Lies & Omens

“Let me draw their fire,” Sylvie said. “I’m going first. I’ve got the gun, and I’ve got some immunity to magic.”

“If they have weapons?”

“Then I’ll wish I’d asked Dunne for a bulletproof vest,” Sylvie muttered.

Zoe’s lips twisted, but she swallowed her instinctive urge to argue.

Sylvie checked her gun, contemplated changing out the clip before going in, but didn’t want them to get impatient and come after them while she was reloading, functionally disarmed. She gripped her gun tight—four bullets left in this clip. She could do a lot with that—and headed through the doorway at speed.

If Demalion wasn’t somewhere in this building, she’d have gone in shooting blind.

Ten witches waited for them in the open room, a blur of suited figures, male and female, arrayed in two rows, six up close, four farther back; Sylvie got off one shot before the first spell surge hit her, saw one suited figure spin around with the force of it. Not a killing shot, dammit, but the woman stayed down. For now.

Magic crawled over her skin like fire ants, nailed her with a spell that sank in and wrapped her body like a clammy, all-encompassing shroud—cold, growing colder, tasting of clay and stone and death. It sucked heat from her skin, her heart, her breath.

Life-draining spell, Sylvie identified. Didn’t matter. She had life to spare. She pushed through the paralysis the spell encouraged, blinked eyelashes that seemed weighted by sand, and sighted for the next shot. Careful, her voice warned. Three bullets left.

This time, her shot was effectively lethal. The witch in the center collapsed silently, no time even for a shout. Sylvie had hit her square between the eyes.

Two bullets, she told it. Nine witches still alive.

Nine witches blocking a doorway behind them. There could be more of the Good Sisters waiting beyond it. There probably were. Yvette wasn’t one of the opponents facing them. Sylvie’s shots had to count.

The life-draining spell didn’t slacken. Wrong witch.

Sylvie growled, heard Lupe echo it before leaping out of the tunnel; chameleon-like, her bright, poisonous colors had dulled, left her dark and sleek, hard to see in the dim, underground chambers.

Lupe looked like a monster, but she killed like a cat in a pack of birds, slashing wildly, doing as much damage as possible before picking a specific target to kill and eat. She scattered three witches with bloody gouges to their thighs and calves, torsos and hips. One man fell with a shriek, rolled beneath Lupe’s weight and claws. Blood glossed the dark stone floor, sinking into crevices; his voice gurgled to a stop.

The other two slapped spells on each other, stopping their bleeding.

After that, Sylvie lost track of things for a bit, bombarded by spells that made her skin burn or freeze or feel like it was going to shatter. Illusions rushed the room—collapsing ceilings and panicking clouds of bats, the stink of burning sulfur and too little air.

But nothing crashed into her, and nothing slowed her breathing. Illusion, just illusion, her Lilith voice whispered over and over, breaking the hold the spells tried to lay on her.

Some spells weren’t illusion, Sylvie thought, as she ducked a lash of impossibly scarlet flame.

The next fiery lash wasn’t aimed at her, but Lupe and Zoe. Zoe held firm; showed the Good Sisters what a shielding spell should really be able to do.

With the witches’ focus split over three targets, Sylvie figured out fast who held the life-draining spell on her—the fiftyish woman with hard, green eyes. Sylvie met that challenging gaze and fired directly at her. The bullet veered in defiance of all natural law and disappeared. One bullet wasted. One bullet left.

Invulnerability talisman, Sylvie thought. This witch was one step up from the ones she’d killed outside, probably the leader of this little coven. Made sense. Ten here, plus the three outside. Witches did like their traditions.

Sylvie fought against the life-draining spell, tried to peel herself out of it, even as the struggle exhausted her, made her feel like the air she breathed was full of sand and sharp edges. She felt years being whisked away from her with each labored breath.

“Why aren’t you dead?” the coven leader shouted. She looked irritated, outraged, even as she directed the other witches with clipped phrases in a language that meant nothing to Sylvie. Zoe seemed to understand just fine, and countered each attempt. She made it look easy, but Sylvie saw the trembling strain in Zoe’s corded neck and braced legs.

“Because I hate to oblige you,” Sylvie snapped. “Tell your goons to leave my sister alone.”

“Only when she’s dead.”

Lupe’s marauding had drawn to a halt; she slunk behind Zoe’s shielding, baring bloody teeth, her eyes flaring in the firelight.

“You’ll go first,” Sylvie said.

The coven head sucked in a breath to object and Sylvie used her last shot to take out the witch aiming fireballs at Zoe. No invulnerability shield there. The man died spectacularly; his spell backlashing on him as the bullet penetrated, wreathing him in fire. His fellow witches twisted and fled him, and Zoe took the opportunity to let loose some offensive spells of her own.

Sylvie gaped for half a moment, watching her baby sister create a whirlwind to drop a witch directly in Lupe’s waiting claws, then started reloading.

“Sylvie!” Zoe shouted. “Go. Get Demalion. We’ve got this.”

Not a bad idea, but not quite yet. Sylvie shot two witches who tried to prove Zoe wrong; her bullets slipped through their shielding—a quick shimmer the only sign that there’d been anything to slow her bullets down. She was getting faster at finding the weak spots in their shields. Some instinct kicking in.

The coven head turned her attention back to Sylvie, began whispering another spell, no longer content to wait for Sylvie to drop dead from the life-draining spell, and Sylvie decided the woman had to go.

She lunged forward, the exertion of pushing past the spell still wrapped around her, making her heart beat hard and heavy and labored, but she had the satisfaction of watching the coven leader’s eyes go shocked just before Sylvie tackled her.

Stupid witches. Even the Good Sisters, who used guns and technology, still seemed stunned when someone got physical with them. Of course, the Lilith voice muttered nastily, it might have more to do with the life-draining spell coming into solid contact with an invulnerability talisman. Warring magic was never fun, and while the coven leader squirmed and fought, Sylvie used the burn of the conflicting magics to locate the woman’s talisman—a thin, golden bracelet—and rip it off.

The witch shrieked; age wrinkled her skin, and Sylvie put a stop to that with a bullet.

She felt better instantly, scrambling to her feet, panting, but energized. Zoe nodded determinedly at her. Another go, go, go. Sylvie dodged another spell and bulled her way through the door into the deeper recesses of the Society stronghold. The door closed behind her and cut off Lupe’s snarls and the sounds of witches fighting for their lives.

She’d never wanted this life for Zoe. Right now, though, she was damn grateful that the girl seemed built for it.

16 Clearing the Way

AS SYLVIE RUSHED THROUGH THE DOORWAY, SHE FOUND HER FEET skidding out from under her. An unexpected blessing when the air above her was strafed with bullets. Sylvie let momentum roll her over, shot in the direction of the gunfire, and had luck on her side. She cut the witch off at the shins, and when the man fell forward, having dropped his gun to clutch at his legs, she finished him off. It made her gut churn, but that was the problem with witches. If they could talk, they could kill. She just didn’t have the time to bind and gag every witch she disabled. Not tonight.

She got back to her feet, wincing as her hip protested—she’d landed hard, and the floor was unyielding as well as slick. She kicked the door shut behind her, latched it just in time to shut it in a pursuing witch’s face. The