by Lyn Benedict
“Fuck you,” Lupe said. “No.”
“Put Erinya on,” Sylvie said. The agents were closing in; Sylvie clutched the phone tight and ran. Hardly discreet behavior in an airport, especially when she didn’t have luggage—no pretense at running for a plane. She dodged two rent-a-cops, who were all too willing to get involved, and they paid the price, getting hit with a spell meant for her. They went down, blinded, paralyzed, neat packages ready to be collected.
Yvette’s personal team was all witch, Sylvie thought, and they could and would use witchcraft at will since they could cover it up, afterward. Up ahead of her, illusions spread like disease, unreal police clearing the concourse. Unreal police dogs lunged before them, pulling leashes taut, scaring people back. Isolating Sylvie, who didn’t react to the illusions.
Yvette had studied her enough to turn Sylvie’s immunity into a disadvantage. Yvette was a thinker.
“I don’t want that thing. It’s plastic,” Erinya’s voice resonated through the phone even at a distance.
“It’s Sylvie,” Lupe said. “Just take the damn thing.”
“Plastic!”
“Erinya!” Sylvie snapped. “Come get me! Now!”
“Not the boss of—”
“Erinya!” Lupe said. “Please! Go to her!”
A moment later, the airport carpet shredded under the stress of a blossoming jungle; the witches nearest Sylvie, nearest Erinya’s sudden arrival, screamed as their spells overloaded in the god’s presence and burned them out as inevitably as a flame following a trail of gasoline. Erinya crossed her arms over her chest and smirked.
Too much to hope that Yvette had fallen prey to Erinya’s magic-burn. Sylvie knew better. The moment Sylvie had hung up on her, Yvette had taken Demalion and Marah and gotten the hell gone. Yvette was a thinker; Yvette had files on Sylvie, knew her strengths, her weaknesses. Yvette knew Sylvie would use every weapon she could if cornered. Even a god. Knew she’d done it recently in Miami.
Erinya snarled, made to go after the witches, who were scattering as best they could. Sylvie grabbed her shoulder, said, “Miami. We don’t have time.”
“We have nothing but time,” Erinya said. “We’re immortal. And we’re hunters. We could play. You could get payback for their harassing you.”
“I need to get back to Alex. I need to talk to Riordan.” Reminders to herself as much as to Erinya. It would be so easy to turn the hunt around. So tempting. Sylvie hated the ISI, but at least they had some interest in people’s welfare. The Good Sisters? None.
And they had taken Demalion.
Sylvie savaged her lip, remembered Zoe. Remembered Alex, ill and alone with Lupe who couldn’t be trusted.
Erinya ran a red tongue over black-painted lips, looking after the fleeing Society agents. “It wouldn’t take long. Really. I could drop some of them from here.” She held up a hand and proved her point. Sylvie turned to see two of the agents explode into a fine mist. The glass wall along the stairwell exploded, spitting shards everywhere. People screamed. Civilian casualties. The roof cracked, parted; sky peered through, mercilessly blue.
Somewhere, something was burning.
Erinya laughed. “Like nipping the heads off birds! Could cripple some others, let you catch up to them…
“This is why Dunne wants you dead. This is why you can’t stay on earth.”
Before Erinya could take offense and disappear, Sylvie grabbed hold of her sleeve, and changed the subject. She didn’t bother with subtlety. Erinya didn’t do subtle. “So you’ve been hanging out with Lupe?”
“I played in her dreams, sent whispers in with the swaying of my flowers, spoke to the beast in her, and she called to me.”
“Don’t you want to get back to her?”
Erinya shot Sylvie a flat glare, a clear reminder that Erinya might not be subtle, but she wasn’t stupid. “I could leave you here. Let you fly back the regular way. I’ve cleared the witches out for you.”
“Eri—I’m worried about Alex. Worried about my sister. Just plain worried. I’m going to go hunt Yvette, but I need to prepare first.” Like it or not, she was going to have to talk to Riordan. Not only to get Zoe back but to get a better scoop on Yvette. Find out if Riordan had been lying this whole time. Find out if he was Society also.
Thinking about his stance on magic, Sylvie doubted it.
Erinya sidled foot to foot, hissed at a single remaining security guard who had the balls to creep up on them, gun drawn, concussion be damned. He was bleeding from his forehead; his eyes looked glazed. He came on anyway. Erinya said, “Go away,” and he was gone. Vanished. He screamed as he went.
“Eri—”
“What!” the god snapped. She spun around, shifting shape as she did, her tail lashing at the air. “Do not presume on our friendship. You keep telling me what to do. What not to do. I do what I want to do. You asked for my help. You don’t get to dictate how I grant it.” The spikes on her neck were not only standing up but quivering with rage.
Sylvie couldn’t muster up any argument. It was true. It was why she’d tried not to ask for help, even when Erinya’s presence loomed like a solution to so many problems. Erinya wasn’t the right solution, just an easy one.
Sylvie wondered if she’d jumped the gun. If she could have escaped Yvette and her goons on her own. A year ago, she would have had to. Then again, a year ago, she’d barely been on the ISI radar.
“All right,” she said now. “You’re right. Can we go home now?”
Erinya’s tail lashed, then the Fury growled concession. Given that they’d destroyed and cleared most of the airport, and there was no one left to stop them, Sylvie took the time to collect her guns from the car and to make sure the laptops hadn’t been damaged in her mad dash. She remembered ricocheting off a wall at one point. If Riordan was involved, Graves’s protected files would name him a villain also. Alex would need the computers.
* * *
TRAVELING VIA ERINYA’S GOD-POWER WAS NOTHING LIKE THE smooth hiccup in reality that was Dunne’s method of movement. Sylvie understood why the guard had screamed; her bones felt like they twisted inside her skin, yanking her forward through landscapes that seemed slick and hungry, predatory. It was all stone and jungle and broken edges; nothing ran in any sensible way. It was as if someone had taken a puzzle of a landscape and forced it together any which way, heedless of shape or image.
Sylvie clung tight to her sense of Erinya and managed to wait until there was real earth beneath her feet to throw up. Her nails dug into damp Key Biscayne soil. Cool grass tickled her palms, and the salt air started to ease the twisting nausea. When she looked up, Erinya was peering back at her with curiosity. “You survived.”
“Was that in question?” Sylvie said. She remembered the child that Erinya had vanished and wondered wildly what had happened to him. If he had felt that pain. If he had died someplace utterly alien to the world he knew, scared and alone. It didn’t make sense. Erinya was all about justice for children.
“He’s fine,” Erinya said. “I took him the safe way. I took you through the realm I inherited from Tepeyollotl. Do you like it? I don’t. Even someone like me needs a peaceful place to call home.”
Sylvie put her hand up, a quiet demand for assistance in getting to her feet. Erinya grudgingly provided it. “I do understand, Eri. I do. But you have the power to change that place. Make it what you want.”
“It fights me,” Erinya said. “It remembers Tepeyollotl. He’s there, somewhere. Slinking around, a sulking remnant. Urging it to rebellion by his very presence.”
“You’ve never shied from a fight,” Sylvie said.
“I like to fight face-to-face, not against sneaking, crawling things. It makes me twitchy,” Erinya said. She shot Sylvie a sidelong glance. She managed to look sheepish. Sulky. Human.
A teenage pout from a creature that had just injured or killed any number of people in the Dallas airport. Sylvie scrubbed her face, frustrated. At a loss. The Magicus Mundi was, paradoxically, easi
er to understand when it was inexplicable. At least then she could just label it as such. Erinya, with her inhuman abilities and human predilections, kept her veering between horror and sympathy.
“Are you two going to stand out there all day?” Lupe leaned out the front door.
“We’ll work something out,” Sylvie said. “Just. Don’t go off half-cocked anymore.”
“Unless you ask me to?” Erinya showed her teeth, sharp and thin behind her painted lips.
“I won’t ask.”
That was a promise Sylvie meant to keep.
Erinya shrugged, raced for the house, rubbed her cheek up against Lupe’s neck, coiled an arm around her shoulders. It was breaking Sylvie’s brain, but Erinya looked small and fragile next to Lupe’s lanky height. Then again, Erinya changed her height as easily as she changed her shape.
Lupe petted Erinya’s hair, met Sylvie’s gaze with a flush on her cheeks. “What. You wanted us to get along.”
Dream-courting, Sylvie thought. Whispering flowers. Beast calling to beast. Obviously, it was an efficient wooing mechanism. There was a bite mark on the back of Lupe’s neck.
“No, it’s great. Rah-rah, love, and all that,” Sylvie said. “Where’s Alex?”
“Still on the couch. I wanted to call the ambulance, but… Lupe’s mouth twisted, showed fangs of her own, the strange skink blue tint to her tongue. She gestured broadly at herself. “What was I going to say when they came to keep them from grabbing me instead? I called Erinya. She said Alex was ill, but not in danger. I had to believe her.”
“Thanks,” Sylvie said.
“She really wanted to talk to you,” Lupe said. “She found out something. Something important. She said, wake her up, no matter what when you got back. She wouldn’t shut up about it.”
“You have any idea what she was doing?”
“Hitting the computer hard. I think she was looking for leverage against Riordan?”
“She would,” Sylvie said. “Thanks again. I mean it, Lupe.” She clapped the woman on the shoulder, jerked her hand back when Erinya growled possessively, and went to check on Alex.
As Lupe had said, Sylvie found Alex on the couch, but instead of chattering and poking at her laptop, drinking coffee by the mugful, Alex was curled into a tight knot beneath a blanket; her face seemed comprised of bruising and shadows, hollows under her eyes, her cheeks, her throat.
Sylvie touched her shoulder. It felt thin. Fragile. Sylvie hated to do it, but she shook her awake. It didn’t take much. Alex jerked to awareness, panting and startled.
“Sorry,” Sylvie said.
“Sylvie—” Alex flailed for a moment, reaching for her computer. “I found something. What did I find. I can’t remember. I found it. It was important.”
“Easy,” Sylvie said.
Alex sat up, shook her head, clicked the laptop open. “So frustrating. I know I know things. A lot of things. Important things. But the more I try to remember it, the more it’s like a whirlpool in my head.” There were tears in her voice, in her eyes. Her hands shook. Sylvie was going to kill Yvette for that alone. For putting her best friend through this hell. The Good Sisters had held sway for far too long. There was nothing beneficial in turning a brilliant young woman into a nervous wreck.
“Just sit a second,” Sylvie said, pushing back anger. Pushing back her own urgency—the need to deal with Riordan, retrieve Zoe, rescue Demalion, deal with Yvette—pushing it all away. Reaching for a tranquility and patience she had never possessed.
All the time in the world, her Lilith voice murmured.
For the first time, that soothed.
Alex calmed. “Okay. Okay.”
“Lupe said you were looking into Riordan.”
Alex winced, but nodded. “Dominick Riordan. Head of the Miami ISI. In charge of studying the legal ramifications of … of … the Magicus Mundi.” She spat the last two words out, panting. She tightened her jaw. “Just about him. It’s just about him. I can remember about him.” Talking herself away from all the memories connected to Riordan that the Society had erased or rewritten. “Oh God, Syl, it’s hard. It hurts. Riordan … He’s fast-track. He’s smart. He’s careful. He’s scrupulous. He’s a good guy. I mean, for a fed. He’s given everything to his job. He has no life outside it, no friends … no family.”
Her breath caught, eased. She looked up at Sylvie, clutched her hands. “Sylvie. He has no son. He just thinks he does. How do you get control of an incorruptible agent?”
“Plant a spy he’ll trust,” Sylvie said. John Riordan. Dominick Riordan’s son. The man she’d saved from the mermaids. The man she’d thought a witch. He was. Guess that meant Riordan Sr. wasn’t Society after all. His so-called son was. It meant something else, as well. She tried to keep the anxiety off her face, but felt her expression freeze along with her blood. Alex picked up on it, anyway. Her face crumpled back toward tears.
“God, Sylvie. Riordan’s son has Zoe. I should have called you sooner. I should have—”
“You did your best,” Sylvie said. “Really.”
“It doesn’t feel that way,” Alex said. “If something happens to Zoe—”
“Hey,” Sylvie said. “The Good Sisters are collecting people. Not killing them. Yvette took Demalion and Marah. She could have killed them. She went for the kidnap. She wants them alive. They’ll be okay. I have time. Maybe Riordan’s son will give Zoe back. To keep his cover, he’ll have to be obedient to Riordan’s deal.” She tried, fiercely, to believe any of it.
Alex nodded along with her, but even as she did, a frown crawled across her face. “Who’s Yvette? Do I know … Oh God, have I forgotten her, too?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Sylvie said.
Alex eyed her distrustfully, but finally nodded. “All right.”
“Get some sleep. Real sleep. In a bed,” Sylvie said. When Alex staggered off obediently, Sylvie confiscated the laptop, studied the open files on Riordan’s life, the identity search Alex had set in motion on his not-son—no wonder her memory was failing so fast. The only image she had of so-called Riordan Jr was the altered film of the mermaid’s attack. Just looking at it would set her off. Sylvie added the computer to her heap of Graves’s stolen tech. She had hoped that Alex could hack Graves’s computers, ID the rest of the Society agents in the country, figure out where they were based.
Maybe Sylvie could do it herself. Alex had programs to crack passwords. Sylvie opened the laptops, looked at the blank password fields. The programs were slow. She didn’t have time.
All the information she could want on the Good Sisters and it was as inaccessible as if it had died with Graves. Sylvie closed the lids. She couldn’t even ask Riordan to deal with it. The man harbored one Society spy in his ranks; there might be more. She looked at the files Alex had brought up on Riordan’s false son, and grimaced.
“What the hell is wrong with her?” Lupe asked. “I thought she’d had a stroke, at first. But then she was convulsing. It didn’t make medical sense. Another reason I didn’t call the ambulance.”
“Relax,” Sylvie said. “You did the right thing.”
Lupe stared at the door Alex had retreated through. “Can you fix her? She’s really scared.”
“If I can break Yvette’s memory spell, I think so.”
“You haven’t broken the spell on me,” Lupe said, her voice low and quiet. As if she regretted saying it even as the words crossed her lips.
“I don’t know what to do with you, Lupe,” Sylvie admitted.
Lupe grimaced. “So fucking unfair. You finally find all these powerful witches, and they’re bad guys.” Scales ran her skin, the beast within her threatening to surface. Sylvie tensed, then Erinya slipped into the room soundlessly, chased the scales away with a brush of her hand.
“We’ll devour their hearts,” Erinya murmured into Lupe’s tangled hair. “We’ll make them all pay.”
Twelve hours ago, Lupe would have shied from that idea. Now, her snake eyes gleamed with a certain eagernes
s. Sylvie was losing her completely, even if Erinya was keeping her form more or less stable.
“Erinya, you healed me,” Sylvie said. “Can you heal Alex? Chase the spell out of her mind?”
“Thought you weren’t going to ask anything more of me,” Erinya said. She leaned back, let Lupe take her weight.
“Can you do it?”
“You aren’t claimed by any god,” Erinya said. “Alex is marked. If I do it, Dunne will know. I don’t want to—”
Lupe shoved her forward. Erinya whirled, hair flaring out into spikes. Lupe’s arms grew multicolored scaly armor; her teeth lengthened, dripped venom.
Sylvie reached for her gun, but the two women only had eyes for each other.
“Do you know what I was before all this?” Lupe spat. “I was a physical-therapy student.”
It seemed a non sequitur, and Erinya looked impatient. Lupe lashed out, scratched four lines across Erinya’s throat. “Pay attention, Eri.”
“I always pay attention,” Erinya said. The vines creeping along the wall bloomed with dark flowers, set small stinging insects into the air. Her irritation making itself felt.
“I was going to help people,” Lupe said. “I was going to teach them to regain control of their bodies—ironic, seeing where I’ve ended up. When I think about it? When I remember what I was, what I wanted to be, what my dreams were? I go crazy. This is my nightmare. I’ve lost control of everything I used to own instinctively. My body. My mind. I was supposed to be helping people. Now I’m killing them.”
Erinya moved forward, reaching out, and Lupe lashed out with her claws again, etched another four lines over Erinya’s throat. Like the first set, they healed at once, but Erinya hesitated.
“It’s Alex’s nightmare,” Sylvie said. She got what Lupe was trying to say. “She’s all about knowledge. It defines who she is, what she does, how she interacts with the world. You take it away from her—”
“And there’s nothing left,” Lupe finished. “You helped me. You made me not want to die. You can help her. Don’t you stand there and do nothing if you can do something.”