell me,” Anna D said. “Is it the same face you used to show? Back when you first chose to protect? Or is it the face of a Fury, driven to punish?” Cat-quick, she reached out and flicked Sylvie’s sleeve, leaving a long, rough scratch in the leather. “You smell of blood and death.”
Sylvie slipped out of the woman’s reach and rose. She leaned up against the cool glass and closed her eyes. “I know who I am,” she said. “Tell me about Lilith.”
She opened her eyes and watched Anna D sink back in the chair, almost seeming to dwindle. The woman’s lips parted, the barest sigh soughed out. “You don’t know,” she said. “But we’ll come at it another way. Lilith hates her God. Do you know that?”
“He told her to obey Adam.”
Anna D made a chuffing sound, flicked her fingers open, dispersing nothing. “That for Adam. It was always about her God. She was created to be perfect, proud and intelligent, caring—why wouldn’t she be all those things?—she was designed by a god, after all.”
“You make her sound good,” Sylvie said. “Not a demon.”
“Lilith is as human as you, though considerably more long-lived,” Anna D said. “She walked paradise and looked outside, at the other peoples, the ones her God meant to improve upon. They suffered fear, pain, death. Lilith asked why they should suffer, when she did not? Why were they forbidden the garden, when there was abundance within that never abated? She finally began to ask why God deserved her worship at all. What made Him worthy of devotion? What separated Him from the flock outside but a happenstance of power?
“She watched as he brought Eve into existence, the serpent, the tree. Soon after that, he punished them both, casting them out.”
“Bluebeard,” Sylvie murmured. “A planned punishment. An unfair test. Death.”
“Lilith deciphered His plan. Eden was limited, even with his handmade followers. To that end, He sent Adam and Eve into exile, frightened, pathetic, hurting, so that their heartbroken, homesick wails could stir envy and longing in the hearts of other peoples. Stirring the desire to bow down, if only to earn a chance at the beautiful garden for themselves. After all, heaven is only a heaven in comparison to a hell.
“The more Lilith learned, the more she swore to depose Him. She created an army to storm his realm, an army she birthed herself. But her children were as earthbound as she, and so she turned to slaughtering men, in hopes of luring Him down to her level.
“Through every war she waged, every death she laid at His door, her God never responded, stayed remote and unconcerned with the world below. It drove her mad.”
“She kidnapped Bran to get a god’s power,” Sylvie said. “To confront God in His own realm.” She closed her eyes, finding a smile on her lips at the pure simplicity of the plan. If the mountain won’t come to you—she almost wished Lilith well. Except, of course, it was Dunne’s power, and Dunne’s lover, her client and Sylvie’s own life at risk.
“Such a god, too,” Anna D said. “One whose powers could rally multitudes of other powers behind it. She plans well.”
Justice? Sylvie thought, skeptical. Justice was a cold and abstract thing for most people, nothing to fire the blood.
“You sympathize,” Anna D said. “You agree with her choice to make things right?”
“Right?” Sylvie said, “Right rarely involves burning people to death in a nightclub. Yes, I sympathize. But I will stop her.”
“What cost are you willing to pay?” Anna D said, and waved a hand at the glass, her eyes distant, pupils narrowing.
Sylvie turned and blinked. Scrying without spell casting was an inborn talent, and didn’t allow anyone but the talented to see—but the images rippled over the glass, visible even to her.
Sylvie’s mother sat at a hotel desk, phone hunched between her shoulder and ear, one hand on her laptop keyboard, the other holding a cup of coffee, probably far from her first or last. Her father read at a table strewn with paper, red pen tucked between his fingers, sighing as he brought it into use. The usual vacation for them, in other words. Her sister crawled halfway out of the academy’s restroom window to sneak a smoke without setting off the smoke detectors. Sylvie made a note: kick Zoe’s butt when I get back.
Alex appeared in Sylvie’s office, on the phone, spinning in the chair with a look of utter frustration on her face. She tossed the cell on the desk and jumped to her feet at some sound Sylvie couldn’t hear. Alex had raided Sylvie’s closet again, wore her ’Canes Windbreaker, and the gag belt buckle Zoe had given Sylvie, the fist-sized steel plate that spelled out Sylvie in rhineston
e glitter. Sylvie wondered if Alex had ever gone home, or if she, like the loyal dog, intended to camp out and pine for her mistress.
The image blurred, swirling, as the silver warning bell gyrated in its bowl. Alex slumped into the seat then, and crumpled, not frustrated but scared, crying, and Sylvie wasn’t there. . . .
The window glass cracked, spiderwebbing with impact and dispersing the vision. For a brief moment, the glass showed blowing sand, the jagged teeth of a broken pyramid. The small crystal ball, chipped now, fell to the carpet with a thunk and rolled back down the steps to Sylvie’s feet. She picked it up again, barely remembering loosing it in the first place, though her shoulder ached with the force of her throw. “Don’t bring my family into this.”
Anna D gasped, sounding pained as if the crack of the glass had found an echo in her bones. Anna D looked older suddenly, her bones etched clearly beneath tight skin.
“Your family is already a part of it. The Murderer’s Child. Lilith loved once, loved a man who she believed had been manipulated and wronged. Cain, his name. Cain, the murderer. His line continues through you. Lilith is your ultimate dam, and you are the first one of her human children to be truly awake for centuries. Do you still think you know who you are?”
It blindsided Sylvie; the crystal left her hand again, dropped from numbed fingers.
“You can’t trust yourself; Lilith is in your blood. Her strength keeps you from bowing before power, but it taints as much as it protects. All Lilith would have to do is call to you, and you’d join her—”
“No,” Sylvie said, then more fiercely. “No. You’ve obviously never seen two alpha bitches meet. Why should I believe you? You’re not even human. For all I know, you could be Lilith’s hireling, meant to keep me distracted, meant to confuse me. You sure as hell don’t like me. I can’t see any reason on earth why you’d help me, and yet, here you sit, dispensing your wisdom with a cryptic hand. And really, you’ve told me nothing.”
“I’ve told you everything.”
“You’ve told me what was. I live in the present. I have to deal with the now. It’s good to know who I face, but it’d be better to know where she is.”
“You’re right,” Anna D said. “I don’t like you. You’re dangerous. But it could be worse. You could be worse, could become a dark creature to rival your dam. Do you want to travel that path?”
“I hate backtracking,” Sylvie said flatly. “If I’m on a path, there’s only one way to go, and that’s forward. No matter where it takes me.”
“Whoever said there are no branches?” Anna D said. “You’re very near a fork in your path. Do not pass it by, unseeing.”
“I think I liked it better when you were spitting insults,” Sylvie said. “At least, that was sincere. New-age metaphors are not your thing.”
Claws shkked out; the chair arms shredded beneath her tense fingers, and Anna D sighed, contemplating the foam stuffing beneath her nails. “I haven’t lost my temper in years. Congratulations, Ms. Lightner.”
“It’s a talent,” Sylvie said. “Apparently inborn.” She turned and headed for the door. Enough was enough.
“Lilith’s chosen future promises a bloody revolution that will damn generations to agony and pit god against god. Inhuman, I may be, and old with it, but there are those whose futures I would guard, those whom I love,” Anna D said. Her voice was tired. “You seem to be the vanguard to stop it, much as it pains me. You, Ms. Lightner, are every mother’s nightmare. To know that my son’s future hinges on your actions—can you blame me for my concern? You are reckless when cornered. You trample others on your path. Worst of all, you are willfully blind to things that should be readily visible.”
“You don’t know when to quit,” Sylvie said. “I almost felt sympathy for you—before you decided to go for the free-for-all into my flaws. Look, no one’s dying today. Keep your son out of my way, and there’s no problem. I don’t put people between me and my enemies.”
“Even when they volunteer?” Anna D looked up at her, her eyes summer-sand hot, blazing with fury. “You don’t even recognize it. You truly believe my son dislikes you, distrusts you. Sometime you should ask him, what wouldn’t he do for you. The answer might shock you. It should shame you.”
Sylvie swallowed. Oh. Maybe she had been narrow-sighted too long, to miss this one. Anna D’s son wasn’t just some stranger at risk in a changing world. Anna D’s son was Michael Demalion. Sylvie walked back into the living room and took a seat, landing suddenly in a chair as her knees failed. “Demalion’s your—”
“I thought it obvious,” Anna D said.
“He’s human.”
“As was his father.”
“He works for the ISI. He studies ways to drive things like you out of this world, or at least make them uncomfortable enough to move abroad. He . . . he doesn’t know what you are.” Sylvie studied the proud lines of the woman’s face, the regal set of her neck, and laughed. “And you think I have denial issues.”
“Your opinion is irrelevant.” Anna D shifted in her seat.
Oh, Anna D regretted opening her mouth, Sylvie thought. She recognized the twitchiness, as if the discomfort were something physical that could be relieved. “What are you, anyway?” Sylvie asked.
What lies in desert sands
with a hiss?
Long-tailed,
smooth-shaled,
not a serpent,
yet deadly in her kiss?
Back to that again, Sylvie thought; to her surprise, the answer sprang up, unprompted, when she had expected Anna D to win this round. Maybe it was the sum of small things, piling up like a snowdrift, her mind working overtime to prove Anna D wrong. “Sphinx,” she said. “You’re the Sphinx.” And still speaking in riddles, still testing men. Belatedly, she wondered what would have happened if she’d guessed wrong. Historically, death had been the result. A kiss? That was one way to describe having your head bitten off, she supposed.
Anna D nodded.
“Put those pieces together right, didn’t I?” Sylvie rose. “You’ve told me everything about Lilith that you can, am I right? You don’t know where she is.”
“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 cri
ed 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.