Sins & Shadows

opinionated justice-freak god act. And I’m hunting Bran because he’s an innocent, and I’m hunting Lilith because I—”

Beneath her hand, the crack in the table widened, and scales rose to touch her fingers, the faint flicker of a tongue. “Fuck!” She threw herself back and watched the snake slip free, a beautiful, deadly swath of red, gold, and black that poured itself over the edge of the table and vanished.

“Do you see that?” she cried.

“It’s a curse come searching,” Mnemosyne said. “You do make enemies, don’t you?” She reached down and collected the serpent. The coral snake coiled and thrashed in her grip. The eyes along her arm opened to better look at it.

Another sleek head began to protrude from the table crack, and Sylvie said, “So what do I do?”

“Nothing,” Mnemosyne said, and dropped the snake. It curled and hissed, tongue flickering. Sylvie aimed the gun, but hesitated; Mnemosyne didn’t seem concerned, and while gods couldn’t be trusted to care about human lives, they needed her.

“Nothing?”

“It’s questing. It can’t see you. Not cloaked as you are in the scents of others, splashed with inhumanity, and dreaming under my aegis. It’ll vanish with the dawn. A limited sort of curse, all spite and petty arrogance. Borrowed power fuels it.”

Sylvie watched the snakes slipping around her ankles and growled. “A curse on me.” The satanists, she thought, scavenging Dunne’s bleed-off in Miami. The curse alert going active, and Alex on the run. “Can I shoot them?”

“They’re not real to you, as you’re not real to them.”

“I want to hurt them,” she said. They’d made a mistake. Their being human had kept Sylvie from her guns, but now, by stealing power, they’d forfeited that status. She killed monsters.

Mnemosyne shook her head. “Better to elude—”

“No,” Sylvie said. “I’m not going to wait around for them to try again. I want them to see me, feel me, fear me.” At her feet, the coral snakes merged and melded, doubling, tripling, growing in size, until it rivaled the mass of an alligator. Her heart pounded in her ears, panic and rage mingled together.

“Do as you will.”

“I always do.”

The snake suddenly rose and struck, and she dodged on pure nervous reaction. She leveled the gun, and the snake raised itself again like a cobra, and hissed her name, “Shadows.”

“Go away. I’m too much for you to handle,” she said, and pulled the trigger. The bullet blew its head into spatter, and it dissolved back into a dozen or more regular coral snakes, all retreating through the cracked table. “What, giving up so soon?”

Mnemosyne said, “Many people throughout history have taunted their enemies. Many learned to regret it.”

“Shove off,” Sylvie said. “You’ve delivered your message; I’ve given you mine. So the sooner you go, the sooner I can wake up and get back to work.”

Mnemosyne raised her hands, and Sylvie turned her head. “No. No more pretty pictures. Just go. It’s my dream. I don’t want you in it.”

When she looked back, the Muse was gone. Sylvie propped her feet up on the table and noticed that the window to the beach had returned, though the girls were long gone, and night had fallen. Phosphorescent waves curled lazily across the sea, and Sylvie leaned back and watched the sun rise over the water.

Maybe, when all this was done, she’d take a vacation. Make it a long weekend, and pull Zoe out of school. Take Alex, too. They could lie out, watch the tourists burn, and count license plates from around the country. Alex could teach her to parasail, and Zoe could whine when Sylvie wouldn’t let her trot off after cute lifeguards. Maybe it wouldn’t be the carefree time of her childhood, but it wouldn’t be bad at all. Hell, maybe she’d even invite Demalion, if he could be convinced to give up his suits for board shorts.

Sylvie woke to noise with the sensation of having been smiling in her sleep; before she could enjoy it, the ringing phone was answered, and Demalion’s voice, first sharp, went quiet and furtive.

Maybe I won’t invite him, Sylvie thought. ISI, secretive, son of a bitch. She never even considered that he might be keeping quiet out of basic courtesy; he knew the phone would have woken her, hair-triggered as she was.

She ghosted to the door, leaned into the dim hallway, and heard, “. . . condition?” He listened for a long moment, and the answer didn’t please him. He swore into the phone, still at a whisper, then said, “I told you to watch her. What about the other?”

Watch who? Sylvie wondered, though the prickling heat of her resurgent anger suggested a name or two. You trusted him, the dark voice gloated. You thought you and yours were safe with him.

“No, no, there’s no help for it. Bring her in. But discreetly! And be careful with her, she’s an innocent. She’ll be scared.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t send men to scare her.”

Demalion jerked; his eyes widened, and he looked away despite himself. Guilty, Sylvie judged. But of what?

“Got to go,” Demalion said, and set the phone down.

“Why do I think that I’m involved in that conversation? Why do I know I’m not going to like it?” She crossed her arms across her chest, tucked her hands away when he reached for her.

“Sylvie,” Demalion said. He licked his lips. “I—”

“What did you do?” Sylvie asked. “Bring her in. Who’s her?”

“Zoe,” Demalion said. “Your parents are on vacation, and she’s not safe where she is. Her school was canceled on account of snakes in the lockers—”

“She’s my sister. I’ll protect her. Or I’ll arrange protection for her. I thought we had an understanding—”

Demalion said, “Sylvie, please. I’m trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help,” she said. Her hands fisted. She wanted to throw herself at him, but held back, a little uncertain whether angry grappling wouldn’t lead back to the bedroom. And if he was going to betray her, she wanted it to be a point of pride that she walked away first—

“Alexandra Figueroa-Smith is dying.”

Sylvie’s entire body spasmed as if she’d been electrocuted. Cold traced her nerves, made her pant. Her brain locked, repeating those words. Not Alex.

“A curse of some kind. Or one hell of a freak accident. Her jeep overturned. They didn’t find her right away, and when they did, she was covered in—”

“Coral snakes,” Sylvie said through numb lips. She’d driven them off, feeling in control, feeling smug—it was her fault entirely.

Her breath seared her throat, and she realized distantly that she was hyperventilating. Her ankle complained, and Sylvie eased it out from under her, wondering when she’d hit the floor.

Beside her, Demalion crouched, still talking, empty words where one or two percolated through every so often. Paralysis. Neurotoxin. Ventilator. Antivenin. Hours. Sylvie’s mind raced. Shorted out. Started again. Swerved to vengeance. They were going to pay and pay. . . . Dunne could save her. No, Dunne couldn’t save himself at the moment. Mnemosyne had said as much. His attention elsewhere.

So get his attention. You know how. The one thing he can’t ignore. The one thing he’d die for. Sylvie closed her eyes. Impossible. But, if there were no other options, then the impossible had to be done. A scheme unfolded, bit by bit by impossible bit. Sylvie’s breath steadied, her pulse slowed. She looked at her plan through a sniper’s obsessive focus and found it acceptable.

“. . . you on a private flight to Miami,” Demalion said.

“What good would watching her die do?” She ignored the shock that lit his face. “I need clothes, I need your car. I need my phone and my gun.”

“What are you planning?” he said, eyes growing less concerned and more wary. “You’re upset, not thinking clearly.”

“I’m angry,” she said. “I find it clears the mind extraordinarily well.”

20 Waking the Oubliette

SYLVIE ABANDONED THE ISI SEDAN ON A SIDE STREET. DEMALION would figure out where she had gone; he had all the pieces and had shown himself more than capable of putting them together. Abandoning the car was only a slowing device, but she wanted things played out before he hit the scene. Before he put himself between her and danger. He’d be furious, not only that she left him behind—again—but that she’d used a weakness he confided in her to do so.

She’d allowed his company as far as Dunne’s apartment, Sylvie driving the last mile when proximity keyed the return of Demalion’s blindness. They had changed places in a tension-ridden silence, and Demalion sank into the passenger seat, cradling his crystal “eye.” Once there, Sylvie had taken ruthless advantage of his blindness, of the effort it took him to see through the crystal; she collected what she had come for in a rush, too fast for him to make any sense of it, and hightailed it out of the brownstone.

Her actions had blown the hell out of their truce and set the ISI back on her tail, but it was the only thing she could do. The curse on her had rebounded onto Alex, who had been—mostly— safely out of the way. At her side, Demalion was nothing more than a walking target.

Another wary glance at the storm-churned sky, and Sylvie thought, Better hurry. Chicago was a shadow of itself, a town lit by tempest light, its borders girdled by towering dark clouds, and its people hunkered down in growing panic.

Lightning flickered and licked the clouds, coming not from within them, but from elsewhere. Dunne was on the run, hiding his own storm-cloud core of power somewhere within the sky tumult, and Zeus—Sylvie winced as another sheet of lightning crackled across the face of the cloud, red-violet, bruising the sky—Zeus was hunting. A bird splatted into the concrete near her, a twisted thing half scale, half feather, all writhing movement, before a passing cab smeared it into the asphalt. The cabbie slowed, backed up alongside her. “Car trouble? Lady, you need a ride?”

Sylvie shook her head. “El,” she said.

“It’s not running. Power outage at the main line.”

“Best news I’ve heard all day,” she said.

He drove on, not bothering to waste more words on an obvious idiot. Sylvie had been serious, though. Doing what she planned to do was already in the impossible category; doing it with an audience? Might as well ask her to save the world. Her intentions were much smaller. One girl, one boy. Alex. Bran. The world would have to fend for itself.

She hefted the artist’s satchel out of the backseat; she’d stolen it from Bran’s attic studio, filled it while Demalion hovered sightlessly, if not quietly, at her side. She bit her lip. If he’d just stay out of this . . .

If you wanted him safe, the dark voice said, you shouldn’t have let him in.

She shivered and forced those thoughts away. Keep him safe, she thought. It was a lie, or rather, a partial truth at best. She didn’t want Demalion at her side. Demalion was her weakness because he offered her his strength, a shoulder to lean on, arms to shelter in. Right now, Sylvie needed to stand alone and tall, needed aggression and vitriol more than understanding. She needed to keep her rage, and she fueled it by knowing she was alone against the world. Demalion had no place in that.

She slung the satchel over her shoulder and headed for the El, ignoring the crackling, fulminating sky above her head.